Several teachers and union leaders claimed at a press conference in India’s capital New Delhi Tuesday, May 20, that the ultra-right-wing government in India is trying to silence all kinds of dissent in the country by invoking a false sense of patriotism and national pride.
The press conference was organized to register a united protest against the arrest of Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a professor at Ashoka University in Delhi, by the security forces on Sunday.
Mahmudabad was arrested after complaints were filed by two leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleging that some of his social media posts, related to Operation Sindoor, were seditious and amounted to hate mongering.
Mahmudabad was later charged with endangering India’s sovereignty and spreading hatred among communities based on race, religion, and language. He was sentenced to 14 days of judicial custody by a local court on Monday but India’s Supreme Court ordered his release on bail on Wednesday.
In the wake of Operation Sindoor
Operation Sindoor was the military strike which India launched against neighboring Pakistan on May 7 after accusing it of being involved in the April 22 attacks in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, in which 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed by armed men.
Pakistan retaliated to India’s strikes, leading to a war-like situation in the region between the two nuclear powers that lasted for days. A ceasefire was finally reached on May 10.
The arrest of Mahmudabad provoked strong reactions from India’s political opposition and rights groups. All major opposition parties, including the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), condemned the arrest and demanded his immediate release.
The opposition has claimed that the Indian state used the tensions with its neighbor to silence critics and launch attacks on them. Those under scrutiny in this crackdown were accused of anti-national activities.
The Indian government ordered X to shut down around 8,000 accounts in India for their critical stance on Operation Sindoor. The actions of the Indian government affected well-known media organizations such as Maktoob Media, the Wire, and 4 PM among others.
Several cases of sedition were filed against social media influencers and activists for questioning the intent and objectives behind the war-like situation in the country and demanding accountability from the government.
Attempts to silence dissent
In the press conference on Tuesday, various academics, scholars, and union leaders repeated the calls for accountability from the country’s law enforcement agencies, claiming they have been acting in a biased and unprofessional manner and attacking the basic rights of the citizens.
The speakers also claimed that the arrest of Mahmudabad was a direct attack on Indian democracy and a part of larger attempts by the Narendra Modi-led government to impose “censorship.”
Professor Surajit Mazumdar, economist and president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association (JNUTA), condemned Mahmudabad’s arrest and asserted that nothing he said was illegal. He described his arrest as an infringement of his rights of free speech.
However, “in this infringement of the rights of an individual, the rights of all other citizens of this country are infringed [upon],” professor Mazumdar claimed. The threat of arrest and persecution prevents others from exercising their own rights and raising their voices for justice, apart from shutting down all rational discussion in society, he underlined.
Students of the Ashoka University read a letter in support of Mahmudabad, extending their solidarity with him and demanding all cases against him be dropped immediately.
Several others have pointed out that Mahmudabad’s statements were “deliberately misread” by the ruling party to punish him for being vocal and make an example of him to intimidate other Muslims.
In the last decade of BJP-rule of the central government, the country’s Muslim minority has been increasingly targeted. The last ten years have seen increased reports of escalating violence against Muslims accompanied by state apathy and unwillingness to take the necessary measures to protect the besieged group. The war frenzy following Pahalgam attacks saw an even greater intensification of attacks on Muslims in India, accusing them of being disloyal and unpatriotic.
Mazumdar expressed in the press conference that he had hoped that the Supreme Court would see the threats to basic rights posed by such blatant acts of state oppression and take corrective action, claiming that “if the judiciary fails to check such blatant misuse of authority” then it becomes part of the problem.
Wednesday’s interim verdict by the Supreme Court granting bail to Mahmudabad was widely celebrated, but it also raised questions. The court not only refused to quash the flimsy “investigation” against Mahmudabad, but it also ordered him to cooperate with a three-member special investigative team (SIT) which will be constituted to investigate allegations against him. Judges also made remarks validating the accusations against Mahmudabad, which activists pointed out were unnecessary and effectively prevented him from speaking publicly about Operation Sindoor.
