Soumitra
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2011
- Messages
- 8,415
- Reaction score
- -17
- Country
- Location
Centre mulls tougher sedition law
March 2: The Centre is planning to make the sedition law more stringent, Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said today, hinting that a call for azadi (freedom) - made infectious by Kanhaiya Kumar - would be covered by the new definition.
"If raising azadi slogans is not treason, then I don't know what is," Naidu said in an interview to India Today.
The electrifying azadi speech of Kanhaiya, former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president, after his release from jail last March might have been on Naidu's mind. He had been labelled an "anti-national" and arrested on sedition charges.
In an oblique reference to the Supreme Court's ruling that only speech that is followed by immediate and proximate violence can be described as seditious, the minister claimed: "The slogan of azadi is followed by violence."
Kanhaiya, in a speech that captivated the country, had called for azadi - from starvation, from corruption, from the RSS, from caste and from communal thought.
Together with Naidu, his cabinet colleague Arun Jaitley added fuel to the nationalism debate kept alive all this week by junior home minister Kiren Rijiju in the wake of the #FightBackDU campaign launched by Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur against the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Sangh's student wing.
"Nationalism is a bad word only in India," Jaitley said today.
"We must take part in any debate related to disputes over nationalism. The reason is clear. The BJP is committed to its fundamental ideology of love for this country. We will certainly present our side if somebody talks about breaking the country," the finance minister said in Varanasi.
Jaitley claimed "some people" were trying to drag the issue of nationalism into the Uttar Pradesh polls. "We didn't start the debate. Nationalism is a good word. It is only in this country that nationalism is considered bad (by some people). An effort is on to make a controversy out of it," he said.
Gurmehar, a first-year student of Lady Sri Ram College, had launched an "I-am-not-afraid-of-ABVP" campaign after the Sangh student wing allegedly thrashed DU students for inviting JNU scholars Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid to a seminar at Ramjas College.
Junior home minister Kiren Rijiju was among the BJP leaders who ridiculed the 20-year-old whose father, a captain in the Indian Army, had died fighting militants in Kashmir when she was two. A BJP minister from Haryana yesterday said anyone supporting Gurmehar should be thrown out of the country.
But Jaitley today suggested that the BJP's rivals were stoking the controversy. "A false rumour was spread during the Delhi elections (February 2015) that some churches were attacked. Then some (writers) started returning their awards during the Bihar polls (October-November 2015). Obviously, some people are trying the same during the UP elections."
Jaitley said the state's voters had become weary of "hegemony" of some classes and sections patronised by the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.
"The voters have turned rebellious against the two parties' model of politics in Uttar Pradesh. It is clearly based on dividing the society on the basis of castes... to maintain the hegemony of a particular class for their political self-identification."
https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170303/jsp/nation/story_138738.jsp#.WLkEkVV97IU
March 2: The Centre is planning to make the sedition law more stringent, Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said today, hinting that a call for azadi (freedom) - made infectious by Kanhaiya Kumar - would be covered by the new definition.
"If raising azadi slogans is not treason, then I don't know what is," Naidu said in an interview to India Today.
The electrifying azadi speech of Kanhaiya, former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president, after his release from jail last March might have been on Naidu's mind. He had been labelled an "anti-national" and arrested on sedition charges.
In an oblique reference to the Supreme Court's ruling that only speech that is followed by immediate and proximate violence can be described as seditious, the minister claimed: "The slogan of azadi is followed by violence."
Kanhaiya, in a speech that captivated the country, had called for azadi - from starvation, from corruption, from the RSS, from caste and from communal thought.
Together with Naidu, his cabinet colleague Arun Jaitley added fuel to the nationalism debate kept alive all this week by junior home minister Kiren Rijiju in the wake of the #FightBackDU campaign launched by Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur against the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Sangh's student wing.
"Nationalism is a bad word only in India," Jaitley said today.
"We must take part in any debate related to disputes over nationalism. The reason is clear. The BJP is committed to its fundamental ideology of love for this country. We will certainly present our side if somebody talks about breaking the country," the finance minister said in Varanasi.
Jaitley claimed "some people" were trying to drag the issue of nationalism into the Uttar Pradesh polls. "We didn't start the debate. Nationalism is a good word. It is only in this country that nationalism is considered bad (by some people). An effort is on to make a controversy out of it," he said.
Gurmehar, a first-year student of Lady Sri Ram College, had launched an "I-am-not-afraid-of-ABVP" campaign after the Sangh student wing allegedly thrashed DU students for inviting JNU scholars Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid to a seminar at Ramjas College.
Junior home minister Kiren Rijiju was among the BJP leaders who ridiculed the 20-year-old whose father, a captain in the Indian Army, had died fighting militants in Kashmir when she was two. A BJP minister from Haryana yesterday said anyone supporting Gurmehar should be thrown out of the country.
But Jaitley today suggested that the BJP's rivals were stoking the controversy. "A false rumour was spread during the Delhi elections (February 2015) that some churches were attacked. Then some (writers) started returning their awards during the Bihar polls (October-November 2015). Obviously, some people are trying the same during the UP elections."
Jaitley said the state's voters had become weary of "hegemony" of some classes and sections patronised by the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.
"The voters have turned rebellious against the two parties' model of politics in Uttar Pradesh. It is clearly based on dividing the society on the basis of castes... to maintain the hegemony of a particular class for their political self-identification."
https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170303/jsp/nation/story_138738.jsp#.WLkEkVV97IU
