From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 44, Dated November 06, 2010
As a section of the political class and the media bays for her blood, author Arundhati Roy tells SHOMA CHAUDHURY why her opinions do not amount to sedition
The State has been contemplating charges of sedition against you for your speeches in Delhi and Kashmir. How do you understand sedition? Did you see yourself as being seditious? What was your intention in speaking from those two platforms in Delhi and Srinagar under the rubric - Azadi: The only way.
Sedition is an archaic, obsolete idea revived for us by Times Now, a channel that seems to have hysterically dedicated itself to hunting me down and putting me in the way of mob anger. Who am I anyway? Small fry for a whole TV channel. It's not hard to get a writer lynched in this climate, and that's what it seems to want to do. It is literally stalking me. I almost sense psychosis here. If I was the Government of India I would take a step back from the chess board of this recent morass and ask how a TV channel managed to whip up this frenzy using moth-eaten, discredited old ideas, and goad everybody into a blind alley of international embarrassment. All this has gone a long way towards internationalising the 'Kashmir issue', something the Indian government was trying to avoid.
One of the reasons it happened was because the BJP desperately needed to divert attention from the chargesheeting of Indresh Kumar, a key RSS leader in the Ajmer blast. This was a perfect opportunity, the media, forever in search of sensation, led by Times Now, obliged. It never occurred to me that I was being seditious. I had agreed to speak at the seminar in Delhi way before it was titled "Azadi: The only way". The title was provocative, I guess, to people who are longing to be provoked. I don't think it is such a big deal frankly, given what has been going on in Kashmir for more than half a century.
The Srinagar seminar was called 'Whither Kashmir? Enslavement or Freedom?' It was really meant for young Kashmiris to deepen the debate on what they meant by and what they wanted from azadi.
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We are deeply concerned at the recent media reports of possible cases of 'sedition' to be levelled against some of the speakers at the public convention on Kashmir held in New Delhi on 21 October 2010 titled "Azadi: The Only Way" organized by the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners(CRPP) with sections of political forces fomenting jingoistic feelings. We are appalled to find how impatient sections of the Indian society have become, and how attempts are consistently being made to silence voices of dissent by the Indian government by branding such voice crying for justice as 'seditious'-a term the new Indian state borrowed from the days of the British raj.
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Condemn strongly the move to put Arundhati Roy and
Syed Ali Shah Geelani under charges of sedition!
Ever since the historic convention in Delhi titled "Azadi: The Only Way" organised by the CRPP, the media is abuzz with reports of possible cases of 'sedition' against some of the main speakers in the convention. The names that are being cited keeps changing with the imagination of the concerned media houses. The hype has become so high that now rather than discussing the serious issues pertaining to the political aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir that was deliberated by one and all in the convention the issue has got subverted into a conflated, convenient binary of that what is euphemistically called as 'seditious' or 'non-seditious'.
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by Shuddhabrata Sengupta :: Friday, October 22, 2010
Dear Friends,
I was present and speaking a few hours ago at a meeting titled 'Azadi: The Only Way' on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, organized by the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners at the Little Theatre Group in Delhi yesterday (21st October). I was not present from the beginning of the meeting as I was traveling from another city, but can vouch for what occurred from around 4:30 pm till the time that the meeting wound up, well after 8:00 pm in the evening.
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WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE AND ROLE OF DEMOCRATIC FORCES
DEMOCRATIC FRONT AGAINST OPERATION GREEN HUNT, PUNJAB HOLDS A MASSIVE CONVENTION AT JALANDHAR!
BUILD A BROAD SPECTRUM OF RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS!
OPPOSE NEO-LIBERAL POLICIES AND SUPPRESSION OF PEOPLES' MOVEMENTS THROUGH ARMED FORCES!
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Dear Friends,
This is to announce about a new book - Maoists in India Writings & Interviews by Azad published by Friends of Azad. Please circulate this mail. Here are the preface and Table of contents to generate your interest. The cover picture of the book is attached. The book is priced Rs 100 in India and $ 6 outside India. The books can be had from Varavara Rao, 203, Lakshmi Apartments, Malakpet X Roads, Hyderabad, India 500036.
With regards
Friends of Azad.
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Development -- Maladies and Remedies National Seminar
18 and 19 October 2010 - 11 AM 6 PM
Auditorium, India International Centre (IIC)
40, Lodhi Estate, Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi - 110003
On 18 October, and;
Speakers Hall, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi
On 19 October 2010
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Forum Against War on People, Delhi, Press Statement
Raising Voice Against Government's War (Operation Green Hunt) on Adivasis is a Democratic Right of the People
Gurmeet Singh Juj, a Punjabi writer and cultural activist of All India League for Revolutionary Culture, AILRC and a State Committee member of 'Democratic Front Against Operation Green Hunt, Punjab', and three other persons Harbans Singh, Satish and Raju (all are progressive social activists) were taken into police custody in Ferozepur on 11.10.2010. The police did not inform anyone, about the case or FIR under which they has been arrested or where they have been kept during detention.
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Faking An Encounter: Killing the Peace Process
Report of the All India Fact Finding Team on the Killing of Azad and H. C Pandey
CDRO put together a team of concerned citizens consisting of Prof. Emeritus Amit Bahaduri, J.N.U., Delhi, Senior Counsel of Supreme Court Mr. Prashant Bhushan, Kavita Srivatsava, Human Rights worker from Rajasthan, Gautam Navlakha writer & from PUDR, Delhi, Kranthi Chaitanya, Advocate and General Secretary of APCLC, D. Suresh Kumar, Advocate, APCLC, Ch. Sudhakar Rao, President of OPDR, D. Venkateswarlu, OPDR.
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September 28, 2010
We are extremely pleased to inform you that we had organized a very successful Independence People's Tribunal on Operation Green Hunt in Ranchi on 25th and 26th of September, 2010 under the banner of the Jharkhand Alternative Development Forum with the support of Operation Green Hunt Virodhi Nagrik Manch, Jharkhand Indigenous People's Forum, Jharkhand Initiatives Desk, Jharkhand Jungle Bachao Andolan, Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee and many other groups.
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