Throughout history, authoritarian and colonial regimes have used imprisonment not merely as a punitive measure, but as a political weapon to suppress dissent, intimidate resistance, and eliminate ideological threats. The prison has functioned as a key instrument in silencing those who dare to question the dominant order. In the contemporary context, this practice continues under the banners of Zionism and Hindutva. Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian writer and political prisoner, and Dr. G.N. Saibaba, a disabled Indian academician convicted under anti-terror laws, represent two vastly different geographies, two different struggles but the same method of suppression. While Daqqa’s imprisonment reflects the settler colonial logic of the Israeli state, Saibaba’s condition shows how India’s Hindu majoritarian regime criminalizes academic and political dissent.
Walid Daqqa was a prominent Palestinian political prisoner and writer who spent 38 years in Israeli detention until his death in 2024.He became a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left wing political and militant group. In 1986, Israeli authorities arrested him and later convicted him for being linked to the 1984 kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldier. Although he wasn’t accused of committing the murder himself, he was still held responsible for being involved. Throughout his imprisonment, Daqqa emerged as one of the most inspiring voices among Palestinian political prisoners. He used his time in prison to write extensively on the harsh prison condition, resistance, identity, and about the Palestinian struggle.
He wrote books, letters, and essays, many of which became popular in Palestine. His children’s book, “The Oil’s Secret Tale,” is one of the notable works which he did. Because of publishing book, the Israeli authorities used some repressive measures against the author, like solitary confinement. In 1999, Daqqa married to an lawyer Sanaa Salameh while in prison, under extraordinary permissions. Despite the Israeli prison system’s ban on conjugal visits for Palestinian prisoners. he and his wife managed to have a daughter in 2020 through smuggled sperm and artificial insemination. Prisoners are normally granted bail on humanitarian grounds to enable them to have children with their partners. but it not happened in the case of Walid Daqqa.
In 2022, Daqqa was diagnosed with a rare and severe bone marrow cancer, but Israeli authorities denied repeated appeals for his early release on medical background. He not even taken to any specialists hospitals. His health rapidly worsening due to deliberate medical neglect and harsh prison conditions. International human rights organizations like Amnesty international criticized it as a ‘slow killing’. After numerous hospitalizations and prolonged suffering, Walid Daqqa died on April 7, 2024, in Israeli custody, at the age of 62.
Even after his death, Israeli authorities refused to return his body to his family, citing security reasons, and suppressed mourning gatherings and destroyed mourning tent at his home. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, condemned the treatment of Daqqa and the refusal to release his body, calling it a violation of international law. For many Palestinians, Walid Daqqa remains a symbol of intellectual resistance, resilience, and the inhumane toll of Israel’s prison system on political prisoners.
Dr. G.N. Saibaba, is an Indian academician, human rights activist, and former professor of Delhi university. In contemporary India context he is the person who has consistently voiced dissent against state oppression, caste and class exploitation, and militarization India's tribal and rural populations. He has been over 90% physically disabled and wheelchair bound due to the after-effect polio, yet despite his condition, he was arrested in 2014 under India’s draconian UAPA ACT (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) and imprisoned up to march,2024 by claiming links with Maoist groups. His arrest and detention show the misuse of anti-terror laws and the emerging suppression of dissent.
As a member of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), Saibaba was always deeply involved in exposing and questioning state violence, displacement, and human rights violations against the minorities and marginalized section mainly for tribal regions of central India, especially in the mineral rich, conflict ridden regions targeted by “Operation Green Hunt”, a state led anti Maoist campaign. Saibaba’s activism centered on exposing the forced displacement of Adivasis, corporate land grabs, and environmental destruction from large scale mining. He accused the Indian state for backing corporate exploitation of natural resources at the cost of tribal communities and their lands. The state policy of violent suppression of these communities was being justified through the label of anti-Maoist operations. Saibaba’s writings and public speeches pointed against the state’s deploying military in this region, He condemned it as state terror and advocated peaceful, democratic resistance against such injustices.
Despite his serious health issues, including cardiac complications, spinal problems, and severe muscle weakness, he was denied bail and imprisoned in Nagpur Central Jail. His health worsen significantly during imprisonment, and he was frequently denied adequate medical care, repeated pleas for bail on medical and humanitarian grounds were rejected by courts. In march 2024 he was acquitted by the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. later he died on October 2024.at the age of 57. One of the most painful incidents in Saibaba’s imprisonment was when his mother passed away in August 2020, and he was not allowed to attend her funeral. this prompted strong criticism from national and international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Special Rapporteurs. On his first Remembrance Day, the students of TISS got arrested by Mumbai police because of a remembrance gathering. It shows that the state is still haunting him and his followers.
In a country where right-wing extremists and hate speech mongers often walk free, the continuous imprisonment of a disabled academic for his ideological beliefs sparked widespread outrage. where voices of dissent particularly those advocating for the marginalized, Dalits, Adivasis, and minorities are increasingly being targeted and silenced through legal measures. His academic work, activism, and courage in the face of state repression have earned him solidarity from intellectuals, students, writers, and activists across the world. He remains a symbol of resistance and resilience, despite his physical limitations, he refused to be silent in the face of injustice. In prison, Saibaba continued to write poetry, essays, and letters that reflected both his personal suffering and his unwavering commitment to the ideals of justice and equality. His writings from jail offer a rare view into the mental and emotional world of a political prisoner, and they also critique the growing authoritarianism in Indian democracy.
Across geographies and political regimes, imprisoning has been weaponized as a tool of ideological control. In Zionist occupied Palestine and in Sangh Parivar led India, prison is not just space for punishment, now it becomes a mechanism of silencing resistance, suppress voices, disciplining dissent, and constructing consent.
Zionism began as a movement for a Jewish homeland but evolved into a colonial project that dominates the Palestinian people. Since 1948, the Israeli state has enforced its control through military occupation, apartheid laws, surveillance, and prisons. Zionist regimes systematically detain and killed thousands of Palestinians by the narrative of "Terrorist", “incitement to violence”.it includes writers, journalists’ activists like Walid Daqqa, Ghassan Kanafani, Khalida Jarrar, Shireen Abu Akleh whose bodies become battlegrounds of colonial dominance. These people are not merely criminals but as existential threats to the settler colonial order making their physical, mental, and symbolic erasure a calculated imperative of the state.
In India, under the growing influence of Hindu Nationalists and Hindutva ideology which is led by the Sangh Parivar.The Sangh Parivar promotes a vision of "Akhand Bharat" and seeks to rewrite Indian history, culture, and education from a Hindu nationalist perspective. Its rise has coincided with increased attacks on minorities, shrinking space for dissent, and the use of state powers laws and machineries to silence the dissent, often labeling them as "anti-nationals", "urban Naxals" or "terror link". Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, and dissenting voices—such as that of Dr. G.N. Saibaba, Gauri Lankesh, Govind Pansare, M.M Kalburgi, Umar Khallid, Siddique Kappan , Prabir Purakaystha, fr.Stan Swamy are assassinated, imprisoned or criminalized under draconian laws like the UAPA, Sedition, NSA.
Both Zionism and Hindutva use detention not just to control populations, but to eliminate alternative visions of justice, freedom, and coexistence. By branding activists as threats and manipulating legal systems, they reinforce domination. At their core, Zionism and Hindutva seek to impose a singular identity while erasing any vision of justice, plurality, or equality.
From Palestine to India, the stories of Walid Daqqa and Dr. G.N. Saibaba reveals their sufferings, how both Zionist and Hindutva states converge in criminalize the imagination of freedom and equality. Both states transform prisons into tools of ideological warfare. imprisonment, under these regimes, is not about punitive measures but about suppressing resistance, silencing dissent, and for political control. The dissent which comes against the authoritarian states, they are criminalizing those dissenting voices. These acts were suppressing using the label of terrorism, sedition, incitement.
These are not just a isolated incident which happening in Palestine or India. These are deliberate strategies of authoritarian states for the political control over the marginalized, powerless, minorities sections of the society. There is a need of global solidarity. Solidarity is not silence it’s a political act. Walid Daqqa or Dr.G.N imprisoned not because of their acts its because of their ideologies those words and ideologies will ignite the future struggles for justice - because as Thomas Sankara reminds us “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered ,but you cannot kill the ideas”.
By Josvin Joji
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