Colin Gonsalves: Freedom of speech and expression and the law of sedition in India

From http://www.sacw.net/article1937.html

Text of keynote address delivered by Colin Gonsalves at the inauguration of Persistence Resistance 2011, New Delhi

As far as speech against the government is concerned, you can now say almost what you want to say and get away with it. Criminal defamation that was a great restraining statute, that prevented people from saying things openly in society: Colin Gonsalves Photograph: Magic Lantern Foundation

Good morning. I am going to be very quick as I don’t want to stand between you and films that are going to be shown. I’ve been asked to speak very quickly for 15 minutes, on the Freedom of Speech and Expression and the Law of Sedition, particularly in the context of Binayak Sen’s arrest and his trial, now the appeal is pending before the High Court.

As you know the Human Right and Law Network represents very poor people and we have a very different view of the world as compared with that businessmen and so on may have about how well India is doing. We sort of represent people in courts and cases related to economic rights and political rights and so on. And we see the suffering of people, the anguish, the abject misery of the people we represent.

So we are always very keen to have critical speech against the government flow as quickly and in as unrestricted a manner as possible. We have had over the last five years very good time in the Supreme Court. In the sense that the Supreme Court has really come in over the last five years to promote the freedom of speech and expression. We have had many of Anand Patwardhan’s films that were stopped by the government, the Supreme Court has cleared many of those films. And even went to the extent of saying that the films be shown on prime time television.

We’ve had the obscenity standards now changed. So the old, very conservative way of looking at obscenity and censoring films on the grounds that it is obscene, those standards have sort of changed in the Supreme Court. We have caught up with the rest of the world and we no longer accept the older version of what constitutes obscenity.

As far as speech against the government is concerned, you can now say almost what you want to say and get away with it. Criminal defamation that was a great restraining statute, that prevented people from saying things openly in society… Criminal defamation as you know, didn’t have truth as defence, so you couldn’t say “Well, what I have said is correct.” So now truth as a defence in criminal defamation proceedings have come in you can say what you like if you have a basis for that statement. You can say: “ well what I said was correct. It might have had the effect of reducing the reputation in the eyes of the public, but what I said was actually accurate and truthful. And it was in public interest that I made that statement.” So defamation now, with truth coming in as a defence, allows people a little more leverage in speaking out.

As far as speaking out against government servants is concerned you can anything. For we follow the American standard, that is as long as what you say is truthful, and even if what you are saying is not truthful, as long as you did not know what you said is not correct, you are completely protected. And if the government tries to sue a person for having made a false statement, the government will have show that not only is the statement false, but also that the person who made the statement knew that the statement was false at the time when the statement was made. So defamation of public servants, politicians, policemen and so on, has virtually now been rendered redundant.

As far as pre-publication injunctions are concerned our courts were very inclined in the 60s, 70s, 80s from preventing publication from being distributed and to injunct the distribution of a publication. You know the ‘Stardust’ case where the High Court said - its scandalous stuff about the life of a particular actress – and prevented the magazine from being distributed. BY and large now, in the 90s and today, pre-publication injunctions are granted very, very rarely. And the approach of the court is to allow the publication to go out to society and leave it open for the person who has a grievance against the publication to file a suit for damages. So pre-publication injunction has also caught up with the international trend and the courts are not supposed to generally except in very rare circumstance to injunct a publication before it goes out.

POTA, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, had a very, very dangerous provision that penalised journalists who went out to interview Maoists. So a journalist who interviewed a Maoist and showed, or didn’t even show the clip, and just had the clip in his house or whatever, or her house, could be penalised for taking part in terrorist activity because you have interviewed an insurgent. Likewise advocates, an advocate who had a conversation with a militant could be taken under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. But POTA is now mercifully repealed.

So those are some of the positive developments that have taken place in the courts in the last 10 years. The downside is hate speech. In many of the Indian language newspapers you have virulent flow of particularly anti-Muslim writings. Terrible, terrible hate speech is flowing in this country which is completely unrestrained. The law exists for control of that kind of speech. It is constitutionally valid to restrain hate speech but it goes on unrestricted in the country. That is the downside.

The second downside is the banning of books, something little known. Hundreds of books have been banned. I don’t know by what authority government departments ban books but there are many, many controversial and good books which are today banned in India. You won’t get them in the bookstores. The third of course is the censorship of films which I feel is an out-dated and a sort of a anachronistic system. I suspect a careful look at censorship guidelines, censorship rules, censorship regulations, a closer look at that from the modern perspective of freedom of speech and expression may show us that censorship needs to go in this country. That’s as far as freedom of speech and expression is concerned.

Let me come to sedition. Now sedition is a very, very old, colonial kind of a law which penalises disaffection, disloyalty to the State. It has its roots in the old, colonial regimes where any speech against Her Majesty or any criticism of the government or the State was seen as fermenting disloyalty and therefore liable for prosecution. Well, it didn’t even require that your speech had any effect. It didn’t even require that people would rise up in arms against the State. The mere statement against the State was enough to take you in for considerable periods of time. We unfortunately in India, in the leading judgment of 1962, followed the colonial law quite a bit with a slight modification that your speech must be accompanied by some overt act against the State. Not a very satisfactory dilution of the law of sedition, so sedition remains on the statutes books even today.

Now you all know of Binayak Sen but you may not know that there are hundreds of young activists in jail today. I have a friend in jail in Uttarakhand, Rahi, who is in jail because he went out and interviewed a Maoist. And his story is on the activities on the Maoists in the State that were reported in the State. The government took offense against that and he is now in jail for three years and denied bail. I have many, many young friends who have had Maoist literature in their homes, and searches were done of their homes and they were arrested because they possessed Maoist literature which was said to be connected with seditious thoughts, activity and so on. So Binayak is one amongst many and I would say that when we campaign for Binayak we campaign for all the young people who have spoken out against the State, against the repression of the State and who are today languishing in jail, quite unknown. Very few people know about their suffering and their incarceration for long periods of time.

Now sedition law has been repealed in most countries. The UK has repealed the sedition law recently, Canada, Australia, many, many countries have done away with this law. But India continues with a very archaic and a very dangerous law. And Binayak Sen is a symbol of that resistance to a law that penalises free speech. As you know in Binayak’s case, the case is that he had a letter, that he took a letter from a person in jail to somebody else. There’s a great deal of dispute whether that letter was taken by him. But even if assume that the charges against him are correct, the taking of a letter for God’s sake, the taking of a letter from a prisoner to somebody else is the foundation for a charge of sedition.

From Human Rights Law Network and I personally I would like to see a great explosion of critical thought against this government, a great flowing of critical action and strong language against the government. I say so because I have seen people really suffer in this country over the period of the last 20 years under the globalisation regime. I have never seen people hungry, die of hunger as we have seen during this period of 8% growth rate. I have never seen people denied basic medical services in public hospitals, and public hospitals being privatised and closed down, and services closed down when people need them most. I have never seen children fall out of school and lose education, lose their chance for education notwithstanding the so called Education Act and so on. Housing rights, demolition of people’s homes and so on. So I would be very happy to have as great an outpouring of anger against the government. Sedition Law penalises anger, Sedition Law penalises criticism, Sedition Law says: You will go to jail if you say “I hate my government.”

I think the time as come in this country to have a little revolution. And young people and old people alike, speaking out with anger against a regime which really torments poorer people, I think the time has come to really allow this kind of free speech t flow.

Thank you very much.

[Colin Gonsalves is Advocate, Supreme Court, and Founder Director of Human Rights and Law Network.]

Extending legal aid to the downtrodden

From http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/11/stories/2006071104580200.htm

Colin Gonsalves

The Human Rights Law Network, headquartered in New Delhi and Mumbai, provides free legal aid to the poor in the country. In a conversation with Sangeeth Kurian, its founder director Mr. Gonsalves airs his views about present-day legal profession.

When Colin Gonsalves' parents decided to put their son through a five-year programme at a prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, little did they realise that he would chuck away his B.Tech to become a lawyer.

"After investing so much money on me, I did not have the courage to tell my father that I wanted to switch professions. So I decided to hide the fact from him till I became a lawyer," said Mr. Gonsalves, founder director of Human Rights Law Network and a native of Tangassery, Kollam. He was talking toThe Hindu on the sidelines of a two-day workshop on `Human Rights and Law' organised by the law network in the city on Sunday.

His decision to switch profession came in the wake of the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi. "I was studying for my final year at the IIT then. And there was wide-spread resentment against the move."

Egged on by his strong sense of social justice, Mr. Gonsalves decided to champion the rights of the slum dwellers and the workers in Mumbai after completing his graduation. But the going was not smooth. For five years he served as a social worker among the working class and slum dwellers for a paltry sum of Rs.500, before going on to take his graduation in law.

"Those five years were the happiest days of my life. I earned the least and learned the most," said this senior lawyer of the Supreme Court who has rocked the rarefied world of Supreme Court advocacy through his aggressive pursuit of public interest cases, including the famous `right to food' case, which was instrumental in providing noon-meals to schoolchildren.

Some of the other areas which the 200-strong members of his law network are actively involved are Dalit rights, disability, torture, HIV, trafficking issues and displacement.

However, according to Mr. Gonsalves, there is a noticeable change in the nature of the Public Interest Litigations (PIL) that are filed in the country today.

"In the Eighties and the Nineties, PIL was an instrument for the benefit of the poor. But now PILs are hijacked by the middle class and used against the poor," Mr. Gonsalves said. "The poor are losing faith in the judicial system and moving towards naxalism. The trend is visible in some of the north and middle Indian States. Dalits and tribals have stopped going to the court."

Mr. Gonsalves was of the view that there has been a steep decline in the ethics of the legal profession.

"The entire legal profession has joined the bandwagon of globalisation. There are very few lawyers who are working according to the selfless principles of the legal profession," he said.

"Lawyers should shed their conservatism, a tacit approval of male dominance and patriarchy and fight against traditions that opposed to the constitutional principals of equality," Mr. Gonsalves added.

His law network headquartered in New Delhi and Mumbai has around 20 centres across the country. The centres provide fast, free, and qualified support to those who have little or no access to law.

There is a big gap between knowing the law and using it, says rights advocate

From http://www.dnis.org/interview.php?issue_id=5&volume_id=1&interview_id=18

Colin Gonsalves is an advocate, practicing law in the Supreme Court of India. He has been actively involved with rights cases to systemise public interest law in India.

Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), set up by Gonsalves, is the first nationwide network of lawyers and social activists offering quick response to pro bono support to people with little access to legal recourse.

For the last 15 years, HRLN has been involved in Public Interest Litigations (PILs), monitoring human rights violations and campaigning for justice for the marginalised population of the country. A separate disability unit within HRLN works for increasing awareness on disability laws and providing legal assistance to disabled people.

HRLN, in collaboration with National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), and its partner NGOs, plans to work towards bringing greater awareness, fighting legal battles for the empowerment of disabled people across the country.

He explained the role of HRLN in empowering disabled people, in conversation with Sudeshna Banerjee.

Q: You have been a rights lawyer. How do you perceive disability cases when compared to other human rights cases?

Let's say they are same and they are also different. Same in the sense that you can use the legal system and the Constitution to correct injustices we find in the society. So it's the same in case of all injustices. Be it disability, employment, discrimination against women, the problems are similar.

The Constitution is a very powerful tool you can use against discrimination. It's another thing that people are still to wake up to the idea of disability as a mass problem in Indian society and that the use of the law is possible.

This is one area where there is a strange kind of ignorance and lack of understanding. It's important for us to be aware how the legal system can be used for such a massive section. I find it very shocking that it can be so severe, especially the lack of understanding in the use of law!

Q: You see this problem only among disabled people and NGOs. What about the problem on the part of the legal system?

When I say lack of understanding, I don't mean it on the part of disabled people only. Yes, disabled people hardly ever think of using the law. This is similar for most sections of people who are discriminated against. They hardly ever think of using the law. Tribals, for example, hardly ever think of using the law. People feel it's a lengthy system and they are not going to get anything out of it and it's going to be very expensive.

Lawyers, judges, social workers - nobody thinks we can use the legal system. It's partly because of our own fault, it's partly also because the legal system is cumbersome. It's a system hostile to the poor and the marginalised.

It's also our fault that we have not thought of using the law often. My personal experience has been when Javed [Javed Abidi, Executive Director of NCPEDP] provoked me to use the law for public awareness and empowerment. Now I have been provoking other people.

Q: What about women with disabilities, they are even more marginalised when compared with disabled men. What initiatives should be taken to bring them out of their shell?

I think all the initiatives you take for the disability sector, you should first start with women and see the results. The disability issues could be common among both the genders, except there will be issues on sexual harassment and violence against disabled women. They suffer more from hunger and poverty than their male counterparts. In every aspect of disability, there should be a clear balance for the women as well.

Say for employment, there is 3 per cent reservation for disabled people - maybe we should talk about women first.

I don't think things are different. You just have to be more sensitive to understand and take priority with the marginalised sector. I don't think that notion exists today.

Another thing I find in many of our meetings is that mostly disabled men attend these meetings. I think there is a disproportionate despair also on the disability issue. You don't find the balance between the two genders here. So I see a strong bias and discrimination here too.

Q: What are your initiatives in the formation of Disability Law Units (DLUs) with NCPEDP?

I basically collaborated with NCPEDP for whatever legal inputs I could give. Within HRLN we have tried to create a disability rights initiative too. Whatever legal inputs we can give, we would like to extend that to DLUs. For example, we have these social worker partners and we know how the legal system functions.

We know how to monitor and supervise lawyers; how do you evaluate a lawyer; how do you make a success; how to find out if a lawyer is bluffing. We are trained in this tradition.

Q: Do you want to act as a watchdog too?

No, no, not just that. We plan to do cases; training; plan to be watchdogs, and also plan to come out with publications.

How can a law be used; what are the tricks of the trade; how does one draft a petition; how does one win orders from the court; which court do you go to; if there are two or three multiple choices then which one should one take; how soon will one get orders; how soon is it going to be for litigations; who are your lawyer friends in the country; who will help you at different stages - we will provide awareness on not just the actual law but also the use of the law.

It's okay to say that this section says this, and that section says that; what is important is how do I get the order or how do I get the result? There is a big gap between knowing the law and using the law.

Q: Disabled people are doubly disadvantaged while fighting cumbersome legal battles due to the access barriers they face. Are you also looking at creating legally empowered local governing bodies to facilitate legal procedures at district or state levels?

I haven't thought of it, but it is interesting. I see disability as a sector where the law is so little used that I think the next few years will be the years for opening up the law.

Sometimes, things are so backward that you can make rapid strides until it catches up to a certain point and then your progress is much slower. I think the next two or three years would be that initial stage where we could just use the legal system.

Since the legal system has never been used the way it should have been, we are at rock-bottom. We will go up very fast and then slowly our progress will taper off. So, I would prefer to use the legal system as much as possible for the next two or three years and then turn towards how to use local governing bodies.

Right now I cannot think on those lines, simply because we don't have any standard. We have to set certain standards first to get the local governing bodies energised. It hasn't happened yet.

The People’s Lawyer: In Conversation with Colin Gonsalves

by Saffi Ullah Ahmad
from http://pulsemedia.org/2010/10/08/the-peoples-lawyer-in-conversation-with-colin-gonsalves/


Colin Gonsalves is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India and a pioneer of public interest and human rights law. He has won over 200 mostly precedent setting cases against the Indian government and powerful corporations in favour of poor and marginalized groups. Gonsalves has been described as a champion of the exploited.

In 1989 Colin founded the human rights law network (HRLN), known today as a network of hundreds of lawyers and social activists whose aim has been to further the struggle for human rights and equality through making justice accessible to disadvantaged members of Indian society. Funded mainly through grants from various organisations, his growing army of lawyers regularly litigates on issues of women’s and minority rights, environmental damage, child labour, disability law, land confiscation, sexual harassment, prisoner abuse, human trafficking and the right to nutrition. Giants taken on by the HRLN include the likes of Enron. The HRLN now has a presence in over 20 Indian states where its centres provide pro bono legal services, undertake public interest litigation and run campaigns to spread awareness of human rights. In addition to this organization Gonsalves also heads the Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights (IPT).

In 2001 Gonsalves began work on a case which in the face of ever increasing privitisation and withdrawal of food subsidies, aimed to force the central government to implement several food security schemes across the country. He argued that the Indian constitution’s reference to a ‘right to life’ encompasses the right to food, work and fair wages. Also highlighting that as a result of rampant malnutrition 3-5,000 Indians die every year of starvation, Gonsalves and his team of pro-bono lawyers were able to bring relief to over 300 million people following a series of court orders in their favour. The case won him and the HRLN acclaim from former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, among others.

Gonsalves has received honorary degrees and awards for his services from a plethora of educational institutions as well as legal and charitable organizations including the American Bar Association’s International Human Rights Award for his ‘extraordinary contribution to the causes of Human Rights rule of law and promotion of Access to Justice’ in 2004.

Gonsalves was recently in London to receive an honorary doctorate in Law from Middlesex University where I interviewed him.

You originally trained as an engineer, what made you want to become a lawyer?

As an engineer I found I couldn’t be socially relevant; I couldn’t help the social movements in any way. Some of my friends were getting in to appropriate technology (AT) and it was a very indirect and unsatisfactory way of helping peoples’ movements. I was looking for something more direct.

You’ve had quite a remarkable and illustrious career. What would you say was your most memorable moment?

I think the right to food case was probably the most satisfying of all the cases because it impacted on 350million people in some way or another. But I have a sort of memorable moment every week or every day. The people I come in touch with – ordinary working people – strike me as being so extraordinary as compared to the upper middle class and rich who sometimes come to me for their cases. The working people strike me as so compassionate, humane and fair. I think that’s what keeps me going.

What are the greatest struggles that you and the HRLN currently face?

Well the biggest problem is that with the period of globalization a lot of very good young brains have been taken away to the corporate sector and we feel very small in a river flowing against us. We feel very tiny and vulnerable. Support as well, financial and other, is now dwindling. We feel as if we’re fighting an insurmountable battle. Swimming against the tide can be very tiring.

Through your work you have challenged both multinational companies and the Indian government and have often been very critical of the latter’s policies. Whereas proponents of globalization such as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh highlight India’s phenomenal growth rate as evidence in its favour, you remain a great critic of the process. What troubles you about India’s current economic model?

The phenomenal growth rate is possible only if you do two things; 1) take away the properties of the poor and divert them towards the corporate sector; you take their land, you take their water you take their forests, you take their mineral resources. If you do that it will account for a sizeable part of this growth. Then 2) the resources of the state that would normally flow towards the working people, in health, education, food, transportation, and housing- if these resources that the state would normally spend on the poor are taken upwards towards the middle classes it would also fuel GDP growth. GDP growth is premised on the deprivation of the poor. I suppose if you had growth with equity, the GDP growth would be a much lower, 1-2%; it would be better in the long run.

On what are believed to be the biggest Commonwealth games ever to be hosted, India is expected to spend around £5bn. Whereas some feel these games are an important way of putting India in the spotlight, others lament that the government is spending an obscene amount of money on a sporting event while millions of its citizens are lacking basic resources. What are your views?

The majority of people feel that the games are very unethical. I would say 70% of people in this country feel it’s a criminal waste of money. They feel very hostile towards the games, very aggrieved at what’s happening. But the media is controlled by corporations so it’s going gaga over the games. We have 70% of our population, 750million people, below the poverty line in terms of food intake. In terms of percentage, the hungry are more numerous now than they were in British period India. The amount that we’re spending on the games could feed the Indians for a year; hungry mothers and children.

With violence in India’s ‘red corridor’ now being a hot topic in the media, in the face of much adversity you and others including Arundhati Roy have spoken out in favour of the ‘Naxalite’ or ‘Maoist’ rebels. You’ve also gone as far as to say that India is in a state of civil war, and has been for a while. These are strong statements, can you elaborate?

I’m a non-violent person. I stand for non-violence; it’s a very important principle. But if you ask me if I understand why people use violence in this country, I would say of course I can. And if you ask me whether people – very large groups of people – feel that the use of violence as a sort of collective self defense against the violence perpetrated by the state and corporations, is justified, I would say they feel a strong sense of justification. And if that is the situation we’re in, things are certainly moving in the direction of a very wide civil war. It has already engulfed many parts of our country and I see it deepening in the next few years.



Survivors of the Bhopal disaster and campaigners were outraged earlier this year at the two year criminal convictions administered to ex Union Carbide India officials, who were in part responsible for the carnage in 1984, and pushed successfully for a reopening of the case. Do you see the victims ever attaining justice?

The cases haven’t really been reopened. Appeals have been filed by all sides, including the accused persons. I don’t see justice ever being done to the victims of Bhopal. We’re very good at camouflaging things, at covering things up and sweeping them under the carpet so to speak, and pretending to do the right thing, but I don’t think justice will ever be done. I think it’s too late already. Even if they were to make a hectic effort it would help only a small amount of the victims. I don’t think there’s any real interest in getting justice done.

What in your opinion are the biggest problems the Indian justice system faces, and do you see any scope for positive developments on the horizon?

The Indian justice system is in a period of very steep decline. Although there are some very fine judges here and there, things have almost come to an end as far as the poor are concerned. The entire working people, which is to say 70% of the population – Dalits (lower caste Hindus), tribal peoples, women, slum dwellers, unorganized workers and so on – all of them fall outside the justice system; they never get to court. They cannot take their grievances to any legal system, and the only time they get tangled up in the legal system is when they are dragged in to criminal law proceedings. There’s an iron curtain between the people of India and the judiciary, and I don’t see things changing any time in the future.

Colin Gonsalves: India's Pioneer of Public Interest Law

By NORA BOUSTANY
The Washington Post, Oct. 24, 2003
From -- http://www.sikhtimes.com/bios_102403a.html

Colin Gonsalves's father, an engineer from the southern Indian state of Kerela, shelled out his savings to put his son through a five-year program at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. Gonsalves began working as a civil engineer, but little did his parents know that he was also well on his way to becoming a lawyer. Gonsalves was drawn to the law through union work and concerns over labor issues and exploitation. In 1979, he started studying law at night school, reading and studying in the union office and on the train to and from Bombay.

One day Gonsalves was arrested while trying to stop the demolition of a Bombay slum. After a couple of similar incidents, he felt he had to tell his father about switching professions. 'He was very proud when he saw me win a case,' he recalled. 'I am glad I managed to shift,' said Gonsalves, founder of the India Center for Human Rights and Law, which has built 12 litigation centers in India since 1983. He has represented children in danger, villagers on the brink of starvation, and prisoners rotting in jails without due process.

Before he graduated from law school, the head of his union asked him to file a case on behalf of 5,000 workers locked out of their jobs. 'It took me three years to get my law degree, but it did not take me three years to go to court,' he said with a chuckle during an interview here Monday. 'No one had checked me out. A nasty employer's lawyer outed me: 'He is not a lawyer, he is impersonating one.' Luckily, I had written myself in as a representative in the papers filed in the court.'

The judge in the case asked him to approach the bench. He admitted he was an aspiring lawyer trying to make a difference. 'All right. Finish this case,' she snapped tersely, calling him into her chambers. 'Get your degree quickly,' she urged sympathetically. Since then, Gonsalves has pioneered public interest law in India by setting up a network of 500 lawyers around the country and is one of its most prominent human rights litigators.

'He is considered a fighter, and it is important to know that his is a controversial subject. He goes up against big forces and interests, like big estate owners. He is a champion of the exploited,' said Venkatesh Raghavendra, who has known Gonsalves for four years and is director of South Asia for Ashoka, an organization that identifies 'social entrepreneurs' in various fields whose work initiates wide reform or significant change.

Ashoka, which operates in 45 countries, selected Gonsalves in 1999 as one of its fellows, paying him a stipend for three years so he could focus on setting up a strategy, build an organization around it and bring his ideas to fruition. 'Colin is credited in large part for putting the whole file of public interest law in the forefront. That is how he has changed the system,' said Carol Grodzins, a managing director for Ashoka.

In response to a petition filed by the Human Rights Law Network, which was founded by Gonsalves, the Supreme Court in New Delhi directed unions and state governments to implement several food security schemes. 'Article 21 of India's Constitution enshrines the right to life, which can be broadly interpreted as the right to food, work and fair wages. Children in school get lunch now,' Gonsalves explained.

'Even if only one-fourth of the order is implemented, it translates into millions all over India, hopefully 10 million. The case began in 2001, and it is not over,' he added, explaining that privatization and the withdrawal of subsidies have left large segments of Indian society unable to afford food or health care. 'We have 3,000 to 5,000 people dying of starvation every year.'

Disability laws, women's rights, domestic violence, child labor and sexual harassment issues have all been revisited by his growing army of public interest lawyers, who act as a front line or the eyes and ears for the India Center for Human Rights and Law. 'They serve as the mouthpiece of Colin's organization and make villagers aware they have human rights,' Raghavendra said. 'Exploiters take advantage of the ignorance of these people. They tell the exploiters: Look, we know what you are doing. We have resolved a lot of these situations like this.'

But when such pressure fails, violations are reported to Gonsalves's litigation centers, which process them and file complaints. 'Very few in India are doing public interest law, so we have grown as a firm, and 70 percent of our cases are public interest,' Gonsalves said. 'There is very little money, and we depend on grants from inside and outside India.' Gonsalves was honored this week by the International Senior Lawyers Project, based in New York and Washington. The group, in collaboration with Ashoka and Piper Rudnick L.L.P., a law firm, is dedicated to assisting international lawyers.

Colin Gonsalves

Colin Gonsalves is a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India. He is also the Executive Director of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN). A pioneer in the field ofpublic interest litigation in India, he has successfully brought a number of cases dealing with economic, social and cultural rights. Most of these cases decided by the Supreme Court have been set as precedents.
Gonsalves is also the founder of the India Center for Human Rights and Law, an independent, one-stop information center for anyone involved in public interest law.