 So, first of all, this statement that the petitioners have put together. The meeting was called by us, the five petitioners who had petitioned the Supreme Court on the arrest of five accused persons by the Maharashtra Police on the 28th of August, 2018. We are of the opinion that the arrests were unjustified given that the charges were unsubstantiated. All these five and others arrested before them are professionals working in various capacities towards the welfare of the underprivileged in society. Even the Supreme Court took cognition of this when it took up our petition. We decided to call a meeting because we felt that the nature of the arrests of the activists and the widespread questioning of the arrest called for discussion, since it pointed to the suppressing of dissent. This is a serious matter, since dissent is a legitimate aspect of a democratic society. The action raises the question of the citizens civil liberties in a situation where the police can use laws like UAPA to enter anyone's home and arrest whoever they choose to on whatever charges the police may wish to make. This is not a new development, but it has become more widespread and frequent of late. How do we as free citizens counter this trend? We cannot allow ourselves to become a society in which freedom of expression is denied. That's the statement that the petitioners put together. The speakers this evening will, as has been said, explain their views on the arrests and the role particularly of dissent in democracy. But before they speak, I would like to take a few minutes and also make an intervention. I would like to begin by asserting quite definitively that the five petitioners are not what they were described as being by the representative of the straight state of Malashtra in the Supreme Court. We are not strangers to the work of the arrested activists. Now I'm aware of the fact that this phrase strangers is used in a legal sense, but I'm using it in a very literal sense. Nor are we unaware of the intentions of those in authority that had them arrested. We are not gullible people, as is the implication of this description. We do know what is going on and it is our deep concern that decided us all to call a meeting and to discuss these events and not only the events but what the implications are of these events. It seems these days that we have moved so far away from the values that led us to independence that we seem to have forgotten why we fought to be a free nation. And I would like to say something on that. I feel I have a kind of right to speak on that. I am now 87 years old. It's an age when one is forced to reflect on the past and it's been a long past for me. 1947 was my final year in school and my generation grew up on the cusp of Indian independence. We saw ourselves as an intrinsic part of the national movement and we know by now what nationalism means. Let me remind you of our concerns of that time because I think that those concerns are still extremely important and central, both among young people and older people. First of all, freedom. Freedom was absolutely essential. The tremendous excitement of the coming of freedom. It was also not just political freedom, it was a freedom to think, to speak and to write as we wished. This was a freedom that colonialism had denied us and this freedom when it came to us at independence was the sign of our being free Indians no longer colonial subjects. And I think freedom has to be seen in that light. We had asserted our right to dissent whether through civil disobedience or through other ways. There were questions that we repeatedly asked and debated and among them how were we going to establish the Indian identity that had been forged through the secular anti-colonial national movement. This was a major way in which the identity came about. The movement was essentially democratic and secular. The identity it brought had to ensure equal rights to every citizen irrespective of religion, caste or class. And from being a subject, Praja, in a kingdom as in pre-modern times or the member of a community, we were now something very different. We were citizens of a nation. There is a huge change in this and we were determined to make that change. The change unfortunately has not been made and is still carrying on. But this new identity of citizenship accompanies the emergence of any nation and is a modern phenomenon. Citizenship does not deny the earlier identity of belonging to a community but this earlier identity is subordinated to that of being a citizen. It has to be in a nation. The citizen is governed by a constitution with laws that apply equally and uniformly to all. Becoming a nation does mean changing the relationship between the individual and the state and this is a very important issue that we should keep in mind. Earlier identities can take extreme positions and conflict with citizenship. These have to be debated, discussed and a system worked out. And debate is the civilized way of sorting out public differences. So small groups from dominant communities cannot threaten others with lynching, rioting, assassination in an effort to impose an identity. The concept of citizenship involves the ordering of society in a way that every citizen would have a right to a decent living. And that is a guarantee of employment, food, water, education, healthcare and social justice preeminently. The lack of these encourages a turn to terrorism. If activists today are demanding these rights for the underprivileged people they are not threatening the state with terror. If anything they are suggesting ways in which terror can be avoided. They are reminding the state that it has an obligation towards improving the condition of underprivileged citizens and that this should be a very primary concern of the state. Such concerns have now been reduced to political slogans. Those critical of government can be accused of being anti-national, as is done virtually daily. This is a very different definition of nationalism from the one that my generation grew up with. Another question was again related to the kind of society that we wanted. Given the foundations of our nationalism it had to be a democratic society. A democratic society has to be secular to accommodate difference else it cannot be democratic. And that is self-evident. Many have pointed out that the term secular is not limited to just the co-existence of religions. It has a wider meaning and assumes the equal status of all citizens in public matters. Giving priority to some citizens and discriminating against others is anti-democratic. All citizens are equally entitled to civil rights. Some citizens are not more equal than others. Nationalism therefore included the well-being of the entire people, those well-off and those impoverished. It was distinct from organisations in communities that gave priority to single religious identities be they Islamic or Hindu or whatever. And claiming to be nationalisms. In those years there was clarity about nationalism. It was not equated with government policies. Now when some persons disapprove of what is happening they are ironically enough said to be anti-national. Since the last few months there has been the invention of a new term, urban nuxal. This is a euphemism for those who are associated with things like liberal thinking, intellectuals of a leftist bent, those demanding freedom of speech and those concerned with improving the condition of the underprivileged. It has become the synonym for intellectuals for certain categories of people. It is a term that is ironically I think an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. The nuxalite movement hardly concerns itself with the urban. It has focused on impoverished peasants and adivasis. And urbanites who are sympathetic to this cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called nuxals. However, the usage of the term urban nuxal is not just descriptive. It is a term which is not even innocent. It can be used by those wishing to fan fear. Calling someone an urban nuxal today assumes that he or she is working against the state, is anti-national, endorses violence and therefore can be arrested without proven evidence. It creates a condition of fear among those so named and they can then be easily terrorized as can others as well. The fear of terror comes from two sources. Firstly, from the existence and activities of organizations that use terrorist activities of a violent kind to mark their presence. Sometimes they are called vigilantes, sometimes they are called Maoists, they have a variety of names. The second form of terror is what comes from the agencies of the state. These agencies are meant to protect and safeguard the citizen but have their own reasons for spreading fear among citizens. We have always assumed that the purpose of the institutions of government is to help and protect citizens and to ensure that their rights prevail. When injustice is allowed, then laws are treated as irrelevant and this is when corruption of all kinds also spreads like treacle on a sponge. One of the central issues in a society therefore is the function of dissent, expressing opposition to existing forms of governance, some small, some large. As Indians, we are familiar with dissent since it was fundamental to the anti-colonial movement for independence. In the Indian past, let me say the concept of dissent was normal, whether in some philosophical ideas or religious beliefs and practices or in many other activities. It was used to oppose orthodoxy or even autocratic power. In all societies, there are people who from time to time oppose the ideas and actions of the dominant groups, which groups are trying to impose their ideas on them. Dissent therefore is normal to civilisation. Dissent can be expressed in writing, in speaking, it can be subtle, it can be direct or it can be symbolic. However, it cannot be equated with terrorism as it does not call for violence. This distinction is fundamental. In itself, dissent is not an act against the state. It is part of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and today it is denied by erasing the autonomy of institutions, many institutions, some of which are selected universities and of course the media. This right was not conceded by the colonial government and was one of the major rights that had to be fought for even in the years of early independence. May I remind you of an early attempt to curb dissent and what happened? The government in Bombay banned the fortnightly magazine Crossroads published by Ramesh Thabar. The charge was that it carried an article criticising the state to which the state objected. The case was fought in the courts as early as 1950. That's pretty soon after independence. The editor won and the state was defeated. It has since become the precedent quoted precisely in cases involving dissent and the freedom of speech and is therefore very relevant to our concerns. One can only hope that we shall not have to go through that struggle once again. Let me leave you with one last thought. Let's not forget the questions and achievements that were once the backbone of our anti-colonial secular national movement for independence. The foundation actually of the present Republic of India. The arguments and agencies that we used were necessary to our freedom from colonialism. The role of dissent was viewed as essential to the functioning of democracy and essential to the definition of nationalism. It underlined the important identity of the free Indian citizen and this is an identity and the rights that go with it that we have to both nurture and defend.