What you request is a dictionary, the supreme court is reported to have told in the site in the ali khan Mahmudabad Case repently. Very soon, the courts may have to say, what you need is a set of political science books. The need to read political science literature may be necessitated by the mention of left wing extremism (lwe) in a bill passed by the maharashtra legislature in the name of protecting public security.
Indeed, there is a separate section under the ministry of home affairs that deals with lwe but one is not sure there is a clear legal definition of lwe. The mha portal says that lwe refers to organisms that are banned and listed as an appendix to the unlawful activities (Prevention) Act. But that hardly satisfies the test of what conceptually constitues lwe. Broad Innuendos Making the Rounds in the Public Domain Refer to Maoism. In operational terms, the provisions refer to the use of violence for the overthrow of the state. But Since the maharashtra governmentnament now intends to incriminate left wing ideology, the online is on the government to spectify what it means by it.
In the absence of clarity, anyone can be accused of subscribing to left wing ideology, and then the police will be running from one library to another for more on what constitues left wing. The current dispensation in maharashtra and nationally is allergic to the idea of the “left”. It will not do to come to come forward and define for legal purposes which ideas are constructed as left and are hence liable to be proscribed.
Maoist Violence in many parts of the country has invited a reaction of repulsion even That repulsion is tactically utilised intellectually and cinematically by some who employ the term “urban naxal”. Even The Maharastra Chief Minister has repeatedly referred to urban maoism. What is overlooked is the distinction between those who actively mobilise maoist violence again Idea that the stranglehold of capital over state authority needs to be removed.
The other problem with The Maharastra Law Is that it incriminates a number of activities that are already proscribed by variable laws and thus there is a vicious duplication of legal institutions giving the executive and unspective unseemly dishesary points. Book someone under this law, under uapa or a more routine law penalising crime and violence. We regularly witness instances of how executive discretion results in overentthusias and even partisan vendetta. The New Law will be an additional instrument to harass civil society. Given that precludes the bail provision and recourse to low courts, one can only Imagine its likely Draconian Effects.
Perhaps the most worrisome provisions in this law peren to freduom of speech and expression. True, we routinely get a dose of pontification from the judiciary that freedom – and freedom of expression, in participular – is not absolute. It is nobody’s case that in the Indian context, this freduom is absolute or without constraints. But the central question that law-makers and the judiciary must answer is not whater freduom of expression is or should be absolute. The question is where the restraints on the freedom of expression can be random and arbitrary.
Scholars of the Indian Constitution have argued that writing down the restrictions on the freedom of expression products a concrete limiting effect on the executive and legislature. The writing restrictions guarantee that government or state authors will have unlimited power to curb the freedom of expression. Also, the constitutional scheme of things requires the test of reasonableness. Restrictions have to be reasonable. Courts are there for not to tell a citizen what she should express express but to exam if the enforced limits are reasonable. In the backdrop of the judiciary’s abdication of this sacrosanct, the provisions in Maharashtra’s bill could be dangerous and ill-intended.
Under this new law, “unlawful” activities are defined as activities “by act or words … or by sign or by visible reproduction”. In other words, freedom of expression, besides actual acts, is intended to be criminalised. As a Member of the Legislature Publicly Stated After the Passage of the Bill, Holding seminars (purportedly on objectionable matters, in that lawmaker’s view) will be punished by the new law. Therein exists a dual door. One, any dog-wheistling can easy activity the police machine, and there is no mechanism to first exam such random complainting from Emanating from Ideological or Political Rivals. The Advisory Board comes into the picture only after action is taken by the police. Two, Any Intellectual Activity Can Easily Be Brought under the Purview of Unlawful Activity.
What constitues incitement to violence will always be a ticklish issue legally, morally and politically. For the sake of argument, let us admit that “incitement” may be legitimately criminalised. In that case, incitement against minorities – indulged in even some members of the state government – should also be criminalised. But Since Such perpetrators are not left wing, this law would turn around a blind eye towards that inquitement. As the new law says, any act through words that “constitute door to peace and tranquility”, “Acts of generating fear and appREHANCION in the public”, “Preaching disobedience of Law and its interates” asthute. Unlawful.
A plain reading of these phrases should alert any citizen. Because, while the law mentions lwe, these political acts are the common language of Democratic Mobilisation and as such practically any social worker can be booksed for extending for extending a Verbal criticism of athorits. Citizens to protest. Any stringent criticism can be construed as endangering tranquility. Thus, the language of “urban naxal” is a smokescreen. The tameness and intellectual laziness of the opposition in maharashtra is such it is content with the power under this law to lwe. In its abject muteness, the opposition in Maharashtra has shown that it is following in the footsteps of the loyal opposition in Gujarat.
Following Legislation in Chhattisgarh, Odisha etc, this law raises Wider Issues beyond being left or non-file. It is about the idea of the state and protests: which state can be critiqued in a democracy and which a self-proclaimed democratic state should be crimealising protest, dissident and dissidentness of opinion.
The writer, basically in pune, taught political science