Arundhati Roy accused of sedition
In India, under Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code, anyone who “brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India” can be punished with anywhere from a few years to life in prison. The law itself is a carry-over from the old colonial days, when besides a few minor replacements (the words “Her Majesty” was replaced by “the Goverment established by law” and “India” substituted for “British India”) the law was exactly the same. It doesn’t seem that surprising for a violently enforced occupation to put such “laws” in to place to justify stamping out dissent, but what about a modern, secular, democracy? The kind that India claims to be today? (And Democracies, of course, never violently occupy other territories or suppress dissent. They’re the nice kind of government, right? The Free Speech kind, the justice and peace and freedom kind. Right?)
The reason I’m writing today about all of this is that, just today, Arundhati Roy, as well as a well-known activist and pro-Kashmiri separatist Ali Shah Geelani, have been booked under IPC 124-A for recent remarks given at a conference called “Whither Kashmir? Freedom or Enslavement”.
And what did Roy say to incite hatred and “disaffection” towards India?
“Kashmir has never been an integral part of India which is a historical fact. It is a historical fact…India fought in Nagaland, in Manipur, Punjab and in Kashmir. It projects a biggest democracy in the world and emerging economic power but at the same time it oppresses its states and the people of diverse cultures.”
Kashmir today is one of the world’s most militarized zones, with nearly 500,000 Indian troops stationed in the region, supposedly to keep the region “stable” and to squash the popular uprising for Kashmiri independence.
Over a hundred protesters have been killed in the last four months alone.
