SAATHII's Goebbelsian Lies & Funding

To

SAATHII,

229, Kalitala Main Road, Purbachal (North),
Kolkata 700 078, West Bengal.

Subject: Urgent rectification needed in the literature brought out by the organizers of Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival from 2005 onwards over several years till date

Sir/Madam,

It has been recently brought to our knowledge that certain statements carried in the literature circulated by your organization (freely available on the internet) regarding the work done by Siddhartha Gautam (S.G.) are patently false and factually incorrect.

We are tabulating some of them for your ready perusal and rectification.

S.No.	Statements	Correct Factual Position
1.	He was one of the first people in India to talk about HIV/AIDS as a human rights issue and started AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) in 1989-90 in New Delhi, the first AIDS activist group in the country.	ABVA was formed due to the collective efforts and commitment of a number of activists. Many of the activists had been working together in various campaigns from 1984 to 1988-89 which made it easier for these activists to come together to form ABVA. S.G. joined at this point of time. Giving credit to one individual for starting ABVA is an insult to all the ABVA members both dead and alive. S.G. was one of the members of ABVA. As a collective ABVA was one of the first organizations to talk about HIV/AIDS as a human rights issue. To be fair Ashok Row Kavi (Bombay Dost); Dr. I.S. Gilada (of erstwhile Indian Health Organization); and Dr. Suniti Soloman (Chennai) were easily the earliest to be active on these issues years before ABVA was formed. There must have been many more. Most importantly PWH&A (people with HIV & AIDS) who chose to maintain anonymity or carried pseudo-names. Perfectly understandable.
2.	ABVA also initiated a petition campaign that helped prevent the passing of the draconian AIDS (Prevention) Bill of 1989. Siddhartha’s work as a lawyer in New Delhi strengthened these efforts.	The said petition campaign was initiated much before S.G.  became a lawyer. ABVA had members who had a decade’s experience of using parliamentary techniques; their expertise was valuable.
3	He was responsible for bringing out “Less than Gay – A Citizen’s Report on the Status of Homosexuality in India”.	There were seven ABVA members who had co-authored the report; it was indeed a group effort of all the ABVA members and not just these seven and certainly not just one amongst these seven. The report is available at the following link: http://www.sacw.net/article10497.html   the names of the seven co-authors can be verified.
4.	Siddhartha also worked with ABVA to publish a series of well-researched reports on the status of other vulnerable  groups of people like women in prostitution, professional blood donors and drug dependents, …	ABVA’s report titled Women And AIDS – Denial and Blame was authored by ten members including S.G. Another report titled Blood of the Professional was authored by just one member, Jagdish Bhardwaje. The report on drug dependents titled This Sugar is Bitter was conceived and brought out much after S.G.’s death!

The rectifications are urgently in order as some of the co-authors of these reports viz Jagdish Bhardwaje, Shalini SCN are since dead. This in no way belittles any single member’s contribution towards the cause. S.G.’s memory stays embedded in our mind and all ABVA members respected him during the brief 2-3 years he spent with ABVA before he died.

To ensure that individual members of ABVA or other vested interests do not belittle/ or take advantage of the collective’s work it was ensured that none of the four authors had their names carried in the ABVA’s report titled “Endless and Sickening Therapies for AIDS” published in 2002!

ABVA since its inception has been a non-funded group; all members – both living and dead – strongly subscribed to this policy as funding was a political issue. Attempts by vested interest to subvert the work of the collective, ABVA; and to highjack the work of the collective in the name of S.G. are condemnable and criminal. This is a blatant violation of ABVA’s intellectual property rights. A conspiracy appears to be afoot to collect funds in his memory; SAATHII appears to be just one of the many outfits involved. S.G. in his lifetime – in consonance with ABVA’s policy – did not accept funds.

This is for information of organizers of Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival.

You are requested to immediately remove all previous literature uploaded on the net which makes false and factually incorrect statements; and also ensure such violation of ABVA’s intellectual property rights is not repeated in future by your organization.

It is hoped that you will do the needful at the earliest and in any case not later than a period of one month from the date of receipt of this letter.

Thanks.

Yours sincerely,

Shobha Aggarwal

Advocate and member of ABVA

P.S. For more information about ABVA you may like to visit its blog at: http://aidsbhedbhavvirodhiandolan.blogspot.in/