With less than a day of prior notice, the city carried a socially and politically active crowd of arguably 500 at its peak, and immersed itself in the trending hashtag #NotInMyName hovered by the media gaze. I stood at a distance and absorbed the eccentricity of passions culminating into chains, songs, and posters as a mark of spontaneous resistance.
 
Mumbai’s young and old gathered from 5-7 pm to distance themselves from incidents of mob lynching and communal hatred disproportionately perpetrated by Hindu extremist factions and against Muslim citizens. As a spontaneous reaction to Junaid’s lynching on a train from Delhi to Ballabhgarh, the Mumbai protest was one among 13 others organized across the country today. The protests, in the limited capacity and time that they could, successfully questioned State complicity, and the condonation of communal hatred and lynching of a religious minority by the ruling government.
 
The crowd refreshingly comprised of many new faces, and their engagement with political and social activity was reflective of a growing consciousness amongst a youth that has often been dismissed as complacent and apathetic. The protest was arguably a display of elite resistance, witnessed by sheer composition of the protesters. But notwithstanding the problematic of representation, the movement was important even to showcase the discard of apathy by the socio-economically privileged section of the society.
 

As everyone put their networking skills to test, I smiled at the rare acknowledgment by some of why they had come; the hashtag that attempts to distance Hindus from countless murders of Muslims in the name of conceited Hinduism and what it ostensibly stands for some is a silent avoidance of savarna Hindu-perpetrated attacks on low-caste Hindus. But the debate of semantics where everyone is complicit in acts of violence, physical or otherwise, cannot and should not hinder resistance against a government that is placing its bets on exactly that.
 
Divisive politics and divisive politicization should not stand in the way of symbols of unity and social harmony. This protest, hopefully the first of many, served the purpose of a symbol, of calling out silence as an act of violence that is as active in mob lynching as the overt act of stabbing Junaid on the passenger train.
 
(The writer is a student with the Jindal Global Law School)

The post Breaking Silence, Pushing Boundaries, a Newcomer to Mumbai, Writes on #Not in My Name Protest appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Since then, it has undergone several changes, in substance and procedure. The second black law enacted during Congress rule was the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act in 1985, which was overtly used by the state to suppress political dissidents. Enacted ostensibly to curb socially disruptive activities, particularly in Punjab, what TADA actually did was get at the opponents of the regime in power. After being subject to widespread criticism for giving sweeping powers to law enforcement agencies, TADA was repealed in 1995. The subsequently enacted draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 post-9/11 was gravely criticized by civil rights groups for sanctioning arbitrary State action at the cost of civil liberties of citizens. The People’s Tribunal on POTA and Other Security Legislations established by eminent human rights activists at the Press Club in New Delhi on July 16, 2004 established that the statute was being used to terrorize civilians and recommended that POTA be repealed. On September 17, 2004, the UPA government approved an ordinance to repeal POTA in accordance with its National Common Minimum Programme that condemned the abuse of POTA under the BJP-led NDA alliance. President Kalam, on the aid and advice of the UPA government,simultaneously promulgated an ordinance to amend the existing UAPA purporting to fill the lacuna created by the repeal of POTA in punishing terrorism-related offences.
 
The 2004 amended version of the UAPA in fact includes certain terrifying provisions of the POTA. For instance, the scheduled listing of terrorist organizations was blindly copied without a willingness to revisit it, and the process of such listing continued to remain devoid of any statutory procedure. Further, section 21 of the repealed statute, which criminalized support given to terrorist organizations, has been included with an intent requirement. The provision has received objections for the vagueness of the term,‘support’, that could enable the State to brand prospectively anyone as a criminal. Further, the amended UAPA incorporated provisions regarding the admissibility of evidence collected through interception of communication without any safeguards.
 
Revamped as India’s principal federal counterterrorism law, the UAPA was swiftly amended after a single day of debate immediately subsequent to the 2008 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Provisions that severely hamper civil liberties and fair trial include the extension of detention periods to 180 days instead of 90, police custody to 30 days instead of 15, reversal of burden of proof for grant of bail, and presumption of guilt for possession of arms with a belief that such substances were used in the commission of a terror act. Ambiguous language pervades the text of the statute, and in turning a blind eye to State torture and arbitrary detentions, the law effectively condones it. Under section 3(2) of the UAPA, the State has the right to withhold evidence from the incriminated organization on grounds of public welfare, and the ambit of a ‘terrorist act’ has been expanded inexplicably to include ‘disruption of supplies or services essential to the community’. As a blatant attack on constitutional guarantees and fundamental freedoms, the UAPA is effectively a political tool to curb dissent and couch any act of subversion in the language of outrage-demanding terrorism.
 
Be it G.N. Saibaba, who was arrested under the UAPA for his political beliefs or Jyoti Babasaheb Chorge, who was taken into custody for being 'in possession of Maoist literature'; the UAPA licenses law enforcement agencies to arrest, search and seize without a warrant, and effectively harass minority communities disproportionately. The Hubli Conspiracy Case of 2011 is just one of many instances where State agents have conveniently confused copies of the Quran to be Jihadi material to arrest 18 Muslims under the UAPA.
 
The 2008 Bill was vehemently opposed by CPI, CPIM, JD, AIDMK, BJD and MIM , albeit in vain, for disproportionately affecting Muslims, Dalits, and tribals, who were all branded as Maoists. According to the Prison Statistics of India 2014 released by the National Crime Records Bureau, Muslims comprised of 47.8% of the inmate population, but barely 16.4% of convicts. With a meagre country-wide population of 14.2%, Muslims as of 2015 constituted 20.9% of undertrial prisoners and 15.8% of total convicts. Kerala jails house 92% Muslims while the remaining 8% are dismissed as Naxalites. An analysis of the caste-wise composition of prison populations in 2015 shows that 75.2% of detenues belonged to OBC, SC and ST categories. State-sanctioned sweeping powers are effectively supplemented with imagined conceptions of disaffection against what India ostensibly means to some.
 
Despite Justice Thipse’s warning that a person cannot be made a criminal by the beliefs that they hold, thoughts and ideologies are constantly being persecuted and prosecuted today. The personal is always political. Director Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court explicates the quiet violence of a legal system that conflates subversion with sedition and uses the UAPA as a convenient tool to attack art and the artist. Apparently, we can live the life of inequality and oppression, but we ought not speak about it. Interestingly, the exercise of civil liberties to hold discussions on socio-economic struggle are curtailed under the garb of promoting a radical left movement, which is already targeted for its extremist views and ostensible methods of violence; the extremist right however marches on seemingly scot-free.
 
The need of the hour is a definition of terrorism that does not allow for sweeping discretion at the behest of police officials marred by their own political pressures and ideological biases. The need of the hour is a revamped anti-terrorism legislation with adequate protections accorded to those indiscriminately charged under it; one that does not allow for dissenting and activist art to be aggravated to the status of an unlawful activity at the cost of our fundamental right to free speech, expression and association.
 
Till then, the intricacies of how the UAPA continues to operate today should not create a chilling effect of blinded conformity to the ruling government’s specific vision of India, disaffection against which is deemed unlawful. Till then, human rights, civil liberties and dissent should be inculcated into our political and social cultures, public spaces and sites of struggle, as resiliently as that highlighted by Deepak Dengle, a member of the Kabir Kala Manch recently granted bail, in the following poem:

(The author is a student of Jindal Global Law School)
 
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The post When the Law Curbs Democratic Freedoms: India’s Anti-Terror Law, the UAPA appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
The following is an extract from Modi’s speech addressed to the United Nations General Assembly in 2014 to advocate for the adoption of an International Yoga Day:
 
“[Yoga] is an invaluable gift of our ancient tradition…It is not about exercise, but to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and the nature…By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help us deal with climate change.”
 
What exactly is going on here? The ancient tradition that is repeatedly used to root the practice of yoga is one purposively cleansed of the influence of ‘foreign [read Muslim] invaders’. The ancient tradition that is referred to unhesitatingly is a reference to the culmination of religious traditions that have now been embraced by the giant conglomerate of Hinduism. The Indian derivative of yoga is a recent phenomenon to manipulatively juxtapose an integral element of the demographically dominant religion with national identity.
 
The Yoga Sutra composed by Patanjali in circa 150 BCE states:
 
“The Lord of Yoga is a distinct form of spirit unaffected by the forces of corruption, by actions, by the fruits of action, or by the subliminal intentions. In the Lord of Yoga is the incomparable seed of omniscience…”
 
The word, ‘Yoga’ has Sanskrit roots and means ‘union’ according to one source; the Maitri Upanishad explains this union as one of breath, mind, and consciousness. Another source attributes the origins of the Sanskrit term to ‘yoke’, which first appeared in the Rig Veda to describe a chariot yoked to horses, in which a felled war hero might ascend to the sun. Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina writings have referenced the term, ‘Yoga’ since 3^rd century BCE to mean eight steps of spiritual meditation. However, both Buddhism and Jainism have already been problematically brought within the legal fold of Hinduism under codified Hindu law. The Supreme Court too has indicated concern regarding the tussle between the secular pillars of Indian democracy and yoga, which has been acknowledged to possess a religious component, in determining the validity of State-sanctioned yoga classes in schools. The ‘Take Back Yoga’ campaign spearheaded by the Hindu American Foundation has expressly linked yoga with Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra. With Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, carving out the Bhagawad Gita as the best reflector of Indian (and not Hindu) culture, the ruling government is systematically conflating Hinduism with India, and relegating ‘othered’ religious minorities to the unfortunate destiny of second-class citizenry. True, the spread of yoga to different parts of the world has led to an inevitable diminution of the role of religion and a greater emphasis on health and spirituality sans religion. However, should that take away from the subtlety of Hindu fundamentalists revamping a religious ideal as they indulge in unapologetic assimilatory politics?
 
“Many countries which do not know our language, tradition, or culture, are now connecting to India through Yoga. The practice, which connects body, mind and soul, has played a big role in binding the world too.”
-Prime Minister Narendra Modi (1^st International Yoga Day, 2015)
 
Modi deliberately affiliates and identifies India with a singular language, tradition and culture. The erasure of diversity, both within Hinduism and across religions and languages and cultures, ought to be weaved into the larger assimilatory narrative of a spiritual, saffronised India.
 
Hindu fundamentalists have followed through by typically demanding those who think surya namaskaar should be excluded from yoga, for being offensive to their religious sentimentalities in worshipping the sun, to leave Hindustan.
 
“The physical engagement, mental discipline and sublimation of desire enshrined in yoga meld seamlessly, yet discreetly, with the more militaristic tenets of organizations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”
 -N.Y. Times (Jun. 19, 2015)
 
The repackaging of the gift of yoga then seems suspect, for it legitimates Hindu majoritarianism in the name of precarious references to the (necessarily homogenous) cultural and national identity of India. Savarkar’s Hindutva dedicates itself to a nation building project that evokes commitment to one India. The past three years have been fraught with instances where the ruling government has consistently privileged Hindu symbols and members of Hindu fundamentalist organizations in the hope of building a Hindu Rashtra. Office bearers today play an active role in subtly maneuvering around the hurdle of secularism, and the symbol of the cow, Om, the Gita, Sanskrit, and yoga suffice to establish a trend of intertwining religion and politics in the name of the nation.
 
The Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) was formed in 2014 and Shripad Yasso Naik, a former member of the Hindu nationalist Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, was handed over the said portfolio. The Ministry is an official statutory body committed to recycling primarily Hindu practices and coercively selling it to a religiously diverse State as integral to the idea of India. Modi has effectively recast yoga in a new mold of secularism, strikingly similar to the Hindutva project of projecting the call for a Hindu nation as comfortably committed to secular values. 
 
One would think that the judiciary would live up to its promise of protecting the People and the Constitution that they gave to themselves. The Supreme Court has, hopefully inadvertently, sided with the narrative of the Hindu-right in declaring Om to be a mere symbol of “spiritual or mystical efficacy” (as opposed to bearing religious connotations), and Hinduism as well as Hindutva to mean a way of life of the Indian people. This has effectively extricated the religious symbolism of terms and their usages from their socio-political and intellectual histories. Identities are being crumbled, remolded and crystallized by the Politic and the Law. There is an imminent call for assimilation and with the absence of a politically viable alternative, the call is here to stay. 

(The author is a student of Jindal Global Law School)
 

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