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Indian Government Backs Prosecution of Author Arundhati Roy

truthout.org Indian Government Backs Prosecution of Author Arundhati Roy

The space for dissent in India has dramatically shrunk under the BJP and Narendra Modi's authoritarian government.

Indian Government Backs Prosecution of Author Arundhati Roy

The space for dissent in India has dramatically shrunk under the BJP and Narendra Modi’s authoritarian government.

Booker Prize-winning writer Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, has been charged, along with retired law professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain, for allegedly seditious comments supporting the separation of Kashmir from India.

They were speaking at a 2010 Delhi conference, the same year right-wing activist Sushil Pandit filed the complaint on which these latest charges draw.

Nearly 13 years later, on October 10, Delhi’s lieutenant governor V.K. Saxena, with the approval of Narendra Modi’s government, sanctioned the prosecution. Roy and Hussain are accused of making statements promoting social enmity, prejudicing national integration and inciting offences against the state and public tranquillity.

It’s the latest in a series of prosecutions and arrests using India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which was amended in 2019 to allow the government to designate individuals as terrorists, without following any formal judicial process.

Roy and Hussain are not being prosecuted under sedition law, though. (In May 2022, the Indian Supreme Court ordered a hold on prosecuting such cases, while the Indian government reviews the colonial-era sedition law.)

As India hurtles toward the 2024 national election, liberal-left civil society and independent media have become prime targets of the Modi government.

read more: https://truthout.org/articles/indian-government-backs-prosecution-of-author-arundhati-roy/

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  • Meanwhile, actual seditious elements are in the parliament.

    • Permanently Deleted

      • What is BIMARU?

        • BIMARU is an acronym for BIhar, MAdhya pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar pradesh coined by Ashish Bose. These states are a burden on India's development in all indexes.

          • By development did they mean harming the environment and the workers to benefit the oligarchs?

            • No, it's a group of states that do not contribute. It leeches money. It does not produce a lot of food, instead it eats most of the share. It has the highest population and their people are not punished collectively, instead rewarded by leaching the taxes of other states.

              They also have the highest number of parliament candidates, thereby screwing the rest of India. Their education system is also rigged, meaning that while the other states follow honestly, people from these states score marks by dishonest means, and get their jobs as civil servants in other states.

              They also come to the south in drives and make it harder for the natives to get jobs. These very people also impose their language on culture on other states. These states also have the highest amounts of rape, murder, religious and caste-based violence. Everything negative you hear about India comes from these states, especially UP.