Centenarian freedom fighter on how India's political landscape has evolved

History they say has a way of repeating itself When Mazgaon resident Gunvantrai Ganpatlal Parikh was issued a notice preventing him from going to the August Kranti Maidan on the anniversary of the Quit India movement in August last year it was history repeating itself for the third timeParikh or GG Uncle as he is fondly called by his doting band of young assistants was 18 years old when he was first arrested by the British police in 1942 In December last year Parikh celebrated his 100th birthday and behind his slim physique lies a brain that is still as sharp as everldquoA meeting of the All India Congress Committee was held at the August Kranti Maidan which was then known as the Gowalia Tank on August 7 and 8 and on the 9th Kasturba Gandhi was supposed to unfurl the Indian tricolour But she was arrested the same morning and Aruna Asaf Ali did the honours instead The atmosphere was still tense and she immediately left to go undergroundrdquo the staunch Gandhian who still dresses in khadi tells middayThat was the first time he goes on to recount that tear gas shells were used on protestors in BombayldquoIt was also the time we learned how to deal with themrdquo he says smiling ldquoWe learned that wiping our eyes with a wet cloth helped It was drizzling that day and many of us held our hankies out to wet them Others caught the shells before they hit the ground and threw them back at the policerdquorsquoParikh was at the time a student at the St Xavierrsquos College in south Mumbai For the next two days he organised pickets and on the 12th he led a group of young men to the Churchgate railway station intending to stage rail rokos He was however arrested at the station taken to what was then known as the Esplanade police station and then to a temporary prison in Worli specially created by the government for political prisoners He spent ten months behind bars some of them in the Thane Central Jail Ultimately Parikh and other young prisoners were released on the grounds that they were students and had been imprisoned for long enoughldquoI was prepared for jail long before I was arrestedrdquo he recalls ldquoIt was part of our training We would always sleep on the ground as practice And we would fast a lot so that the absence of meals in prison wouldnrsquot affect us Frankly we had heard a lot about people dying in jail and hence when wersquod say we were preparing for jail we were actually preparing to dierdquoIt sounds quite dark when he says it in 2024 but in those days it was a reality that everyone involved in the freedom struggle lived withldquoI donrsquot think Irsquom any kind of herordquo he says ldquoElders in my family were actively involved in the freedom struggle I attended Mahatma Gandhirsquos meetings since I was eight years old and was personally blessed by him at the age of ten By the time I went to jail I was a socialist but was also shedding Marxist principles to embrace the Gandhian school of thoughtrdquoParikhrsquos first disappointment came soon after Indiarsquos independence because he believed that the new rulers would be the servants of the people By the time Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency Parikh with his staunch and vocal support for the theory that the government should put the people first had become a targetIn October 1975 he was arrested and spent several months in jail the only charge against him being that he knew former Samata Party leader George FernandesldquoI always knew I was going to be arrestedrdquo he says ldquoI even predicted the exact day that it would happen correctlyrdquoAsk him about the current scenario and he becomes pensiveldquoYou know even the British showed streaks of humanity When Mahatma Gandhi started living in Sevagram it was the British who provided a telephone line Indira Gandhi for all that she did to protect her gaddi still had some scruples I donrsquot see that in India anymore Anyone who comes in the way of the governmentrsquos agenda is mowed down mercilesslyrdquo he saysIn August last year Parikh along with Gandhirsquos grandson Tushar and others had planned a silent march to the August Kranti Maidan to commemorate the Quit India movement He was however served a notice by the Mumbai Police forbidding him from doing so while the others were detained The reason Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Ministers Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar were having a function of their own at the Maidan