By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: Academician and rights activist Manish Sethi’s book on ‘Prejudice, Law and Counterterrorism in India,’ Kafkaland was officially released on Saturday evening at the packed hall of the Press Club of India in the National Capital.
Kafkaland explores the grisly underbelly of counterterrorism, where prejudice and lawlessness are the standard operating codes. From Mumbai to Bangalore, to Delhi to Madhya Pradesh, it examines some of the most prominent terror cases to show that the hallmark of terror investigations is not simply a casual subversion of norms but cynical prejudice and brutal violence inflicted in the knowledge of absolute impunity. It also examines the disquieting trend of judicial abdication, wherein the courts indulgently ignore signs of torture, lack of evidence and absence of procedural norms, while trying terror cases.
(L-R) Advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhry, Manisha Sethi, Mukul Kesvan, Asad Zaidi.
Advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhry, Human Rights Lawyer, Mukul Kesavan, Writer and Columnist had a discussion with the Author on the larger theme of the book, where Author and other panellists also read excerpts from the book. The session was chaired by Asad Zaidi.
The book published by Three Essays, challenges the dominant narratives of counterterrorism and the emerging security-industrial complex. Kafkaland is where impunity, bias, suspicion are sustained by laws, where erosion of constitutional guarantees is advertised as internal security, where corporate greed masquerades as national interest.
During the discussion, passive silence of the larger civil society when it comes to persecution of the marginalised community, including minorities, Dalits and tribals was questioned, while discussants also pointed the glaring manner in which media appears to be “colluding” with the state machinery and blindly write what investigating agencies plant.
Manisha Sethi is currently Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She teaches at the Centre for Comparative Religions and Civilizations, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She is also Associate Editor at Biblio: A Review of Books. Her book Escaping the World: Women Renouncers among Jains was published in 2012. Sethi is an activist with Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association and has been at the forefront of the struggle for justice in the Batla House shootout.
Advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhry noted the instances when investigating agencies brazenly fabricate cases to implicate youths with impunity. Kesvan pointed how we generally feel detached from events we read in newspapers, but there comes moment in everyone’s life when we realise how unabashedly security agencies have been carrying operations and media has been obediently following them without question. He added that Batla House episode was an event in his life that turned his outlook towards such incidents since as a faculty member at Jamia Millia Islamia he was witness to how media was over-zealously reporting things.
The discussion was made lively by presence of large number of people that included almost entire circle of the left leaning academicians, activists, journalists and lawyers, including Prashant Bhushan, Shabnam Hashmi, Vrinda Grover, Manoj Mitta, Amit Sen Gupta, Muzammil Jaleel, Mahtab Alam, Tanveer Fazal, among others.
Advocate Vrinda Grover questioned the way Judiciary have been reduced to meek spectators and officers who were involved in fake encounters or implications of youths get total impunity that has emboldened them.
Related:
New book explores the grisly underbelly of counterterrorism in India
Table of contents
Preface
Part 1: Stories from Kafkaland
1. Dr. Narco and Other Stories from Kafkaland
2. The Life and Death of Gulam Yazdani
3. Terrorism’s True Lies
4. Malegaon and the Fiction of Muslim Revenge
Part 2: Law of the Land
5. Death by Encounter
6. Why the Ishrat Jahan Case Frightens Our Commentators
7. Crime and Punishment
8. Sinful Liberals and the Investigative Bias
9. Temples of Justice
10. Truth is Stranger than Fiction
Part 3: The Security Metaphysic
11. The Security Metaphysic
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Pages: xii+216,
ISBN (Paperback) 978-93-83968-00-8
Rs350 (India) $15 (elsewhere)
weight: 350 gms Pb (approx.)
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Available at major bookstores and with the main distributor: IPD Alternatives 35A/1 Shahpur Jatt, New Delhi 110049 Tel. 011-26491448/26492040 e-mail [email protected] or directly from Three Essays (www.threeessays.com)
The book is also available on Amazon.in