The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) is a prominent anti-terror law in India that was first enacted in 1967. The law has evolved over the years and was expanded in 2008 to accommodate all kinds of security offenses (Vishwanath, 2021). However, significant changes made by the current Indian government in August 2019 granted more power to the government to declare individuals as "terrorists" without charges or arrests and removed the requirement of prior permission for investigations by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) (Vishwanath, 2019). These amendments have been widely criticized for enabling the misuse of the law to silence dissenting voices and target critics of the government. Over the past four years, the Modi administration has been accused of abusing the UAPA to incarcerate journalists, student leaders, and activists indefinitely (Singh, 2023). Among these cases is that of Sidheeque Kappan, my focus on this post, a journalist from Kerala, who was imprisoned for two years without sufficient evidence, highlighting the consequences of the law's misuse of individual liberties (Khetan, 2023).
Sidheeque Kappan along with three others were arrested on 5th October 2020 on charges of sedition. He was on his way to Hathras to report the gang rape of a Dalit Woman. However, he was prevented from reaching Hathras and was arrested due to his alleged connection with the Popular Front of India (Singh, 2023). It was said that he attended a meeting with PFI members in which they decided to instigate Muslims to create riots in sensitive areas to overcome the funding problems they faced. Further, the three others who were traveling along with Kappan were formerly associated with the Bahraich riots, and Muzaffarnagar riots and were strongly connected with CFI AND PFI respectively. The Uttar Pradesh police also submitted two witnesses’ statements claiming Kappan was trying to stir an uprising against the UP administration for cremating the rape victim’s body (Bhatnagar, 2021).
In the following sections of this blog post, my objective is to scrutinize the surveillance mechanism employed by the UPA government on Sidheeque Kappan through a threefold analysis. First and foremost, I intend to contextualize this mechanism within the framework of securitization theory as proposed by Ole Weaver. Secondly, I will offer a critique of the initial conceptualization, drawing upon Hansen Lene’s interpretation of securitization theory. Finally, I will examine this surveillance within Foucault’s framework of Biopolitics and the PARIS school’s approach to (in)securitization. This structured approach will provide a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics and implications of this particular surveillance tactic.
The Securitization theory within the Copenhagen School of Security Studies proposed by Ole Weaver renders more authority back to the State and explains that anything that threatens the state sovereignty and political order is a matter of security concern. When a particular situation is designated as a security issue, it grants the state a unique authority, as defined by the state and its governing elites. Employing securitization allows those in power to shape the narrative and tackle challenges by framing them as security risks. The “speech act” of invoking security plays a central role in this process, as it authorizes the state to implement requisite actions to mitigate the perceived threat. This act of invoking "security" can be exploited by those in power to safeguard their interests and uphold control over perceived challenges (Weaver, 1995). Here, the security actor – the UP government is declaring Sidheeque Kapan as a terrorist in their 5000-page charge sheet against him. They are building a narrative that he is a threat to national security by using portions from his previous articles that are supposedly – spreading communalism, victimizing Muslims, spreading anti-Hindu sentiments, and empathizing with left extremists and Maoists (Bhatnagar, 2021). They use the revised UAPA as a means to tackle the security threat. The explicit purpose is to bring peace to the nation while the implicit purpose is to curtail the voices of marginalized communities and individuals who criticize the government (Singh, 2023).
However, in contrast to this conception, Hansen Lene asks the question of a silent security dilemma. She explores the concept of “security as silence” where individuals who are facing security threats are unable to voice their concerns due to societal restrictions (Lene, 2000). Kappan’s identity as a Muslim and a journalist from Kerala added to the insecurity of the state resulting in the silencing of his voice (Kappan, 2023). Here, silencing is a securitization strategy where the silenced are constituted as threat objects. They are normalizing silence on certain issues or perspectives that do not align with the dominant security narratives. In Kappan's case, his arrest under the UAPA can be seen as an attempt to silence his dissenting voice and suppress his reporting on issues deemed sensitive by the authorities (Singh, 2023).
The UAPA, ever since its revision in 2019 has been widely used as a surveillance mechanism that can be contextualized within Foucault’s framework of Biopolitics. Biopolitics is the notion in which governance takes place in a modern society. Foucault talks about two kinds of power of which ‘Power of Life’ helps us to understand the case of Kappan better. There are two ways in which the state exercises the power over life – first through disciplining of individual bodies and then through regulation and administration of the population i.e., governmentality (Foucault, 1990). The UAPA fits into this framework as it reflects the state’s attempt to govern and regulate the population who are perceived threat to national security or in this case the government itself. As Foucault argues, the UAPA is a prime example of how modern forms of power operate through both coercive and intrusive mechanisms such as laws and more subtle techniques like surveillance practices aimed at identifying and monitoring potential threats (Foucault, 1990). Even though Kappan’s arrest was under the guise of national security, it also serves as a warning to other individuals (‘deviant’) who might seek to challenge or criticize state actions.
Additionally, we can analyze this within the PARIS School’s approach to (in)security. In this approach, the division between what is security and what is insecurity starts fading. Both of them are presented as part of the same continuum. Further by deconstructing threat and referent object, this approach reframes the relativity of security itself. Here, the security apparatus enforced by the state is creating insecurity within individuals who are vocal against the current regime, weakening their trust in the government. On the other hand, by silencing these individuals state is trying to cover up their insecurity of being challenged for their wrongdoings. Sidheeque Kappan as being someone who was very vocal about political discourses that are unsettling to the current hyper-nationalist government, inflicted danger upon himself by representing the marginalized community which can be analyzed under the framework of Necropolitics as suggested by Mbembe. Under this approach, the UAPA can also be seen as a state of exception that permits states to file charges against individuals without proper evidence and declare them as terrorists (Mbembe, 2003).
In conclusion, the case of Siddique Kappan under the UAPA exemplifies the misuse of security laws to suppress dissenting voices. The threefold analysis reveals how state power operates to silence critics and regulate populations. Kappan’s imprisonment underscores the erosion of civil liberties. The UAPA’s expansion reflects broader trends of securitization, biopolitics, and (in)security dynamics, highlighting the urgent need for accountability and protection of individual rights in India’s legal framework.
References
Vishwanath, A. (2019, July 31) Explained: What is the UAPA amendment bill?. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/uapa-amendment-bill-terrorist-designating-individual-as-terrorist-5864906/
Vishwanath, A. (2021, July 6). Reading Section 43D (5): How it sets the bar for bail so high under UAPA. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/section-43d5-how-it-sets-the-bar-for-bail-so-high-under-uapa-7390673/
Bhatnagar, A. (2021, October 1). Siddique Kappan incites Muslims, paints them as victims, says UP STF in chargesheet. The Indian Express.
Khetan, A. (2023, February 18). Supreme Court must use cases pending against UAPA to examine its scope. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/supreme-court-must-use-cases-pending-against-uapa-to-examine-its-scope-8452013/
Singh, T. (2023, February 5). Tavleen Singh writes: The rules of democracy. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/tavleen-singh-writes-the-rules-of-democracy-8424383/
Kappan, S. (2023, February 2). Sidheeque Kappan says: ‘I was not arrested for being a Muslim… but because I’m a journalist from Kerala.’ The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sidheeque-kappan-was-not-arrested-for-being-muslim-but-journalist-from-kerala-8420550/
Foucault, M. (1990). Part Five: Right of Death and Power over Life. The history of sexuality: An introduction. (R. Hurley, Trans.). Vintage. (Original work published 1978).
Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11-40.
Wæver, O. (1995). Securitization and Desecuritization. In R. Lipschutz (Ed.), On Security (pp. 1-24). Columbia University Press.
Hansen, L. (2000). The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School. Millennium, 29(2), 285–306.
Hello Gauri,
You have provided a very nuanced analysis on this topic which showcases how the state misuses its power. I really appreciated your insights on the complexities of security dilemma through various lenses. I was particularly absorbed by the irony that a state by invoking security through its speech act makes some of its citizens insecure. Given that the state is viewed as a threat object and the Supreme Court made a statement against the state where do you place it in the Securitization concept proposed by Ole Weaver?
Thank you for the really insightful article, it engages with various themes and theories pertaining to security and security studies while critiquing the current regime's fascist tendencies to misuse their power and to repress voices freedom of speech, something that is clearly a process of othering. Reading this, I was able to draw parallel to various other cases where the state (under both the current and the previous rule) has used the 'speech act' in perceiving a particular person or community as a threat object in order to justify its actions, a prominent example being the Operation Green Hunt, one that has promoted a state sponsored vilification of the Naxal community; and of course the arrest of Disha Ravi and…