My original name as given to me by my parents is Inder Y. Kumar. Dr. Azad Bhartiya is the name I have given myself. It was registered in court on October 13th 1997 along with the English translation i.e.: Free/Liberated Indian. My affidavit is attached. It is not the original; it is a copy attested by a Patiala House magistrate.
If you accept this name for me, then you have the right to think that this is no place for an Azad Bhartiya to be found, here in this public prison on the public footpath—see, it even has bars. You may think a real Azad Bhartiya should be a modern person living in a modern house with a car and a computer, or maybe in that tall building there, that five-star hotel. That one is called Hotel Meridian. If you look up at the twelfth floor you will be able to see the AC room with attached breakfast and bathroom where the US President’s five dogs stayed when he came to India. Actually we are not supposed to call them dogs because they are officers of the American Army, of the rank of Corporal. Some people say those dogs can smell hidden bombs and that they know how to eat with knives and forks sitting at a table. They say the hotel manager has to salute them when they come out of the lift. I don’t know if this information is true or false, I have not been able to verify it. You might have heard that the dogs went to visit Gandhi’s memorial in Rajghat? That is confirmed, it was in the newspaper. But I don’t care. I don’t admire Gandhi. He was a reactionary. He should be happy about the dogs. They are better than all those World Killers who regularly place flowers at his memorial.
But why is this Dr. Azad Bhartiya here on the footpath while the American dogs are in the Five Star hotel? This must be the question uppermost on your mind.
The answer for that is that I am here because I’m a revolutionary. I have been on hunger strike for more than eleven years. This is my twelfth year running. How can a man survive for twelve years on hunger strike? The answer is that I have developed a scientific technique of fasting. I eat one meal (light, vegetarian) either every 48 or 58 hours. That is more than sufficient for me. You may wonder how an Azad Bhartiya with no job and no salary manages a meal every 48 or 58 hours. Let me tell you, here on the footpath, no day goes without somebody who has nothing offering to share it with me. If I wanted, just sitting here I could become a fat man like the Maharaja of Mysore. By God. That would be easy. But my weight is forty-two kilos. I eat only to live and I live only to struggle.
I try my best to tell the truth, so I should clarify that the Doctor part of my name is actually pending, like my PhD. I’m using that title a little bit in advance only in order to make people listen to me and believe what I say. If there were no urgency in our political situation, I would not do this because, technically speaking, it is dishonest. But sometimes, in politics, one has to cut poison with poison.
I have been sitting here in Jantar Mantar for eleven years. I only leave this place sometimes to attend seminars or meetings on subjects of my interest in Constitution Club or Gandhi Peace Foundation. Otherwise I am permanently here. All these people from every corner of India come here with their dreams and demands. There is nobody to listen. No one listens. The police beats them, the government ignores them. They cannot stay here these poor people, as they are mostly from villages and slums and they have to earn a living. They have to go back to their land, or to their landlords, to their moneylenders, to their cows and buffaloes who are more expensive than humans, or to their jhuggis. But I stay here on those people’s behalf. I fast for their progress, for the acceptance of all their demands, for the realization of their dreams and for the hope that some day they will have their own government.
What caste am I? That is your question? With such a huge political agenda as mine, you tell me, what caste should I be? What caste were Jesus and Gautam Buddh? What caste was Marx? What caste was Prophet Mohammed? Only Hindus have this caste, this inequality contained in their scriptures. I am everything except for a Hindu. As an Azad Bhartiya, I can tell you openly that I have renounced the faith of the majority of the people in this country only for this reason. For that my family does not talk to me. But even if I was President of America, that world class Brahmin, still I would be here on hunger strike for the poor. I don’t want dollars. Capitalism is like poisoned honey. People swarm to it like bees. I don’t go to it. For this reason I have been put under twenty-four-hours surveillance. I am under twenty-four-hours remote control electronic surveillance by the American Government. Look behind you. Can you see that blinking red light? That’s their camera battery light. They have installed their camera in that traffic light also. They have their control room for their cameras in the Meridian hotel, in the dogs’ room. The dogs are still there. They never went back to America. Their visas were extended indefinitely. Now because the American Presidents come to India so often, they keep their dogs here, permanently stationed. At night when the lights are on they sit on the windowsills. I see their shadows, their outline. My distance vision is very good and getting better. Every day I can see further and further. Bush, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Ceausescu are members of a one hundred member club of leaders that are plotting to destroy all the good governments in the world. All the American presidents are members, even this new one.
Last week I was hit by a white car, Maruti Zen DL 2CP 4362 belonging to an Indian TV Channel funded by Americans. It crashed through the iron railing and drove onto me. You can see that part of the railing is still broken. I was sleeping, but alert. I rolled to one side like a commando, and so I escaped that attempt on my life, only my arm was crushed. It is now under repair. The rest of me was saved. The driver tried to escape. The people stopped him and forced him to take me to Ram Manohar Lohia hospital. Two people sat in the car and slapped him all the way to the hospital. The government doctors treated me very well. In the morning when I came back, all the revolutionaries who were here that night, bought me samosas and a glass of sweet lassi. They all signed or put their thumb impressions on my plaster. See, here are Santhal tribals from Hazaribagh, displaced by East Parej coal mines, these are Union Carbide Gas victims who walked here all the way from Bhopal. It took them three weeks. That Gas-Leak company has a new name now, Dow Chemicals. But these poor people who were destroyed by them, can they buy new lungs, new eyes? They have to manage with their same old organs, which were poisoned so many years ago. But nobody cares. Those dogs just sit there on that Meridian Hotel windowsill and watch us die. This is Devi Singh Suryavanshi’s signature; he is like me, a nonaligned. He has given his phone number also. He is fighting against corruption and the cheating of the nation by politicians. I don’t know what his other demand is; you can phone him directly and ask. He has gone to visit his daughter in Nashik, but he will come back next week. He is a eighty-seven years old man, but for him, still, the nation comes first. This is the rickshaw union Rashtravadi Janata Tipahiya Chalak Sangh. This thumb impression belongs to Phoolbatti from Betul, Madhya Pradesh. She’s a very good lady. She was working in a field as a daily laborer when a BSNL—Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited—telephone pole fell on her. Her left leg had to be amputated. The Nigam gave her money for the amputation, fifty thousand rupees, but how is she to work now, with only one leg? She is a widow, what will she eat, who will feed her? Her son doesn’t want to keep her so he has sent her here to do a satyagraha to demand a sedentary job. She has been here for three months. No one comes to see her. No one will. She will die here.