#SeditionDebate: Everything you need to know about Umar Khalid, the man they're calling 'Kashmiri traitor'

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/seditiondebate-everything-you-need-to-know-about-umar-khalid-the-man-theyre-calling-kashmiri-traitor-2633254.html

by Sameer Yasir  Feb 19, 2016 12:10 IST

On the evening of 9 February, 30 minutes before the scheduled start of a cultural event organised by the Democratic Students Union (an ultra-leftist group) titled ‘A Country without a Post Office’ to protest against the “judicial killing” of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, the university administration of Jawaharlal Nehru University cancelled the event. Dozens of students gathered on the Sabarmati lawns — including Kashmiri students — to protest against the cancellation and raised slogans. One among them was Umar Khalid.

Former DSU leader Khalid, 28, resigned from his post in November 2015 along with 10 others and is now doing his PhD at JNU's Centre for Historical Studies.

His college and university mates say he was always vocal and believed in extreme left ideology.

Khalid wore a maroon printed muffler and a grey-and-white sweater while he spoke to a television channel after the protest. In the subsequent days, he appeared on different television channels defending the event. On Friday, immediately after Delhi Police arrested JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of 'criminal conspiracy' and 'sedition' under Sections 124A and 120B of the Indian Penal Code, JNU students say Khalid went missing from the campus.

​His disappearance led a certain section of the media to claim he was a Jaish-e-Mohammad sympathiser and that he had links with terrorist organisations. Other reports in media and posters outside JNU in the Munirka area described Khalid as a “Kashmiri traitor”.

A few clarifications are required:

First, Umar is not a Kashmiri. His parents live in Delhi and he is actually from the Amravati district of Maharashtra. His family moved to Delhi 35 years ago and they live in the Jamia Nagar area — they have no connection with Kashmir.

Although his views on Kashmir are known to everyone on campus, according to some JNU students he would encourage Kashmiri students and those from other parts to speak about their experiences in Kashmir.

After the 9 February rally, this is what Umar told a television channel, “I am not from Kashmir, but what is happening there is Indian occupation of Kashmir. Just like one territory is occupied by Pakistan, another territory is occupied by the Indian State. (Jawaharlal) Nehru’s words in 1947 were very clear — Kashmir will be given a plebiscite.”

Umar’s father, Syed Qasim Ilyas, says he is not the first one to say what he has about Kashmir. “Many politicians, authors, journalist have talked about separation of Kashmir. Then should they also be charged with sedition?” he asked.

Second, he is a communist and self-proclaimed atheist — not an Islamist, according to his friends at JNU. This is why there has always been some distance between him and his father Ilyas, a social activist who also runs an Urdu magazine in Delhi. “He is not at all religious and we always have disagreements on the issue,” Ilyas said.

Joyeeta Dey, a family friend of Umar's, wrote on her Facebook page that she heard her friend (Umar's sister) saying on many occasions that her brother was a "communist pagal".

Dey wrote during her extensive stay at Umar's house that she noticed “the grief he caused his family (who are believers) by fiercely renouncing religion (as it clashed with his political ideology) was palpable".

Third, did Umar travel to Pakistan? The former leader of the DSU faces far graver charges than sedition — those of having links with militant groups, as reported in the media.

Ilyas denied these claims and said his son had, until now, never even applied for a passport, despite receiving offers of international scholarships. “My son and Kanhaiya Kumar are the worst victims of the media trial. My son is being called a terrorist and someone who travelled to Pakistan, even though he doesn’t have a passport. He may be anything but he's not a terrorist,” Ilyas said.

His friends inside the JNU campus do not believe the allegations. Aparna (name changed), a classmate of Umar's, did her MA in History from JNU and has known him for many years, ever since he was an undergraduate student at a college in Delhi University.

“He (Umar) is being targeted because he is a Muslim. His face, name and his political views provide the best fit for media and State to brand him a terrorist. The ABVP pasted his posters in Munirka saying he is a traitor and militant sympathiser while as far as I know, he believes in the Constitution of this country, but has his views on issues,” she said.

Fourth, if he believes in the law of the land and the Constitution, why is he hiding and where?

His father denied having any information and said the last time he spoke to his son was when he was coming out of the studio of a TV channel. This question was posed to many students during a protest rally organised by the students of JNU who've known Umar for years.

“Do you think he would be safe, if he was to come out in public? Lawyers and goons want to kill Kanhaiya in court and lynch him; how can you trust institutions of the State that have failed to protect Kanhaiya? Imagine a Muslim student — bearded and having radical views — who has worked with adivasis and is not scared like most of the Muslims in India today. They would lynch him,” said Supriya, a student of JNU who was part of a protest match organised by the university students in New Delhi, on Thursday.

Ilyas said he asked his son to return home on the day Kanhaiya was arrested, but his son refused saying he was going to JNU.

“His ideology has become his worst enemy. He is a meritorious student, did his MA and MPhil in such a prestigious institution. The country’s media is slowly turning on him because he is a perfect fit: A Muslim face with views that don’t gel with the State's opinion on things,” he said.

“I wish and appeal that my son returns soon to face the law of the land if he has done something wrong. Our family is worried about his safety and I am worried about him. We have been receiving threats. If he has raised any slogan that the state thinks is seditious, he should face the law of the land,” said Ilyas.

A WhatsApp conversation between Umar and his friend, which is in Firstpost's possession, reads:

Friend: Bhai, calcium tablets khalo. Is umr mein daant jhadna think nahi. (Take calcium tablets. At your age, you don't want to lose teeth) You should take care of yourself

Umar: Hyper mat ho. Thik hoon mein. Is desh ke logon ko do waqt ka khana nahi milita. Tum log selfish ho. Kabhi toh bada socho (Don't be hyper. I'm fine. In this country, people don't get to eat two meals a day. You people are selfish. Try and think big).

Solidarity Statement by Academics in the UK

BY SUNALINI KUMAR, FEBRUARY 19, 2016

This is a statement by nearly over three hundred and fifty academics based in the UK

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). We condemn the BJP government-sanctioned police action in the JNU campus and the illegal detention of the JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar. We strongly condemn the manner in which political dissent is being stifled, reducing academic spaces to fortresses. We also condemn the widespread witch-hunt of left-wing students and student groups that this police action has unleashed.

These recent acts are representative of the larger trend that we have been observing – the imposition of an authoritarian and regressive agenda in institutions of higher learning from Films and Television Institute [FTII], Hyderabad Central University [HCU] to Jawaharlal Nehru University [JNU]. From the institutional murder of HCU student, Rohith Vemula, and the suppression of student protests at FTII to the illegal detention of the student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar and pervasive police presence at JNU, there has been a constant non- observance and disregard of administrative and legal norms as well as a gross infringement of the democratic rights of the student community. These actions are embedded in a deeply chauvinistic cultural nationalism, which espouses a casteist and Brahmanical, homophobic, and patriarchal worldview.

We strongly believe that student politics is being targeted currently by giving a new lease of life to a sedition law that was a draconian tool in the hands of the colonial state and has no place in a democracy. It is our democratic right to dissent, disagree, organise and struggle against state, institutions or policies that transgress and suppress democratic and egalitarian values. Expression of dissent cannot and should not be equated with being ‘anti-national’ (or any other such constructed category) and is definitely not punishable under law especially if it is non-violent.

Disguising targeted assault on oppositional student groups/political movements within the narrative binaries of nationalism/anti nationalism only reflects how vulnerable the BJP government feels in its own ability to provide accountable governance.

We also believe that institutions of higher learning should be publicly funded spaces for political engagement, debates, and critical discussions – a legacy campuses (be it JNU, DU, or FTII) have embodied. As they always have, university spaces should subsidise costs of education for students, irrespective of the political disposition of the students. A rather disturbing feature of the narratives around this issue has been the construction and furthering of an artificial dichotomy between academics and politics that suggests that being ‘political’ is an aberration. This would certainly appear to be the case, if seen through the neoliberal lens of perceiving education as an industry that produces ‘semester bred’ automated ‘disciplined’ individuals who are mere consumers.

However, as the nonviolent expressions of dissent by students in JNU clearly demonstrate, contrary to this neo liberal view of academia,we believe that ‘personal is political’ and there is no sphere that is devoid of politics.We believe that good academic work necessarily involves a critical engagement with society and its power inequities and in that sense is always politically engaged. This engagement thrives in the democratic space of the university where many dissenting views can be heard and debated. The vilification of JNU as a space of ‘anti-national’ politics is being carried out by ABVP and BJP in order to attack and break this democratic spirit of academic and political life in Indian universities.

As teachers, students, scholars, and academics from the UK, who are keenly observing the developments unfolding in JNU, we express our solidarity with the students, faculty and staff of JNU as they non-violently resist this infringement on their rights. We urge the Vice Chancellor of JNU to uphold the institutional autonomy and the democratic rights of the student community. We also urge the government of India to stop encroaching on our rights as citizens, students, activists, political and politicised subjects.

The final frontier: What the govt and media aren’t telling you about the JNU controversy

Feb 19, 2016 22:37 IST
 
http://www.firstpost.com/india/the-final-frontier-what-the-government-and-media-arent-telling-you-about-the-jnu-controversy-2633586.html

By Saib Bilaval
In the light of recent controversies, JNU currently occupies centre stage in media coverage and the public gaze. Most of the media, especially Zee News, NewsX, IndiaTV and Times Now, is portraying the government as justifiably taking action on students who insult the country. Needless to say, public opinion mirrors that.
What the government is really doing is attacking social science, and democratic socialism, in the name of coming after 15 ultra-Left students. That they arrested Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNUSU president who was not shouting slogans, makes it clear that the government just needed an excuse to ‘crack down’ on JNU.
It is attacking the centres of the most systematic and sharp critiques of state policy in the country. This objective is tied to their notions of repainting history in saffron. The Indian Council for Historical Research has been taken over, as has the University Grants Commission, the Indian History Congress is being starved and discredited.
Hyderabad Central University has been hijacked, Delhi University courses professionalized, and Mamata Banerjee has already done to the institutions in West Bengal in her reign what the Modi government is just starting to do in the rest of the country. JNU is indeed the final frontier of political and policy dissent.

If Kanhaiya Kumar was to be released in a few days, then brutal BJP-supporting lawyers and goons would not have attacked teachers and journalists twice in the Patiala House court complex. With FTII, the establishment wants to extend the conflict indefinitely. It did not come to power to with 280 seats in the Lok Sabha to back down in the face of public pressure, and behave like the UPA-II.When it cannot prove its argument, it attempts to add to it – ‘anti-national’ and ‘sedition’ having failed, it is considering the ‘narcotics’, ‘terror’ and ‘corruption’ angles.
There is nobody who can prove that those accused of shouting slogans didn’t want azaadi through a Constitutional amendment. After all, 66 percent of the Constitution was lifted straight out of the Government of India Act 1935. Reservations were imposed that way, as were Right to Education and Right to Information. Disagreeing with the Constitution in its current form should not be a crime, because the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ that the saffron forces want would also require a Constitutional amendment, as would the uniform civil code that they have long held as a cherished dream. Both these proposals challenge the Constitution in its current form. Would someone then call the BJP and RSS anti-Constitution and anti-India, or those proposals seditious?

I would like to remind the public that Dr BR Ambedkar was a democratic socialist, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jayaprakash Narayan were too, as were EMS Namboothiripad, Hasrat Mohani, Premchand, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, P Sundarayya, EV Ramasamy Naicker, as was Ramanohar Lohia. A history of the freedom struggle without the democratic socialists would have been a history of the slow decline of sati. Swaraj would have been demanded but not universal adult franchise. The right to property would have been guaranteed, but so would have been the right to starve, and the right to discriminate based on caste, gender and religion. There would have been no land reforms, and minimal public education. Workers would not have been unionized in a fair manner. In fact, the democratic socialists were the only consistently secular brand of Indian politician, across party lines. A lot of the people listed above were not in agreement with the Nehru government in 1947 over issues such as federalism, Pakistan (Ambedkar on Pakistan is a good example), land reforms, public sector, unionization, reservation, rights, and state and religion. Branding democratic socialism as anti-national is branding Dr BR Ambedkar anti-national, even as the current administration attempts to appropriate him.Regarding the myth of leftists having ‘hatred for our troops’: most leftists know that the army and police are not imperialistic or fascist – they are simply professional – especially under a civilian government. Our troops are ordinary people for whose welfare, working conditions and safety, any student would have great compassion.
Speaking of insulting our troops, did minister Gen (retd.) VK Singh not insult the Dalits in the army, when he made the horrendous ‘throw stones at a dog, blame the govt’ comment? Or are there no Dalits in the army? Either way, there’s a problem.
In addition, another discourse doing the rounds is about how taxes are subsidizing the education of “anti-nationals”. Firstly, every student of JNU, no matter what party or if any at all, is using their brain and getting educated. This is the reason they’re political in the first place. Taxpayer money goes into every university of this country, each of which also has a financial corpus gathering interest in deposits. So is a good education anti-national, and a not-so-good one in maybe some state-level university ultra-patriotic?
Secondly, did people think fake encounters don’t cost money? Or a certain man’s countless foreign trips? Or the fact that tax breaks to mega-crorepatis is what ensures that many, many children don’t get educated, people go to sleep hungry, die before being able to afford a hospital, or commit suicide when saddled with debt? Unlike most professional universities (including the IITs and IIMs and NLUs) where people look for cushy placements in the corporate sector, students of JNU actually agitate for expansion of education to all. And here is a media-tainted public who wants education withdrawn from ‘anti-national’ students.
This discourse over taxpayer money in a country where barely 3 percent of people (including all government employees) pay taxes is rather telling of how the regime is attempting to harness Hindu nationalist fervor to the cause of fiscal conservatism and budgetary austerity in key welfare sectors. It is also their way of playing divide-and-rule. By never universalizing public school and public college education, the administrations of this country have stood witness to social strife in a race to the top over school and college seats, as well as reservations. They have learned much from the British indeed.
The JNU controversy also exposes what the media and government don’t want to talk about. It is evident that the current administration is keen on a low-key Union Budget affair this year. That there has been no paradigm shift in economic since the Modi government took power is a media myth. Whether at the behest of the WTO or private interests in India, there have been massive cuts in the budgets in education, healthcare and NREGA. Further, taxation policy was distorted – with corporates now paying lesser (25 percent) than employees, teachers and other middle-class professions (around 30 percent). The only significant thing cheaper, according to the last budget, was footwear valued over Rs.1000.

Having sold off significant coal blocks, and inching toward disinvestment of the “underperforming” public sector banks, the government has nothing left to expand welfare in a country of widespread poverty where 77 percent of the population lives under Rs. 20 a day (according to the Arjun Sengupta report). While governments and agencies over the world have shifted to median income indicators, the Modi government remains keen on showing poverty and inequality figures based on mean averages. The Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook shows that the richest 1 percent of the Indian population owns 53 percent of India’s wealth, up from 36 percent in 2000. Of all the wealth generated between 2000 and 2015, 61 percent of it went to the top 1%.The administration has nothing to offer the people but empty promises. ‘Development’ features solely private profits.

The Rs. 1.14 lakh crore of loans written off by public sector banks as bad debt, is largely due to irresponsible lending to private corporations that wanted to milk the government cash cow. The RBI claims that the required information on the individual and business beneficiaries of the write-off is not available with them, according to a report. It thus turns out that more public sector banks are ‘underperforming’, and the likelihood of some of them being disinvested, is greater than earlier assumed. Further, the selling of public assets to bail out corporations whose greed, recklessness and speculation bankrupted them in the first place is tantamount to crony capitalism and a betrayal of the general public.

The truth is – and no one else will tell you this – that the Modi government has no concrete economic vision, and has no immediate agenda to alleviate poverty, hunger and lack of education in this country. Even the policy they follow now will be in tatters by November 2016. By then, the USA would have a new President-elect. Two of the frontrunners (one Republican and the other Democrat) Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have promised to reverse American trade deals, having realized that such deals are no longer beneficial to the American people (lower wages, outsourcing of jobs) or the American state (shrinking revenues and stashing of black money in tax havens).Our government is for the WTO and IMF in ways that the next President of the US (whether Bernie or Trump) clearly won’t be. There is no point implementing policy under American pressure when America will change its mind in November.

These policies include education and healthcare cuts, privatization of pension, provident funds and insurance, risky financial trading in derivatives. Education and healthcare is not guaranteed. All the expansion in the past 30 years has been in the expensive private sector. Drunk on Reaganistic measures of ‘economic development’, just without any outsourcing or strong manufacturing sector, the governments since 1991 have been shaping India’s education and labour market to American needs: less/no education (low-wage blue collar jobs) and computer science/engineering. When the foreign demand withdraws, with a more protectionist USA, a large chunk of tertiary/service sector earnings in India (concentrated in a few sectors like IT) will vanish.

The great patriots, the Indian tycoons, the ‘job-creators’ are busy investing abroad while an empty slogan for local production echoes in non-existent factories. There is no salvation waiting for us.
After the electoral rout of the Congress in 2014, opposition to the NDA regime is fragmented and weak in Parliament. Outside, public pressure through movements, petitions, and writings is quickly misreported by the media, then lathicharged or dismissed by the administration. In order to avoid criticism on its policy or lack of policy, while the country is burning on issues of communalism, caste discrimination and deprivation – the administration seeks to paint its main critics as an ideological East Germany. Other universities are aware that if JNU isn’t safe, no university that doesn’t toe the government line is. The bastion of ideas, the frontier of freedom of expression, is under siege.

The public is informed to watch out for the demise of the ideological Berlin wall, and cheer when the time is right. Meanwhile, the students of JNU expect a Reichstag fire to be in the works.

The author is a research scholar in Modern and Contemporary History at Centre For Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

On Kanhaiya: It is Time to Stand Up and Be Counted

By Siddharth Varadarajan on 19/02/2016  

 For complete article with videos , visit link 
http://thewire.in/2016/02/19/on-kanhaiya-it-is-time-to-stand-up-and-be-counted-22039/

From fabricating a case to resorting to violence and peddling forged ‘evidence’, all those who have worked to ruin a young life must be brought to account.

 

Let Kanhaiya go! Protestors march in central Delhi on February 18. Credit: Shome Basu

Let Kanhaiya go! Protestors march in central Delhi on February 18. Credit: Shome Basu

Make no mistake, this is one of those moments when your children and grandchildren are going to ask you where you stood when cynical politicians, mercenary police bosses, thuggish lawyers, callous university administrators and rotten, corrupt journalists ganged up to destroy the life of a young man, Kanhaiya Kumar.
If this scenario sounds familiar, I have two words for you: Rohith Vemula. The country failed that student, driven to suicide by the false cases foisted on him by the corrupt men and women in authority who oversaw his life. The national remorse we felt then has evaporated in the heat of our present hyper-nationalist grandstanding.
Not satisfied with tormenting a student by helping to pin a concocted case on him, or by inciting vigilante violence against him with their incendiary coverage, Zee TV, NewsX and other channels like India News have gone a step further and broadcast a clearly doctored video clip purporting to show Kanhaiya shouting slogans in favour of Kashmir’s independence.
Most of us had never heard of Kanhaiya before the Delhi Police arrested him for sedition on February 12. He was charged with one of the most serious offences on the Indian statute books for an incident involving nothing more than the shouting of slogans on campus: An incident in which he played no direct role. An incident that a self-confident, democratic country should never have turned into a police matter.
Since then, Kanhaiya has been vilified by the Home Minister of India, by official spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party, by the Delhi police and black-coated thugs who masquerade as lawyers – and by television anchors. He has been violently assaulted inside court premises. “We have all the evidence we need,” Delhi police chief B.S. Bassi declared, while Rajnath Singh went one step further and sought to connect Kanhaiya to Pakistan-based terror groups on the basis of a Tweet from a parody account.
A young man India can be proud of
Those of us who tried to look for evidence of these grave charges against him, instead, discovered a vibrant young man who is anything but the “anti-national” of the Home Minister’s description.
I challenge you to watch video recordings of his speeches and not come away with the feeling that young Kanhaiya has better political sense and greater command over language than most of our national politicians and journalists. You don’t have to agree with his unabashedly left-wing politics and his pungent criticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to recognise his passion and commitment to the people of India.
As a member of the All India Students Federation – the oldest extant student organisation in India, and an affiliate of the Communist Party of India, which has fought more general elections than any other party other than the Congress – he obviously could not support the demand for the “azadi”, or independence, of Kashmir. But he has the wisdom and political skill to know how to converse with advocates of that cause, and to seek to channel their demand for azadi into the wider struggles for dignity of the people of India. His azadi is the freedom for which all of India’s people yearn: azadi from hunger, azadi from feudalism, azadi from communalism.
Like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who put aside a narrow constitutionalism in order to talk to the advocates of azadi in the Hurriyat Conference when he was prime minister, Kanhaiya’s politics on campus embraces insaniyat (humanity) and insaf (justice). He is a patriot who knows his India is not so fragile that it will break into pieces because a handful of people on campus shout provocative slogans.
Listen carefully to Kanhaiya in this clip from a speech he made at JNU a day before the police arrested him:
 ABP news

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=SadQ3U9j_X0

What is he doing here? By anchoring the idea of freedom in rights that belong to all Indians equally, he is doing more to secure the future of the country – including its territorial boundaries – than those who treat every political challenge to the state as a military threat. Kanhaiya is challenging the superficial attraction that secessionism might have in Kashmir or elsewhere in a far more effective way than the state – which doesn’t seem capable of thinking beyond the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, sedition and other purely coercive methods.
I don’t know what is driving the Modi government’s insane persecution of this vibrant young man. Some argue that his arrest was, initially, the result of sheer incompetence. This theory is comforting, but the facts that have emerged since then make it harder and harder to believe.
Fabrication to forgery
Plainclothes ‘sleuths’ from the Delhi police were present at the February 9 meeting where Kanhaiya allegedly performed his seditious acts. Despite having been alerted by a complaint from the ABVP, the policemen noticed nothing untoward and took no action.
The next day, someone on campus provided cell phone footage of the slogan-shouting which had taken place to Zee TV, which went to town. The channel’s owner, Subhash Chandra, is very close to the RSS. Zee TV’s lead was quickly followed by Times Now and NewsX. For two days, the TV channels whipped up a frenzy; and on the morning of February 12, Rajnath Singh tweeted, “Whatever has happened in JNU is extremely unfortunate. I have instructed Delhi CP to take strong action against the anti-India elements.”
Later that day, Kanhaiya was arrested and charged with sedition. This is when Rajnath Singh tried to link Kanhaiya to the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and a section of the media, presumably egged on by faceless intelligence officials,  made wild allegations against another young left-wing student, Umar Khalid, claiming that he was working for the Jaish-e-Muhammad.
All this while, the Delhi Police – which had acted under political pressure and done no proper investigation of its own – was frantically trying to obtain footage of the incident from TV channels, hoping to find a video clip on which they could hang their absurd allegations. They found nothing.
The blatant partisanship of Bassi became evident on February 15, when a BJP MLA, OP Sharma, was filmed viciously beating a CPI leader outside the Patiala House court, and a pro-BJP lawyer, Vikram Singh Chauhan, was also found attacking students. Instead of filing charges against them, Bassi claimed that the MLA had been attacked first. Sharma’s astonishing statement that he was even prepared to shoot dead someone accused of being “pro-Pakistan” has been endorsed by Sudhanshu Trivedi, the BJP’s national spokesman on live television. To date, no BJP leader has sought to distance the party from Sharma’s words and deeds, and no prosecution has been brought against Sharma for incitement to violence.
Two days later, despite clear instructions from the Supreme Court, the police allowed thugs to go on the rampage at the Patiala House court. Section 124A of the IPC defines sedition thus: “Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Government established by law in India,” commits sedition. The courts are a vital part of the Indian state and indulging in violence inside a court certainly “brings into … contempt” the government established by law. Yet it is Kanhaiya who faces sedition charges despite the absence of any evidence.
In order to salvage his tattered reputation, Bassi has been claiming that the police now have clinching evidence of Kanhaiya shouting anti-national slogans. Predictably, this ‘evidence’ soon found its way to TV channels like Zee,  NewsX and India News, whose anchors triumphantly rushed to broadcast it:
Times Now’s anchor, Arnab Goswami used the convenient device of asking BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra to show it on air:

Goswami can clearly be heard repeatedly asking Patra (from 22:50′ onwards) to “show the video, show the video.” When Patra shows it, he orders the Times Now camera to zoom in on it. “Show the video close by”, says Goswami. After the forgery is aired, Goswami declares triumphantly, “I can clearly him say, if that is indeed him in the video, I can clearly hear him say ‘leke rahenge aazadi’.” He then turns to a guest, Anand Kumar from JNU, and says, “If this video is correct, what are you going to say now?”.
As ABP News pointed out on Thursday, this clip is an edited version of the original clip we saw at the beginning of this article. Kanhaiya’s call for azadi from bhukhmari, samantvad, sanghvad etc. has been cleverly converted into a call for Kashmir’s azadi – something he never said.
When Kanhaiya is eventually released from jail and the charges against him are dropped – as they surely must – the Supreme Court must set up a Special Investigation Team to root out the criminals who fabricated this “evidence” and put it into circulation. The politicians and policemen responsible for this false and malicious prosecution must be arraigned and brought to justice. No one, not even Bassi, must be spared, if it is found that they played a role in the fabrication or its dissemination. The lawyers and BJP leaders who attacked students and teachers and journalists and others inside and outside the Patiala House court must be prosecuted. The lawyers should be debarred for life.
There is no criminal law that readily applies to the journalists who for the past ten days have engaged in the character-assassination of Kanhaiya Kumar, putting his very life in danger. Some of them have sons and daughters who are Kanhaiya’s age, and yet felt not a twinge of guilt in feeding a young man to rabid dogs. Let our contempt for them be their punishment. They are a disgrace to journalism—and to India.

Note: In an earlier note, The Wire accepted in good faith Arnab Goswami’s claim, made in a telephone call to Siddharth Varadarajan, that the channel had stopped Sambit Patra from showing the clip.

In fact, as the video link we have since then added to the article above makes clear, Goswami repeatedly urges Patra to show the video, instructs his cameraman to zoom in, and then announces that Kanhaiya can “be clearly heard saying azadi’.

Use and Abuse of Sedition Laws : verdict of Mridula Garg, Soli Sorabjee, Fali Nariman and Others

By The Wire Staff on 18/02/2016 •

Eminent personalities such as former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee, senior Supreme Court advocate Fali Nariman, constitutional expert PDT Achary, writer Mridula Garg and others share their views on the law of sedition.

Association For Democratic Rights wants to remind that before Jallianwal Bagh massacre in 1919 , the British Goverment brought the sedition Law then known as Rowallet Act , “ No Dallel No wakil “It is the same sedition act which is misused by BJP government.

Mridula Garg Writer

Mridual Garg.

Any country carrying a law of sedition on its statute books has no right to claim that its citizens possess the right to freedom of expression. Even Britain, who once imposed it on India, has repealed it. A foreign government needs it to prevent the enslaved from forming a democratic republic. But the Indian government has different reasons – not because it’s a colonial legacy but because it suits the temperament of our governance. Successive governments in India in the last six decades have proved that freedom of expression is not something they genuinely believe in. They only barely tolerate it in the name of democracy and the Constitution. Any excuse is seized to curb it.
The imposition of the Emergency banning all freedom of expression was an extreme step, but at least it was an overt one. The law of sedition is more insidious, hence more dangerous. It provides the government with covert means to create Emergency-like situations, that too with no warning. It is a measure of extreme repression.
The JNU Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar is not the first one to be charged with sedition for allegedly raising anti-government slogans or inciting others to do so. Even though the law of sedition is expressly against violent action and not mere sloganeering, no government has respected that. Moreover, each government has acted time and again under the presumption that the government and the nation are synonymous, which they most certainly are not. The nation also consists of people outside of the government, whom the government merely represents for a prescribed period of time.
When the government is disposed towards curtailing the free flow of expression, it is ready to use any excuse to do so. The law of sedition makes it easy to club anti-government utterances with anti-national intentions. Intention is all that can be seen in expressions of dissent, however violently phrased. Verbal violence can be construed as criminal only if it is proven to lead to acts of actual physical violence, not because someone in the government thinks it might do so at some future date. A government that is ready to wreak havoc upon autonomous institutions of higher learning through police action can itself be held guilty of inciting violence. In as much as violation of the autonomy of such institutions is violation of democracy, can it not be fairly said that it is anti-national?
The Indian constitution guarantees us a democracy. If to violate this democracy and hence the constitution is not anti-national, then we need to rethink the meaning of the word ‘nation’.

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Fali Nariman
Constitutional jurist and senior Supreme Court Advocate, writing in The Indian Express

Fali Nariman. Credit: PTI

… “sedition” in India is not unconstitutional, it remains an offence only if the words, spoken or written, are accompanied by disorder and violence and/ or incitement to disorder and violence. Mere hooliganism, disorder and other forms of violence, though punishable under other provisions of the penal code and under other laws, are not punishable under Section 124A of the penal code. Likewise, mere expressions of hate, and even contempt for one’s government, are not sedition. When a person is dubbed “anti-Indian”, it is distasteful to India’s citizenry, but then to be “anti-Indian” is not a criminal offence, and it is definitely not “sedition”. (It only means that you are a freak, and that it is high time to have your head examined!)
Citizens in India are free to criticise their governments at the Centre or in the states — which they do quite frequently, and boldly and fearlessly as well; as they must, because that is what a participatory democracy is all about. It behoves the men and women of the law who advise government to impress upon their client that freedom of speech and expression is a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution — and to remind all governments (present and future) that “sedition” had been deliberately and designedly excluded by the framers of the Constitution from Article 19(2), the exception clause to free speech, only because, as the founding fathers had said, “Sedition is not made an offence in order to minister to the wounded vanity of governments!”

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Soli Sorabjee
Former Attorney General of India, in an interview to The Indian Express

Soli Sorabjee. Credit: PTI

What did [Kanhaiya Kumar] do? Did he merely shout slogans like ‘Pakistan zindabad’? Arresting him for that? I mean that’s deplorable. That is not sedition. Sedition, the Supreme Court has said, are the acts which have a tendency and intention to disturb law and order or incite violence. After all, it is a section which gives you life imprisonment, has very serious consequences. So the Supreme Court has construed it in that fashion and said it very clearly that even if you use words that vigorously criticise the government or comment on the actions of the government, that is not sedition. That is our law, that is how Section 124A was interpreted and upheld as constitutional by a Constitution Bench.

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Lawrence Liang
Advocate and co-founder of Bangalore Alternative Law Forum, writing for The Wire

Lawrence Liang. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

It is abundantly clear that freedom of speech and expression within the Indian legal tradition includes within its ambit any form of criticism, dissent and protest. It cannot be held hostage to narrow ideas of what constitutes “anti national” speech and we hope that the courts will step in not merely to defend free speech but also pass strictures on those who abuse the legal process to create a chilling effect on constitutional rights. This is particularly important in the context of the ongoing case against the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University because if free speech and thought is curtailed within universities, we run the risk of endangering one of the most crucial spaces of political freedom in the country.

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NS Nappinai
Advocate, writing in The Times of India

NS Nappinai.

The genealogy of the colonial hand-me-down [of sedition], as a tool of suppression, is clearly contrary to even remote concepts of democracy and ought to have been discarded with the empire. Substitution of “Her Majesty” with “government established by law” did not take away the oppressive flavour but has in fact lent itself to further abuse. “Government” and “Nation” neither mean the same nor are they interchangeable. A nation is distinct from the persons administering it i.e., the government, vested with powers and duties to ensure cohesive functioning of the nation.

PDT Achary
Constitutional expert and former secretary general of the Lok Sabha, writing in The Hindu

PDT Achary. Credit: PTI

Sedition defined under Section 124A of the IPC is a colonial law meant to suppress the voice of Indian people. That is why the Indian law on sedition was different from the English law. Despite the strict construction adopted by the Supreme Court, the law enforcement agencies have always used it against artists, public men, intellectuals, et al for criticising the governments. In fact the Supreme Court itself did not apply these strict principles to the speech of Kedarnath and his conviction. The government and its agencies have, in reality, followed the law enunciated by the Privy Council and not by the Supreme Court in Kedarnath. The governments in free India continue to use it for the very purpose for which the colonial government used it.
Therefore, since the governments and its agencies have strictly gone by the text of Section 124A though the Supreme Court itself did not apply these principles to the speech of Kedarnath, the law declared in Kedarnath has lost its potency. The Supreme Court, being the protector of the fundamental rights of the citizens may step in now and declare Section 124A unconstitutional. India of the 21st century does not require a law used by the colonial government to suppress India’s voice.

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Mrinal Satish

Associate Professor of Law at National Law University Delhi, writing for IBNLive

Mrinal Satish. Credit: Twitter

Our Sedition law is archaic and draconian. It was introduced by the British to keep leaders like Mahatma Gandhi in jail. Mahatma Gandhi wanted the Independent India to abolish the Sedition law. Unfortunately, we still have it. We are continuing it with even after so many years. Sedition law is a weapon in the hand of the state. It can be misused by the state in many ways. If somebody is charged with sedition, it will take a long time to get the bail and come out. The punishment is also very harsh.
Amnesty International

Article 19(1) of the Constitution of India guarantees to all citizens the right to freedom of speech and expression. Article 19(2) makes public order a ground, among others, for restricting freedom of expression. However India’s Supreme Court has ruled that such restrictions must be authorized by law and must not be excessive or disproportionate. The Court has also ruled that restrictions relying on the ground of public order are valid only when there is a close connection between the speech and public disorder, and there is an imminent threat of lawlessness.

… However the law continues to be used to suppress critics. Successive governments in India have deployed it against journalists, activists and human rights defenders. In 2015, the law was used to arrest a Dalit folk singer in Tamil Nadu for songs criticizing the state government, and a community leader in Gujarat protesting for quotas in education and employment.