India is known to be the world’s largest democracy but the people living here would beg to differ. Democracy is supposed to give equal rights and opportunities to its citizens and to conduct fair elections. But recent times have seen it thrown under the bus.
Gothenburg-based V-Dem Institute categorised India as an “Electoral Autocracy” in 2018. V-Dem is an Institute that tracks democratic freedom worldwide on various indexes. India fell even worse in V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy index and was stated to be “one of the worst autocratisers.” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in its 2024 report ranked India at 159 out of 176 countries (2 ranks higher than last year) in its Press Freedom Index. This calls for attention towards journalistic freedom in the country.
Indian Media questions the reliability of these reports and term them as “foreign propaganda” and it’s no lie that these indexes have been made keeping a foreign point of view in mind but one cannot deny that press freedom is at an all time low in the country. Deteriorating conditions of true reporting are helping no one other than the party in power. Most journalists and news agencies either cater to the advertisers or serve up to the officials and elites. Out of all this, if someone turns out to be brave enough to swim against the current and speak out the truth, they are imposed with multiple criminal charges and threatened to death. One such law is the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which gets misused to silence voices of disagreement.
Article 19 of the Indian Constitution is a Fundamental Right that guarantees freedom of speech and expression to all Indian citizens. Its subsections also guarantee the freedom to assemble, freedom to form associations, freedom to move freely, freedom of residence and freedom of profession. UAPA contradicts the rights given in Article 19 and creates an environment of fear.
What exactly is UAPA?
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or simply, UAPA, is an act that could be used by the Central Government at any instance without any prior notice or solid evidence to arrest an individual or a group of individuals and/or disband an organisation, allegedly pronouncing them to be terrorists or separatists.
If it wasn’t anti human rights already, its amendments made it even worse for the general public. UAPA gives the Central Government absolute power, which has been in the past and still is being misused to curb dissent.
History of its Enactment
Just after the Constitution’s adoption, there was an amendment in 1951. The amendment added that your fundamental rights could be taken away in extreme emergency cases with a reasonable justification. One of the major justifications was if an act affects public order.
The next step in creating a massive hole in freedom of speech was the enactment of UAPA. Just after India’s loss to China in 1962, the country was in a state of chaos. At the exact same time when DMK was contesting elections in Tamil Nadu, they had succession from India as part of their manifesto. So, to tackle internal separatist tendencies and to declare associations that sought secession from India as ‘unlawful’ the government brought in Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on 30 December, 1967.
The process of banning associations could simply be done by the government announcing them as ‘unlawful’ and hence banned. Though the original 1967 Act had provisions for a tribunal to review or to hear an appeal against the ban, it rarely came to practical terms.
2004 Amendment
In 2004, after public’s outcry against the misuse of Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) it got repealed. Which then created a vacuum in the law, so there were amendments in UAPA. Instead of changing the law, they took all clauses from POTA and reframed it under UAPA, making only minor changes. UAPA also borrowed clauses from the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) Act, which was just one of the other misused acts.
This amendment added Anti-terrorism provisions to the UAPA. It also introduced new definitions of Terrorist Acts and Terrorist Gangs and added New Punishments for New Offences. The Central Government could now circumvent rules of evidence when it came to interception of communication. They could also declare any organisation as a terrorist organisation by enlisting them in a ‘schedule’ without a trial or requirement to show evidence.
2008 Amendment
On December 17, 2008, another amendment of the UAPA was moved and adopted following the Mumbai Terror Attacks in 2008. More provisions similar to POTA and TADA regarding:
Maximum period in police custody,
Incarceration without a charge sheet, and
Restrictions on bail were incorporated into the UAPA.
These new procedures included longer police custody, longer jail time without a charge sheet being filed and harder bail provisions.
2019 Amendment
The latest amendment in this Act gives direct power to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to investigate cases under UAPA. It also gives the right to the Government to declare individuals as terrorists as well. Earlier the Central Government could only schedule organisations but after this amendment even individual people are at threat.
Present - day UAPA
It allows individuals to be arrested and kept in custody for up to 90 days, i.e, 3 months with bare minimum evidence as to why they were being arrested. Additionally, Investigative agencies could take up to 180 days, i.e., 6 months to file an official chargesheet.
Under UAPA the accused won’t be given bail if the first impression of the court is that they are guilty. A minimum of 2 years of imprisonment is imposed on an accused, depending on their offences.
Umar Khalid and CAA/NRC Protests: An Insight
Syed Umar Khalid is an Indian Student Activist. He was a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the former president of the Democratic Students’ Union (DSU) there. He faces charges under the UAPA statute for his alleged involvement in the sedition incident at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
As per the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), individuals who are migrants of Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Parsi descent who came to India illegally (i.e., without a visa) on or before December 31, 2014, from Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, and have resided there for a period of five years, are qualified to apply for Indian citizenship.
CAA overlooks the persecution of Hazaras, Ahmadis, atheists, and political dissidents in Pakistan, as well as oppressed minorities from other countries including Tibet, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. This Act uses an Indian citizen’s religion as a criterion. Articles 13, 14, 15, 16, and 21 of the Constitution, which protects the rights to equality, equality before the law, and non-discriminatory treatment by the Indian State, are all violated by the CAA. It also breaches secular values outlined in the Constitution.
Indian Muslims are negatively impacted by CAA+NRC because Muslims who lack the documentation needed to prove their citizenship in a National Register of Citizens (NRC) may be labelled as illegal migrants. They would also be unable to use CAA to obtain citizenship by pretending to be illegal migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, unlike non-Muslim Indians who may be able to do so.
Protests against CAA/NRC have taken place in major parts of the country. Especially in Assam and North Eastern regions and New Delhi. The living state of people without documents who are neglected in CAA is very bad after NRC was implemented in Assam. People were thrown into concentration camps and their property was seized. Looking at this, protests lit up in New Delhi in 2020. Major protests were led by students and the name of JNU came into light the most. There were attacks on JNU students against these protests. Students were beaten up, abused and thrown into jail and sedition charges were implemented on them.
Umar Khalid, Asif Iqbal Tanha, Gulfisha Fatima, Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Sharjeel Imam, and other students were booked under UAPA.
Speeches that have been referred to extensively during the making of Umar’s chargesheet weren’t actually riot-inducing. Instead, he spoke for peaceful protesting and basic rights. But, his words were twisted and brought to misdirect the public. In general people’s mind Umar is a terrorist and the BJP government has succeeded to sideline demands. A similar thing happened with Sharjeel imam and other students.
The Central Government is misusing its power to put activists and journalists in jail so their discriminatory bills are passed and implemented without dissent. One of the major reasons why Umar was booked wasn’t him being a terrorist or him igniting violence, but was that he is anti-BJP with a great influence on people and the Modi government fears that students like Sharjeel Imam or Umar khalid could influence the youth to not vote for BJP and eventually dethrone.
Conclusion
The National News Media tries its best to portray a negative image of everyone dissenting. Their main TRP comes from running shows on islamophobia. From calling students a part of ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’ (for their alleged separatist ideology) to publicly announcing young students as terrorists and justifying attacks on them. The Central Government uses UAPA for its own good. UAPA hasn’t been used in actual sense for its ‘real’ purpose a majority of the time. Umar Khalid and other victims of this act have been rotting in jail and fighting for their truth. Umar Khalid is still waiting. It has been more than 3 years and he is still waiting to get released.
A Drochanian law like UAPA in hands of a religiously extremist central government feels like nuclear weapons in America’s domain. You don’t know when they would drop a bomb on you, and you would look at them from your grave justifying it under national security. Hilarious to a point. How is it democracy when a person is booked under custody for practising their right to Freedom of Speech and Expression. It was violated at the time of Emergency (1975) and also after Modi’s election (2014). Cases of UAPA have risen up 10 times in Uttar Pradesh after Adityanath Yogi came to power. Similar things happened with other right wing ruled states.
Though anti-terrorism laws are needed for security, they should not give a particular government absolute power to use it whenever and wherever against whoever. The chances of it being misused touch the sky. We’ve seen in cases of Siddiqui Kappan, Father Stan Swamy, Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, Safoora Zargar, Suddha Bhardwaj, and other students, activists and journalists that UAPA is a sword hanging above your head waiting to be dropped without a reason.
The only solution to UAPA’s terror is to make it more judicial and less political. Absolute power from the Government should be taken away and given to the Supreme Court. Before booking someone under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, at least a little evidence that supports the arrest should be given and a charge sheet should be filed as soon as possible. Waiting time for a bail should be reduced on humanitarian grounds and officials should be more humane when it comes to ambiguous cases where bold and strong evidence is not present.
This brings us back to the point of Democracy. Are we really Democratic? Or are we Autocrats? Or are we on our way to become a Religious Dictatorship? One way to safeguard our constitutional rights and freedom is to mindfully elect a good and just government that isn’t majoritarian, because Babasaheb once said that: “However good a Constitution may be, if those who are implementing it are not good, it will prove to be bad. However bad a Constitution may be, if those implementing it are good, it will prove to be good.”
Written by – Harshvardhan Bhaskar
Edited by – Shamonnita Banerjee