DesiPundit

LIKE CHANDRASEKHAR AZAD, Aseem Trivedi, the cartoonist arrested recently in Mumbai, too has family origins in central Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district. The purpose of recounting that piece of trivia is not to compare the revolutionary hero of the 1920s to Trivedi. The two are very different individuals, and any comparison would be odious. However, one intriguing question does link them: was Azad’s relationship with and threat to the British Indian State exactly the same as Trivedi’s relationship with and threat to the Indian State? The answer is plainly “no”. If that be the case, how does one explain that a charge of sedition — the same legal clause that the Raj may well have deployed against Azad and other freedom fighters — has been used by authorities in Maharashtra to arrest Trivedi?