[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Arundhati Roy sent to prison today

[Dan Sheetz <dan@goodfoodpro.com>]

Shuddhabrata,

Can we see the text of the affidavit?  Is it publicly available?  This
maneuver by the Indian Supreme Court seems highly suspect, but it would help
if we could read what Roy wrote that sparked elicited such a strong
reaction.

Thanks,
Dan Sheetz


> From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha@sarai.net>
> Reply-To: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha@sarai.net>
> Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 16:25:48 +0530
> To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
> Subject: <nettime> Arundhati Roy sent to prison today
> 
> Dear All,
> 
> (apologies for cross posting to those on both Nettime and the Reader List)
> 
> Contempt and Magnanimity - Preliminary Observations on the Conviction of
> Arundhati Roy
> 
> This morning the Supreme Court of India sentanced Arundhati Roy to symbolic
> imprisonment for one day and also asked her to pay a fine, for the offense of
> criminal contempt of the Supreme Court of India.
> 
> While delivering the judgement, the bench, comrising of Justice G B Pattanaik
> and Justice R P Sethi said "Arundhati Roy is found to have committed criminal
> contempt of court by scandalising and lowering its dignity through her
> statements made in her affidavit"
> 
> Justice Sethi, writing the judgement for the Bench, said "the court is
> magnanimous and hoped that better sense would prevail on Roy to serve the
> cause of art and literatrue, from which path she has wavered by making these
> statements against the dignity of the court"
> 
> Perhaps the path of art and literature that Justice Sethi recommends is one
> that leads to stage managed literary festivals in medieval fortresses in
> which geriatric mediocrities hang out their pet Nobel peeves to dry. Truly a
> case of the "Writers must write, but they must write this much and no more"
> syndrome, that afflicts, the state, a glassy eyed media circus, and the
> chattering classes who want their books signed by writers and want them to
> toe the line while they sign . The Indian state is a past master at
> masquerading as a cultural octopus, simultaneously cajoling, seducing and
> pampering writers and cultural practitioners with many tentacles even as it
> imprisons others with one of its arms - an overblown and arrogant judicial
> apparatus.
> 
> Arundhati Roy was whisked straight from the court to the womens prison at
> Tihar Central Jail, Delhi, without an opportunity to meet the press or
> members of the public, activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and others who
> had assembled outside the court premises. I was present in the court and saw
> a cordon of police constables and officers take Arundhati down the corridors
> and steps of the court and into the waiting police vehicle.
> 
> Incidentally, this is the first and only hearing of the case in which members
> of the public, and friends and well wishers of Arundhati Roy have been
> permitted to attend. Uptil now, the proceedings, for want of a better word,
> have been virtually "in camera".
> 
> In a statement read out on Arundhati Roy's behalf by Prashant Bhushan,
> advocate of the Supreme Court, she (Roy) asserted that she "continued to
> stand by what she had said earlier in her affidavit, and that the dignity of
> the court lay in the quality of the judgements that it delivered."
> 
> This verdict represents an important setback for free speech in India. While
> it is debatable as to whether the 'magnanimity' of the court in delivering a
> 'symbolic' judgement of one days imprisonment, 'because she is a woman' is
> anything short of  plainly patronising, the verdict, by the severity with
> which it characterizes the task of drawing connections between several
> decisions of the supreme court (which is what Roy had done in her affidavit)
> as a criminal offense, underscores that we are not living in a free society.
> 
> What is the path of art and literature from which the court, the highest
> judicial authority in India, asks Roy not to waver from? The verdict is not a
> warning to Roy alone. In effect it represents a clear signal to all those who
> write, report, create works with images, sounds, data and text, that some
> things will not be tolerated in India. Clearly, drawing attention to the
> class interests represented by the state and its institutions, such as the
> judiciary is a criminal offense. In delivering this verdict, the court has
> only exposed the specific class character of the institutions of governance
> and the judiciary. This clarifies a great deal of issues. It will no longer
> do to suffer under the illusion that there is such a thing as natural,
> objective justice that prevails in this Republic, and those who actively
> engage in struggles for justice must now re-consider the paths that they must
> take. Some of these paths will clearly have to stray from the straight and
> narrow of constitutional propriety and the miasma of republican
> jurisprudence. If anyone should choose not to see the courts  any longer as
> the sources of remedy in instances of gross injustice, they will be justified
> in their convictions. The whole language of activism is open to
> re-negotiation and creative renewal.
> 
> However, there are definitely unfortunate immediate aspects to the judgement
> and its consequences. Tomorrow, if a person, who is not as well known as
> Arundhati Roy is critical of the complete lack of accountability of the
> Supreme Court, they had better be prepared for half a year in prison.
> Needless to say this path is one down which one walks at the risk of imposing
> the severest form of self censorship. It is a path that represents the
> shortest distance between repression and silence, sanctified by the authority
> of the supreme court. Roy had done what writers should do more often in any
> society, which is to point out the equations that underwrite the arithmetic
> of power and powerlessenes, which determine how many millions can be
> displaced at the whim of the state and corporate interests, and who can
> profit from their displacement, and also who can say what, to whom, and when
> abotu the consequences of this displacement. If the supreme court in its
> wisdom chooses to attend to the criminalisation of free speech, even as it
> delivers judgements that wreak havoc and bring violence to the lives of
> millions of ordinary people in this country, then clearly we must understand
> that the court and the custodians of law and order have a great deal to fear
> from free speech in India. It requires nothing other than common sense, and
> the ability to say that "two plus two make four" to see that there is a
> pattern in the judgements. That there is a relationship between the muzzling
> of free speech, and the sanctioning of the raising of the height of the
> narmada dam. The enemies of free speech are clearly those who have a great
> deal to profit from the displacement of human beings. This is all that
> Arundhati Roy has done.
> 
> 
> Interestingly, the "truth" of a statement made by any person in a case of
> criminal contempt of court is not an 'adequate defence' in law. Which means,
> that it matters little as to whether or not it can be demonstrated that the
> 'motives' which Roy has imputed against the court can stand the test of
> truth. They are criminal, even if, and perhaps, especially if, they are true.
> 
> In the days to come, as conflicts sharpen, as the nakedness of the violence
> of the powerful becomes all the more transparent, there will be more
> verdicts, more real and symbolic punishments, and more opportunities for the
> powerful to prove how magnanimous they are in their punitive actions.
> 
> Clearly there needs to be a public campaign to expose all the dangers to free
> speech in India. We could do, for starters with a campaign to change the
> repressive measures of the law pertaining to criminal contempt. We could also
> do with a vigourous public and open debate about censorship, lack of
> transparency, free speech and the politics of information and expression.
> The veridct on Arundhati Roy must not be seen in isolation from a general
> climate of increased repression, of stringent laws like the IT act and the
> Convergence Bill, and the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, all of which
> mandate a situation of 'undeclared' emergency and pervasive censorship by a
> paranoid state that seems to have a great deal to fear from a free and open
> cultural climate in India.
> 
> This morning, standing in the corridors of the Supreme Court, waiting for Roy
> to come out of the registrars office, after she had been sentanced, I could
> find nothing else but this contempt when I looked for a reasonable, human
> response to this petty courtroom drama, this little vendetta of censorship
> over free speech, that was played out in the chambers of the highest courts
> of the land.
> 
> I realised that contempt is the only reasonable response one can make to
> the magnanimity of power.
> 
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