India's radical Hindu party, the BJP, has called for the arrest and trial of the internationally-acclaimed author Arundhati Roy while abusing her as a traitor. Such sentiments are not Indian, but nonsense from irate BJP activists, said the Guardian in an editorial published Thursday. Excerpts: On trial for sedition in 1922, Mahatma Gandhi told the court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat: “I have no desire whatsoever to conceal from this court that to preach disaffection towards the existing system of government has become almost a passion with me.” Sedition “in law is a deliberate crime”, he admitted, but it “appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen”. History does not repeat itself, nor does it always rhyme. Still, the words of the father of modern India come to mind when considering the case of Arundhati Roy, who faces arrest under pretty much the same colonial sedition laws that earned Gandhi a six-year prison sentence. The writer is under threat of a sedition charge after claiming in Delhi this weekend that “Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. It is a historical fact. Even the Indian government has accepted this.” Ever since, the rightwing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party has been demanding the author's arrest and trial. The party's general secretary claimed: “Anyone speaking against India should be hanged.” As sentiments go, this is both daft and directly contrary to the Indian tradition of open debate and healthy dissent – and the Congress-led government should say so. The BJP may find Ms Roy's position shocking, but her comments are hardly new – she has been making similar public statements for years now. All she has done is bravely use her position to draw attention to the unjustifiable repression of unrest in the Kashmir valley that has been taking place over the past few months. __
