14 - 20 March 2002
Issue No.577
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 March 2002 Issue No.577 |
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Justice on unsure foundations
A celebrated author has been jailed in India for criticising a court ruling that would displace thousands of tribal people, writes Sudhanshu Ranjan from New Delhi
On 5 March, Booker-Prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy was taken to jail in New Delhi. Roy spent a day behind bars after the Indian Supreme Court found her guilty of criminal contempt of court. The court's decision has created a storm in India and abroad, with India's rigid legal system increasingly accused of being a judicial autocracy.
Aside from the theatrics of a writer being incarcerated for expressing her views in the world's largest democracy, the ruling has made for a test case in which a citizen's right to freedom of expression is being pitted against the judiciary's powers to haul up those who do not respect it for contempt.
In some circles, the case is being seen as the last nail in the judiciary's coffin. India's judges continue to remain impervious in an open society. Many accuse them of wanting to be seen as a holy cow, when all other institutions are subject to scrutiny.
Roy, for her part, is defiant. She is convinced that she has hit the nail on the head. In a handwritten statement after the court's verdict she said, "I stand by what I said. And I am prepared to suffer the consequences. The dignity of the court will be upheld by the quality of the judgment. The quality of this judgment will be assessed by the people of this country."
After undergoing a one-day prison sentence and paying a fine of 2,000 rupees (about LE200), she repeated, "Anybody who thinks the punishment was a 'symbolic' day in prison and a fine of 2,000 rupees is wrong. The punishment began over a year ago when notice was issued to me to appear personally in court over a ludicrous charge which the Supreme Court itself held should never have been entertained. In India, everybody knows that as far as the legal system is concerned, the process is a part of the punishment."
Roy's story of criticism, contempt and controversy has played itself out over two-and-a-half years. It began in July 1999, when the Supreme Court held a hearing on contempt charges against Roy. The court expressed concern over some portions of her essay on the Narmada Valley, "The Greater Common Good." In the essay, Roy sharply criticised a government plan to build a dam at Narmada and thereby displace thousands of local tribal people in the name of "progress." Without allowing the author to explain her position, the court issued an order warning her against continuing with her "objectionable writings."
The next episode was enacted in December 2000 outside the Supreme Court itself, where Roy was participating in a demonstration against the Supreme Court's controversial judgment allowing the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam. Roy commented that by giving this verdict the Supreme Court had forced people to follow in the footsteps of Veerappan ó the most wanted fugitive in India.
A few days later, five lawyers of the Supreme Court filed charges against her and two others. Roy and her co-activists were accused of contempt for shouting foul slogans against the courts and for physically assaulting and threatening to kill the lawyers. An irrepressible Roy, in her hard-hitting affidavit, expressed shock at the court's "disturbing willingness" which indicated "a disquieting inclination on the part of the court to silence criticism and muzzle dissent, to harass and intimidate those who disagree with it."
On 28 August 2001 the Supreme Court issued a fresh notice to Roy, asking her to show why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against her. Addressing the Court in person on 2 August, Roy had dared the bench to proceed against her if her remarks were contemptuous.
In October, the court dismissed the lawyers' petition but not without issuing a second round of contempt proceedings against Roy. Maintaining a defiant posture, Roy replied by saying that if portions of her affidavit were deemed to be in contempt, "it would have the chilling effect of gagging the press ... (for) if the judiciary removes itself from public scrutiny and accountability, it will mean that another pillar of the Indian democracy will eventually crumble." On 5 March, the process culminated in Roy's imprisonment amidst massive protests by Narmada Bachao Andolan ("Save Narmada Movement") activists.
The judgment said that the court should not take a lenient view in such cases, especially since Roy had refused to show any "repentance or regret or remorse."
"She wanted to become a champion to the cause of the writers by asserting that persons like her can allege anything they desire and accuse any person or institution without any circumspection, limitation or restraint," the judgment read.
Roy's sentence had, in fact, become a public cause even as she was being whisked away to jail. Photocopies of a hurried scribble penned by her had already started being distributed as pamphlets which railed against the arbitrariness and terrorism of the Indian judiciary. "The message is clear," the scrawl said. "Any citizen who dares criticise the court does so at his or her own peril."
Letters of protest from the world over, petitions, sloganeering protesters rallying support ó all of these have increased from a trickle to a flood, making it amply evident that the battle has now spilled over into a public arena far removed from the world of nuanced legalities.
Activist Medha Patkar, squatting outside the Tihar jail with a crowd of fasting Narmada Valley residents, spelt out the issue at stake: "We are here because we feel strongly about the right to protest ... to fight for our rights ... which have been threatened by this ruling." Meanwhile, a poster fluttered in the background with the slogan "Free speeches, Not Frightened Citizens."
Criticism of the legal system is not confined to activists, however. Even legal luminaries themselves are concerned that the Supreme Court should feel threatened by mere criticism. The law on contempt ó the Contempt of Court Act ó dates from British rule, but is now almost a dead letter in Britain itself. Critics claim that the law violates the principle of natural justice, which says that nobody can be a judge in his own case. When it comes to contempt of court, it is judges who decide what is contempt and mete out punishment, thus becoming both prosecutors and judges in their own cases.
Meanwhile, Indian heads are buzzing with questions. Are the press and common citizens not free to comment upon or criticise their judiciary? Moreover, people are asking if the dignity and respect given to their courts depends only on what citizens say about those courts ó or if the court's authority, as the famous English judge Lord Denning once said, "rests on surer foundations."
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