Hasan Mansoor bears a striking resemblance to a kindly grandfather as he sits you down and tells you stories of his life as an activist. A remarkable life led by a remarkable man, although he is quick to shrug off any compliments you might send his way. “I hate communalism and its many divides,” he states, with a glint in his eye. “I believe in a life of dignity, which is brought about with literacy, shelter, health and self respect.”

President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Hasan Mansoor joined the Communist Party when he was in college, between 1957 and 1960. “I was sent to jail three times,” he says smiling. “The first time, I was protesting against a film, The Iron Curtain. We didn’t have money to pay the fine when the cops arrived.” That led to a week-long stint in jail. The all-India railway strike had him put away for nine days and the Communist Party strike earned him a whole six months in prison. “I had to go out on parole to write my exams,” he says. That marked the end of his time in active politics, for his mother, who was already in frail health, took a turn for the worse every time he had an altercation with the police.

“My father was a Gandhian, so my six sisters and I grew up wearing nothing but khadi,” he says. Those philosophies permeated his life and his thinking, resulting in his aversion to communal and caste divides of any kind. After getting a Master’s in English, he became a professor and taught English for the next three decades, side by side with his zest for human rights. He became a member of the Karnataka Civil Liberties Commission, and then its president.

“We filed complaints on behalf of people whose civil liberties were violated.” He was also part of the Citizens for Democracy, where the main focus was communal harmony, allowing him to continue with what is still closest to his heart. “When the Cauvery violence first began in Karnataka, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer set up a commission which I was part of,” says Hasan. They travelled through the state, meeting victims of abuse, violence and torture, making records of it all.

He has worked for the betterment of slum-dwellers. “Slum dwellers live without drinking water or a proper sewage system. Shivajinagar is the worst; the people live in several feet of stagnating water, their children play in it every day.” The plight of sex workers is just as bad, he says, having done a good deal of fact finding on them. Plagued by insecurity every moment of their lives and subject to violence by the state, civil society and the underworld, theirs is a dismal existence. “Many of them are so artistic, but they aren’t given a chance,” he says.

An ardent admirer of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Hasan has a special place in his heart for Dalit rights. “The women have to wake up before sunrise and use the fields as toilets. After this, it can only be after dark. If they are spotted during the day, they are stoned,” he says. “They are not allowed to be human beings.” His indomitable spirit, his optimism that has not been worn down by age, and the dreams that he has not lost make Hasan an inspiration. The professor in him snaps to attention as the conversation winds down and he ends with a line from T.S. Eliot’s The Rock: “Where is the life we have lost in living?”