Indra Sinha, author of the novel Animal's People (Simon & Schuster, 2008), began a hunger strike on Tuesday to protest the Indian government's neglect of victims of the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster, the event at the heart of his Booker Prize-nominated book, the Guardian recently reported. Sinha traveled from his home in London to New Delhi to join nine other protestors, seven of whom have been affected by contamination of air and water around the disaster site.
The group is campaigning to bring U.S. company Dow Chemical to trial in India on charges related to the Bhopal event, during which a pesticides factory released a cloud of toxic gas over the central Indian city, killing eight thousand people and injuring a half-million others, according to Amnesty International. The factory was then owned by Union Carbide, but was taken over by Dow in 2001. Activity at the now-abandoned facility has contributed to fifteen thousand more deaths, and caused a health crisis due to contamination that affects twenty-five thousand people.
The hunger strike was prompted by the Indian government's recent negotiations with Dow, talks which reportedly may release the company from liability for Bhopal. Presciently, Sinha's fictionalized account of the disaster's fallout in Animal's People includes a section in which several characters embark upon a similar fast in order to influence government leaders cooperating with the company responsible for the catastrophe.
After previous protests failed to gain citizens contact with prime minister Manmohan Singh, the fast came as a last ditch effort to rouse government officials. Earlier this spring, fifty people, aged four to eighty, traveled five hundred miles on foot to meet with the prime minister, and, having been denied a meeting, are still camped out near his residence. Last month, child victims of contamination chained themselves to the gates of Singh's house, and were arrested.
"Those poisoned in Bhopal continue to sicken and die, without help, without compassion, without justice, because the politicians in Delhi want to do business with their killers," Sinha said in a statement. "These canaille refuse to honor the law, blindfold themselves against justice, and, by their inaction, condemn thousands of the citizens they are sworn to protect to fear, pain, suffering and death."
