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Sanction to prosecute Arundhati Roy stirs unease

Published : Tuesday, 25 June, 2024 at 12:00 AM  Count : 579
Maksud Ibna Rahaman
What is lawful in the eyes of a government may deem unlawful to people, what seems to be legal to the state may sound illegal to a victim, what is seditious to a government could be quite the opposite to others who may well consider it a freedom struggle, what sounds a violent act to a government is actually could be a democratic movement to those who fight for their rights, what sounds subversive and anti-state to a government may well be construed as a revolutionary act by those who desperately intend to see a radical change in a society full of injustice.

The state, particularly capitalist in nature, always its own discourse and accordingly it enacts its laws to silence dissents. Everyone is said to be equal in the eyes of laws. How far is it true? Is really everyone is equal in the eyes of the laws? If one keenly observes what is going on around one can see it without any microscope. Everywhere in the world there is one common statement issued by governments: Law will take its own course. But was the law made for all and does it punish everybody equally? The answer always blows in the wind. There is no exception to the case of Arundhati Roy, the booker prize winner for her novel The God of Small Things in 1997.

The top official in the Delhi Administration, VK Saxena, sanctioned the prosecution of Arundhati Roy who has long been vocal against the Modi government for its jingoistic and communal mind-set, especially its targeting the minorities living in India. The sanction to prosecute Arundhati Roy, also an activist, alongside a former university professor, Sheikh Showkat Hussain, was granted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for her provocative speech at a seminar in Delhi in 2010. To many, the UAPA is a controversial draconian law enacted apparently to silence the opposition, lawyers, activists, journalists, writers, academics and particularly Kashmiri civilians who very often come down heavily on the government to prevent the protest being sparked from within the society.

I don know much about what this UAPA says about provocative speech but I know from both electronic and print media of India that this UAPA is different from other criminal laws. A section of the UAPA says bail is exception and jail is norm while in an ordinary criminal case it is vice verse. Under this law even a long-time custody can be sought during the investigation and trial. However, in ordinary criminal cases custody is sought only for a short period of time (three days or seven days). As there is no provision for bail an accused can remain in jail for ages. Does a writer like Arundhati Roy deserves to be punished under a law that was said to punish criminals? What criminal act did she commit? What she said at a seminar 14 years back has now been brought forth to penalize her. The Delhi Administration along with the government suddenly woke up from their deep slumber after 14 years to say that it was a criminal act while to others like me it is writers freedom to say what she deems right. It is her freedom to define and redefine what Azaadi is.   

I had an opportunity to talk to her on the sideline at a seminar in Bihar last year. Arundhati Roy was invited as a guest there while I was just a participant. Her talk to me was recorded and I am giving her account verbatim of what she said about her being called a Maoist. When I asked her why people thought that she was sympathetic towards Maoist in India this is what she said: It is not about sympathizing. These are all very weak words. You know, what happens is that in central India in Bastar they had signed hundreds of MoUs. This was the Congress government at that point handing over, against the constitution, indigenous peoples land to multinational companies for mining for infrastructure. They had set up a Vigilante Army which was burning villages, raping women. Adivasi people were not able to live in their homes at night for fear of this Salwa Judum (a militia deployed as part of counterinsurgency operations in Chhattishgarh) or police and there was a Maoist Army in the region but I went inside to just say, look what is going on in the middle of five days walk from the main road in a village. What sort of Gandhian protest are you asking people to do? You know, thats a form of political theatre. You know, you need an audience and people who are starving inside there can go on a hunger strike. So I was highlighting the fact that there was huge environmental destruction, there was huge displacement, and there was massive violence on these people. There is a force in there resisting it but if nobody is going to talk about it in the way it should be talked about then I am going to talk about it.

Yes, she talked about the environmental destruction, displacement and violence unleashed by the government and tried to bring forth what was going on in Chhattishgare in her writing Walking with the Comrades. Yes, she protested the nuclear test in 1998. While the whole country was celebrating the test she found in it a vicious form of nationalism and she wrote an essay The End of Imagination criticizing those tests.  Yes, she talked about caste system. She told me in the same interview: Caste is the engine that runs the Indian society. Similarly, she talked about Kashmir. In her words to me: What I said was that and what I say today also is that nobody can justify the way the Indian state has acted in Kashmir and Kashmir should be allowed to express their. . .  it is not for me to say that they should be independent or not, it is for them to say but you have to create a space, you can oppress people in this way. Thats what I was saying. You can have the most densely military occupation in the world and then call yourself a democracy. You put millions of people under communication siege. You can arrest thousands of people and keep them in jail the way they did after section 370 was struck down and call yourself a democracy.

These are some of her thoughts that incurred the wrath of the governments. What the acclaimed writer Arundhati Roy said in 2010 at a seminar in India was very clear. She said Kashmir has never been an integral part of India, , , even the Indian government has accepted in the UN that it is not an integral part of India. He questioned the Modi government why it was changing its narrative now. She posed the question. If there is really an answer to what she said it is the government that should come up with an answer. We know it is not to happen because what the government wants is to stifle the thought and idea not the person or the speech delivered which is the core idea of fascism. The ruling class and the oligarchs felt threatened by her thought. They know if the thought of Arundhati Roy cannot be throttled it will ultimately shake the very foundation of its power.

The writer is a senior journalist


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