“The trials of time”

That was a sterling act visiting Kobad Ghandy at Tihar Jail during Jamshedi Navroz ("The trials of time,” Parsiana, April 7, 2014). It prompts me to quote Oscar Wilde as you have from De Profundis, written in that "cave of black despair,” Reading Jail.
Wilde was brought to trial handcuffed and a motley crowd jeered and hurled insults at him. However, a single man in the crowd pointedly raised his hat to him and this is what Wilde said of the incident: "It was in this spirit and with this mood of love that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss a leper on the cheek. It is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the treasure house of my heart. I keep it there as a secret debt that I am glad to think that I can never possibly repay.”

Your excellent Editorial Viewpoint "The wall is strong” (Parsiana, April 7, 2014) makes a dignified and balanced case for this brave and unfortunate man who sought justice for the downtrodden. Ghandy is typical of a type of Parsi who takes up lost causes as a challenge and sometimes defends the indefensible. But if this man has never encouraged or engaged in acts of violence, or even if he has, then the basic tenets of justice demand that either he be tried and punished, or released, or at least released on bail. To incarcerate a man for five years without a trial speaks poorly of our judicial system and of our country’s conscience.
You have rightly and very pertinently said that while comparisons are odious one cannot help but be struck by the incongruity in the application of the law when it comes to men like the Thackerays because of whom people from other states who spoke a different language were killed, the high ranking Congress politicians actively involved in the 1984 Sikh massacre and men like L. K. Advani and Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party who are responsible for the killing of thousands of Muslims through action or inaction at Babri Masjid and Godhra. The four paragraphs of the editorial on the above and on the shenanigans of politicians like Sharad Pawar and Ashok Chavan remind one of Emile Zola and the Dreyfus case.
You also mention that "the community by and large has turned its back on him.” One would have hoped that in a community known for its legal luminaries at least one would have offered to defend Ghandy pro bono. If they have, we are both unaware of it.
I am neither a communist nor a Maoist sympathizer but recently a police officer who was fighting the Maoists confided in me, "The Maoists certainly cannot be condoned for the murder and mayhem they are propagating and must be dealt with an iron hand; but go into those jungles and remote villages and you will see unbelievable poverty and degradation, children dying with bloated bellies, starving and stunted men and women slowly dying of starvation, not a doctor or a midwife available for basic medical aid in an emergency. That is the state of a very large number of our people.”
If this is what has moved Ghandy to take this extreme stand, then I say with Kipling: "You’re a better man than I am.”
Dr HIRJI S. ADENWALLA
Trichur, Kerala
charlespinto@sify.com