Times View It is absurd that anyone should be charged with sedition for writing an open letter to the Prime Minister against hate crime and lynching. The person who petitioned a chief judicial magistrate to prosecute the 49 prominent signatories has been quoted as saying that they had “tarnished the image of the country and undermined the impressive performance of the Prime Minister”. Whether this is true or not is a matter of debate, as can be the accusation that this group of citizens was being selective in its outrage. But irrespective of what position one may have on those debates, there is no basis for a charge of sedition or indeed any criminal offence. The higher judiciary will hopefully take suo motu notice of this order of the lower court and quash it. Else, the judicial process in India would be held up to global ridicule – and that would actually tarnish the country’s image.

We are moving towards becoming an authoritarian state, says Rahul

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM/KOLKATA/CHENNAI: The FIR on charges of sedition and other offences ordered against 49 celebrities by the chief judicial magistrate of Muzaffarpur, Bihar, for writing a letter to the PM snowballed into a controversy on Friday.One of the signatories to the letter, filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, said the government and the judiciary seemed to have missed seeing people shooting at an effigy of Mahatma Gandhi but an FIR had been ordered against 49 actors, directors and intellectuals expressing concern about increasing instances of mob lynchings.The signatories to the letter to the PM included Ramachandra Guha, Shyam Benegal , Aparna Sen , Amit Chaudhuri, Kaushik Sen, Mani Ratnam, Anurag Kashyap , Soumitra Chatterjee and Shubha Mudgal.Gopalakrishnan said the CJM court’s decision pointed to the disturbing state of affairs in the country. “What worries us most is that a court has admitted the case,” he told reporters on Friday.“We wrote the letter believing that democracy prevailed in the country, and it was intended to bring to the attention of the PM about injustice (sic). Normally a government should be looking into such a complaint and (should) find solutions if there is any merit in it. Here, an FIR was registered against the complainants instead,” Gopalakrishnan said. All the signatories were artists and cultural activists who did not have any political interest, he added.Actor Aparna Sen refused comment as the matter was sub judice.Congress leader and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi said the country was moving towards becoming an authoritarian state. “Everybody knows what is going on in this country. It is not a secret, and in fact the whole world knows it. We are moving into an authoritarian state. Anybody who says anything against the Prime Minister, anybody raises anything against the government is put in jail, is attacked and media is crushed,” Rahul said in response to questions from reporters in Wayanad.Writer Amit Chaudhuri, one of the signatories to the letter, said it was an ordinary protest by politically neutral citizens. “If India continues to be a democracy, and there has been no announcement otherwise, then there should be nothing surprising about people expressing their concerns frequently. Democracy is not about silence but about various kinds of voices, debates and discussions, all of which are guaranteed by the Constitution. As far as I know, we are not in a state of emergency where our fundamental rights have been revoked,” said the novelist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.Actor Kaushik Sen, also a signatory, said the FIR was an attempt to harass those who had expressed their views. “The letter had nothing that was remotely anti-national or can constitute sedition. Political leaders, including those of BJP, are aware of that,” he said.The FIR, under IPC sections related to sedition, breach of peace and hurting religious sentiments, among others, was lodged at Muzaffarpur Sadar police station on Thursday evening. It was filed on orders passed by Muzaffarpur CJM Surya Kant Tiwari on August 20 while hearing a petition filed by a social activist and lawyer, Sudhir Kumar Ojha.In the petition, filed July 27 this year, Ojha had alleged that the accused had “tarnished the image of the country and undermined the impressive performance of the Prime Minister besides supporting secessionist tendencies”.