Arundhati Roy said the government is targeting academics and activists.
New Delhi:
Writer Arundhati Roy on Wednesday criticized the government for “the relentless and continued incarceration of activists, academics and lawyers”, a day after an associate professor at the University of Delhi was arrested by the NIA in the Bhima Koregaon Elgar Parishad case.
Arundhati Roy said representatives of secular, anti-caste and anti-capitalist politics posed a threat to the government’s “disastrous Hindu nationalist policy”.
The NIA accused Hany Babu Musaliyarveettil Tharayil, 54, an associate professor in the English department, of propagating Naxal activities and Maoist ideology and of being a “co-conspirator” in the case.
“ The relentless and continued incarceration of activists, academics and lawyers, in this case, is a manifestation of this government’s understanding that this nascent, emerging secular, anti-caste and anti-capitalist policy that these people represent , offers an alternative narrative to the Hindu. fascism and poses the most obvious threat – culturally, economically and politically – to its own disastrous Hindu nationalist policies which have led this country into a crisis that has left hundreds of millions of people living in turmoil which ironically includes its own supporters, “A Arundhati Roy said in a statement.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) also condemned Babu’s arrest.
“The botched investigation into the Bhima Koregaon affair was resolutely directed towards the involvement of activists and intellectuals who question the policies of the ruling regime and its connivance with communalism and anti-popular policies,” JNUSU said.
JNUSU called on students, academics and all progressive sections of the population to unite in solidarity at this “dark hour of the witch hunt”.
“We demand the immediate release of Dr Babu and other activists and the end of politically motivated investigations,” they said.
