Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Arrest of around 200 members of ABVP, the student wing of RSS in New Delhi on Friday in connection with JNU incidence suggests that the right-wingers might have a role in precipitating or manufacturing a situation for plutocratic media to mislead the masses while paving way for denigration of the left.
Sedition is a concept contrived by arbitrary rulers, as British were then in India, to prosecute the subjugated masses and to choke their voice against exploitation/oppression.
But because, since independence, India has remained under the pernicious grip of the rich class that has transferred our painstakingly created democracy to plutocracy, this nasty instrument of inhuman torture on our freedom fighters, has not yet been repealed in Independent India. It suits to the anti-people fellows that have hijacked our independence and continue in power despite change of governments in general elections. Whosoever bags majority of berths to constitute the government in India plays the same role – the role of the pet dogs the rich people pamper.
So, we see that sedition charges are always hurled at progressive people who oppose the proponents and practitioners of inequality. Persons with a world outlook of humanitarianism are also booked for sedition in India.
It is well known that massive majority of JNU students’ leadership opposes the oppressors wherever they surface.
Arrest of their president under sedition charges is, therefore, not a surprise, as the central administration run by BJP controls the Delhi Police.
DCP (South) Mr. PS Kushwaha is on records to have admitted that the police are “in the process of scanning the footage to find out what kind of slogans were raised and identify those who raised them. If there is anything anti-national, we will act according to the law”. This means, the reality is not located as yet.
Before the reality is determined, it is wrong to attribute anti-nation slogans to JNU students and to book their president under sedition charges.
We have ample discussions in these pages of ORISSA MATTERS on how sedition charges are leveled on truth-reporting journalists and pro-people public figures.
To us, revolt against a capitalist State is no revolt against the State “We the people of India” have resolved to have.
We are inclined to look at Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest for sedition in this light. Criticizing a capitalist administration is not a revolt against the State, we would like to maintain. Any administration, which is not addressed to socialism in India, is anti-people and opposing or criticizing an anti-people administration is no sedition. Preamble being the soul of Indian Constitution, no slogan against capitalist administration is sedition. Opposing plutocratic terrorism is no sedition.
On the other hand, if there was any slogan in praise of Pakistan, without any prejudice to the yet-to-be-determined reality, it can be said that the same is also not sedition, taking into consideration the legal definition of sedition.
If to any Indian, a country like Pakistan looks better than India under plutocratic terrorism, instead of hurling sedition charges at such observers, the rulers should address themselves to introspection and work wholeheartedly to salvage India from the labyrinth of capitalism that has made India worse than Pakistan and build it up as a socialist country.
We should learn from how people react to wrongs and better our way of running the country, instead of prosecuting revolting voices under charges of sedition.
Afzal Guru was a part of world plutocratic terrorism. So, it is not normal to accept that any left-winger might have raised any slogan in his honor. Therefore, JNU throws a challenge. Whether or not any agent-provocateur from the camp of anti-left was engaged to stage the drama with the rich media ready to vilify the left should be investigated into by a fact-finding judicial body.
The sooner, the better.