She had extensively written about illegal mining in Dastak, her fiery journal. Result – sedition charges and jail. Right now on bail, Seema Azad speaks to Ashtadhyayi on her experience in jail, sedition laws and more.
What is the present status of your case?
The case is still in the High Court. Now I am on bail. The hearing hasn’t begun yet. It will take years. Till then, I am imprisoned for life outside bars.
Please tell us about the days you spent in jail, your experience with the police and intelligence of this country?
It was a terrible experience and it’s very difficult for me to describe it all in brief. I can pen down an entire book on this. Still, if I were to describe it briefly, I would say that I can very well understand how the police and intelligence function in this country. In such cases, the police officers generally have to follow orders from the top, and the top is under the government. And in following these orders, they do not take care of the available proofs and evidences and instead manipulate them. Like in my case, they found Veer Bharat Talwar’s Naksalbaari ke Daur Mein, which I had purchased from the book fair, and branded it as Maoist literature; and asofoetida pills as explosives. In these matters, they are absolutely illiterate and the ones at the top are extremely clever. Same is the situation with the intelligence. They spread so many rumours against me among the intellectuals. As they saw that many people came to see me whenever I was produced in court, they called a few of them and told them that my case was very intricate and complicated, also that they found truckloads of maoist literature on me. They also told them that my friends were being listed and arrests would soon happen. During hearing, to instill fear, the ATS officers used to click pictures of the people who came to meet me. People got scared and stopped visiting me. This is how they work.
The jail too has a world of its own, where you can witness the cruelest form of corruption. High profile criminals bribe the authorities and get the best facelities. They can roam around, eat whatever they wish to, and meet whoever they want to. In fact they pick new recruits here. A large chunk of the inmates are Dalits and Muslims because they come from the poorest strata. Neither can they bribe the police nor the lawyers. So they have to spend years locked up for petty crimes. Sometimes they are charged with graver offences for failing to bribe the police. There are many ways to extract money from the inmates. Suppose one inmate wants to be close to people from his village, the police might charge him a thousand rupees. Also the practice of giving on the basis of caste is still prevalent. Use of drugs, gutkha and alcohol is rampant, all in collusion with the jail authorities.
What about gender and child rights situation inside the jail?
Just as in society, the female wards in jail too are subjected to discrimination. All the correctional and employment programmes, in jails, never reach the female wards. The women also don’t speak up here.Speaking to external authorities doesn’t help because once they leave; you are abused and even beaten up at times for speaking the truth. Beatings and extortion are quite common. So women there keep quiet but I always protested whenever authorities were around, thanks to which I started getting 2 newspapers each day. Encouraged, I complained about lack of enough toilets and water. But soon I realized, the authorities just wrote orders, drank tea and left. However, due to my constant protests, the toilets were cleaned once in a while. If you just compare the male and female jails, you will see how clean the male wards are, with coats of paint on the wall, unlike the female jails. Many of these women are convicted under the NDPS Act and they do not even know that selling drugs is illegal. They needed work, so did this. Yet, no distinction is made between them and hardened criminals. They are made to languish in jails for 10 years or more. Most of these inmates are illiterates. Even if a teacher is there, the teaching is such that the inmates think learning is also a part of their punishment. In any case, under such strenuous circumstances, it is difficult to study.
Unlike some other jails which teach stitching and other jobs, the Naini Central Jail has no employment opportunities. With 100 female inmates, there isn’t a single female doctor! Inspite of communicating this to the authorities, I have not been able to do anything about this.
I have also realized during my incarceration that our dowry laws need reforms. They are destroying many families.Children have to suffer along with the women. In fact, it’s worse for them. They are not allowed to experience the world and dream, which is more important than formal education. This was shocking for me. They are being limited to a very small world. Once I encouraged them to speak to the authorities for toys. The toys did arrive a few months later but their quality was so bad that they soon broke.
How do you see the sedition laws in India?
The sedition law is one of the worst laws in this country. The presence of such a law in any democracy is a question on the democracy itself because it is fundamentally against freedom of expression. This law should be axed. Many people talk of changes in this law, their argument is that, this law is being misused. But you will be aware that the Supreme Court has already brought some changes, yet governments use it against opposing voices, who are actually patriots in the real sense. Therefore, this law should be deleted. If this law exists in any form, governments will keep misusing it.
What you think about the Maoist movement in India, and this entire issue of internal security? Do you agree and support their ideology? Do you see any problems in the present Maoist movement in India?
In whichever form the Maoist movement exists in India, it is not the biggest internal threat to this country. In fact, the government terms it so to distract people’s attention from other bigger threats. Instead, they can find a solution to this issue by holding talks with them, by addressing their concerns. In many regions, this movement has protected the land and water resources; which the governments were gifting to the multinational companies. The government is parking the army in schools. They are only serving the interests of the US through foreign investment in retail, insurance and pension. In this light, I support the ideology of the Maoist movement. Alike many other movements, the Maoist movement too has its own share of problems which they have to work upon. For instance, the Maoists still do not have a strong foothold in the cities, while remaining strongly entrenched in the rural areas. And it is in the cities that the numbers of labourers in the unorganised sector is increasing rapidly. The workers in multinationals, where organisation is badly needed, are also surrounded by many problems.
The question of armed struggle is in itself unique and complex, and should be viewed in its proper context. Where people are silenced by guns, it is but natural for them to take up stones, bows and arrows… You may agree or disagree with this, but it is the ground reality of these places which shape the way these people protect themselves.
Being a journalist, how do you view the media, maoists and the state propagating their views among the people on this entire issue?
If you are to look at this whole issue from a journalist’s perspective, then the hands in glove affair of the mainstream media and the state is quite clearly visible. I witnessed this situation in my case, and also with reference to the entire Maoist movement, that the mainstream media tells us only what the state wants to say… there can be one or two exceptions to this situation. When I was arrested, then all the mainstream newspapers, all of whom knew me for years, wrote only what the police or the ATS told them. They never felt it was necessary to get in touch with my lawyers, my organization PUCL, or my family and friends. And same is the situation with the Maoist movement. In the last few years, P. Chidambaram has carried out a relentless drive, and the media has been paid heavily for this. But again, in the last few years, as many small papers have come to being and with the rise of alternate media on the web, the desire to side with the people and the investigation for truth has received an impetus, and it is visible too. As far as the maoists are concerned, they are still lagging behind, people do not know what their ideologies are, and people do not know what kind of India they want. People like you and me, through our efforts, find out everything by reading about them, but the general population does not know who the maoists are in the real sense, and what are they fighting for. To make their presence felt in the media, they have to and should work a lot.
What is your idea of a nation, democracy and a welfare state?
This is subject for an entire book! But in a nutshell, a nation is a combination of various cultures where everyone has equal rights. In our country, this is not the case. It’s a lot of nations within a nation and they are all governed with different set of rules and regulations.Years after independence, so many people are still goverened by arms and ammunitions. I just want to quote Voltaire on what he’d said about democracy-I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. Forget India, no country has reached that level of democracy yet because no country has actually attempted true form of nation building and democracy. Just to keep appearances, they have coined a fancy term called ‘welfare state’. They appear like a democratic country but in reality they are also a nation like India.They developed like a welfate state but democracy was continuosly being gnawed at. So yes, in place of this system, I would want a truly democratic state.
