Public Statement by
Forum For The Protection of Free Speech and Expression

At a time when India is projecting itself on the
world's stage as a modern democracy, while it hosts
international literary festivals and book fairs, the
Government of India, most mainstream political parties
and their armed squads are mounting a concerted
assault on peoples' right to Free Speech.

It is a matter of abiding shame that even as some of
the world's best-known writers were attending the
Jaipur literary festival and prestigious publishers
were doing business at the World Book fair in Delhi,
the exiled Bengali writer Taslima Nasrin was (and is)
being held in custody by the Government of India in an
undisclosed location somewhere in or around Delhi in
conditions that amount to house arrest. Contrary to
misleading press reports stating that her visa has
been extended, her visa expires on the 18th of
February, after which she is liable to be deported or
remain confined as an illegal alien.

Taslima Nasrin is only one in a long list of
journalists, writers, scholars and artists who have
been persecuted, banned, imprisoned, forced into exile
or had their work desecrated in this country. At
different points of time, different governments have
either directly or indirectly resorted to these
measures in order to fan the flames of religious,
regional and ethnic obscurantism to gain popularity
and expand their 'vote-banks'. Every day the threat to
Free Speech and Expression increases.

In the case of Taslima Nasrin it was the CPI (M) and
not any religious or sectarian group who first tried
to ban her book Dwikhondito some years ago. The ban
was lifted by the Calcutta High Court and the book was
in the market and on bestseller lists in West Bengal
for several years. During those years Taslima Nasrin
lived and worked as a free person in Calcutta without
any threat to her person, without being the cause of
public disorder, protests or demonstrations.
Ironically, Taslima Nasrin's troubles in India began
immediately after the Nandigram uprising when the
people of Nandigram, mostly Dalits and Muslims, rose
to resist the West Bengal Government's attempt to
takeover their land, and tens of thousands of people
marched in Calcutta to protest the government's
actions. Within days a little known group claiming to
speak for the Muslim community asked for a ban on
Dwikhondito and demanded that Taslima Nasrin be
deported. The CPI(M)-led government of West Bengal
immediately caved in to the demand, informed her that
it could not offer her security, and lost no time in
deporting her from West Bengal against her will. The
Congress-led UPA Government has condoned this act by
holding her in custody in Delhi and refusing, thus
far, to extend her visa and relieve her of her public
humiliation. They have once again played the suicidal
card of pitting minority communalism against majority
communalism, a game that can only end in disaster.

Inevitably, hoping to make political capital out of
the situation, the BJP is publicly shedding crocodile
tears over Taslima Nasrin, going to the extent of
offering her asylum in Gujarat. It seems to expect
people to forget that the BJP, VHP and RSS cadres have
been at the forefront of harassing, persecuting,
threatening and vandalizing newspaper offices,
television studios, galleries, cinema halls,
filmmakers, artists and writers. Or that they have
forced M.F. Husain, one of India's best-known
painters, into exile.

Meanwhile, in states like Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh
and Karnataka, away from the public glare of press
conferences and television cameras, journalists are
being threatened and even imprisoned. Prashant Rahi
from Uttarakhand, Praful Jha from Chattisgarh,
Srisailum from Andhra Pradesh, P. Govind Kutty from
Kerala are a few examples. As we speak Govind Kutty,
who is on a hunger strike in prison is being
force-fed, bound hand and foot. Scores of ordinary
people, including people like Binayak Sen have been
arrested and held illegally under false charges.

We the undersigned do not necessarily agree with,
endorse or admire the views or the work of those whose
rights we seek to defend. Many of us have serious
differences with them. We agree that many of them do
offend our (or someone else's) religious, political
and ideological sensibilities. However, we believe
that instead of making them simultaneously into both
victims and heroes, their work should be viewed, read,
criticized and vigorously debated. We believe that the
Freedom of Speech and Expression is an Absolute and
Inalienable Right, and is the keystone of a modern
democracy.

If the Indian Government deports Taslima Nasrin, or
holds her as an illegal alien, it will shame and
diminish all of us. We demand that she be given a
Resident's Permit or, if she has applied for it,
Indian citizenship, and that she be allowed to live
and work freely in India. We demand that the spurious
cases filed against M.F. Husain be dropped and that he
be allowed to return to a normal life in India. We
demand that the journalists who are being illegally
detained in prison against all principles of natural
justice be released immediately.

Signed:

Mahashweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Ashish Nandy, Girish
Karnad

Report_final_sarai http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dhqjmdj4_53c5tcrkch&revision=_l... 1 of 26 2/1/2008 7:54 PM Chithra Lekha ’ s burning Auto: Caste and Gender in the Urban Space of Keralam In small towns and urban spaces in India we can often find cinema theatres, old book shops, night-skies, dirt, varieties of sounds, sights, visions and what not!!! But we cannot forget that these spaces are also inhabited by a large number of human beings who create and consume all of these urban and semi-urban phenomena. As researchers coming from the discipline of humanities, such human interactions that structure the culture of the urban space is what interests us most. This helps us get in touch with our own troubled lives in various semi-urban situations, both as children and as adults, which has pushed us like this, to think about the way this world is arranged. Thus we decided to study one of the most important patterns in the urban design, the way in which identities such as caste, gender and religion make and unmake human lives. It was easy for us to choose the Chithralekha case for this, as it is often called, which in 2006, was on the lips of every Malayalee intellectual who wanted to talk about the issue of caste in the contemporary space of Kerala. We begin this report by giving a detailed account of this case: Chithra Lekha was born into a Pulaya family, which is an ex-untouchable caste in Keralam. Chithra Lekha ’ s husband Shreeshanth is a Thiyya (an OBC caste). Both his family and the dominant left party (CPI (M)) structure were against Shreeshanth marrying Chithra Lekha as she is a Dalit. Yet the couple went ahead and got legally married. In their attempt to make a better living, they resorted to what many Dalitbahujans of moffusil towns easily choose: an autorickshaw. The autorickshaw KL 13L 8527 was bought in Chitra Lekha ’ s name under the PMRY loan scheme. The Edaatu auto rickshaw stand in which Chithra Lekha wanted to drive her auto was under CITU, the trade union that belongs to the Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPI (M)). To start functioning from this stand Chithra Lekha had to obtain a membership card from the CITU. However, this card was delayed for more than 2 months as the party was already angry with Chithra Lekha having married above her caste. Chithra also told us that they adopted such delaying techniques with many new comers from “ other ” communities. When at last she was given membership she started driving her auto rickshaw from March 2005. According to Chithra Lekha, they welcomed her with these words: O! The subalterns have progressed. A Pulaya woman has come with an auto. ” In spite of such harassment Chithra Lekha turned out to be a competent driver and became very popular with her customers, especially women. When she started her career there had been a coin operated phone at the auto stand where the customers would call for drivers. Soon, Chithra Lekha started getting the most number of calls from this phone. This she feels disturbed her fellow male drivers. After a few months she bought a mobile phone and now people started calling for her even more than before. This made the drivers feel even more threatened. All these problems took a violent turn during the Navami or Saraswathy Pooja days when Chithra Lekha placed her auto in the common Pandal for pooja. When she came to take back the auto on the next day, that is on October 11, 2005, she found that the hood of her auto was torn. Ajith, one of the CITU members who had threatened her earlier was standing there and she asked him why did he tore the hood. He retaliated saying that if you don ’ t keep your limits you will also be torn like this. She complained about the incident to Rameshan, fellow auto driver and the Secretary of the local branch of CITU, but to no avail. Since there was no response from Rameshan or CITU, she lodged a complaint with the police after two days. When she came back to the stand on October 14 th Rameshan gave her a two hour punishment of abstention, for

Subject: Fwd: Re: Fwd: An Appeal For Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee, Kannur, Kerala (Sent For Approval) To Be Released By Prominent Signatories

Dear all,
[Following is the translated text of an appeal drafted originally in Malayalam, to be released to the press in a press conference at Kannur, on behalf of the Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee, Kannur, shortly after the Committee's scheduled meeting on 21st September]

Dear friends,
Despite our pride in having achieved 100% literacy, we have to acknowledge sadly that Kerala's social life continues to be reigned by several unwrit rules of caste and gender, rather than by law. A series of incidents that took place at Edat (Payyanur, Kannur District) starting from organized abuse and harassment of a dalit woman at her workplace, physically attacking her for having complained to the police, and finally seeing her only means of livelihood, an autorikshaw, destroyed by unknown persons setting fire to the vehicle in the dead of night, and to cap these all, a CITU autorikshaw workers' union coming out openly to defend the accused persons, seems to demonstrate this.
Chithralekha had procured her autorikshaw under the JRY Scheme in October 2004. Nevertheless, she had to wait for three months before the permission to park her vehicle in the Payyanur College bus stop Autostand as well as the membership in the Union was given to her by the CITU Union.
When finally she did succeed in this, she was greeted by an all-male group of non-dalit autoworkers by the following comments"Look, the pulachi ( female gender for pulaya, name of a prominent SC) is coming with with her auto".
Since then, Chithralekha had to suffer a host of humiliations and untold sufferings. On 11-10-2005, Ajith, a fellow auto driver tore the hood of her vehicle. She complained to the Union only to be ridiculed and turned back. Further, a complaint made to the Police ended up with her tormentor being warned by the police. Obviously outraged by this daring act of Chithralekha petitioning against a comrade to the police, Ajith along with Pavithran, Naveen and Rameshan physically attacked Chithralekha at her workplace, the auto stand on 14-10-2005 morning. They publicly dragged her out from the vehicle and drove one of the autorikshaws on to her body, which caused injury to her leg serious enough to stay as inpatient in the Payyanur Govt hospital for many days. As they were doing all these acts of brutality, one of them shouted these words" pulachies of your ilk in future shall never ride auto here, and it is the union's decision"
The above incident has been booked by the Payyanur Police under various sections of IPC as well as under sections of the SC/ST Atrocities (Prevention) Act of 1999. This case with FIR No 367/05 is presently posted for trial before the Special Court (SC/ST Atrocities), Thalassery.
We believe that but for the timely intervention of the District Level Monitoring Committee which is a statutory committee for monitoring such cases of atrocities against dalits, the above mentioned case would not have been booked at all; on the contrary, the dominant caste-gender set up in combination with the generally existing status-quoist bias of individual police officers would have ensured impunity for the offenders and further institutionalization of such crimes.
Even against the successful intervention on the part of the Dist Level Monitoring Committee to get the case booked and properly pursued, collectively expressed hatred and openly displayed hostility against Chithralekha were only heading to a point of vantage. In the night of 31-12-2005, her vehicle was burned by unidentified persons. This incident was registered as FIR No 474/05 in the Payyanur Police Station.
As we hear further stories of intimidation and demoralizing of witnesses by several quarters of vested interests with a view to weakening of these cases as such, we notice that unless the civil society actively involves in the process of bringing justice to the victim, this kind of crimes motivated by caste and gender is going to get institutionalized.
Chithralekha is presently dependent solely on the Monitoring Committee that includes a few civilian(dalit) representatives and the State mechanism available. While it needs to be clearly reiterated that without such State mechanism it would not have been possible to bring the culprits to book under the relevant provisions of law, the ridiculously unwarranted attempts to impose virtual compromise on the victim by intimidating and demoralizing her witnesses and in many other ways need to be resisted. The absolutely unfair interventions of political manipulators to protect the non-dalit, male accuseds from the reach of law, in this case, should be effectively challenged by vigorous pursuit of the Rule Of Law by an informed civil society.
It is worth mentioning in this context, that a citizens' action committee based at Payyanur was indeed on the scene until April 2006 to support Chithralekha. The committee though succeeded in getting an auto for her on rental basis and as part of their endeavour to restore work to Chithralekha, it became defunct soon after the election campaign for the Kerala Assembly picked up momentum. Due to several reasons, Chithralekha was virtually compelled to return the hired vehicle to its owner. Since then, she had to support herself and her family by going outside for unskilled labour in the building sector, evenwhile she refused to compromise in her determined struggle against the cast-gender hostilities still propagated against her.
On the 29th August of this year, a new initiative to support Chithralekha came to existence by forming a new forum based at Kannur, the District headquarters. The meeting convened by Dr D.Surendranath was personally attended by Mr. K.K.Kochu,the well known dalit leader.Several other prominent dalit activists and intellectuals had also extended thier support to this initiative. This committee was named as Chithralekha Punaradhivasa (Rehabilitation) Committee and it took stock of the situation as a whole.,against the background of conspicuous lack of any collective expression of solidarity with her continuing struggle.The next meeting of this committee on 4-09-2007resolved to extend unconditional support to Chithralekha in her struggle for justice.The committee identified the urgent need of rehabilitating Chithralekha, with the work as well as a nightmares-free workplace restored to her. For this, it was decided to purchase a new autorikhshaw for her by collecting the necessary fund from the people. For carrying out this effectively and transparently, Dr Surendranath(Chairman), Mr.P.K.Ayyappan (Treasurer) and Mr.K.M.Venugopalan (Convenor) would jointly operate an account in the Thalap branch of the Kannur District Central Co-operative Bank in connection with collecting and depositing of a targeted fund of Rs1,50,000/=
While we ourselves fully endorse the above mentioned objectives of the Chithralekha Punaradhivasa Committee,Kannur, we would like to request the entire civil society of Kerala to come forward in support of these causes ,viz; of ending hostilities toward a dalit woman and allowing the law to take the right course on the one hand, and helping rehabilitation of Chithralekha by restoring her means of livelihood and work.
Hence,we request everybody to make contribution to the Cithralekha Rhabilitation Fund either by depositing direct to Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee SB Ac. No.1 of Thalap branch of CDCC bank of Kannur, or by sending in Ac.Payee Cheque or DD payable at Kannur, or Money Order, to the following address :-
Dr.D.Surendranath,
Chairman,
Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee,
Pallikunnu P.O., Kannur.

Among the persons who have already signed this draft are ---Bhargavi Thankappan (former Dy Speaker,Kerala Assembly), L.Natarajan ( Retd IAS),K.C.Venu ( Retired Director, Public Relations, Thiruvananthapuram) K.K..Kochu (Dalit activist and writer),Sunny Kapikkad (Dalit writer and activist, Kottayam) , M.B.Manoj ( Poet and Dalit activist, Kottayam), Rekha Raj (Dalit Women's Forum, Kottayam), K.Panur (Senior campaigner and writer on Adivasi-Dalit issues & Human Rights, Kannur), K.Venu , Dr.M.Gangadharan, Dr .A.K.Ramakrishnan (School Of International Relations, MG University, Kottayam), K.Ajitha (Campaigner in Womens' issues and the leading activist in Anweshi, Womens'Organization, Kozhikkode) , A.Vasu ( Human Rights activist, Kozhikkode), Dr.J.Devika (CDS, Thiruvananthapuram), V.P.Zuhara ( Nisa,Organization For Progressive Muslim Women, Kozhokkode) , Anivar Aravind (Greenyouth Forum& GAYA, Trissur), B.R.P.Bhaskar (senior Human Rights campaigner and journalist, Thiruvananthapuram), Dr.V.C.Harris (School Of Social Sciences, MGU, Kottayam) , C.K.Janu (leader, Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha, Wynad), Prof Sara Joseph ( Literatuer and Womens' Rights campaigner, Thrissur), Advocate P.A.Pauran (PUCL-Kerala, Manjeri), K.Haridas ( writer and Human Rights activist, Mumbai ), Dr.Jenny Roweena (Writer and Researcher in Gender and Caste Issues ,Hydbad), Carmel Chrity (Research Scholar, Hyderabad Central University & activist researcher In Gender and Caste ), Elizabeth Philip( Sahaja, Womens' Rights organization, Kottayam), Ranjith Thakappan ( Lecturer, Indira Gandhi Open University, New Delhi), I.Gopinath (Media Initiatives and Human Rights activist, Thrissur), Sarat (Thirdeyefilms , Ernakulam), A.Arun (Research Scholar, Hyderabad Central University), P.Baburaj (Thirdeye films,Ernakulam), K.K.Ushakumari (Janakeeya Samskarika Kendram, Kodungallur), Radhika Menon (Forum For Democratic Initiatives,New Delhi), Vinod.K.Jose ( Human Rights activist and Fellow, Columbia Journalism School, New York), K.P.Sasi( Human Rights activist and film maker, Bangalore), Bauraj.K (writer and activist, Kodungallur), Shyla.K.John (Secretary, AIMSS, Kerala), Advocate Kasthuri Devan (social activist, Kannur), Dr.A.K.Jayasree( womens'rights campaigner,Rajamundri, A.P) ,Dr.K.M.Seethi (School Of International Relations and Political Science, MG University, Kottayam), Deepa V.N (Sahayatrika, Kerala), Girija K.P (Kerala),S.Sanjeev (Kerala), Rev Sunil Raj (Bangalore), Mustafa Desamangalam ( Media and Films activist, Kerala), Sudeep Joseph (Bangalore), Bobby Kunju (Human Rights and Legal activist,New Delhi),Sandhya P.C (GAIA,Thrissur, Kerala), Anil Tharayath Varghese (National Centre For Advocacy Studies, Pune), Dr.Ratheesh Radhakrishnan (Kerala), Shinaj.P.S(Hyderabad Central University), I.K.Shukla (Writer, Los Angeles ) ,Sushovan Dhar (Radical Politics,Mumbai).Subhash Lokjith (Pune)
We look forward to your co-operation in further spreading the message. .
thanking you,
K.M.Venugopalan (Convenor)
for Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee, Kannur .

Kindly use the following postal addresses/ emails as well, for future communication:

Dr.D.Surendranath,
( Chairman, Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee),
Pallikkunnu P.O;
Kannur-4,
Kerala (State),
S.India
Pin code- 670004
email: dskannur@gmail.com
phone: 04972-701279

P.K.Ayyappan
(Treasurer, Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee)
Ariyil.P.O;
Pattuvam (via),Taliparamba
Kannur Dist,
Kerala (State) .
Pin Code- 670143
Phone: 09447488215

K.M.Venugopalan,
Convenor, Chithralekha Rehabilitation Committee, Kannur.
email: kmvenuannur@gmail.com
phone: 09447488215.

C.K.Vishwanath,
Member, Chithralekha Punaradhivasa Committe, kannur
email: ckvishwanath@gmail.com
ck_vishwanath2000@yahoo.com
ck_vishwanath@yahoo.com
phone: 04985-277680.

With immense gratitude to everybody and In solidarity,
K.M.Venugopalan.