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

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Though in reality - Ms. Arundhati "PUBLICITY-SEEKING Roy advocates
Terrorism. I think readers would find interesting to read this Acron piece
at -
http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/2005/03/19/arundhati-roy-advocates-terrorism/

Thanks
Aditya Raj Kaul
New Delhi


On 2/16/08, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
>
> 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
>
> -----------------------------------
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
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