Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and his newly elected federal alliance have been accused by critics of using “fascist” tactics. This follows their move to prosecute acclaimed Booker Prize-winning author, Arundhati Roy, for comments made about the disputed region of Kashmir more than a decade ago. Critics include opposition politicians and activists who believe that Modi’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is stifling disagreement against their newly formed government.
Last week, permission was given, by Delhi’s lieutenant governor V K Saxena, who is closely associated with the BJP, to prosecute both Roy (62), and ex-Kashmir University professor Sheikh Showkat Hussain. This followed a claim made at a human rights conference in 2010 that the territory of Kashmir was never a vital component of India. It’s a comment that highlights a 70-year disagreement between India and Pakistan over landownership, which has incited three wars and remains a sensitive issue for both.
Roy, who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel The God of Small Things, along with Hussain and two others, was previously charged with sedition for promoting Kashmir’s disconnection from India. Their prosecution was overseen by the then federal coalition government led by the Congress Party. The sedition case was later dismissed by the supreme court due to the outdated law under which they were charged, but it remained in India’s famously slow-moving legal system. Nevertheless, Modi’s administration has recently revived the case, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Opposition parties and political commentators report that Modi, since the BJP gained power in 2014, has commonly employed the act to suppress his opposers, including journalists, rights campaigners, authors, lawyers, cartoonists, academics, as well as members of the public. Mauha Mitra, a newly appointed opposition MP from the state of Bengal, criticised the government’s actions saying, “If by prosecuting Arundhati Roy under UAPA, the BJP is trying to prove they’re back, they are not. This kind of fascism is exactly what Indians have voted against.”
In the UK dialect, Ms. Mitra pointed out BJP’s failure to obtain a majority in the recent elections within the 545-member parliament, in spite of Mr. Modi’s confident assertions otherwise. BK Hariprasad, Congress Party leader, publicly expressed on platform X his disapproval of Roy’s arrest, viewing it as an attack on free speech. He further emphasises that such tactics were indicative of fascism, which is characterised by suppressing opposition, especially from thinkers and authors. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) echoed these sentiments, criticising the push to pursue legal action against Roy for being an irrational measure, unless viewed through a fascist lens. Roy, however, has chosen to remain silent on the issue.