If you are an Indian, you are probably angry, sad or deeply frustrated at the moment. In the past few years the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and his coalition government have been embroiled in corruption scam after corruption scam, from the embarrassing Commonwealth Games scandal to the massive looting of food stocks. The latest scam, termed “Coalgate”, involves the government allocation of coal and is estimated to have cost the country more than $50bn (dh). For the last two weeks, parliament has ground to a halt, as the opposition and ruling party fight like schoolboys over who is more corrupt. From bitter experience, Indians know that all political parties are equally, obscenely, venal. So, it is ludicrous that cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was taken into custody on Sunday for drawing what everyone is thinking. Trivedi has been charged with sedition and insulting the constitution for a series of anti-corruption cartoons. One replaces the three lions of India’s Ashoka symbol, the national emblem, with three bloody-jawed wolves. The usual legend under the symbol is Satyamev Jayate, translated as “truth alone triumphs”. Trivedi’s version changes the line to Bhrastamev Jayate which means “corruption alone triumphs”. Another cartoon shows the 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab urinating on the Indian constitution. Tasteless and clumsy? Perhaps. But seditious?
India’s sedition laws date back to the Raj, and were used for imprisoning Mahatma Gandhi, along with other freedom fighters. Section 124A of the Indian penal code defines sedition as any attempt to bring into hatred or contempt the lawful government. Yet, the explanation points out that comments expressing “disapprobation with a view to obtain their alteration by lawful means” are not offences. Nowhere has Trivedi called for a violent overthrow of the government. If he is in contempt of the government, then so are we all. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called sedition laws “objectionable and obnoxious”. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and Markandey Katju, chairman of the Press Council of India, are among the many critics to have flayed the laws. Yet they have survived for years. Why? Because they allow the government to gag opposition without going to the trouble of preparing a case that will stick. In the last few years, writer Arundhati Roy and activist Dr Binayak Sen have been charged under sedition laws, among other lesser known journalists and activists. The complainant against Trivedi, Mumbai law student Amit Katarnaware, claimed the cartoonist was misusing free speech. “There is nothing bigger than the Indian constitution,” he pompously declared.
To be sure, India’s constitutional values are a fragile and precious thing. We are an amazingly diverse country with more than 22 different languages and five major religions, a loose and sometimes unravelling medley of completely different ethnic groups. Arundhati Roy’s 2010 speech saying that Kashmir is not an integral part of India sends a chill down the spine of every patriotic Indian who knows it is a marvel that our nation survives at all. Yet Roy and her ilk are not the real problem. It is the government’s criminal apathy that is tearing this nation apart. To take just one shameful example, recent reports revealed that India’s poor are starving, as politicians loot food stocks. So much for constitutional values. This is the kind of news that makes starving people riot against the state. Not cartoons, or provocative speeches by Roy, of whom most of India has never heard anyway. Last month, after more than 75 people were killed in communal riots in the eastern state of Assam, panic spread through the country, causing thousands of people from the north east to flee other states. The government’s ham-fisted response was to block the Twitter accounts of several journalists. After Washington Post journalist Simon Denyer wrote a fairly mild article calling Manmohan Singh “ineffectual”, the prime minister’s office lodged a protest with the Post, calling Denyer unethical. Talk about throwing toddler tantrums. Trivedi has refused bail. “I am not a terrorist. I am a terrorist if Gandhi and Azad were terrorists.” Meanwhile the Mumbai police commissioner warned that “cartoonists and artists should not cross limits.” Trivedi is no Gandhi. But his fight, and our right to free speech, is Gandhian. He may have ridiculed national symbols. Those in power have done far worse.
Guardian News and Media Ltd.
Kavitha Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.