Arun Ferreira

Ferreira’s career and interests in social activism were strongly influenced by his close relationship with his family, specifically his uncle, Father Raymond D’Silva,[3] who was also a liberation theologist. As a member of the All-India Catholic University Students' Association, he began to explore the strong social sinfulness of the millions of impoverished people and why there is so much poverty while at the same time india is abundant in resources. D’Silva taught many Catholic youths about the strong social imbalances between the wealthy, and the impoverished. Ferreira was raised hearing about the unequal distribution of resources and the rich who always remained in control.

Ferreira’s attended St Xaviers College in early 1990s and as a student, he took a large part in an organization called Cheshire home, assisting in reading to blind children and orphans.. Arun also became interested in liberation theology, and then grew to express his thoughts about liberation overpowering theology, and soon adopted a more radical view of politics and the rights that human beings should be given and graduated in 1993 from St. Xavier.

After graduating, Ferreira worked in favor of the slum-dwellers and squatters of Mumbai, where he became involved in helping slum rehabilitation at Dindoshi where he worked for the relocation of slums from Colaba to Goregaon.

Ferreira attended St Xaviers College in Mumbai. During his time there, he was known to aid the annual blood donation drive by sketching caricatures for those who donated blood.[4]

From 2014 to 2016, he attended Siddharth Law College and received his degree in law.

As reported by the Chandrapur superintendent of police, Cherring Dorje, Ferreira used to run a government banned organisation named Vidyarthi Pragati Sangathana in Mumbai. The Vidyarthi Pragati Sanghatana is a student organisation that took many struggles and campaigns for the rights of students and other oppressed sections. With his VPS comrades, Arun Ferreira hoped to transform a class- and caste-ridden country into a more just and equitable one. He was a big part of the organisation’s decision-making process, fighting for the democratisation of student councils in the various colleges, cultivating student-worker and student-peasant solidarity, the latter, buttressed by its “go-to-the-village”campaigns.

He moved to Chandrapur in 2001 until 2006 when along with Arun Bhelke, he started the Deshbhakti Yuva Manch to recruit more youths for the banned outfit, Communist Party of India (Maoist). Arun was horrified at the brutal killings of four members of a dalit family on September 29, 2006 in Khairlanji village (Bhandara district) and the police and government’s attempt at a coverup. Arun was active in the post-Khairlanji protests — the protesters’ endeavour was to hasten the emergence of an uncompromising leadership among the dalits, and to find support for the dalit cause among the underprivileged kunbis, marathas and “other backward classes”. He was also organising students in Chandrapur, some of whom (of the Deshbakth Yuva Sanghatan) have since been persecuted by the police.

He was arrested in his late 30s on May 8, 2007 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) on charges of sedition and spent four years and eight months at the Nagpur jail. Here he began to draw and these sketches marked the beginning of Ferreira’s book Colours of the Cage (Aleph).

In 2008, Arun Ferreira started a hunger strike along with other imprisoned activists. Over the course of his sentence, Arun Ferreira had 11 cases filed against him under the UAPA and the Arms Act.

After his acquittal in 2011, Ferreira completed his degree from Siddharth Law College and began working as a lawyer in December 2016. He then became a part of the ‘Indian Association of People’s Lawyers’ and the ‘Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights’. IAPL was created to gather lawyers involved in the legal support of collective struggles for people’s rights and in situations of gross rights violations. The main objective of the CPDR has been to educate people on their democratic rights as provided in the Constitution of India and struggle against violation of civil rights by the state as well as civil society elements. Arun Ferreira carried out social work with an NGO, Naujawan Bharat Sabha, which was a left-wing Indian association that sought to foment revolution against the British Raj, (the rule by the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent), by gathering together worker and peasant youths. This social work was deemed “covert Naxalite activity” which was cause for more charges. Arun works to protect rights of minorities and is critical of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Arun stated in a 2015 interview that there has been in increase in attacks on Christians and Muslims since Modi came to power. He believes the government is responsible for anti-minority propaganda and stirring feelings of hate towards minorities.

• Fr Stan Lourduswamy SJ