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Letter to the Editor: The Bizarre Justification of Solidarity with Hate Speech

Imagine waking up one morning to chants of “You will be broken into 16 parts,” aimed directly at you, followed by more chants in support of the person who had tried to stab you, branding him as a martyr and seeking vengeance for the legal punishment he/she received. Now imagine these chants are coming from your living room and the people who live in your very house are carrying them out.

This is what the sovereign state of India experienced on Feb. 9, 2016. Home to about a sixth of the world’s population, the world’s largest democracy was insulted, threatened and mocked by students on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, a university named after the nation’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and subsidized almost entirely by the Indian government. Understanding what occurred will prove instrumental in establishing how indiscriminately hate speech was meted out against India on its own soil, while a terrorist was praised as a martyr.

According to the The Huffington Post, based on eyewitness testimony, “ex-members of a student organization DSU, short for 'Democratic Students Union' had called for a cultural meeting of a protest against what they called 'the judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat' and in solidarity with 'the struggle of Kashmiri people for their democratic right to self-determination.’”

Afzal Guru was sentenced to death by the High Court of Delhi for an armed terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on Dec. 13, 2001 at the very epicenter of Indian democracy, that resulted in the death of nine Indians and shocked the entire nation. The Indian constitution has consistently complied with international standards for civil and political rights, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has continued to guarantee all universal, fundamental rights to its citizens.

However, what actually happened at this separatist rally crossed the bounds of the simple right to freedom of expression. Slogans turned from “Hum kya chahte? Azadi!” (What do we want? Freedom!) to “Bharat ki barbaadi tak, jung rahegi, jung rahegi!” (The war will be fought till the destruction of India) and “Har ghar se Afzal niklega!” (An Afzal will emerge from every house). Eventually the students expressed the very direct and unambiguous message of their protest: “Bharat tere tukde honge” (India you will be broken up into pieces).

The Indian constitution clearly articulates the right to organize peaceful protests with the caveat that any incitation of violence against the state will be deemed punishable by law. The intentions behind using slogans were not peaceful. One talks about the destruction of and war on India, another on the emergence of men like Afzal Guru from every house and yet another on the disintegration of India. Guru is a man who has been deemed a terrorist and murder – deemed by the Supreme Court of India as someone who violently attacked the Indian Parliament. In fact, he is one of the counted few to actually be regarded as violent and dangerous enough to avail the death penalty. His being hailed as a martyr and someone who should emerge from every house serves as a verbal incitement of violence. Consequently, many protesters believe that he was framed. However, there lies a distinction between protesting the possibility of an unfair sentence and calling for people like him to rise up.

Furthermore, as prescribed by Section 124(A) of the Indian Penal Code, this sloganeering was an act of sedition. The exception to this law is comments that express dissatisfaction with the government and its methods, made with the intent to make the government or administration consider different methods. Essentially, the law opposes inciting contempt or hatred against the government of India, not dissent or protest, and the JNU students taken into custody did indeed do just that, as videos all over the Internet and students’ accounts verify. Fulfilling their responsibility to the constitution and acting against hate speech does not qualify the Indian government as unethical. There is no misuse of power in this instance. The government did not act as they did because these students were speaking out against the ruling party, but because they were spewing hateful and insulting rhetoric towards India. As hard as it is for proponents of the hate speech to accept this fact, the students were in direct contradiction of the Indian Penal Code, and the government strictly adhered to the Indian Penal Code by taking justifiable, legal and ethical action.

What the government did was neither repressive nor illegal. It was simply an act of preserving law and order in accordance with the Indian Penal Code, which is one of the prime constitutional responsibilities of the Indian Executive.

Now I will turn to the specific case of Kanhaiya Kumar, one of the focal points of this incident as his arrest has been deemed repressive, unfair and in violation of his fundamental rights. It is, in fact, true that no instance of direct incitement has been seen on video from Kumar’s end. However, branding this a deliberately repressive move by the police or the government is both premature and biased. Even if this were a misled arrest simply on the grounds that he served as the president of Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union, a group involved in the demonstration, it doesn’t have to qualify as a deliberate act of repression. In such a case, those who made this error are liable to be held accountable and investigated, but until this arrest is established as unlawful by the judicial system, a lack of evidence behind his arrest does not point to wrongdoing on the part of the government and police, but rather simply a dearth of public evidence.

Even if we are to assume the singular case of Kumar’s arrest as unjustified, there is enough evidence of anti-India slogans, charged with hatred and contempt, being propagated on the JNU campus to justify their arrest. Up until this point in time, the government has neither repressed nor violated the basic rights of the people arrested. It needs to be clear that the law on sedition is a part of our penal code and the executive has sworn by the constitution to implement it. While any decision the judiciary takes is final, accusations of infringement upon freedom of speech and expression carry little weight when the accused parties, except possibly Kumar, directly violated the Indian Penal Code and were arrested on grounds of hate speech against the nation.

There also seems to be an issue with the use of the term “anti-national.” Many parties defending the accused argue that the term is problematic and should not be used by a democratic system. “Anti-nationalism” in this context isn’t simply the expression of discontentment or disagreement with the government or nation itself, as asserted by proponents; it is the act of actively insulting, abusing and inspiring hate against the country. In accordance with Indian law this could even pose violent physical consequences. Punishing against those who act in ways that are deliberately detrimental to their nation is not undemocratic; otherwise, this would render means of maintaining national security, such as armies and borders, useless.

Arnav Joshi is an ORFE major from Dehradun, India. He can be reached at arnavj@princeton.edu

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