A Butterfly Flapped Its Wing In Dantewada Causing an Earthquake
By Bobby Kunhu
12 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org
It is rather ironical that on the same day that my new column for the Malayalam newspaper Thejas titled "We, the People", was published that I stumbled upon the material for the next piece - material that clearly demonstrates how the entire system functions towards subverting the mandate of the Constitution.
At around 8 AM on 26th January, just outside the Gandhi Stadium in Salem, Tamil Nadu, minutes before the annual Republic Day Parade, there was a small scuffle between the Police stationed there and a lonely cyclist, following which the cyclist was arrested. The arrested cyclist Piyush Sethia, incensed by the State-sponsored extra-judicial terror that he had observed in Dantewada was planning to distribute handbills to the audience, before embarking on an awareness building cycle yatra to Chennai via Sivagangai - the constituency of the Union Home Minister, P. Chidambaram. The demands in the handbills that were to be distributed pointed out the irony in celebrating the republic day while Constitutional rights was being denied to a vast majority of the Indian population. It pinned the responsibility of the crisis in the tribal regions squarely on P. Chidambaram, demanded justice and exhorted people to speak out.
Cutting a long story short, Piyush was arrested for a volley of offences including Sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. Later in the day, chatting up the SHO of the Hasthampatti Police Station, where Piyush was initially held in custody, and as he tried to convince me that he had recieved his orders from the District Administration (as against the Police administration) while betraying his lack of knowledge of Section 124A, the question that popped into my head was how a butterfly that flapped its wing in Dantewada caused this minor tremor in Salem or was the flapping of the wing and the occurrence of the tremor merely coincidental?
I will try to answer the above rhetorical question through a prism of events surrounding Piyush's arrest and subsequent bail from the Madras High Court. I suppose one should start with Sedition, the most serious of charges levelled against Piyush. S. 124A has visited many notables, the most prominent of them being M. K. Gandhi. Other interesting trivia about this section includes the fact that the only post-constitutional amendment to this section was to replace the punishment clause from "transportation for life" to "life imprisonment". What is also interesting is the first few challenges to this provision was on grounds of its constitutionality! Being very aware of its history of use under the colonial regime, a Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court in Kedar Nath vs. State of Bihar, while finally settling the issue in favour of the impugned provision cautioned that;
"Keeping in mind the reasons for the introduction of s. 124A and the history of sedition the section must be so construed as to limit its application to acts involving intention or tendency to create disorder, or disturbance of law and order; or incitement to violence." clearly excluding criticism(s) of the government.
But it might be useful to briefly look at the judicial history that led to this decision. As early as 1950, Justice Patanjali Sastri in Romesh Thappar vs. State of Madras held that;
"Deletion of the word 'sedition' from the draft Article 13(2), therefore, shows that criticism of Government exciting disaffection or bad feelings towards it is not to be regarded as a justifying ground for restricting the freedom of expression and of the press, unless it is such as to undermine the security of or tend to overthrow the State" . In 1951, prior to the first amendment to the Constitution, the then East Punjab High Court struck down 124A as void. It was the first amendment that paved the way for the final settling of the question of sedition in Kedar Nath's case.
Notwithstanding the stringency around Section 124A evolved by the judiciary, various governments still find it convenient to use this provision arbitrarily to quell dissent, of course, as a more lenient option to draconian legislations ranging from the National Security Act to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. But that still leaves us with the question, why the Tamil Nadu government felt so affronted by a critique of the policies in Chattisgarh. The answer perhaps lies in Piyush's activism itself. Over a decade, he has managed to build support across class and caste for his environmental activism - including the usually reticent middle class. With this support base, he has managed to thwart multiple attempts with varying levels of success land grabbing attempts in and around Salem district. May be it is not a coincidence that some of the affected parties are corporations that have land or mining interests in Chatitisgarh as well, with strong local political patronage. Maybe the same butterflies flap their wings in Dantewada and Salem.
To end with an eerie quote from more than 50 years back attributed to Yunus Soren against the then Bihar State (he was finally acquitted in Debi Soren and Ors Vs. The State);
"The Bihar Government is placing bars on our way for achieving Jharkhand in various ways, by instituting false cases. Several Adivasis were killed due to Government firing at Kharsawan and other places and dead bodies were carried away in trucks like fuel. We are not afraid of such firing.... Bihar Government is taking undue advantage because we are all poor. The Bihar Government is oppressing us in various ways."
In a different place and different context, regardless of the name of the state and the purpose aspired for, this statement holds good even today. May be we should draw hope from the fact that like Yunus Soren's dream of Jharkhand having been realised - the aspirations of millions of Indians for a life with dignity also would be at some point in future.
Post-script: I would like to use this space to salute the contribution of Justice A.P Shah, who retired as the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. He is easily one of the finest judges that the Indian higher judiciary has seen in its history and many of us are saddened that his prospects of making it to the Supreme Court was lost in the non-transparency in the appointment of judges to the higher judiciary
Post-post-script: In the context of the likelihood of renewed violence in Dantewada between the State and the Maoists - with the Adivasis literally being denied any say in their own affairs (read it as lives including whether either the State or the Maoists have been consulting them on whether their lives need to be laid down for the larger politics of the State or Humankind) I thought it important to re-publish this piece in English
