[Reader-list] Statement by Arundhati Roy in Support of Taslima Nasrin

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

As there has been considerable discussion on the Taslima Nasrin issue  
on this list, I am forwarding on to the list a statement written and  
read by the writer Arundhati Roy, in support of Taslima Nasrin, and  
in support of the many others (journalists, doctors, and others) in  
conditions of detention in India currently.

I hope that this will be of interest to some of you on this list,

regards

Shuddha

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ARUNDHATI ROY’ S STATEMENT AT A PRESS CONFERENCE CALLED IN SUPPORT OF  
TASLIMA NASRIN'S RIGHT TO STAY IN INDIA IN CONDITIONS OF LIBERTY

February 13, 2008, Press Club of India, New Delhi, India

I would like to caution us all against looking at this issue, in  
particular the issue of Taslima Nasrin, through the single lens of a  
battle between religious fundamentalism and secular liberalism.  
Taslima Nasrin herself sometimes contributes to that view. On her  
website, she says: “Humankind is facing an uncertain future…. In  
particular, the conflict is between two different ideas, secularism  
and fundamentalism…. To me, this conflict is basically between  
modern, rational, logical thinking and irrational, blind faith.…. It  
is a conflict between the future and the past, between innovation and  
tradition, between those who value freedom and those who do not.”

How strange it is then, that it was the West Bengal Government — led  
by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a party that sees itself  
as the vanguard of secularism, modern, logical, and rational thinking  
— that banned Nasrin’s autobiographical novel Dwikhandita, not once,  
but twice. Twice the ban was successfully challenged in the Calcutta  
High Court. The book was published, and for four years people in  
Bengal read it and Taslima Nasrin lived in Calcutta. And there the  
matter remained — without incident.
  Then Nandigram happened. Muslims and Dalits bore the brunt of the  
government’s attack. The CPI(M) began to worry about losing the  
“Muslim vote.” So it played the Taslima card. A report by Mohammed  
Safi Samsi in the Indian Express (December 1, 2007) tells the story.
  The government launched its operation to “recapture” Nandigram at  
the end of October 2007:

On November 1, Path Sanket a CPI(M) magazine published an anonymous  
letter supporting Taslima Nasrin, adding some gratuitous insults of  
its own against Prophet Mohammed. On the November 8, the government  
banned the magazine and a member of the editorial team called  
printing the letter a “historic blunder.” But, of course, vernacular  
newspapers republished the letter. Photocopies of the letter were  
then distributed in Muslim-dominated localities.

On November 21 — a week after more than 60,000 people marched on the  
streets protesting the government’s actions in Nandigram — the little- 
known All India Minority Forum organized a protest that then  
“erupted” in violence. The army was called in. The government  
deported Taslima Nasrin from West Bengal.

And today, on February 13, we are all gathered here to discuss “free  
speech.” Not the recapturing of Nandigram or the continuing  
terrorizing, humiliation, and rape of the people who live there. It  
seems pretty clear that the threat to free speech comes as much from  
chemical hubs and iron ore mines — and from the project of land grab,  
enclosure, and mass displacement — as it does from religious  
fundamentalism. To not see this is to fall into a trap that has been  
cleverly laid for us.Religious fundamentalists, especially those from  
minority communities, are often inadvertently playing out a script  
that has been written for them. Their outrage, genuine though it may  
be, has become a dependable, predictable, and an extremely useful  
political device to further the agendas of others.

The principle of free speech and expression has to negotiate many,  
many fundamentalisms. Religious fundamentalism, ultranationalist  
fundamentalism, market fundamentalism, among others. Sometimes they  
are intertwined in the strangest ways.

Liberals often make the mistake of believing that free speech is a  
fundamental right given to us by the Indian constitution — and that  
when it is curbed either by the state or by vigilante militias and  
thugs, it is because the the constitution is being subverted. This is  
not true. Free speech is not our constitutional right. It is a  
contained right, beset with caveats, caveats that are always used by  
the powerful to control and dominate those who are powerless.

Now, we have a slew of new laws that make not just free speech but  
freedom itself in India a pathetic joke, a distant dream. There is  
the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which incorporates  
some of the worst provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act  
(POTA) and Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act  
(TADA). There is the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act, the  
Madhya Pradesh Control of Organized Crime Act, and the utterly  
draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA). Some of  
these laws contain provisions whose sole purpose seems to be to  
criminalize everybody and then leave the government free to decide at  
leisure whom to imprison. Under the CSPSA and the UAPA, for example,  
the government is free to arbitrarily ban any organization without  
giving any specific reason for placing the ban.

Here is how the CSPA defines an organization: “ ‘Organization’ means  
any combination, body or group of persons whether known by any  
distinctive name or not and whether registered under any relevant law  
or not and whether governed by any written constitution or not.”

Remember, the vaguer the provisions in the law, the wider the net it  
casts, the greater the threat to civil and democratic rights.

Here is how the CSPSA defines an “unlawful activity”: “Any action  
taken by such [banned] individual or organization whether by  
committing an act or by words either spoken or written or by signs or  
by visible representation or otherwise.”

And then there are some sub-clauses that widen the net: these are -

"(i)     which constitutes a danger or menace to public order, peace  
or tranquility
(iii)   which interferes or tends to interfere with maintenance of  
public order
And, remarkably
  (vi)   of encouraging or preaching disobedience to established law  
and its institutions."

In Section 8(5) it says that “Whoever commits or abets or attempts to  
commit or abet or plans to commit any unlawful activity shall be  
punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years.”

So now they have mind readers in the Chattisgarh government, as well  
as seers.

How can there be even the pretense of free speech or freedom under  
laws like these? All over the country, not just journalists and  
writers, but anybody who disagrees with the government’s plans is  
being arrested, tortured, and imprisoned. Sometimes murdered.

Govind Kutty, the editor of People’s March, a publication banned for  
being sympathetic to Maoist ideology, has been arrested and  
imprisoned. The Maoists have as much right to the freedom of  
expression, as much right to place their ideology — however abhorrent  
the government or anybody else may believe it to be — in the public  
domain, in the so-called marketplace of ideas as anybody else does.

I believe that the ban on People’s March should be lifted immediately  
and its editor unconditionally released.

Finally, I would like to say that the battle for free speech must not  
turn into a battle that limits itself to the freedom of writers,  
journalists, and artists alone. We are not the only ones who deserve  
this right. A friend from Chattisgarh recently told me of a doctor  
who had been arrested because a prescription of his had been found in  
some “Naxalite kit,” whatever that means.

In Chattisgarh, 644 villages have been evacuated of their  
inhabitants. That’s more than 300,000 people — displacement on a mass  
scale, which is eventually intended to clear space for corporate  
mining interests.

Fifty thousand people have been moved into police camps and have  
become recruits for the dreaded Salwa Judum (the supposedly anti  
Maoist“people’s militia” created and funded by the state government).  
Tens of thousands of people have fled to neighboring states to escape  
the horror. Nobody is allowed to go back to their villages or to  
cultivate their land. What is freedom of expression for a farmer? The  
buzz in town is that a new law is on the anvil which says that if  
farmland has not been cultivated for two years, it can be diverted  
for non-agricultural purposes.

Every form of resistance, peaceful or otherwise, is being shut down  
by the state. Of all the cases on the anvil, the goldfish in a bowl,  
the dire, menacing warning to us all and to anybody who may be  
entertaining the idea “of encouraging or preaching disobedience to  
established law and its institutions” is the continued imprisonment  
of Dr. Binayak Sen under false charges, underpinned by blatantly  
fabricated evidence.

Dr. Binayak Sen, who has worked as a civil rights activist with the  
People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and a doctor in the area  
for more than 30 years, was arrested last May, charged under the  
CSPSA, the UAPA, and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). He has been in  
prison for eight months, denied bail even by the Supreme Court.

By imprisoning someone like Binayak Sen the Government is trying to  
close out the option of peaceful resistance, of democratic space. It  
is creating a polarization along the lines of the Bush Doctrine — “If  
you are not with us, you are with the terrorists” — in which people  
only have the choice between succumbing to displacement and  
destitution or resisting by going underground and taking up arms.  
This is the beginning of either civil war or the annihilation of the  
poor. Once that genie is out of the bottle, it won’t go back. There  
are reports that the Chhattisgarh state government has asked for 70  
battalions of paramilitary forces beyond the 17 battalions that are  
already there. A fourfold increase. I fear the worst.

And so, from this platform I would like to ask for the granting of  
citizenship to Taslima Nasrin, for the immediate and unconditional  
release of Binayak Sen, Govind Kutty, and the other journalists whose  
names have been mentioned at this press conference, experienced  
journalists and peaceful activists who understand that reporting the  
realities of these situations is the only hope of righting this ship  
that is tilting dangerously and about to tip over. If it does tip  
over, everybody will suffer, the poor definitely, but the rich too.  
There will be no hiding place. I urge those present here to pay keen  
attention to the specter that is looming before us. And to begin a  
campaign demanding the repeal of these very frightening new laws that  
do not merely threaten free speech, but freedom itself.