On the evening of 13 September 2025, as twilight painted Mumbai’s skyline over Nariman Point, the Y.B. Chavan Centre filled with activists, students and civil society veterans determined to attend an event once denied to them. The annual Father Stan Swamy Memorial Lecture — delivered this year by Jesuit theologian Father Prem Xalxo SJ on the theme ‘Migration for Livelihood: Hope amidst Miseries’ and chaired by senior advocate Indira Jaising — was a gathering imbued with both mourning and morale.

Originally slated to be held in August in St Xavier’s College, the lecture was abruptly cancelled after the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a right-wing student organisation, objected to honouring Swamy, describing him as ‘an anti-national’. For many of those assembled, the rescheduled event was no mere academic exercise but a collective act of defiance. In choosing to persist at a public venue instead, organisers turned the lecture into a refusal to let memory be silenced.

The evening began with the screening of the documentary A Caged Bird Can Still Sing, which recounted Swamy’s life and struggles. Its symbolism was unmistakable: a voice caged, yet still resonant, echoing the refusal to let repression erode resistance.

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The life and sacrifice of Father Stan Swamy loomed over the evening like a moral compass.

Born in 1937, Swamy spent more than five decades working among Adivasi communities in Jharkhand, founding the social action centre Bagaicha in Ranchi and insisting, time and again, that constitutional rights to land and forest must mean more than words on paper. He fought displacement caused by mining projects, corporate land grabs and the state’s erasure of tribal self-governance enshrined in the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act.

Known for documenting the arbitrary arrests of young Adivasis accused of being ‘Maoists’, Swamy condemned the misuse of the UAPA — the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act — as a tool against dissent. That same law was turned against him. In October 2020, at the age of 83 and battling Parkinson’s, he was arrested in connection with the Bhima Koregaon–Elgar Parishad case, accused of Maoist links on ‘evidence’ widely discredited by rights........

© National Herald