Protesting sedition charge against peers, TM Krishna, Romila Thapar among 180 signees on open letter to PM Modi

Around 180 members of the art and culture community including TM Krishna, Jerry Pinto, Ranjit Hoskote, Romila Thapar, Mallika Sarabhai and Naseeruddin Shah wrote an open letter to Narendra Modi, condemning the sedition charges filed against the 49 signatories who had addressed a letter previously to the Prime Minister on 23 July this year, highlighting atrocities against Dalits and minorities in India.

Terming the charges as harassment, the 180 signatories endorsed the letter the 49 had written previously. “They wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister, expressing concern about mob lynching in our country. Can this be called an act of sedition? Or is harassment by misusing the courts a ploy to silence citizens’ voices?" the letter reads. “More of us will speak every day. Against mob lynching. Against the silencing of people’s voices. Against the misuse of courts to harass citizens,” the letter stated, as per a  report by The Wire.

The entire text of the open letter is as follows:

An FIR has been lodged against forty-nine of our colleagues in the cultural community, simply because they performed their duty as respected members of civil society. They wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister, expressing concern about mob lynching in our country.

Can this be called an act of sedition? Or is harassment by misusing the courts a ploy to silence citizens’ voices?

All of us, as members of the Indian cultural community, as citizens of conscience, condemn such harassment. We do more: we endorse every word of the letter our colleagues wrote to the Prime Minister. This is why we share their letter here once again, and appeal to the cultural, academic and legal communities to do the same. This is why more of us will speak every day. Against mob lynching. Against the silencing of people’s voices. Against the misuse of courts to harass citizens.

A Mangai Aarti Sethi Abha Dev Habib Abhishek Kaicker Abhishek Majumdar Achin Vanaik Achyutanand Mishra Ajitha GS Akeel Bilgrami Amit Bhaduri Ammu Joseph Amrita Pande Anand Pradhan Anand Teltumbde Ananya Parikh Ania Loomba Anil Janvijay Anitha Thampi Anjali Monteiro Arun Dev Arundhati Dhuru Arundhati Ghosh Arunima Sehgal Ashok Bhaumik Ashok Vajpeyi Ashutosh Kumar Atamjit Singh Ayesha Kidwai B Rajeevan Badri Raina Bajrang Bihari Bali singh Balvant Kaur Bharat Tiwari Bhasha Singh Bodhisatv BRP Bhaskar Chaman Lal Chanchal Chauhan Chandrakant Patil Civic Chandran CK Meena Damodar Mauzo Devaki Khanna Devendra Choube Dilip Borkar EV Ramakrishnan Faisal Khan Gauhar Raza Gayatri Spivak Geeta Kapur Geetanjali Shree Girdhar Rathi Gita Jayaraj Githa Hariharan Gyan Prakash Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar Harsh Mander Hemlata Mahishwar Himanjali Sankar Hiralal Rajasthani Ina Puri Ira Bhaskar J Devika Javed Malick Jawari Mal Parakh Jeet Thayil Jerry Pinto Jyothi A Jyoti Punwani K Satchidanandan K Srilata Karthik Venkatesh Kavery Nambisan KG Sankara Pillai KP Fabian KP Jayasankar KP Ramanunni Krishnan Unni P KS Parthasarathy Kunal Sen Leela Jacinto MA Baby Madhu Bhaduri Madhusree Dutta Mallika Sarabhai Mangad Rathnakaran Mangalesh Dabral Manishi Jani Maria Couto Maya Rao Merlin Moli MMP Singh Moinak Biswas Moloyashree Hashmi Moolchandra Gautam MP Pratheesh Mridula Garg Mridula Koshy MV Narayanan Naina Dayal Nancy Adajania Nandita Narain Naseeruddin Shah Natasha Badhwar Nayantara Sahgal Neelan Premji Neelima Sharma Neeraj Malik Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay Nilanjana Bhowmick NP Chekkutty NS Madhavan Nupur Asher Pamela Philipose PK Parakkadavu PK Pokker PN Gopikrishnan Poile Sengupta Prabir Purkayastha Pradeep Chakraverti Pramod Ranjan Purushottam Agrawal Rahman Abbas Rajan Gurukkal Rajashri Dasgupta Rajendra Chenni Rajendra Sharma Rajesh Joshi Ranbir Kaleka Ranjit Hoskote Ravikant Rekha Awasthi Renu Ramanath Ritu Menon Romila Thapar Ruchi Chaturvedi Rukmini Bhaya Nair S Raghunandana Saba Dewan Saba Hasan Sabeena Gadihoke Saleem Peeradina Salil Chaturvedi Salim Yusufji Sandeep Pandey Sandhya Taksale Sanjeev Kumar Saumya Chakrabarti Savithri Rajeevan SG Vasudev Shafey Kidwai Shamsul Islam Shamya Dasgupta Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri Shashi Deshpande Sherna Dastur Shoma A Chatterjji Siddharth Sonia Jabbar Sreyashi Dastidar Subhasini Ali Subhasis Bandyopadhyay Subodh Varma Sudeshna Sengupta Sudhanva Deshpande Sudhir Chandra Sumangala Damodaran Sunil P Elayidom Svati Joshi Syantani Chatterjee Syeda Hameed TM Krishna Udaya Kumar Vaasanthi Sundaram Valay Singh Venkitesh Ramakrishnan Vibha Maurya Vijay Prashad Vijaya Venkataraman Vishnu Nagar Vivan Sundaram Vivek Narayanan Yousuf Saeed Zoya Hasan

On 3 October, an FIR was filed in Muzaffarpur, Bihar against 49 artists including Anurag Kashyap, Aparna Sen, Ramchandra Guha etc among others. The petitioner, a local advocate named Sudhir Kumar Ojha, alleged that their letter, written on 23 July, “tarnished the image of the country and undermined the impressive performance of the Prime Minister” besides “supporting secessionist tendencies”.

The open letter, as written by these 49 artists on 23 July, brought to the fore issues such as mob lynching of Dalits and minorities, increasing cases of hate crimes in the country, to the acts of violence in the name of religion. The letter also contained a plea to the Prime Minister for stringent actions against the perpetrators.

In a press conference soon after the letter was circulated on social media, Aparna Sen had said, “We are doing this because we love our country. We are raising our voices against the secular fabric of our country being ruined”. She added, “No one has the right to brand any one of us (the signatories) as anti-nationals…One must not politicise this.”