National Herald is committed to freedom, individual liberty and right to dissent. We condemn attempts to describe 45 cultural personalities who wrote an open letter to PM as seditious or anti national
Are we as a nation moving into dark ages? If not, how does a court take cognisance of a sedition charge against as many as 45 cultural personalities who wrote an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi against hate crime spreading like a virus through the length and breadth of the country? And this despite the Supreme Court of India laying down the rule that only incitement to violence against the state can amount to sedition.
Not only has there been not a word of condemnation or repudiation from the High Court or the Supreme Court but not a single person in authority has publicly ridiculed the absurd stand taken by the Muzaffarpur court on a complaint from a lawyer. Union Minister Prakash Javadekar merely distanced the ruling party and the Government and stated that they had nothing to do with the court’s action. Technically correct. But a party and the Government which doesn’t think twice before commenting, even warning, the Supreme Court on Ram Janmabhoomi cannot find their voice to send out a message?
One also suspects the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had this open letter in mind when in his Dussehra speech on Sunday, he frowned upon people raking up the ‘Western construct’ of lynching and defaming India. In his matchless wisdom, he appeared to approve the court’s action and suggested that the act of writing an open letter was somehow ‘seditious’.
But what did the open letter contain? It read, “We, as peace loving and proud Indians, are deeply concerned about a number of tragic events that have been happening in recent times in our beloved country.” And, they demanded: ‘’1) The lynching of Muslims, Dalits and other minorities must be stopped immediately. 2) There is no democracy without dissent. People should not be branded antinational or ‘Urban Naxals’ and incarcerated because of dissent against the government.”
By only a wild and irresponsible stretch of imagination can these demands be deemed to be a crime against the country. As proud Indians they only pointed out that in a ‘’secular’’ republic, minorities and Dalits must not be discriminated against and dissent against the government should not be treated as seditious. Is writing an open letter with these two demands calls for their arrest? If yes, isn’t it against the basic tenets of democratic norms? Democracy does acknowledge the right of citizens to disagree with and criticise the government of the day.
source: NH
