கருணாநிதி - வினாசகாலே விபரீத புத்தி

MASSIVE HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE HIGH COURT TODAY
Lawyers from Chennai today took out a massive human chain encircling the 36 acre high court campus symbolising how it was only the lawyer community which protected judges and the court campus targetted for vicious attack by the police on the 19th of February 2009. Though the call for the human chain demonstration was given only yesterday, the massive turnout for the belied the state's propoganda and the version of a pliant section of the media that lawyers had returned to courts in response to the call by the ruling party's legal wing.

The human chain followed on the heels of yesterday's rally to the Memorial Hall from the High Court campus. Again organised at short notice, hundreds of lawyers demonstrated that they stood united and would never be defeated.

Mr. M. Karunanidhi, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, who has a history of issuing empty threats of having his M.Ps from Tamil Nadu resign from the Parliament, fasting from the hospital bed etc. has shown no sign of taking action against the errant police officers who have been indicted by even the much maligned (rightly, for the most part) Sri Krishna report. It is clear that he does not want to lose power at the centre and the state and that he needs a partisan police force to assist the party during the Lok Sabha polls.

But by taking no steps against the police, Mr. Karunanidhi is lending credence to the view that the attack on the lawyers and the police was a intelligence led "Operation Black Coat" operation unleashed by the State to stifle the voice of lawyers and judges and to enslave the state judiciary.


Whatever his motivation, it is clear that Mr. Karunanidhi has grossly underestimated the power of the lawyer community, and the carnage which he unleashed though the police has cemented various groups and forged a united front among the lawyers.

It is not as if lawyers resorted to direct non violent action alone. From the 19th of February 2009, lawyers have attempted to obtain legal redress for the constitutional crisis that has enveloped the state. The media and the "letters to the editor" writing public have hardly scratched the surface of lies to discover the truth, for it is prejudice and hatred that they prefer to truth and stuggle. So be it! History will judge us, not fickle media barons who depend on government largesse in the nature of assignment of land for their recreational sports venture, exoneration from cases and for reasons too varied to go into here in detail.

Now that lawyers have taken to the streets peacefully and to sensitise the general public about the threat to the body politic from a police force and a political class gone berserk and running amok, the sounds of the death knell being sounded for the present government are growing louder by the minute.