Sacked IPS Officer Sanjiv Bhatt Writes Letter to Countrymen from Jail

Guwahati, August 16, 2019:

Ex-IPS Officer, Sanjiv Bhatt, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, poses these questions on his letter - “Are we even headed in the right direction? Was Aazadi just about throwing off the colonial yoke? Wasn’t Aazadi about the freedom to question, to challenge, to express, to amend…”

His wife, Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt, on Thursday, shared a letter written by her husband on Facebook. She posted the letters from the Ex-officer’s Facebook handle.

The sacked officer is currently in Palanpur Jail, Gujarat. He starts his letter with his location – “Place of darkness” and expresses his thoughts on the occasion of India’s independence. He writes that today’s idea of nationalism is premised on the exclusion of minorities and the smallest minority is the thinking, rational Indian. He has termed politics as the choice for thugs.

“Today, the muscular nationalism and mobocracy that is thriving under the aegis of the state, silences and snuffs out all voices of social, cultural and political dissent,” writes Bhatt. His letter indicates clearly that the officer is enraged with the current political scenario of India. He says that the current political narrative and rhetoric have not only clouded our capacity for reason, but have also deprived us of our ability to differentiate between good and evil.

“We are on the threshold of unprecedented darkness,” he says. Urging the fellow citizens of India, Bhatt says that if the country has to survive as a functional democracy, every single person will have to rise above the crowd and voice out her/his opinion and ‘deconstruct’ the muscular nationalism.

Sanjiv’s letters received widespread response on social media after his wife shared his letter of 3 pages. People came in support of his thoughts and hoped for a better India which is truly independent. He further says that the people will have to realize that the government is not the nation, and being anti-government is not the same as being anti-national.

He concluded his letter with a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, hoping that the countrymen continue the march from the darkness to light with undaunted, undeterred and undefeated spirit.

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