The Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies has expressed its dismay over the “continuing assault” on civic freedoms and Constitutional rights of writers, teachers, students, human rights activists and public intellectuals in the country.

In a statement, the association expressed solidarity with Hiren Gohain, Anand Teltumbde and several Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students against the “orchestrated witch-hunt” being carried out for the cause of “raking up an electoral consensus against the spirit of scientific inquiry and free-thinking”.

“The current political climate of fear and intimidation, fuelled and vindicated by the State and the ruling party, has simultaneously targeted entire communities through a range of religious-ethnic violence, as much as it has sought to silence conscientious voices that have spoken up against such onslaughts,” read the statement.

The association said that “vacuous rhetorical constructions” such as “anti-national” and “urban naxal” — with no basis in fact or in principles of democratic governance — have been repeatedly manufactured as the grounds for punitive-legal action and media trials, through the invoking of outdated colonial codes like the sedition laws.

The IACLALS stated that as a scholarly association, it believes in the need and power of a critical public sphere, as the only promise of a living democracy. “We condemn every attempt being made at gagging forms of dissent and enforcing regimes of censorship,” the association added.