Two weeks before he passed away, H.S. Doreswamy had sent in his hand-written weekly column Noorara Nota , to Nyaya Patha , a Kannada weekly. It was a sharp analysis of the results of the five States Assembly polls.
That sums up how Mr. Doreswamy, the Gandhian freedom fighter, worked till the very end. A man who never rested on his laurels, he continued to see a role for himself in public life and fought for “freedom”, as he continuously redefined it. He saw it in his fight for civil liberties, land rights, environmental justice, freedom of expression or against corruption and communalism.
He never contested elections or held posts, but remained a citizen-activist till the last. “Gandhiji wanted the Congress to abjure political power and remain a social movement, convert itself into a permanent opposition party against misrule by any party or government,” he wrote in his column in April 2018. Mr. Doreswamy followed that path. He spared none and was critical of all governments about what he saw as “anti-people policies”. He was one of the most vocal public intellectuals of the State, whom historian Ramachandra Guha describes as “conscience of the State”.
In recent years, he was a trenchant critique of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He took the lead in the recent anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests and farmers’ agitation against farm laws, drawing the ire of the ruling regime. In March 2020, BJP legislator Basanagouda Patil Yatnal questioned his credentials as a freedom fighter, dubbed him “anti-national” and a “Pakistani agent”. But the centenarian did not flinch or change his stance. He often called the mass movement against the incumbent regime a “second freedom struggle”.
Mr. Doreswamy was particularly active in the State’s public life over the last one decade, starting with the satyagraha he held to stop dumping Bengaluru’s garbage in Mandur in 2013. He later led the State government’s initiative to mainstream left-wing extremists, where he worked with the late editor-activist Gauri Lankesh, who often described Mr. Doreswamy as “rockstar taata ”.
Sirimane Nagaraj, one of those who joined the mainstream through this initiative in 2014, said after their release from prison, he tasked them to take up a struggle that affected the poor and when they chose land rights and housing, Mr. Doreswamy led the struggle from the front for several years.
The murder of Gauri Lankesh in 2017 hit Mr. Doreswamy hard. He was a rallying point for the State’s civil society in demanding that the culprits be brought to book. He chaired the Gauri Memorial Trust and worked to revive her weekly tabloid, in which he was a columnist till he died. “We appear to be moving into the age of Nathuram Godse, where writers and activists are assassinated for their views,” he told The Hindu in 2019, advocating a rediscovery of Mahatma Gandhi. The Mahatma, he said, was all the more relevant today, in an age of post-truth, unprecedented violence and suppression of dissent.
Never one to lose hope, he always retained optimism and belief in democratic protests and struggle on the street. “Anyone in Karnataka fighting for people and their rights knew that the door of his house in Jayanagar was always open for them. The big man would walk with you in the hot sun and to any place to inspire the movement,” said activist Srinivasa Alavilli.
At an online event to mark his 103rd birthday on April 10, Mr. Doreswamy, speaking after a host of well-wishers praised him, said he did not have all those qualities but would try to inculcate them in his life ahead, with a mischievous smile.
