by VIJAY PRASHAD
On October 10, 2023, Delhi’s lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena acted against the writer Arundhati Roy and a former professor, Sheikh Showkat Hussain. Prosecution under Section 153A and 153B of the Indian Penal Code – provisions for ‘hate speech’ – requires the sanction of the government. Saxena duly noted that a prima facie case against Roy and Hussein was made under these two sections.
The First Information Report (FIR) accuses Roy and Hussein of disrupting social harmony and of acting in ‘public mischief’, but more seriously of sedition. The accusation is not about an event held last week or even earlier this year. Saxena, a high official of the government, went back 13 years to draw from a complaint filed on October 28, 2010, by Sushil Pandit against Roy, Hussein and two men who have since died (Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani). Last year, the Supreme Court said that cases of sedition could not advance while the government reviews the law. Saxena noted that while a ‘case of sedition is made out’, the police itself was not pressing the matter in the light of the Supreme Court staying all sedition matters.
The action by the government against Roy and Hussein comes days after the massive raids into the homes and offices of journalists and researchers across India. On October 3, 500 officials of the Delhi Police interrogated reporters associated with the news website NewsClick and arrested its founder (Prabir Purkayastha) and its human resources head (Amit Chakraborty) under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act; Purkayastha and Chakraborty have now been moved from police to judicial custody and are in jail. The raids and arrests provoked mass demonstrations across the country in defence of press freedom. The day after the raid and arrests, a protest meeting was held at the Press Club of India in New Delhi. Roy sat prominently at the front of the room with a sign around her neck that read, ‘Free the Press’.
It was no surprise that Roy was at the protest. Since she won the Booker Prize for her landmark novel A God of Small Things in 1997, Roy has been a vocal critic of imperialism and the rise of the toxic right-wing Hindutva movement. After India’s nuclear test in 1998, she wrote a brave essay – ‘The End of Imagination’ – which introduced an entire generation of readers to a poetic voice of moral clarity.
In rapid succession came a stream of remarkable essays – ‘The Greater Common Good’ (1999), ‘The Cost of Living’ (2000), ‘The Algebra of Infinite Justice’ (2001), ‘Listening to Grasshoppers’ (2002), ‘War Talk’ (2003) – that picked away at the suffocating discourses of war and profit, rooted in an India that seemed to be slipping away into deep inequality and horrible violence (many of these essays, and more, are collected in the cheekily named My Seditious Heart, 2019). In her fabulous IG Khan Memorial Lecture in April 2004, Roy characterised the developments in India as a ‘dual orchestra’ – ‘While one arm is busy selling off the nation’s assets in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is arranging a baying, howling deranged chorus of cultural nationalism’. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in power at that time but would lose the elections the next month.
The BJP has an elephantine memory. Nothing of these kinds of remarks is forgotten. Everything is remembered. The BJP returns at some point to cash its cheque. Roy made a speech in 2010. It was not forgotten. She was at the protest against the arrest of Purkayastha and Chakraborty. The FIR against her has been activated by the LG less than a week later. The FIR is not just about that speech in 2010. It is against everything she has stood for since ‘The End of Imagination’.
Kashmir
What happened in 2010? So much happens in Kashmir that it is impossible to remember the details of even last year, let alone so many years ago. In April 2010, the Indian Army shot dead three civilians from Rafiabad and then claimed that they had infiltrated from Pakistan. The murders took place so that the soldiers could claim cash rewards being offered for such killings; five soldiers received life imprisonment for their actions (suspended by the Armed Forces Tribunal in 2017). Inevitably, large mobilisations in Srinagar and other places demanded the complete de-militarisation of Jammu and Kashmir (it has one of the highest military-to-civilian ratios – one million soldiers to 14 million residents). The protests led to more military violence, which then led to more anger and mobilisations. By September, these protests became a mass movement, and so the Indian government offered some concessions to calm matters. The public meeting held in Delhi on October 21 was part of this cycle of protests.
In 2008, Roy had travelled to Kashmir. Since 1987, it has been relatively impossible to be in Kashmir and not experience either terrible violence or a mass demonstration. She was fortunate to be there at a time when a major non-violent uprising resulted in the ordinary people of Srinagar taking over their city. In an essay in Outlook, Roy wrote, ‘The city floated on a sea of smiles. There was ecstasy in the air. Everyone had a banner: houseboat owners, traders, students, lawyers, doctors. One said: “We are all prisoners, set us free”’.
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