Why Arundhati is not wrong on Kashmir?

James A. Baldwin wrote not too long ago that-‘I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.’ While quoting his thoughts he made plain that perhaps the test of patriotism comes with willingness to confront the nation’s failures and censure the same. This argument also forms the dividing line between ultra –nationalism and patriotism- a notion, slowly dying into oblivion for the larger Indian society.

Not surprisingly then, Arundhati Roy has come under severe attack for what she said at a seminar titled ‘Whither Kashmir? Freedom or Enslavement’ organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society in Srinagar. Following her call for azadi for Kashmir, there was news doing the rounds that she will be booked under sedition by the Government of India who sought legal opinion in this regard.

Criticisms poured in from all sides with pseudo-patriotic fervor. Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily said that Roy’s statements were not in good taste. Union minister Farooq Abdullah said there was “too much of freedom” in India that was being used by some to destroy the country. The Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party continues to take a strident position, insisting that a case of sedition be lodged against her, even as the Centre played safe (by not arresting her for sedition), side stepping the potential minefield with the US President Barack Obama on visit to India.

Under attack over her statements on Kashmir, writer Arundhati Roy said she only spoke what “millions of people” in Kashmir have been saying everyday for years. “Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free,” she said from Srinagar. “Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world,” she added. “In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one,” Roy said.

Meanwhile, an organisation of Kashmiri Pandits – Roots in Kashmir – filed a complaint against Roy and Syed Ali Shah Geelani at Tilak Nagar Police Station, New Delhi for instigating communal passions. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) women’s wing activists on Sunday, Oct 31  marched to author-activist Arundhati Roy’s Delhi residence, protesting her remarks over Kashmir and shouting slogans “Take back your statement, else leave India”.

The growing middle-class furor over Arundhati Roy’s statement only highlights the narrow notion of patriotism that we Indians have come to embrace. What she espoused was a cause for democratic India and a more humane society. For more than sixty years nobody from the mainstream questioned the nature of Indian sovereignty over Kashmir. And when today someone has found the audacity to think otherwise, there is a furor and attempt to label such acts as anti –national and divisive. Have we become so numb to the suffering of people around us? Can’t we see the callousness of military occupation in Kashmir? The extra judicial killings, unaccounted disappearances, restrictive curfews, arbitrary arrests, rapes- all make for a terrible recipe for alienation of the Kashmiris. Is it justified to torture Kashmiris so that they call themselves Indian? What Arundhati Roy questioned was sacredness of territorial integrity over humanity. And the response with which she was met clearly indicated a non-self-critical ,ultra-national, intolerant  society guilty of supporting military atrocities in the name of Indian unity.

Incidentally, more than one lawyer has cited Kedar Nath vs State of Punjab to point out that a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court clarified in 1962 that nothing would be considered sedition unless there was a call for armed revolt or for use of violence, pointing out that it is a clear case of freedom of speech. Wikipedia defines sedition as: “Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power”. Arundhati Roy is not the originator or instigator of the acts of sedition. What she has done is to take note of the disaffection against the Indian state in J & K, draw the attention of the rest of India to the disaffection, analyse the causes for the disaffection such as alleged human rights violations and express her understanding and sympathy for those in J&K who have taken to arms against the Indian state. [Vir Sanghvi, 2010]

Extending moral support to a movement is very different from actively participating in that movement. In a similar incident, during the Vietnam War, the Hollywood actress Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam and expressed her support for the struggle of the Vietnamese people condemning the US role. There was widespread public outrage accompanied by demands for her arrest under ‘sedition’. But the governments were content to let the actress be, upholding freedom of speech.

The test of a democracy is in the freedom of criticism that it guarantees. Aptly put by Potter Stewart- “Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself.  It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”  Thus the public backlash to what Ms Roy had to say in not only uncalled for but also reflects poorly on a country that prides itself to be the world’s largest democracy.

Voltaire has rightfully opined, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Also published at: http://isikkim.com/why-arundhati-is-not-wrong-on-kashmir/