 If we look at the state of human rights and democracy in this country today, well for democracy to exist, democracy is not merely what some people feel that it just means the right to be able to go and cast your vote for your representative. This is what some people have come to believe that this is all that there is to democracy. For democracy to really function anywhere, you require the rule of law, you require protection of various fundamental rights, particularly the right to speech, the right to protest, the right to organize and meet, etcetera and of course, the freedom of the media. If we look at the state of all this today, if we just look at the rule of law, what we find today is a very, very alarming state of affairs. On the one hand, we see in UP in particular, all these fake encounters taking place almost on a daily basis by the police, where the government and the police are taking great pride. They are not even shy to admit that these are fake encounters. They just say that well, we just killed criminals, what is wrong with killing criminals in cold blood. I mean, this is the kind of language that is now being used by the UP government. It is the spokesman of the BJP and even some sections of the police about these encounter killings. I mean, they seem to have completely forgotten or they have become totally brazen about the rule of law that you cannot, nobody can kill even a criminal in cold blood. It is the job of the police to arrest him if there is a charge against him and bring him to trial. Then there is lynch, there are lynch mobs all over the country, where any group of goons can come and beat up people in the name of cow protection, in the name of love jihad and it is happening across the country almost on a daily basis. And we find the more alarming thing is that it is not only happening, but the police is siding with these mobs in most parts of the country, particularly in states which are ruled by the BJP. We also have a lynch mob on the social media, where if you say anything against the government or against some of these BJP leaders etc., then you are liable to be, it is called trolling, but you are liable to be abused in the most filthy language, you are liable to be threatened with death or rape if you happen to be a woman. And we are seeing something quite extraordinary happening in this country, which I have not seen happen anywhere in the world at any time of history, that I am aware of, that you have a prime minister who is virtually leading and controlling this pack of wolves or this lynch mob on the social media. Swati Chaturvedi has written a book, I am a troll in which he has elucidated in great detail, how the prime minister himself controls and manages this entire BJP IT cell, which in turn controls this lynch mob. And further evidence of the prime minister's direct encouragement to this lynch mob on the social media is that he invites many of these people who use the filthiest language, threatened people to kill people or to rape people etc., that these people are invited to the prime minister's residence for tea, where he takes, allows them to take selfies with him and then allows them to put them up on their Facebook pages saying, proud to be followed by the prime minister. So, we have not, at least I have not seen this kind of a thing and I am not aware of this kind of a thing happening anywhere in the world. I mean, we have seen that all kinds of thugs and goons have become prime ministers and presidents of various countries. I mean, Trump is an example, but this kind of mob being led by the prime minister and virtually openly led by the prime minister, I have not seen anywhere. We have a media which has been brought totally to heel, where we find that far from dealing with tackling serious issues which confront us, whether it is farmer suicide or these people who clean these sewage deaths etc., etc., I mean, there are so many problems and issues that we see across the country, but we find that there are large sections of the media who day in and day out are just engaged in trying to promote communal hatred, communal polarization, etc. People who speak out or even draw cartoons run the risk of being charged for sedition. A lot of them are charged for sedition in the country though that is completely in violation of what the Supreme Court has declared about the correct interpretation of the law and sedition, though this is a colonial law which should have been eliminated from our statute books, but the Supreme Court had read it down to say that it is not sedition to promote disaffection against the government. It is sedition only if you are inciting people to violence or public disorder and yet we find that people who are just lampooning the prime minister or criticizing the prime minister are often being charged for sedition. We have all these draconian laws which are being misused, the National Security Act, nobody has a clear idea of how many people are today imprisoned by way of preventive because this is an act which allows preventive detention on a government's apprehension that this person may cause some disturbance to foreign relations, he may cause some disturbance to public order, etc., etc., gives very wide powers to the government of preventive detention and this young boy, very fine boy Chandrasekhar Azad Raman, one of the young Dalit leaders who has emerged in this country, first they charged him with some 30 cases, in all those 30 cases he got bailed thereafter they put NSA against him where he could not even get bailed and for the last 17 months he was in jail, finally they released him because they perhaps feared that the Supreme Court would come down on the government, the case was coming up before the Supreme Court. You have the UAPA which is now being used against some of our finest human rights activists who have an absolutely stellar record of trying to protect human rights of Dalits, of Adivasis, of other human rights defenders, etc., and now the government is going after them by fabricating supposed letters and when this case was heard in the Supreme Court about these letters which the government, supposed letters which the government is using as justification for arresting them, just supposed to be letters written mostly to or from one comrade Prakash and that comrade Prakash in that Sai Baba's judgment is supposed to be Sai Baba and all these letters are supposed to have been written at a time when he was in jail, yet these totally fabricated letters and in these letters you find that some Marathi script is also used when the persons who are supposed to have written these letters or received these letters do not have a computer which has the capability of writing the Marathi script, etc. So, there are so many indications to show that these letters are fabricated, these letters say that we will carry out a Rajiv Gandhi style assassination of Mr. Modi, they say that we have paid 10 crores for procuring arms for the Maoists, all kinds of absurd things and these letters are not even produced before any court, etc., by the police, but they are just circulated to the media and the some sections of the media use these letters to say urban naxals, urban naxals, urban naxals. Just as earlier they used this term, tukde tukde gang to target people like these JNU activists, Kanaiya Kumar, Umar Khaled, etc. So, you create this myth, you use the media to create this myth of urban naxals, etc., and then and it is all done in a very organized and planned manner. This urban naxal thing starts with some fellow called, some failed filmmaker called Agniyotri or something. He then thereafter it is picked up by this republic TV and Times Now, etc., and thereafter it is we find that these same letters which are shown around by republic TV, etc., are being used by the police against these human rights activists. So, you have armed forces, special powers act being used again and again to protect security forces and their officers who have committed heinous crimes from being prosecuted for them. I mean I do not understand how anybody, any army officer or anybody can say that look if you do not protect us from being prosecuted for them and prosecuted for crimes of rape and murder then we cannot do our duty of providing security. I mean of course you have a right to fire in self-defense. You would not be prosecuted for that. You are only prosecuted if you have carried out a cold blooded rape or murder or things like that. And how can anybody, any police officer or any security officer say that we need to be protected from prosecution for cold blooded rape or murder? That in the absence of that protection we would not be able to do our duty, but that all these laws are still persisting in our statute books. Maya told you about the state, Maya and Colin told you about the state of the police. I need not elaborate on that. Other institutions like the judiciary also. I mean Colin said that the judiciary must see at the threshold because today what is happening is that you make a false case against anybody like they have made against these activists etc. And if you just say that well let law take its course and if the judiciary says that alright police has made this case so let the trial take place and till that time let these people remain in jail then what happens and what has been happening everybody has been seeing that is that people remain in jail for decades altogether at the end of which they usually come to be acquitted but their lives have been destroyed. Colin said that it is the duty of the judiciary to see at the threshold whether there is any substance in the case against them and they should throw out the case at the threshold itself. I say one more thing. At the end of the trial when they find that the police case was bogus and thereafter these people are acquitted. In my view it is the duty of the court to also make a determination whether the charges that were brought were on the basis of fabricated evidence or not. If they were on the basis of fabricated evidence then it is the duty of the court to order the prosecution of the police officers who fabricated that evidence. Even in the Parliament attack case even the Supreme Court came to the conclusion that 3 out of 4 persons were acquitted in that case. Only Afzal Guru was convicted that the case against those 3 persons was on the basis of fabricated evidence and yet the police officers who fabricated that evidence on the basis of which they wanted to hang these people those police officers were not ordered to be prosecuted. So therefore that should be an additional duty. Of course the fact that the trial goes on for decades is itself scandalous. There is no reason why we should have a judicial system where trials go on for decades altogether. At most it should take 6 months or maximum 1 year. There is absolutely no justification for any trial to take more than 1 year. That requires serious judicial reforms which unfortunately the governments I mean they are not at all interested in any of those judicial reforms. And then we have these institutions like NIA, CBI which have been totally politicized and corrupted much like the police. CBI has more professionalism but the political control of over the CBI and the use of the CBI for political purposes is perhaps even more than of the normal police. And then we have universities I mean we have been seeing at least in the last 4 years a very concerted assault on universities and institutions of higher education particularly of higher education because this government being a fascist government. In fact recently there was a book which has just been published called how democracies die. It is written by two Harvard professors. It is written in the context of America in which these professors have pointed out that democracies do not die now by military coups. They die by elected demagogues who gradually destroy all the institutions that are necessary not just the institutions they destroy the culture that is necessary to sustain democracy. So therefore if you look at in this book you will find charts which gives you indicators of fascism and if you see those indicators may be half of the indicators are already there even in a country like the U.S. in Trump's America because the book has been written about Trump's America. But more than 90 percent of the indicators are present in this country. And when you have a fascist government, fascist government does not want critical thinking to survive in the country they want only order following people who will wear these khaki shorts have a latte and stand. And then if they are told that look you go and burn all these houses they will just go and burn all these houses without questioning as to why you are asking them to burn these houses what is wrong with the people in those houses. So they do not want critical thinking and therefore there is a concerted assault absolutely studied and concerted assault. In fact if you remember when this JNU issue started the campaign of the BJP and its spokespersons were they ran the hashtag on the social media called shut down JNU shut down JNU. So JNU which is arguably the best university in this country has always been rated as the best university in this country that they want to shut it down and they want to shut down higher finishing all such institutions of higher learning that is what happens in a fascist state. So and this idea of nationalism that is being promoted that nationalism is being promoted that nationalism means hating Muslims nationalism means hating Pakistan. I mean absolutely today actually Yogendra Yadav has written a very nice piece about this RSS in the Hindu all of you should go and read that piece where he has pointed out that the RSS is the most anti-national organization that you can imagine it not only opposed India's struggle for independence it not only opposes the Indian flag the national anthem etcetera it opposes the very idea of India as a multi cultural multi religious society. So therefore we are in conclusion there is no doubt that we are facing not just an assault on democracy and rights we are today facing an assault on civilization itself. The silver lining is that just as all of you have come here just as the Jamia teachers association has stood up and stood steadfast in this struggle there are a lot of people in fact when these five activists were arrested there was a huge uprising in the whole country against that those arrests. So there is we have a we have a good fight on our hands on the one hand there is a fascist onslaught the one of the most severe fascist onslaughts that we have seen ever in this country on the other hand there is some very not some there is considerable very brave resistance on in this country we have some absolutely outstanding young leaders who are coming up in this country people like Chandrasekhar Azad people like Jignesh Mewani people like Anayakumar many such examples. So therefore people like Manisha Sethi here so there are a large number of outstanding activists who are in fighting against this fascist onslaught and I have no doubt that we will prevail in the end. Thank you.