Bhuvaneshwar (Orissa): Lenin Kumar Roy, the editor of Nishan, a Left oriented quarterly magazine published from the state was arrested on December 7, 2008 and sent to jail on charges of writing provocative literature which as per the police version and the official report would disturb communal peace and harmony.

The police did not stop here. It also arrested two employees of Sovan Press, Bhubaneswar, after conducting a raid on it for printing the book ‘Dharma naanre Kandhamalre Raktara Nadi’ published by Lenin Kumar Roy.

The said book was alleged to be ‘Maoist literature’. Next day, he was produced in the court for ‘publishing provocative literature which can disturb communal peace and harmony’. The police cited page 38 to 41 of the above book. And what do those pages have in them? They produce a letter allegedly written by the RSS to its members for anti dalit, anti minority activities and also have some of Lenin’s comments on this.

Dr Nutan Thakur, editor of ‘Nutan Satta Pravah’ and representative of the Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences (IRDS) in Lucknow says that, "So, in India (and particularly in Orissa) it is a crime to write anything against the RSS or to produce an RSS letter or to comment upon it- more so if the government is supported by the BJP!

"But the actual reason goes even more deeper. In reality, Lenin had become a pain in the neck for the Navin Patnaik government which has completely failed in protecting the minority rights in the Kandhamal episode and has proved to be blatantly partisan and completely ineffective on the law and order front. He has been consistently raising voice of dissent for last one year in Nissan on all these, a fact that was to great distaste of the establishment, be it the CM and his party or the supporting ally BJP.

In August 2008, Nishan was labeled as a Maoist organ by SP Jagatsinghpur though the editor had protested this allegation. This is not the lone instance of the Orissa government coming up heavily against the dissenting members of the intelligentsia and the media who are critical about the government’s activities. A few months ago, Rabindra Prasad Panda, a prominent Oriya writer, was sent to jail for writing a book, using similar Sections of the IPC.

Thus as the NDTV has rightly said- “Orissa cops have taken the term gag order to a new level altogether.”

I am never able to understand what the police force in this nation want to prove by arresting people like Lenin Roy. Is it not completely shameful highly deplorable and atrocious? What is Lenin’s fault- that he writes Maoist literature, that he speaks the language of Marxism, Leninism and Communism? Is this a free country we are living in?

I don’t know what will happen to our country where such local dictators who only want bards and sycophants around them. While it can be the case with the political persons, how can this be true also with the intellectuals and the media? Is this the way our Constitution makers had envisaged our Chief Ministers and governments to behave?

The media is known as the fourth estate and the watchdog of a democratic society. But can any society function properly if its chosen representatives are so intolerant, biased, personally stymied and spiteful as to pursue matters on a personal level and stop any person from expressing his/her views?

Lenin’s arrest is a blot on our society and must be resisted by each one of us as an example of complete dictatorship. Is this a free nation? In a subsequent press statement, the authors condemned the arrest and demanded his immediate release.