Framed as a measure to bolster public security, the bill instead severely curtails civil liberties, granting the state unchecked authority for surveillance, to detain, and criminalise dissent. CJP has flagged several provisions that could be weaponised to suppress free speech, peaceful assembly, and activism. Calling for its immediate withdrawal, the organisation warns that the bill mirrors the draconian framework of past laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the National Security Act (NSA), both of which have been routinely misused to stifle opposition and target marginalised communities.

Key objections raised by CJP

1. Section (2) (f) (i) to (vii): Overbroad definitions of “an unlawful activity”

CJP has flagged Section (2) (f) (i), which defines “an unlawful activity” in vague and sweeping terms. The broad language allows the government to label almost any activity as a security threat, including peaceful protests, strikes, or political dissent. Such an expansive definition could be used to arbitrarily justify restrictions on fundamental freedoms.

2. Section 5(1)(2): Politicisation of the Advisory Board

The bill provides for the setting up of an Advisory Board under Section 5(1)(2) to adjudicate on actions taken by the state government, police, and administration. However, CJP has raised concerns over the qualifications of its members. Unlike previous laws governing public security and counter-terrorism, which mandated sitting or retired High Court judges, this bill allows for the appointment of individuals who “are, have been, or are qualified to be appointed as Judges of the High Court.”

This wording dilutes the judicial independence of the Advisory Board by allowing for the inclusion of retired judges, non-appointed officials, or lawyers with no prior judicial experience. This opens the door for politically aligned or executive-friendly individuals to occupy key decision-making positions, making the Board prone to bias and manipulation in favour of the state.

3. Section 9: Arbitrary eviction and property seizure

One of the most alarming provisions flagged by CJP is Section 9, which gives the District Magistrate (DM) or the Police Commissioner unchecked authority to take possession of, or seize, any notified area and evict persons from the premises. The bill provides only minimal protection for women and children, stating that they must be given a “reasonable time” to vacate—a vague and insufficient safeguard.

Such an arbitrary provision could be used to forcibly evict communities under the guise of maintaining public security, particularly targeting politically inconvenient groups, protest sites, or informal settlements.

4. Section 10(1): Extension of seizure powers to moveable property

Further compounding the concerns around Section 9, Section 10(1) grants the administration unchecked authority to seize moveable property, money, and other assets found within a seized premise. This means that not only can entire homes or offices be taken over, but all belongings inside can also be confiscated without clear legal safeguards.

CJP warns that such provisions can be used to financially ruin individuals or organisations that the government views as adversaries. Activists, journalists, and opposition members could be disproportionately affected by these extreme measures.

5. Section 12: Denial of legal redress at district level

Shockingly, Section 12 of the draft MSPP Bill, 2024 prevents individuals arrested under this law from seeking legal recourse at the district level. Instead, only the High Court and Supreme Court are designated as proper forums for filing petitions to challenge any actions under the law.

CJP has strongly criticised this provision, arguing that it directly violates India’s four-tier system of judicial redressal and creates unnecessary barriers to justice, particularly for economically disadvantaged individuals who may not have the resources to approach higher courts. The rationale for this provision remains unclear, raising concerns that it is intended to stifle legal challenges against the law.

6. Sections 14 and 15: Blanket immunity for police and bureaucrats

Under Sections 14 and 15, police officers and district magistrates are granted complete immunity from prosecution, even in cases where courts pass strictures against their misuse of the law. These sections explicitly state that no action can be initiated against such officials, even if they engage in blatant misuse or wrongful prosecution under the MSPS Bill.

CJP warns that these provisions effectively shield law enforcement from accountability, encouraging impunity and opening the door to widespread abuse of power. This provision closely resembles the impunity granted to security forces under draconian laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), which has led to grave human rights violations.

Violation of Constitutional Rights

CJP has strongly asserted that the MSPS Bill violates fundamental rights guaranteed under the Indian Constitution, including:

• Article 19 (Freedom of Speech, Assembly, and Association) – By allowing the government to criminalise protests, public gatherings, and activism, the bill directly undermines democratic freedoms.
• Article 21 (Right to Life and Personal Liberty) – Sections on preventive detention and surveillance threaten personal liberty and privacy.
• Article 14 (Right to Equality) – The arbitrary powers granted by the bill could lead to selective enforcement, disproportionately targeting marginalised communities, activists, and opposition groups.

CJP’s call for immediate withdrawal of the bill

The Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024, as highlighted by CJP, represents a major threat to democracy and civil liberties. By granting the state unchecked powers to surveil, detain, and prosecute individuals without due process, the bill paves the way for state repression under the guise of public security. CJP’s objections serve as a crucial intervention in the fight to preserve constitutional freedoms, urging the government to scrap the bill and uphold democratic values.

The detailed objections may be read here.

Related:       

Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill tabled in assembly, using the myth of “urban naxals” to supress dissent?

New Criminal Laws: Future risks for democracy and rights in India

Modi’s government bypasses SC & Law Commission, no nuanced, strong penal sections on Hate Speech: BNS, 2023

The post CJP submits objections to Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024 over serious threats to civil liberties appeared first on SabrangIndia.

2023, the year saw a total of 47 bills being introduced, out of which 30 bills were passed by both the houses of Parliament. Since the Narendra Modi led government enjoys what has been termed as a “brute” majority in both the houses, most of the bills were passed without following due process, allowing for public participation or referring them for opposition views (and amendments) to select committees of Parliament. In essence, this means they were passed summarily without inculcating any of the changes. Many of these bills that have been thus inappropriately seen a passage through the union legislature have also promptly received assent of the President of India. They will therefore soon take the shape of laws.

So, last minute tabling of the law (curtailing public and media discussion), hasty passage without either critical discussions in the Houses of Parliament and thereafter the brazen bypassing of established parliamentary procedure became the established norm of this union government, a practice it has perfected since it first came to power in 2014. Parliament, meant to witness elected lawmakers –of all ideological hues– engage in debate over issues concerning the country, saw a dismal record of large numbers of opposition leaders being suspended from both Houses.

During the budget session, the opposition political parties had staged a protest against the disqualification of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and demanded a JPC probe into Adani stocks. The Monsoon session saw the opposition parties’ outrage over the ethnic violence taking place in the state of Manipur. Throughout the monsoon session, the opposition parties demanded that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at least make a statement on the targeted festering violence in Manipur since the May 3, 2023. Matters came to a head when a shocking video (first recorded in mid-May) of a ghastly gang rape and stripping of women became public on July 19. A total of 5 Members of Parliament (MP) were suspended from this session for various reasons.

The latest Winter Session marked a new low in India’s parliamentary democracy as a total of 146 MPs from the Opposition bloc were summarily suspended — 46 of the Rajya Sabha, and 100 of the Lok Sabha, as they clamoured for a statement by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on a breach of security that involved protesters gaining entry into the chamber of the Lok Sabha on December 13. Notably, 246 questions raised by them were deleted from the records. As opposition social media handles stated, the voices of 240 million Indians (who voted for these members) had been undemocratically silenced.

These protests and suspensions resulted in key bills being passed hurriedly, with little to no discussion. In many cases, the opposition even complained about the drafts of the bills being passed were not even available for scrutiny beforehand, underlying the riding rough shod over democracy by the majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) union government.

As we do each year, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) takes a look back at the bills that were passed by the union government in 2023. The analysis is approached through the prism of basic human rights, fundamental rights and the Indian Constitution.

• Curtailing civil liberties, transforming India to a police state

Three bills were introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2023 that sought to repeal and replace the Indian Penal Code, 1860, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. In the Winter session of the Parliament, three bills, namely the Bharatiya Nyaya (Second) Sanhita, 2023 (“BNS”), Bharatiya Sakshya (Second) Bill, 2023 (“BSB”), and Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha (Second) Sanhita, 2023 (“BNSS”) which were passed in the Lok Sabha on December 12, 2023, and the Rajya Sabha on December 20, 2023. On December 25, the three bills had received the assent of President Draupadi Murmu. These bills had been brought in with the stated objective of “reforming and de-colonising Indian criminal law”, having been presented as an exercise to indigenise the legal landscape of the country from one that was created during colonial rule. The details are as follows:

The Bhartiya Nyaya (Second) Sanhita Act, 2023- While the said act has majorly re-packaged the provisions available in the erstwhile Indian Penal Code, 1860, some significant changes have been brought in through the second version of the BNS bill.

The BNS Act contains several offences that overlap with special laws, which in many cases carry different penalties or provide for different procedures.  This may lead to multiple regulatory regimes, additional costs of compliance and possibility of levelling multiple charges.

Furthermore, the said Act has also retained the offence of sedition (Section 150) with a new nomenclature and a more expansive definition of what will constitute “Acts endangering sovereignty unity and integrity of India”. Former union minister, present Rajya Sabha member and senior counsel, Kapil Sibal has analysed these new criminal laws, stating that they may allow for the use of “draconian police powers for political ends”. Under newly inserted provisions, he has pointed out, “action against Supreme Court and high court judges, magistrates, public servants, CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General), and other government officials”, could be initiated by the ruling government to exert pressure.

Another important change in the second version of the BNS Act is that is has totally excluded Section 377 of the IPC, which dealt with rape of men and bestiality as offences. Since the said new act does not making the offence of rape as gender neutral, there are now no safeguards against rape available for any other gender. It is critical to highlight that the said new Act had retained the marital rape exception, providing blanket immunity to husbands accused of raping their wives.

It is critical to highlight here that even at the time of writing this piece, protests are being held across the length and breadth of India over some of the provisions introduced by this Act. Through this Act, which was supposedly citizen-centric, stricter penalties and enhanced fines have been brought in without any discussions with experts.

One such example is of the offence ‘causing death by rash and negligent driving of a vehicle, not amounting to culpable homicide’, which has an aggravated punishment of ten years if the driver fails to report it to a police officer or a Magistrate soon after the incident. Against this particular new hit and run law, truck drivers have held countrywide protests, even state bandhs, compelling the union government to concede to their demand that the said new provision will only be implemented after consultation. While the Act (penal provisions) still anchor out-dated and feudal philosophy of harsh punishment, it has also introduced a new community service punishment without any public participation or discussion.

The Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha (Second) Sanhita Act, 2023- BNSS Act seeks to replace the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973. Passed by the Parliament in the month of December 2023, the act has expanded the possible duration of police custody beyond the initial 15 days to up to 90 days of the arrest, heightening the risk of police excess and custodial torture.

Notably, this extended detention period applies to severe offences punishable with death penalty, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for at least 10 years while for “any other offence” with lesser imprisonment terms, custody extension beyond 15 days up to 60 days is permitted.

In addition to this, the new BNSS also suffers from a glaring gap is the absence of stringent and comprehensive data privacy regulations in this era of technology.

The Bhartiya Sakshya (Second) Act, 2023- The Sakshya Act retains the structure of the Evidence Act with most provisions unchanged.

More importantly, the scheme of legal relevance and conceptual definitions of the categories like “fact” and “evidence” have been left unaltered but for incorporating electronic evidence. The few changes that have been introduced through this Act is regarding streamlining the rules on electronic evidence, and expanding the scope of secondary evidence. Furthermore, the Act had added a new schedule to the legislation which prescribes a detailed disclosure format of the certificate earlier governed by a mere affidavit and self-declaration as to the genuineness of the contents of electronic records. Since this is merely a repackaged version of the “colonial legislations”, the question that it raises is whether these changes could have been brought to the former IEA through basic amendments.

• Right to privacy and digital rights

A total of three bills were introduced in the Parliament in 2023, namely the Telecommunications Act 2023, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (DPDP Act) and the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill 2023, which will have an impact on the digital sector in India. These bills and legislations directly impinge on the digital rights of an individual as well as the constitutionally protected right of privacy. These three, out of which two have already become an Act, will give the union government vast power to regulate (read: restrict) the content online, imperil encrypted communication, employ the tool of internet shutdown and intercept communications with minimal accountability.

All these bills and legislations have been greeted with serious criticism by experts and stakeholders for containing vague provisions and attempts to cause irreparable damage to user rights and democratic freedoms.

Since the Broadcasting bill, which seeks to regulate OTT platforms, is yet to be passed by the Parliament and is available for public consultation (until January 2024), we will not be referring to that in this piece.

Another blow to the digital rights and right to privacy was through the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2023 which gave sweeping powers (and control) of birth, death registration data to the union government. This highlights the need to examine the serious implications of the said amendment as it acts as a precursor to the right to vote and is being brought in before the 2024 general elections.

The Telecommunications Act 2023: The Telecom bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on December 20 and the Rajya Sabha on December 21. It is critical to highlight here that the said bill had been passed by the two houses in the absence of the opposition members, as they had been suspended, and without any critical debate. This Bill was given the assent by the President on December 25 that is within four days despite this glaring lapse in parliamentary procedure.

The said act, which seeks to govern our telecommunication services, empowers the government to pause, suspend, intercept and detain transmissions and messages “during public emergencies to prevent incitement for committing offenses.” This particular measure provides officials with significant authority to monitor and manage messages across the entire telecom network on the broad grounds of public safety. In furtherance to this, the act has not legal established the power of the union government to impose internet blackouts without any statutory safeguards.

Additionally, this act has created uncertainty regarding its applicability to online communication services like WhatsApp, Zoom, Signal, Skype, etc. Ironically, even as the act was brought in under the guise of reforming the colonial legislation of its predecessor Telegraph Act of 1885, the Telecom Act 2023 hangs on to a majority of the colonial provisions while also expanding the surveillance power of the union government. One can surely say that with this act, the union government missed a huge opportunity to reform the telecommunication sector and create a rights-centric law that protects user rights instead of infringing on it and tightening the noose around an individual.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023: The DPDP Bill was passed by the Parliament in early August and soon got the assent of the President, becoming a law governing this country by August 11, 2023.

The drafting of this bill was shrouded in secrecy and drew the ire from activists and experts. To put it mildly, the said act provides governments unlimited powers to use citizens’ data, contains vague provisions and repeatedly uses the phrase “as may be prescribed” and transgresses against the Right to Information Act, resulting in having the potential to redefine the contours of data governance in the contemporary digital landscape. Through this legislation, the government has broad powers to exempt itself, demand information from companies, and retain data for an unlimited period of time, raising the risks of mass surveillance. In furtherance to this, under Section 37 of the Act, the government can block access to websites or content on advice from the Data Protection Board in case of repeated offences by the entity or in the “interests of the general public.” Thus, instead of having provisions that safeguards an individual’s right to privacy, the said act has legitimised discretion of various administrative agencies to indulge in rampant abuse or the exercise of excessive power.

The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2023: The said bill seeks to make changes to The Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 and allows the union government to build a central level data base of all deaths and births. The said bill was passed by the Lok Sabha without any debate or referral to the Parliamentary Select Committee and was then passed by the Rajya Sabha in the month of August. Through the amendments made by this bill, the state Registrars have been mandated to share their database with the Registrar General of India. In furtherance to this, upon approval of the central government, this database can be made available to authorities dealing with preparation or maintenance of databases relating to the population register.

As can be deduced from the provisions highlighted above, direct impact of these amendments will be on an individual’s right to data privacy as sharing of databases with any national authority just with the consent of central government or state government in cases of central and state databases respectively takes away any control the person has on their birth data.

• Environmental Rights and Forest Rights

The year 2023 saw the seamless passing of Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021, the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 and The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023. These bills, passed under the guise of “benefitting the environment and helping the country achieve its climate goals”, have weakened the safeguards that were existing against the exploitation of our precious forest resources to the exploitation by private companies.

The changes made also undermined the judicial decisions of the Supreme Court which furthered the principles and ethics of Indian environmental laws, depicting a ‘dereliction of duty’ on behalf of the State who is required to protect and conserve the environment. All the three bills had been passed as the opposition was protesting the Manipur violence, and this no debate had taken place. All the three bills got assent of the President of India in August itself, again within days of their being tabled and passed.

The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021: Through the said act, several controversial changes have been made to the Biological Diversity Act (BDA) 2002. The said amendments have watered down the provisions of fair and equitable sharing of the benefits of the parent Act under the guise of promoting “ease of doing business”. These changes have facilitated the commercial use of traditional resources to promote AYUSH industries, and fast-tracked the patent application process. In addition to this, the amendments have also decriminalised biodiversity offences and replaced them with penalties.

The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023: In the face of the criticisms and protests, the Parliament had passed the said contentious bill in both the houses of the Parliament. The said bill amended the parent Forest Conservation Act of 1980 and exempted land within 100km of border that is needed for national security projects, small roadside amenities, and public roads leading to a habitation from the purview of the forest conservation laws.

While passing the bill, concerns raised by forest dwellers, Adivasis, ecologists, biologists, and naturalists regarding the terrible effects of environmental degradation and climate change were totally ignored by the union government. Another change that was brought in by the bill was that no prior clearance was going to be needed for the construction of any strategic linear project of national importance.

The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023: The Bill empowered the union government to exclusively auction mining lease and composite exploration licence for certain critical high value minerals such as gold, silver, platinum, copper. The Bill also dispensed with the cumbersome forest clearances required for mine reconnaissance and prospecting operations, rendering it easier for the private firms to participate in exploration of the country’s mineral resources. It is critical to point out that the said bill allows pitting, trenching, drilling, and sub-surface excavation as part of reconnaissance, which had been prohibited under the parent Act, namely the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957.

• Rights of media and censorship

A noticeable decline in media freedom has been observed in India in the year 2023, along with the country’s denigrating democratic credentials. Through two new legislations, details of which have been provided below, a threat to further increasing government surveillance looms over the media, which will undermine freedom of information and impact press freedom. With a dramatic rise in digital surveillance measures and increasing arrests of media workers on spurious terrorism charges, as became the norm in the year of 2023, the fear of underhanded state retaliation for investigative or critical journalism will promote censorship.

The Press and Registration of Periodicals Bill, 2023: The said bill sought to repeal the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867 and provide provisions for press, registration of periodicals and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. This bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on August 3, while the opposition was protesting and demanding discussion on Manipur ethnic violence, and by the Lok Sabha on December 21, as the majority of the opposition party members remained suspended.

While the new bill was brought under the spirit of upholding media freedom and ease of doing business, it carried forward the draconian provisions of the previous act as well as widened the powers of the State to have more intrusive and arbitrary checks into the functioning of newspapers and magazines. In the definitions section of the Bill, the term “specified authority” empowered government agencies beyond the Press Registrar to conduct the functions of the registrar, which could even include police and other law enforcement agencies. In addition to this, this bill contained such clauses that allowed the Registrar to deny the right to bring out a periodical, and to cancel the certificate of registration of a periodical, to persons convicted of “terrorist act or unlawful activity”, or “for having done anything against the security of the State”.

The Cinematograph Amendment Bill 2023: The said bill sought to make significant changes to The Cinematograph Act, 1952, tackle the issue of piracy by making it an offence that may be punishable with a fine or imprisonment and empower the central government to order recertification of an already certified film following receipt of complaints.

This Bill was passed by both the houses in July even as questions were being raised against the proposed certification process resulting in excessive censorship, potentially hindering artistic freedom and creative expression. Filmmakers had voiced their opposition to the said amendments by stating the proposed amendments will make them powerless at the hands of the state and more vulnerable to threats, vandalism and intimidation of mob censors. In addition to this, the Bill’s provisions regarding content regulation also sparked debates about potential infringement of the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression.

• Right to health:

A total of 42 legislations were amended by the Jan Vishwas Amendments passed by the Parliament. These amendments, with the intention of decriminalising offences under them, have the potential of being hijacked by powerful lobbies for their own interests as manufacturers can now escape imprisonment by paying a paltry fine for sub-standard drugs. It is crucial to highlight here that before the bill was introduced in Parliament, neither a draft bill nor the accompanying policy document was published for consultation.

An example of this is how offences of a serious nature have been diluted by this amendment.  Section 27(d) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, earlier punished several offences with imprisonment for a minimum of one year and maximum of two years and/or a fine of Rs. 20,000.  The range of offences included the manufacture of “Not of Standard Quality” (NSQ) drugs in India as well as criminalised breach of licence conditions by proprietors of pharmacies. While both of these offences are of a serious nature, in the new Jan Vishwas Act, they have been converted into compoundable offences. The new amendment provides that on paying a  fine of Rs. 20,000, first-time offenders can avoid the minimum prison term prescribed in the provision.

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2023: The said bill, passed by the Lok Sabha on June 27 and the Rajya Sabha on August 2, amid Opposition protests over Manipur violence had sparked a debate among health policy experts and activists due to its “lenient approach” to the crime of manufacturing “not of standard quality” (NSQ) drugs, having an adverse impact on public health.

The said bill had garnered criticism as experts and activists had pointed out to the unfair leniency that this bill was showing to “minor offences” and that less attention had been paid to the adverse impact that the legislation would have on the issue of regulation of pharmacies in India’s drug supply.

• Undermining verdicts of the Supreme Court:

This year saw the Parliament undermining and disregarding the verdicts of the Supreme Court that did not sit well with them by pushing through legislations. These bills, which had severe impact on the smooth and independent working of our Constitution, were then passed by the majority ruling government in the face of criticisms and protests. In one case, the bill brought in and passed by the union government raised questions on the independence and autonomy of the Election Commission of India ahead of general elections. On the other hand, the other legislation, namely the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023, undermined the federal structure established by the Indian Constitution.

The Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, 2023: On December 29, the president gave her assent to the CEC bill which seeks to regulate the appointment, conditions of service and term of office of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners, the procedure for transaction of business by the Election Commission and for matters connected therewith. The said bill, which will replace the Election Commission (Conditions of Service of Election Commissioners and Transaction of Business) Act, 1991, was criticised for dropping the Chief Justice of India from its selection committee.

To provide a brief overview, in March of 2023 itself, a constitution bench of the Supreme Court had ruled that the election commissioners shall be selected by a committee comprising the prime minister, the leader of the opposition, and the chief justice, till the parliament frames a law prescribing the selection process.

However, within months of this judgment, the composition of the selection committee was modified by the union government by passing the said bill. This ensured that the selection committee is predominantly composed of members from the ruling government, potentially jeopardising the independence of the Election Commission of India.

The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023: On August 3, amid loud protests from opposition MPs who called it “unconstitutional”, the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha.

The said bill seeks to replace the Delhi Ordinance brought in by the Union government on May 19, 2023, overriding an order by the apex court which ruled that only Delhi’s elected government has authority over civil servants.

Through the Ordinance and the now passed Bill, the union government conferred powers over the transfer and posting of officers to the National Capital Civil Services Authority, breaking the triple chain of accountability established by the court that links the civil services, ministers, the legislature and citizens. One of the biggest criticisms of this bill is that it takes away the Delhi government’s power over services which in turn violates the Indian Constitution’s basic structure.

A read through the details of the legislations and bills mentioned above, along with the ignored criticisms, the suggestions that were not inculcated and fear of the misuse that was ignored, shows that the same will have a long lasting impact on the freedoms and rights guaranteed to an individual by India’s Constitution.

It is also pertinent to highlight the readers here that another legislations that another bill had been passed by the Parliament in 2023 during the special session of the Parliament in India’s new Sansad Bhavan.

The bill, known as the ‘The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam Bill’ or ‘The Women’s Reservation Bill 2023’, had also been passed by the Parliament in the month of September. The bill is the One Hundred and Twenty Eighth Amendment bill, 2023 to the Indian Constitution.

This bill seeks to reserve one-third of all the seats in the Lok Sabha for women, the state legislative assemblies and the legislative assembly of National Capital Territory of Delhi. The new bill will also apply to the seats that have been already reserved for the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.

However, since the said bill can only be implemented after 2026, post conducting the delimitation exercise, it will not have any impact on our rights and freedom (or our lives) at present. Hence, the same did not make it to the list of legislations and bills above.

The question that this analysis should leave the reader with, in order to help one determine if the legislation is a good law or a bad law, is the kind of hope it gives one regarding the future of India and its citizens.

An overwhelming majority of the “laws” passed under the pretence of ending India’s colonial history paint an even more dismal picture of the country’s future.

In 2023, almost all the controversial laws that have been passed have a direct impact on the fundamental as well as the constitutional rights that have been guaranteed to the people of India by the Indian Constitution. These weaponised laws, far from ensuring an emancipated citizenry enjoying participatory rights in governance, in fact ensure dangerous tools in the hands of the state (government in power), tools that can be used to seriously erode and impact hard fought for social, economic, cultural and civil rights of all Indians. Instead of passage of laws that are in the people’s interest what we see in 2023 India is the re-emergence of a weaponised police state, albeit an authoritarian majoritarian one.

Detailing these serious drawbacks with regards to the individual’s rights and freedoms that these laws impact, we use the categories of ‘bad laws’ and ‘good laws.’

With the consolidation of such weaponised power in the hand of the state and its enforcement agencies, the future in 2024, for us, “We the People of India” looks constricted, even bleak. As Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi succinctly said,

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence,

Arrest for its breach, is even more so.”

And here we have a detailing of several such, adding to a black list that spans close to a decade.

Related:

Untouchability in 2023 garb: Dalits Speak Out

CJP’s NBDSA Complaints 2023: A look at the repeated violation of ethics and guidelines by Indian television channels

Hate slurs ensure a discriminated citizen: India’s Muslim voices speak up, 2023

Bail not Jail, India’s constitutional courts’ bumpy ride towards personal liberty

The post India’s 2023 bad laws: Impact on Individual Freedoms and Indigenous Rights in a weaponised state appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In an open letter on the BJP website, Jaitley makes a strange argument: only those who protested against the Emergency have a right to speak about civil liberties in the country today. At one stroke, entire generations born after the Emergency — the bulk of our country's population today – has been told to hold its tongue. As a former ward-mate of Jaitley – Ward No 14 of Tihar Jail – I have to remind Jaitley that the right to free speech, therefore the right to criticise the government of the day, is a constitutional right. It cannot be taken away for her or him not protesting about the Emergency 43 years ago; or being born too late for such protests. Nor can we, just because Mrs. Gandhi took our liberties away during the 19-month Emergency, claim a permanent monopoly over it.

Just for the record, it was during a 3-day strike against the Emergency in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) that I was virtually kidnapped from the campus by plain clothes policemen. My crime? DP Tripathi, the then President of the students union, I and a few other students had stopped Maneka Gandhi – the then crown princess of Emergency and now Jaitley's cabinet colleague — from attending her classes. Yes, it was the same JNU, now in the cross-hairs of the current NDA government, that was a major locus of resistance during the Emergency . It was the same JNU that, during the Emergency, saw a number of students being denied admissions for their political record. The present government has done one better. It has decided that instead of selective denial of admission to students, they will drastically chop admissions to JNU by 80% to its research programs. And teach the faculty a lesson for its “anti-national” academics, and the students for their resistance to the Hindutva ideology.
For Jaitley, there is no loss of civil liberties as long as the members of parliament are not arrested and press freedom is officially not taken away. That TV channels are being raided, that journalists in Chattisgarh are in jail , that police officers are forming mob brigades to attack lawyers and civil liberty activists, all count for nothing. Does anyone doubt the chilling effect on free speech of these events? Is it an accident that the major task 24-hour news channels today is not telling truth to power, but “exposing” the opposition? Or stings against an anti-nuclear energy activists, hounding their old parents and young children?

Far more horrendous is the blanket attack on minorities, promoted by the Hindutva votaries, and supported by the state in various ways. A 15-year old is beaten, stabbed and killed in a train compartment in the capital region, his 17-year brother seriously injured – soon after Sadhvi Saraswati exhorted people to kill beef-eaters . No senior government official or minister can take time out from their yoga to even visit the family. The police are describing this heinous murder as a clash over train seats. A clash? Between 15 and 17-year old young boys and a knife-wielding mob of 10-15 people? Accusing these young boys of being beef eaters?

Why has no senior Minister or the Prime Minister spoken about such attacks? It needed a huge campaign of returning awards in 2015 by the literary community for Modi to express “sorrow”, not condemnation, on Akhlaq's murder. Now we have had Pehlu Khan and Junaid being lynched, one after another. The attacks on Muslims are growing every day. Not only physical attacks, but attacks on their livelihood, their choice of food, dress. Attacks on Dalits, as we saw in Una and in Sahranpur .

Yes, we have press freedom in the sense that we can write what we want, even if most papers won't publish it. We have the right to speak, but not on television, even if news channels debates are about the “key issue of the day” – should we declare war on Pakistan in the morning or in the evening? This apparently, is only what India wants to know.

Yes, we have formal freedoms. But what about the undeclared loss of these freedoms, the disappearing of criticism from public spaces, the attack on minorities, the Dalits, the tribal population; the loss of their lands, their livelihoods, their way of life? Jaitley cannot “censor” people for speaking up about these losses just because they did not protest 43 years back.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.
 

The post No, Mr Jaitley,We have the Right to Speak on Violation of Civil Liberties, On Your Watch, Today appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Prime Minister Theresa May holds a meeting with her Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, on the second day of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China. Stefan Rousseau/PA Images.

Britain's recently elected Prime Minister Theresa May, post-Brexit, has chosen to visit India from November 6, her first foray outside Europe after taking office. She ought to have headed to Washington given Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States but presumably thanks to the presidential election due on November 8 that was ruled out. However, why did she choose India as her first port of call outside of Europe even as her country is witness to a rising spate of racist attacks including against people of Indian and other southern Asian as well as Black and Coloured origins?

The former colony which is home to the second largest population – 1.2 billion, behind China's 1.4 billion – has been pursuing pro-big-business policies since the 1990s at least. And under the current government of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, the country has been moving rapidly rightwards.

While domestic big business is being favoured with gifts of tax concessions and vast tracts of mineral-rich forests, mountains and land (seized from indigenous peoples), foreign domestic investment even in retail commerce is being encouraged by the very same party that previously criticised such moves while it was in the opposition.

Prime Minister May perhaps sees an opening and wants to engage with the Modi government in order to land some lucrative contracts, especially of the defence kind: much warmongering noises have been reverberating around New Delhi since an attack that left 17 soldiers dead at an army base in Uri in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Prime Minister May perhaps wants to engage with the Modi government in order to land some lucrative contracts, especially of the defence kind.

Given May’s track record thus far, especially in the face of increasing anti-immigrant sentiment in post-Brexit Britain, it is unlikely that she will raise thorny issues such as the massive human rights abuses taking place in many parts of India as also in Indian-occupied Kashmir in the north and Manipur to the northeast of India.  

The media contingent accompanying her ought to look beyond the May-Modi talks and report on what has befallen the country that preens itself as the “world’s largest democracy”.

In Kashmir alone since the anti-India uprising escalated following the killing of a militant named Burhan Wani in early July, more than 100 Kashmiri men, women and children have been killed by the Indian state. The forces’ use of pellet guns has caused massive injuries and left scores of people – including innocent children – blinded. As many as 15,000 people have been injured and 8,000 have been arrested.

In the capital itself, a young Muslim student named Najeeb Ahmed has been missing since October 15 from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University but its authorities have made little effort, if any, in helping to trace the 27-year-old. Earlier this year, student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on trumped up charges of sedition, sparking protests from beyond India’s shores. Another ‘sedition’ accused is Professor S.A.R. Geelani, who had been teaching in a college under Delhi University. His crime: an address at the Press Club during which he spoke on the anniversary of the 9 February 2013 hanging of fellow-Kashmiri Afzal Guru – almost entirely wrongly convicted in connection with a mysterious attack on the Indian parliament in 2001.

In January, a brilliant Dalit PhD scholar at the Hyderabad Central University (in southern India) named Rohith Vemula committed suicide having faced months of hounding by the university authorities and a student wing linked to Prime Minister Modi’s party. Human rights groups refer to his death as institutional murder. Human rights groups refer to his death as institutional murder.

A little to the east of the capital, in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh state, a Muslim man was murdered in September on the suspicion that he stored beef (the cow being deemed sacred by Hindu fanatics) and when one of his assailants died a natural death in hospital recently, his body was covered with the national flag, Modi’s party members egging on the supporters of the attackers.

Just a few days ago, eight Muslims were killed by police in the central Indian state, Madhya Pradesh which is ruled by Modi’s BJP: extra-judicial executions or “encounters” as they are known in India, are quite rife, the National Human Rights Commission having noted that there were 206 such instances over the past year. In Manipur, to the east of India, there have been more than 1,500 “encounters” since the 1970s.   

Attacks on Dalits (members of oppressed castes) are a daily occurrence. ‘Cow vigilantes’ or Hindu fanatic hoodlums who attack Muslims and Dalits transporting meat – and not only of the cow – have been becoming increasingly brazen in their ways in many parts of India, especially in BJP-ruled states but also in others such as Karnataka, currently ruled by the Congress party.

Vast areas of mineral-rich central and east-central India have been rendered no-go zones for independent lawyers and journalists with police-raj prevailing and local Bar Associations and the media subject to police control.

May is set to end her India visit on November 8. Just the day after, unless wiser counsels prevail, the Modi regime’s bizarre order on a television channel, NDTV, to go off air for a day is to take effect: the government’s grouse is apparently that the outfit put out sensitive information about an alleged Pakistani attack on a military base in Pathankot in Punjab earlier this year. Never mind that other channels too had reported on the attack. But NDTV had earlier blotted its copybook by caving in unasked just a couple of weeks earlier when it interviewed a former Congress party minister named P. Chidambaram and then decided not to air it. Meanwhile, the Kashmir Reader remains banned.

But there certainly is resistance against Modi Raj. In fact, it is occasionally “in your face” even from the usually supine middle class: just a few days ago, when it was reported that The Indian Express, a major newspaper house, had invited Modi to present journalism awards, there were predictable expressions of consternation, which, however gave place to pleasant acknowledgements of the courage of a couple of journalists who used the occasion to signal dissent – senior journalist Akshaya Mukul refused to accept his award from Modi and Raj Kamal Jha, the newspaper’s own editor made pointed references to the need for reporters to question governments. It was similar to scholar Sunkanna Velpula’s refusal to accept his doctorate from Hyderabad Central University Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile a few weeks ago in protest over the Rohith Vemula issue.

The media accompanying the British prime minister will not be able to question Modi as he does not face unscripted, freewheeling interviews or press conferences. His ministers and party leaders are also kept on a tight leash. The British reporters have their work cut out seeking other sources if they want to report on the reality of India under Modi.

(N. Jayaram is a journalist now based in Bangalore after more than 23 years in East Asia (mainly Hong Kong and Beijing) and 11 years in New Delhi. He was with the Press Trust of India news agency for 15 years and Agence France-Presse for 11 years and is currently engaged in editing and translating for NGOs and academic institutions).

(This article was first published on openDemocracyIndia.
 

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Dalit protest in Gujarat; Photo credit: NDTV

The Gujarat government is set to table the Gujarat Protection of Internal Security Act (GPISA) in the upcoming budget session of the State Assembly. A bill, various versions of which have been sent back to the state assembly, is being pushed once again by the BJP-led government in Gujarat. Inspired by the MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999) the Gujarat assembly in 2003 attempted to draft the Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime Bill (GCTCB) ostensibly to fight internal security. It has been sent to three sitting Presidents and returned each time on grounds of conflict with existing central acts on evidence, communication and national security. Now, it is set to appear with a new name and thrust as a question of national interest.

The bill was first drafted by Modi-led state government of Gujarat in 2003. It was sent back in 2004 by the then President APJ Abdul Kalam who demanded that the clause pertaining to telephonic interception of communication be removed as it violated citizens' right to privacy. The Gujarat government tweaked this clause and sent it to the next President Pratibha Patil. Once again, in 2008, President Patil also refused to ratify this bill citing conflict with the Indian Evidence Act, which does not recognize confessions before the police as valid in court. Accepting this clause would have meant opening up the scope for torture under police custody.

These clauses pertaining to internal security were seen as falling outside the purview of the state government and thus, under the Union government as per Article 245 and 246 as well as the VIIth Schedule of the Constitution.

In September 2015, the state legislature of Gujarat once again tried to send a slightly amended version of (GCTCB) and it was hoped that with the change in central government this would be ratified. But once it became clear that President Pranab Mukherjee would not ratify a law that allowed the police to arrest merely on the basis of suspicion, the home ministry withdrew the bill. The proposed law allows the Gujarat police to remain immune from prosecution on grounds of wrongful arrest, as it insists on the “protection of action taken in good faith”.

A state government with a history of violence targeted against the minority community, oppressed castes and marginalised people, where police officers have been charged with fake ‘encounters’ and then subsequently earned promotions and legal immunity, and where voices of dissent have been repeatedly crushed, is now attempting to ratify a law that can effectively suspend the rights of the citizens in the name of internal security.

The ministry of information and broadcasting also challenged the bill, citing the utilisation of law to intercept private communication, a provision that could be used to fabricate cases against political opponents. In January 2016, the bill was returned to the state assembly. Despite these repeated reversals, it appears that the BJP-dominated state assembly of Gujarat is determined to pass GPISA, which defines internal security as threats posed by “proxies of a hostile foreign power” within the state. Here, it becomes crucial to understand why such a law is deemed essential for ‘internal security’.

Cursory assessments of the clauses of GPISA are reminiscent of the debates that surrounded the MCOCA, an act passed in Maharashtra to address organised crime. Inspired by MCOCA, the GPISA goes a few steps further to empower the state police force by including “challenges posed by terrorism, insurgency, communalism and even caste based violence”.

This renders any and all criticism of the existing political dispensation, especially the growing rage of the minority communities and Dalits against an increasingly intolerant regime, criminal. The GPISA allows the Gujarat Police to nab any person(s) on the basis of suspicion of being a ‘threat to internal security’. This means that no prosecution is required against the person under suspicion as it empowers the police to define the basis of suspicion.

Under this Act, offences are punishable and would be cognisable, non-bailable, non-compoundable and can be tried by a Sessions court. Both public and private institutions fall under the purview of the GPISA and such institutions can be put under electronic surveillance. Evidence collected through the interception of wire, electronic or oral communications shall be admissible as evidence against the accused in court.

A contentious section of the bill states that confessions before police officers are admissible in court against the accused. The period of custody and for filing chargesheet in a case is extended from 90 days to 180 days. Punitive action extends from fines to imprisonment or both along with confiscation of property. This builds a veritable ground for police corruption wherein officials can extort opponents with a threat of being charged under this Act. Political opponents can be put under electronic surveillance; the police can set up security zones with special powers.

Furthermore, the government can take action against caste groups and communities for promoting ‘sectarian interests’. And remarkably, as per this bill, no legal action can be taken against the police and security agencies for wrongful arrest, as all action is deemed to be done in “good faith”, even if the arrested citizen is honourably acquitted after trial.

A state government with a history of violence targeted against the minority community, oppressed castes and marginalised people, where police officers have been charged with fake ‘encounters’ and then subsequently earned promotions and legal immunity, and where voices of dissent have been repeatedly crushed, is now attempting to ratify a law that can effectively suspend the rights of the citizens in the name of internal security.

Human rights organisations and activists have described the proposed law as ‘draconian’ and ‘unconstitutional’ as it takes away the right to express one’s views, builds an atmosphere of fear, and is bound to be misused, especially considering the partisan views of the existing government. Central ‘anti-terrorism’ laws or acts like Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA 1967 (especially after the substantive amendments made in 2012) and Prevention of Terrorism Act or POTA 2002 are already in place, and along with MCOCA, its efficacy has repeatedly come under question with regards to containing law and order, combating organised crime and fighting terror.

Instead of equipping the existing security forces with means of combating crime and terror, laws are being drafted that effectively curb human rights and civil liberties. Unsurprisingly, following the efforts of the Gujarat state assembly, other states like Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka have been pushing for such laws. Laws such as these, that propose to provide the police with unregulated powers of surveillance, arrest and even torture while letting them get away with it in the name of ‘good faith’, are inconsistent with the Constitution of India, and in some instances, they directly violate it – as in the case, with the GPISA, of the Property Act, Indian Evidences Act, CrPC and IPC. Such laws are bound to be used against the socially and economically weakest sections of society, and threaten to put in place a new method of state-sponsored extortion against every political adversary.

(Vidhya is part of the Editorial Collective at the Indian Cultural Forum).

This article was first published on India Cultural Forum.
 

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UN General Assembly

A paradox sits at the heart of the human rights movement. For decades it has made strong claims about the universality of human rights but then proceeded to present a discounted version of the universality story.

Standard historical accounts have privileged the role of western actors, and their perspectives on historical causalities. These have been accompanied by an overemphasis on the 1940s and 1970s in explaining the emergence of human rights—an emphasis that reveals a scholarly addiction to “human rights moments” and iconic histories, instead of more richly contextualized narratives over time.

The above-mentioned emphasis has resulted in a huge gap in knowledge concerning the intervening period – covering about 25 years from 1948 to the mid-1970s. In this period, the largest transformation of sovereign power in world history took place, namely decolonization. Surely, this structural transformation in the international system of states played a role in the post-1945 emergence of human rights en route to their contemporary significance?

It is surprising how international research has been so ignorant regarding the 1960s developments in the human rights field.

Judging from the existing research—at  least until recently—the answer appears to be negative. The global South engagement during this period has been described as essentially focused with promoting the right to self-determination.  Human rights scholarship was generally speaking content with this profoundly reductionist view. It was forgotten that neither the global South nor UN human rights diplomacy was monolithic. It was always multi-tonal. The effect has been a distorted view of the global South’s role in the emergence of human rights diplomacy, when in actual fact a number of Caribbean, African and Asian diplomats have made innovative and foundational contributions.

The reason for this state of affairs lies in the combination of a complacent approach to research that itself is too focused on international legal standards, combined often with a celebratory or commemmorative approach to the historical evolution instead of a more critical approach. In hindsight, it is surprising how international human rights research has been so ignorant regarding the 1960s developments in the human rights field, because a closer look belies a more nuanced and pluralist understanding of this history.

For a field of practice committed to inclusion and non-discrimination, it is striking that it is so closely affiliated with such practices of exclusion related to its core tenet: universality. This is a paradox that needs remedying.

The first point to acknowledge is that human rights came in from the South. The year 1962 was a major turning point because of an important redefinition of the human rights project around race and religion, and the emergence of an unprecedented momentum and leadership in the field of multilateral diplomacy. The legal and diplomatic breakthrough was brokered by a key group of countries, namely, Jamaica, Ghana, the Philippines, Liberia, Costa Rica and Senegal. These countries pushed the human rights agenda and built alliances at the United Nations for a vital period during the 1960s. They fought for and delivered a stronger human rights system, including with legally binding components, that was in place in the 1970s when Western countries picked up the mantle and began reshaping their foreign policy engagement.

The second point to acknowledge is the need to ensure more representative historical accounts. If we shift attention from “iconic” representatives such as Eleanor Roosevelt onto the Jamaican UN Ambassador (from 1962-1967), Egerton Richardson, we discover perhaps the most significant, yet completely unknown, human rights diplomat in the 20th century and a very different international history. Richardson made Jamaica the global leader in human rights diplomacy within two years of the country’s independence in 1962. He facilitated the first foreign policy strategy (1964) that integrated human rights into a document of this kind—more than thirteen years before the more famous efforts of President Jimmy Carter. The results from Jamaica’s diplomatic efforts are numerous. Their efforts were instrumental in inspiring Amnesty International in 1968 to include the fight against torture in its mandate. They also influenced how Soviet dissidents came to adopt international human rights as a domestic platform against the totalitarian regime they were facing. And it was Richardson’s efforts that led the Teheran World Conference on Human Rights in 1968 to focus on armed conflict. This is by any measure a substantive record—yet it has been completely ignored.

The third point to acknowledge is that the global South contribution was foundational with long-lasting legacies that are still with us today. From 1963-1968, a core group of these states initiated a diplomatic effort to develop an international human rights system with mechanisms at the global, regional and national level. They believed such mechanisms were necessary if the United Nations was to function as an organisation for collective security in the post-colonial world. They therefore placed issues such as fact-finding missions, national human rights commissions, treaty body monitoring and regional human rights mechanisms on the UN agenda. Ghana and the Philippines led the process that laid the foundation for the treaty body system in the mid-1960s. They faced much resistance and progress was slow, but this agenda-setting would have a lasting impact.  

The fourth point to acknowledge is that global South actors from 1962 redefined the international human rights project around racial discrimination and religious intolerance. The standard account has told the post-1945 story as being centred on civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. This reflects the intent originating at the UN in the 1940s with the development of an International Bill of Rights. Yet race and religion were driving forces on the global human rights agenda from 1962 until 1975, begging a repositioning of how we perceive the human rights story. It was global South actors that placed religion on the international agenda. In that process they both challenged the Communist states and inspired the major Western powers to engage more fully with the emerging international human rights diplomacy.

These four points are among the key elements in a much needed re-imagining of the evolution of human rights. It was never just a Western project. It was a pluralist project emerging through a multitude of historical processes with a diverse set of actors involved. This is what human rights researchers and practitioners have failed to acknowledge. For a field of practice committed to inclusion and non-discrimination, it is striking that it is so closely affiliated with such practices of exclusion related to its core tenet: universality. This is a paradox that needs remedying. Rethinking the trajectories that shaped the post-1945 human rights story is now a matter of some urgency for the credibility of the research field and for human rights advocacy itself.

(Steven L.B. Jensen is a researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. He has recently published the book The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge University Press 2016). He is currently working on a history of economic and social rights after 1945).

This article was first published on openDemocracy.
 

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Jammu and Kashmir is again in the news for violence and counter violence. Again, several solutions are proposed. Any such exercise, however, needs a reality check if peace is to return in the state in the foreseeable future.

The present unrest began after killing of Burhan Wani, a local commander of Hizbul Mujahidin, an organisation that vows to liberate Kashmir by unleashing suicide bombers in Kashmir (Times of India, 4 September 2016). The unrest is restricted to the Kashmir valley comprising 7.1 percent of land and 54.9 percent of population of the state numbering 6.8 million (Census of India, 2011). In a fresh round of bloodshed over seventy people have died and thousands are injured.

To defuse the situation, among the solutions being offered is merger with Pakistan and 'freedom' from India. The third solution — status quo — is supported by the major political parties, though with differing caveats.

Merger with Pakistan

The merger with Pakistan is incongruous for the simple reason that Kashmiris will be an additional minority group in Pakistan that already has a disturbing record towards its ethnic and sectarian minorities including Mohajir, Baloch, Pashtun, Ahmadis and Hazaras. Many of these people are forced to seek refuge in other countries.

According to latest figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Pakistanis are the sixth largest group seeking asylum in Europe following Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis. Australian immigration report 2013-2014 reveals that the largest number of people who sought humanitarian visa on arrival came from Pakistan (Elibritt Karlsen: 2014, Parliament of Australia).

Pakistan's human rights record on Baluchistan has also been disconcerting. Since the last decade about 18,000 people have allegedly ‘disappeared’ in the province. According to the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, 157 mutilated bodies were found and 463 people disappeared in the state in 2015. (Balochwarna News, 3 January 2016). The prime suspects in these incidents are the security forces.

Pakistan administered Kashmir is no better. Of the $38bn proposed investment in energy sector on the  China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Gilgit-Baltistan has not received any allocation as compared to other provinces (The Dawn, 12 May 2016). On the contrary, the planning minister of Pakistan warned the protesting farmers of the region that the terrorism act would be invoked against them if they obstructed the project (Times of India, 18 August 16).

Freedom

The option of freedom for J&K is equally fraught with problems. If freedom is a demand for all the five regions of the state, then it seems a non-starter given the Indian and Pakistan position on it; and if it relates only to the Indian part then without taking into consideration the views of the people of Jammu and Ladakh region it is unlikely to move any farther.

The demand of freedom for only the valley of Kashmir is fraught with a moral dilemma in light of about a half a million Kashmiri pundits' virtual exile from the region. Besides, freedom for Kashmir will have a ripple effect in Muslim majority districts of Poonch and Rajouri, and Kishtwar and Doda, separated by Hindu majority districts of Jammu and Udhampur, which will further add to the instability in the region.

Another difficulty regarding freedom for Kashmir is the use of violence and terrorism as a method to achieve it. Contemporary history shows that a violent movement does not produce a sustainable democratic state as is seen in many African countries which were inspired by various violence based ideologies.

And finally, there are reports that mosques are being used for mobilisation of people and ISIS flags are being waved in rallies in Kashmir (Indian Express, August 21, 2016). Successful culmination of such a movement can only lead to a theocratic state that would be against the spirit of 'kashmiriyat', which has already suffered considerable erosion in the valley.

Way Forward

The central government owes it to the Constitution of India to restore civil liberties by withdrawing the laws like AFSPA from civilian areas in the Valley, ensure accountability for human rights violations, secure transparent governance, launch de-radicalisation programs and identify a genuine leadership in the valley for a dialogue. Nationally, toning down ‘saffron nationalism’ might greatly assist. It is the only way forward for a humane and democratic Kashmir.

(Pushkar Raj is a Melbourne based author of Kahsmiri origin. Formerly he taught political science in Delhi University and was the national general secretary of PUCL. He can be reached at raajpushkar@ gmail.com).
 

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Faced with widespread protest from opposition political parties and social activists over a proposed new law – Maharashtra Protection of Internal Security Act (MPISA) –, the state government has stated that the draft posted on the state government’s official website on August 21 is only a proposal which is open to “healthy debate” and fair criticism.

At a press meet on Wednesday, KP Bakshi, additional chief secretary (home), flanked by top police officers, said the proposed Bill will be discussed at the political level only after due consideration has been given to suggestions and objections from citizens.

“We will go through the points of criticism and suggestions and incorporate what we think needs to be incorporated. Then, a revised draft would be placed before the home ministry and after its approval, before the cabinet,” he added.

The bill has been sharply criticized for several of its “draconian clauses” which it is alleged will turn Maharashtra into a “police state” wherein civil rights of citizens, including the right to privacy and to protest will be severely curtailed. The Congress Party and the National Alliance for People’s Movements (NAPM) have demanded withdrawal of the bill in toto.

"This draft gives unbridled powers to the police and the intention behind such a law is to muzzle democratic dissent and not terror or crime," said Congress Party leader Sanjay Nirupam.

Ditto, said an NAPM activist, Ulka Mahajan. She said the law gives sweeping powers to police and curbs even democratic dissent. “We are not going to offer our criticism or objections to the draft. We will demand this draft be withdrawn,” Mahajan added.

The stated objective of the bill is to make “special provisions for protection of internal security in the state of Maharashtra, to deal with the challenges of terrorism, insurgency, communalism, caste violence, etc., and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.”

The draft defines certain systems and assets as “critical assets” and “critical infrastructure”. It proposes the setting up of a high-powered committee under the minister of state for home which will undertake measures to protect such assets and infrastructure. Certain areas are proposed to be declared as Special Security Zones (SSZ) where movement of arms, explosives and inflow of unaccounted funds will be prohibited.  

The proposed bill obliges all owners or managers of public establishments to “at all times, provide and maintain public safety measures, as may be specified by order of the state police chief from time to time”. The safety measures include installation of CCTV and footage of the same must be preserved for 30 days. Failure to comply with the stipulations will attract a fine up to Rs. 5 lakh.

All punishable offences under the proposed act will be cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable. They will be tried in special courts for to facilitate speedy trials.

Those found guilty of engaging in “subversive acts” are to be punished with “imprisonment for a term which may extend to life, or with fine, or with both”. Included among subversive acts is “causing damage to any building, vehicle, machinery, apparatus or other property used or intended to be used for the purpose of government or any local authority”.

While defending the proposed bill, Bakshi claimed that while there was a similar hue and cry in 1999 when the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) was proposed, today everyone is happy with the results it has produced.

Full text of the bill may be accessed here.

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USA and EU blind to Turkish government’s brutal clampdown in Kurdish regions

While the EU and the US have turned a blind eye to the Turkish government’s brutal clampdown in Kurdish regions, Turkish academics who have spoken out about the regime’s increasingly dictatorial policies have faced punishment and even imprisonment.

A petition published in early January by the Academicians for Peace initiative, criticising the Turkish state’s political and military attacks against the Kurdish people, raised a red flag with its signatories stating: “We will not be a party to this crime.” They wrote:“The Turkish state has effectively condemned its citizens in Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre, Silopi, and many other towns and neighborhoods in the Kurdish provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks. It has attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilized in wartime. As a result, the right to life, liberty, and security, and in particular the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment protected by the constitution and international conventions have been violated”.
 

In response, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan immediately demanded that all institutions in Turkey take action: “Everyone who benefits from this state but is now an enemy of the state must be punished without further delay.”

Academics targeted

Following this, Turkish federal prosecutors have investigated 1,128 of the signatories with 33 academics from three Turkish universities in Bolu, Kocaeli and Bursa being detained because of their alleged propaganda for a terrorist organisation and insulting the Turkish nation, state, government and institutions.

Turkey’s top higher education body, the Higher Education Board (YÖK), has called for university administrators to impose disciplinary sanctions against the academics. Subsequently, 109 academics from 42 Turkish universities were subjected to dismissal, discharge, suspension, termination and forced resignation.

A government-backed counter-petition, Academics Against Terror, has also been organised. The Grey Wolves, also known as Idealist Hearts, a formal youth organisation of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the Turkish parliament, has even marked the office doors of signatories and left written threats.
Despite this, immediately after the government’s response, the number of academics participating in the campaign increased from 1,128 to 4,491. There has also been a public reaction against the government’s tactics.

Within just two weeks, independent petition campaigns organised by a variety of civic and professional organisations have collected more than 60,000 signatories, and supporting statements have been released by 65 organisations that have millions of members across the country.

The original petition has also created much-needed international solidarity with more than 60 international institutions, organisations, leading academics and politicians issuing messages of support and ten international petition campaigns being organised worldwide.

The recent clampdown on academics characterises the scope of the new “counterterrorism” strategy of the Turkish state. This “new” doctrine is again promoting a military solution to the Kurdish question by concentrating state violence against the Kurds and supporters of Kurdish rights.

Political plotting

After a period of fragile negotiations with the hope of ending the decades-long conflict, the new doctrine has emerged since the June 2015 Turkish general elections, when Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) failed to win a majority in parliament for a single-party government.

The government introduced the strategy after the June elections in an attempt to win back the votes of Turkish nationalists in the MHP, a long standing ultra-nationalist political party, and the “borrowed votes” of Turkish dissidents who temporarily collaborated with the HDP, a pro-Kurdish and pro-minority political party.

The Turkish state has effectively condemned its citizens in Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre, Silopi, and many other towns and neighborhoods in the Kurdish provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks. It has attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilized in wartime.

The Turkish state is also using the Syrian refugee crisis and military intervention against the so-called Islamic State to gain international support from the EU and the US.
In line with the “new” doctrine, the ongoing ceasefire agreement and peace negotiations between the Turkish state and the PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) were officially suspended in July, with a state of emergency and curfew declared in Kurdish territories by the AKP government.

According to a report in Turkish by the Human Rights Association in Turkey, between June and November, 602 people (including 41 children) were killed, 1,300 people were injured, 1,004 people were jailed and 5,713 people were taken into custody during the military operations in Kurdish towns. There were also 134 people killed and 564 injured in two suicide bombings in Suruç and Ankara.

This campaign seemed to pay off for the AKP, with a significant increase in support within the six-month period. The AKP won 49.50% in a second parliamentary election called on November 1 2015, returning their single party majority.

Entrenching positions

It seems that Turkey’s “new” anti-Kurdish doctrine is a strategic, precautionary manoeuvre to maintain the popularity of Erdoğan’s regime. The government is aiming to avoid potential resistance, such as that experienced in the Gezi Park uprising in 2013, which unified a wide range of dissidents including leftists, Turkish nationalists, capitalists from the upper classes and religious groups.
Through its anti-Kurd strategy, the government is simultaneously deepening localised political and social tensions in Kurdish regions and reunifying right-wing nationalist civil society and political organisations under the flag of Turkish chauvinism.

In this light, the petition by Academicians for Peace is not only a revolt against the government’s Kurdish policy, but also a very effective swipe at the crucial point of the “new” strategy. It draws academics, students, intellectuals and other urban professionals together throughout the country, sending a wake-up call to the international public that Erdoğan’s new political and military strategy cannot be tolerated.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation

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WHETHER it is an out right extra–constitutional military coup as  now, or the military– supported constitutional” coups under the former dispensation, the rationale offered is always the same: the politicians have failed as a class, and some group of people other than elected representatives can best solve the country’s dire economic and social crises.

Always the coup is greeted with temporary euphoria, only to be followed by bitter disillusionment as yet another tinkering with the democratic set–up inevitably fails to solve long–standing problems.

What is most surprising about the latest coup is the lack of outrage expressed by ordinary Pakistanis as well as most of the intelligentsia. What is most surprising is the ultimate lack of surprise at the coup on the part of those who closely follow Pakistani politics. For anyone observing the dynamics of the 1990, 1993, and 1996 interventions, it was only a matter of time.

What is most disillusioning about the current interruption of democracy is that the same segments of Pakistani society that have greeted previous interruptions refuse to learn from past history. What this clearly shows is that the Pakistani people, both the lay person and the majority of the intelligentsia, are simply not prepared to deal with democracy on its terms.

Understandably, the commercial classes are the least committed to the idea of democracy. They are the first to support any military government; they care less about civil liberties and the rights of the working class. As long as they can be assured of a minimal degree of stability in which to do business, they go along. They don’t realise that anything but democracy only leads in the long term to greater instability. For most of the intelligentsia to be in accord with the commercial classes’ liking for military rule, however, is less expected and less acceptable.

Unrealistic expectations about democracy lead to repeated support for rejecting the very processes of democracy. The missing piece of analysis has to do not with the mechanisms of democracy, which are not at fault, but with our own expectations and desires. Pakistanis want painless, quick, instant gratification. Neither democracy nor any other means of governance can deliver what they want. And yet, in their haste to reach the Promised Land, the people of Pakistan keep diminishing the chance that the desired objective of an egalitarian and prosperous society will ever be met.

It is precisely the sky–high expectations of the people for swift (shading into undemocratic) action on the part of their elected political leaders that leads to the politicians justifying autocracy in the name of expediency. Should the people set their expectations at a more moderate level, politicians would find it more difficult to justify autocratic intervention in the normal workings of state institutions.

To the extent that each time the ordinary people and the intelligentsia have refused to outright condemn the previous interventions — those of 1990, 1993, and 1996 — they have been party to the final overthrow of democracy. Imagine a scenario in 1990 when, despite disillusionment with Benazir Bhutto’s first term, an absolute line in the sand had been drawn, and the intelligentsia by and large had refused to accept the presidential intervention. Certainly, the costs of continuing with Benazir Bhutto at that time —  as with Nawaz Sharif in his first and second terms, and Benazir in her second term — would have been high. But under no circumstances would the costs have been as high as those that actually did accrue after the disguised coups.

By the same logic, it is inconceivable that any possible benefits could accrue under the present military government that will not be overwhelmingly offset by the long–term setbacks to democratic governance.
It should be clear by now that the first Benazir government was better by far than the first Nawaz government, and so on for the three succeeding governments. The first Benazir government could treat state institutions with far less impunity than the regimes that followed. Doubtless, this logic will hold for the present regime as well. Simply to get back to square one after each intervention takes monumental work. People make the task well–nigh impossible when they keep supporting illegitimate interventions for the sake of expediency.

People seem to lack the basic characteristic for the survival of democracy that the Indian populace seems to have in abundance: patience. None of the long–term, even endemic and perplexing, problems outlined by the new military regime, are susceptible to short–term resolution. A few years are simply not enough to get the economy back on track, or to root out corrupt politicians, or to deal with deep–rooted ethnic and sectarian violence.
These are tasks that ought to occupy generations. No interim set–up of bureaucrats or technocrats, whatever the duration of power — a year, two years, or even five years — can possibly come up with radically different alternatives to what was already being tried under the four different democratically elected governments between 1988 and 1999.

Pakistan’s basic incomprehension of how democracy functions is highlighted by the remarkable progress of democracy in India. An elitist party has gradually seen its power diminish from its heights of autocratic rule, and dynastic politics has declined over the last three decades. 

Coalitions of parties representing the lower classes, the outcasts, and the marginalised are in the ascendant. No matter how slow India’s economic or social progress, the Indians refuse to discredit democracy for it. Rather the thought has never even occurred to Pakistan’s more enlightened neighbours.

In Pakistan, whenever problems are found to be intractable, instead of doing everything possible to strengthen the institutional foundations of democracy, individual culprits are hounded out of office and democracy itself is questioned.

Certainly, Nawaz Sharif found it easier to weaken democratic institutions because of all our previous undemocratic interventions. The Supreme Court’s actions in the past justifying the overthrow of democracy under the doctrine of necessity are one example of institutions undermining their own long–term viability in the urge to protect themselves in the short run.

Five decades of playing around with democratic institutions almost guarantees that any representative government will have quite a bit of success in generating the perception that it intends to stay in power for good, and that it will undermine democratic institutions with every increase in power. But precisely the worst way of dealing with a democratically elected government that acts undemocratically is to abolish the very process itself. That will only make future governments, even if democratically elected, more prone to try to ensure their permanent stay in power.

Once again, the people’s lack of patience has made them indirectly party to a whole new series of likely witch–hunts. Accountability as it is understood in Pakistan is a pipe-dream. Who will watch the watch–dogs? No answer to this has been found in fifty–two years in Pakistan, nor in the various doomed experiments in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

The solution is simply to make sure that the rascals are voted out of power at the end of their term, and that in the meantime they are not allowed to ensure that their stay will be anything except at the pleasure of their constituency.

In short, having degraded democracy, the people of Pakistan seem to want to degrade it even further, and reduce the chances of having a well-functioning democracy in the future. The benefits of this kind of intervention cannot possibly exceed the devastating costs. What is most disturbing is the cheerfulness of the people, or many of them, as they greet the new regime with high hopes. This reflects nothing but the naivete of the common people as they curse and condemn the existing set of politicians. The intelligentsia is equally naive as it sets out to discover yet another set of technocrats and bureaucrats who can magically rescue the country from its own worst instincts.

Pakistan’s worst problem is that the entire polity has become distorted because of the excessive militaristic or despotic attitude. Priorities at home have been twisted as a result, and civil liberties have had to take a back seat. Absolutely the worst possible response is to further increase the power of the military. Nobody wants to talk about a secular, pacifist, socialist approach to governance, as India shows the capacity to do. But that takes time, and individual and collective commitment. Democracy at all costs would be the slogan then. Right now, it seems to be — whatever works, damned be the ideology. It is a well–set trap, sprung at the least provocation. Escape is 
unlikely without massive doses of patience with the workings of democracy.

Until democracy at all costs becomes the desire, democracy will never work at any cost. Until the principle sinks through that the worst possible elected government is always better than the best possible military dictatorship, democratic institutions cannot begin to gain hold. This is an absolute on which there can be no compromise. The only solution for the ills of democracy is more democracy. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 1999. Year 7  No, 53, Neighbours

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