Prosecution of Arundhati Roy meant to show Modi 3.0 has teeth intact

The move to prosecute Arundhati Roy under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) must be understood less as a punitive measure targeting, specifically, the author-activist, and more as a display, for the benefit of the public at large, of its dental endowment by the Modi Government 3.0.

It is designed to set at rest the speculation, in some liberal circles, that loss of an absolute majority for the Prime Minister’s party has resulted in the government shedding some, at least, of its teeth.

The use of UAPA to prosecute Ms Roy for a speech made 14 years ago is, prima facie, ridiculous. Even if you deemed the speech questioning the propriety of treating Kashmir as an integral part of India to be unlawful, it can hardly be prevented from being made, by means of prosecution nearly a decade and a half after it was made.

A well-considered move

The aim of the prosecution clearly is to make an example of Arundhati Roy, to dissuade others from acting on the assumption that the government has lost its bite, after being denied an outright majority by India’s voters.

The choice that has been made to prove the government’s toothsome point is well-considered. The move has been initiated by the Delhi Lt Governor, not the Central government directly. That leaves some room for sidestepping responsibility, should that prove necessary, for whatever reason.

Further, whether Muslim-majority Kashmir is a legitimate part of India is a question that is guaranteed to arouse passions. Nationalist fervour can be counted on to trump respect for the right to dissent in the court of public opinion, and put pressure even on the judiciary.

Raw deal

It is indisputable that the people of Kashmir have got a raw deal — from its mostly opportunistic local political leaders, Pakistan’s eagerness to validate its claimed legitimacy as the only safe place for the subcontinent’s Muslims by sowing violence and disruption in Kashmir, so that India would not be able to tell the world that the people of its Muslim-majority state lead a stable, prosperous life, and the readiness of India’s rulers to play fast and loose with the will of local Kashmiris, as revealed in the results of elections with largescale popular participation.

Indian security personnel stationed there to suppress disruption and subversion have tended to behave like a hostile occupation force.

Legitimacy of accession

All this does not negate the legitimacy of Kashmir’s accession to India or how, historically, the region has been integral to India’s history and culture.

Nor does it alter the uniquely subcontinental form that Islam assumed when it spread in Kashmir, its religious guides being called rishis, before its subordination, in more recent times, by a vocal zealotry sponsored from abroad.

Nor can the injustice sustained by the local people wash away the blood shed by Indian soldiers drawn from across the land to ward off Pakistani aggression in repeated wars over Kashmir.

All this makes the idea of Kashmir’s separation from India hugely unpopular.

What amounts to sedition?

But it is precisely when it comes to saying unpopular things that the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution becomes relevant. It does not require the backing of the Constitution to mouth mundane platitudes or sing paeans to the ruling dispensation.

The core of democracy is dissent. Dissent is to be valued, rather than ostracised, for it alone leads to new thinking and progress from the status quo. Dissent becomes troublesome only when it is accompanied by incitement to violence.

The Supreme Court has made it amply clear that Sedition under Section 124A of the IPC subsists only when accompanied by the intent to stage violence against the state.

Even those who shouted “Khalistan Zindabad”, in the wake of the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards acting under the influence of Khalistani separatists, were pronounced innocent of the crime of sedition by the Supreme Court.

Key difference

To charge a couple of intellectuals, including Arundhati Roy, guilty of trying to overthrow the constitutional order merely by stating her opinion on Kashmir is to fail to understand the distinction between exercise of the right to free speech and overthrow of the state.

Speech is to be debated, contested and refuted, not silenced by the use of state force.

The Indian state is not so weak as to be blown down by any gust of free-flowing speech, even if the speech in question is unpalatable to many.

Using a draconian law like the UAPA to prosecute a speech made 14 years ago is to profess a fragility that does injustice to the solidity of the nation, however incomplete the task of building Indian democracy might still be.

No one to the rescue

Which is why it is fair to draw the inference that the real object of the prosecution is not Ms Roy but all would-be critics of the government who might feel emboldened by the BJP’s failure to obtain even a bare majority, leave alone the supermajority its key leaders sought in the just-concluded elections.

The untenable charge against Arundhati Roy must be challenged politically and legally. More to the point, would-be critics should refuse to take fright.

In the fairytale, Red Riding Hood merely asked her grandmother why she had such long teeth — she did not quite recognise their actual purpose or the real identity of the pretend granny.

But then, she had a woodsman come to her rescue. In the real world, threats to democracy have to be recognised when they come up, and resisted. No woodsman is waiting to come to the rescue, with a swinging axe or a walking stick.

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