Gonsalves: India's 'Alternative Nobel Prize' winner

Indian human rights lawyer Colin Gonsalves has spent most of his life defending people who can't defend themselves, including poor minorities, women, children and laborers. 

One of Gonsalves' most prominent cases was presiding over a 2001 legal action in the Indian Supreme Court that put the right to food in the Indian constitution and ensured that hundreds of millions of people would receive proper nutrition.

On Tuesday, the 65-year-old Gonsalves was awarded the Right Livelihood Award. Also dubbed the "Alternative Nobel Prize," it has been given out since 1980 to honor people whose work the award foundation feels is being ignored by the Nobel Prize Committee.

In a statement, Right Livelihood said that Gonsalves was awarded "for his tireless and innovative use of public interest litigation over three decades to secure fundamental human rights for India's most marginalized and vulnerable citizens."

"India is going through a dark period in terms of poor people who have been subjugated," Gonsalves told DW after the award was announced. "We are exhilarated by this announcement. This is for the other half."

The organization Gonsalves founded in 1989, the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), has grown into the leading public interest law group in India, with 200 lawyers and paralegals operating out of 28 offices across India.

"Modern Conscience" of India

Seven years ago, Joshua Castellino, dean of the law school at Middlesex University in London presented Gonsalves with an honorary doctorate, saying that Gonsalves and the HRLN were "the modern conscience of India."

"You remain a fundamental part of the struggle to ensure that the vision of the Indian founding fathers, of respecting the dignity and worth of every individual, will one day be realized," said Castellino.

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In 2010, Gonsalves was also given the "Mother Teresa Memorial Award" for social justice in recognition of his contribution to legal services addressing human rights.

"He has credited his understanding of labor law to his interactions with workers and seeing the world through their eyes," Ruth Manorama, widely known in India for her work in Dalit activism, told DW. In 2006, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.

Ensuring the "Right to Food"

Apart from fighting for the underdog, Gonsalves was also the senior counsel of the Right to Food case in the Indian Supreme Court.

In 2001, public interest litigation on behalf of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) was filed in the Indian Supreme Court, demanding that the right to food should be recognized as a legal right to every citizen in the country.

The court accepted the argument that the right to food was a fundamental right apparent in Article 21 of the Constitution.

The legislation provided over 250 million school children their mid-day meals. It gave pregnant women, lactating mothers, adolescent girls and children up to 6 years of supplementary nutrition among many other benefits. It was also the largest intervention anywhere in the world to combat malnutrition and hunger.

Keeping up the good work

Many of Gonsalves' colleagues say that he does a large number of public interest petitions on behalf those who are either too poor or illiterate to take on the cases themselves.

Some of his most prominent cases include the reinstatement of a teacher having cerebral palsy, stays on the demolition of slums, reduction in the prices of essential medicines and the enforcement of sexual harassment law throughout the country.

"It is because of him that over 1000 institutions for destitute children in India have been set up," Raj Kumwar, an Indian social activist told DW.

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In private conversations, Gonsalves believes that violence and poverty are on the increase in India.

"Discrimination against minorities is reaching a crescendo. All political parties are unified on programs for the enrichment of capitalists and pauperization of the working people. There is no political alternative in sight," Gonsalves said in a recent lecture to law students this year.

A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, Gonsalves started his professional life as a civil engineer but was drawn into the field of law through his work with the unions there.

"He was a civil engineer but law fascinated him and through his work with the mill-workers' union in Mumbai.  He helped out 5,000 workers locked and that was a big victory," Manik Chand, a union activist, told DW.