A Rock and A Hard Place

Dr N.C. Asthana

On August 19, a sedition case was registered by UP police against a member of Parliament Shafiqur Rahman Barq and two others. The FIR alleged that Barq had compared the Taliban to India’s freedom fighters even as Taliban has been declared a terrorist organisation by the government of India.

Illegality and Hypocrisy Evident in the Case

In the backdrop of a catena of judgments since the Constitution Bench judgment in the cases of Kedar Nath Singh (1962) until Common Cause (2016) that define what does and does not constitute sedition, the action of the UP police is plainly absurd. In fact, in several cases like Raneef (2011); Arup Bhuyan (2011); Sri Indra Das (2011); Ms Jyoti Babasaheb Chorge (2012) and Shyam Balakrishnan (2015), it has been held that even membership of a banned organisation will not incriminate a person unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence, not to speak of applauding those organisations.

On August 19, the foreign minister sidestepped a direct comment on whether or not India was in touch with the Taliban. However, earlier in June, media houses like India Today and Hindustan Times had reported of Indian officials having opened channels of communication with Taliban factions and leaders, including Mullah Baradar. Radha Kumar, the former director general of the Delhi Policy Group, also spoke of secret talks. Foreign media like Al Jazeera had also been reporting about the backchannel. In fact, Al Jazeera has reported that the Indian embassy staff could be evacuated from Afghanistan only after they requested Taliban and they agreed to escort them to the airport. These reports were neither contradicted by the government nor were the Indian media houses booked for spreading fake news.

Foreign minister S. Jaishankar after briefing the  opposition parties on Afghanistan

Thus, we have a paradoxical situation—an ecosystem where expressing any view not in sync with the populist, majoritarian view has been made into a crime by a police eager to please the former. Ghazala Wahab, editor of FORCE,