‘I’ll read my ‘inflammatory speech’ everyday’: Chandrashekhar Azad says before going into exile

Two days after he was granted bail on the condition that he would stay away from Delhi for a month, Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad today declared that “the inflammatory speech for which I was put behind bars is something that I’ll say everyday”.

As if to prove that he meant it, Azad proceeded to read the preamble of the Indian constitution. It was his reading of the preamble at a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act outside Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid that the police had deemed “inflammatory” and arrested him for on December 20. He was bailed out on January 15 but ordered to leave the national capital; not hold any protest against the citizenship law or the National Register of Citizens; and appear at the police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur, where he is from, every Saturday.

Speaking at a press conference organised by the Indian Women Press Corps in Delhi, Azad said, “If the government believes that the preamble is provocative, then I do not mind reading it. For it is because of this constitution of Bhimrao Ambedkar that I have clothes on my back.”

Granting Azad bail, judge Kamini Lau had chastised him for not respecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “This is wrong. You must respect the PM and the office. It’s our country and our people. We elected them,” she had said.

Azad said he did respect Modi because he held a constitutional post. “But I request him that he too should respect our constitution,” the leader added.

Azad dodged questions about his electoral plans. He had planned to launch his political party in December, he said, but now that the nation was going through “dark times”, it was imperative to focus on that. “Electoral politics can wait,” he said. In keeping with this, Azad added, he even educated people in jail about the citizenship law and the NRC.

On his health, which had reportedly deteriorated while he was behind bars, Azad claimed that prisoners in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, where he was held, were “treated like insects”.