Rally Against UAPA

Gilbert Sebastian

Amassive protest rally against Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 2008 was organised by Popular Front of India (PFI), a radical Muslim organisation at Putharikandam maithani in Thiruva-nanthapuram in the evening of 30 May, 2013. At least 50,000 men (women being hardly in sight in this evening rally) participated. The rally was the culmination of a 22-day state-wide campaign against UAPA.

The speakers at the meet were unanimous in asserting that it is an anti-people State that requires draconian legislations and that the Act is being used against the most oppressed sections of people, namely, Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis. Sainaba, the National Vice-President of National Women's Front elegantly articulated these opinions.

As Karamana Ashraf Moulavi, State President of PFI says, this Act enacted in the name of preventing terrorism confines these 'backward' sections of people in a shadow of suspicion and thwarts their entry into the mainstream of Indian society and their entry into political power. UAPA, 1967 was amended into a much more draconian Act following the Mumbai attack in 2008. Examining the recent history of such draconian Acts, he says that almost all of the 75,500 persons arrested under TADA in India were Muslims or other religious minorities. Out of this total, 74,889 persons were innocent. Out of the 280 persons arrested under POTA in the country, 279 persons were Muslims. These figures make it clear whom these draconian legislations are intended to target. B R P Bhaskar pointed out that only around 1.5 percent of the arrested persons under TADA were convicted. Charges under POTA were slapped against 1,031 persons but only 13 of them were convicted, he said. Given the nature of all the cases under UAPA in Kerala, charge-sheets under ordinary law would have been sufficient. But the police chose the easy route so as to deny bail to the accused and evade the responsibility of producing evidence and prove the case in a court of law. Both B R P Bhaskar and Abdul Hameed, State Vice President of PFI pointed out that out of the 100 persons arrested under UAPA in Kerala, 92 were Muslims. The rest were alleged Naxalites/Maoists.

Prof Jagmohan Singh of the Radical Democratic Front, Punjab, a radical left organisation, spoke of the history of draconian Acts. The police firing on the protest meet at Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar against the draconian Acts enacted by the colonial government had taken a toll of around 175 lives in 1919. P A Pouran, state president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties reminded the audience about the days of the declaration of the emergency during 1975-77.

K M Ashraf, the State President of the Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI) illustrated the lie on State terror by narrating a story. Someone was bitten by a dog and lodged a complaint to the police. The police made the sketch of a terrific-looking dog but noted in the enquiry report that the dog had no teeth!

Maulana Muhammed Issah M of the Imam Council expressed anguish at the fact that the Muslim League is in power in the state, having no less than 5 ministers and yet vibrant young men of his localities are arrested under UAPA and jailed in states like Karnataka and Gujarat.

E Aboobaker, the former national secretary of All India Milli Council expressed deep apprehension about the larger game-plan behind the newly forged Hindu unity by NSS and SNDP.

S A R Geelani of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners opined that draconian laws are introduced by the ruling classes to terrorise people who resist oppression.

Other speakers at the meet included: Prof Nagargiri Ramesh; O M A Salaam, Popular Front national general secretary; A Saeed, SDPI national president; Adv S Prahladan, BSP president; A Pookunhu, Jamaat Council secretary; and K Saadat, Popular Front general secretary. A gathering of the families of the persons arrested was also held before the rally.

The mainstream media did not want the massive mobilisation against UAPA to become a major news. News reports on the rally, relegated to the inside pages in the Hindu and Mathrubhoomi (Malayalam) newspapers focused on E Aboobaker's apprehensions about SNDP-NSS unity and the celebrity-speak of SAR Geelani (who was earlier acquitted in the parliament attack case and himself withstood an attack from gunmen subsequently) rather than on the massive rally opposing the draconian Act.

It is but natural that such a protest against UAPA comes up from among the Muslim community since they have been the worst victims of this Act in Kerala. But are such Islamist outfit capable of achieving a much-needed democratisation within Muslim society itself - particularly with respect to the rights of women? (The void was clear at the rally with the other half of humanity largely missing at the rally!) The shameful and atrocious role of Jamaat-e-Islami during the 1971 war in Bangladesh is there before all to learn from. In any case, the cause against draconian legislations needs to be supported whole-heartedly.

What disturbed this writer was the conspicuous lack of presence of 'the left' in this human rights discourse opposing draconian laws, except for the marginal presence of the radical left, as represented by Prof Jagmohan Singh from Punjab (Vara Vara Rao dropped out at the eleventh hour) and those in the human rights movement like S A R Geelani from Kashmir/Delhi and P A Pouran from Kerala. The CPI and the CPI-M in the state have hardly spoken up against UAPA. Land struggle was another traditional agenda of 'the left' in the state. But today, demanding land, deprived sections in Kerala society like Adivasis and Dalits have also mobilised themselves around their ethnic identities. Ethnic identity-based movements are appropriating the traditional agenda of the left: land struggles, human rights and anti-imperialism; probably, secularism will also follow suit in the days to come.

How does one understand and classify ethnic identity-based social/political movements? The dominant western framework of individual rights alone is clearly insufficient to understand such assertions of collective rights. T K Oommen (T K Oommen (ed.) 2010: Social Movements vol. I: Issues of Identity, OUP, New Delhi, p. 42), draws a crucial distinction between "hegemonic" and "emancipatory" identitarian movements. Anchoring this distinction in the contemporary rights discourse, it might be better to designate them as "privileges-based" and "rights-based" identitarian movements, respectively. The former kind of movements, such as those of the Sangh parivar are disempowering and the latter kind, such as the rights-based regional, linguistic, oppressed caste and Adivasi/tribal movements are empowering.

Granting that rights-based struggles grounded on ethnic identity (such as the mass human rights movement led by Popular Front) do have their democratic content, a caveat should be added that without the necessary sanitisation of popular consciousness, they run the risk of turning chauvinistic over time. Only through the conscious and coordinated intervention of democratic forces could these ethnic identity-based, partial struggles be oriented towards long-term theory and practice for democratic transformation.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 52, Jul 7- 13, 2013

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