The Free Saibaba Coalition U.S. condemns the recent arrest of Professor Chintakindi Kasim by the Telengana state police. Professor Kasim is the newly elected general secretary of the Revolutionary Writers Association (Virasam), and is a well-known Telugu-language poet and literary critic. This arrest is the latest in the Indian government’s crackdown on any and all democratic and progressive voices in India, and people around the world have a responsibility to stand up and oppose it.

In the past few years the Indian state has launched an all-out assault on democratic and progressive activists and figures as part of its consolidation to a more openly fascist form of rule. They arrested Professor G. N. Saibaba in 2014 on trumped up charges of “waging war against the government.” Since his arrest, Saibaba, who is 90% disabled due to childhood polio, has been relentlessly and brutally attacked by the state. They have denied him medical treatment and needed medication and refused to grant him bail for medical reasons.

By contrast, in 2019 the Indian supreme court granted medical bail to Babu Bajrangi, the former leader of the Gujarat branch of the Hindutva-fascist group Bajrang Dal. He openly confessed to murdering Muslims during the 2002 pogroms in Gujarat and bragged about how he enjoyed this act of butchery. Before being granted bail, he was serving a life-sentence for his heinous crimes. In today’s India Hindutva fascists who openly admit to murdering Muslims are treated leniently, while disabled professors imprisoned for holding progressive political beliefs are brutally attacked. This is the twisted fascist logic of the Indian government.

This assault on democratic rights and freedoms was taken to a new level in 2018 with the Bhima Koregaon case. A clearly fabricated conspiracy to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi was used as a pretext by the police to arrest numerous progressive and revolutionary activists, including G.N. Saibaba’s lawyer, Surendra Gadling, and the poet Varavara Rao, one of the founding members of Virasam.

Now with the arrest of Professor Kasim under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) the Indian state has shown it has no plans to stop attacking progressive and democratic activists who are raising their voices about the many injustices in Indian society. As in all these cases, the only thing Kasim is guilty of is having political ideas which are inconvenient for the Indian government.

Professor Kasim is an active member of Virasam, and he was elected general secretary just days before his arrest. Virasam recently celebrated its 50 year anniversary, marking half a century in which it has played a key role in supporting progressive and revolutionary struggles throughout India and the world.

Kasim’s arrest is clearly motivated by his political sympathies, by his membership in Virasam, and by the fact that he is a Dalit. The arrest itself is absurd. He was arrested based on an FIR which was registered four years ago, on which he was marked “absconded.” But, as Virasam’s statement on his arrest pointed out, Kasim has been a prominent figure for years in left-wing and literary circles in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, appearing in many public events, giving speeches, and teaching at Osmania University in Hyderabad.

It is absurd for the police to claim that for four years they have been unable to locate him, and that it is only now, days after he was elected general secretary of Virasam, that they were finally able to determine his whereabouts. In reality the police have, with the slimmest possible pretext of legality, arrested him as an act of intimidation for his political stance and to attack Virasam as an organization.

Perhaps the police should start simply opening an FIR against every Indian at birth, on the off-chance that they need to arrest them later. That would only be slightly less absurd than what has happened here.

In the past few weeks all across India there have been massive demonstrations against the Modi government’s plans to implement a Hindu Rashtra through the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Registry of Citizens (NRC). This shows that many people in India do not want to live in a fascist country, and they are willing to stand up strongly to oppose fascism. We in the Free Saibaba Coalition U.S. are heartened to see this growing tide of resistance against Hindutva.

The suppression of dissent in India is part of the same fascist political program. The Modi government is, like the Congress government before it, willing to use draconian laws like the UAPA to make a mockery of the democratic rights and freedoms that Indian citizens are supposed to enjoy. Progressive and democratic people around the world should stand up to oppose the suppression of dissent in India, and call for the release of Professor Kasim, of Varavararao, of G. N. Saibaba, and all the political prisoners languishing in India’s jails.

Here in the U.S., right wing Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) are mobilizing in support of Hindtuva. They are holding demonstrations in favor of CAA and NRC, and lobbying Congress and the Trump administration to support these policies. Last September, they mobilized 50,000 people for the “Howdy Modi” event in Houston, Texas, where Trump greeted Modi on stage (at the same time, around 50,000 people, including many NRIs, protested outside the event). These right wing NRIs share much ideologically with White Nationalists in this country. All of this shows the need to organize in opposition to these forces here in the United States, and to work closely with progressive NRIs. All around the world people of Indian origin and countless others have been protesting against CAA-NRC, the Modi government, and the broader suppression of dissent in India. We in the Free Saibaba Coalition are committed to working with these people to expose the crimes and atrocities of Hindutva fascism to the broader American public.

Free Professor Kasim!
Stop the attacks on Virasam and on democratic rights in India!
Oppose Hindutva fascism!