Hearing a petition by Major General (retired) SG Vombatkere, who has challenged Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which deals with the offense of sedition, Chief Justice of India (CJI) N V Ramana turned to Attorney General K K Venugopal: “It’s a colonial law. It was meant to suppress the freedom movement. The same law was used by the British to silence Mahatma Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Still, is it necessary after 75 years of independence?”
There is a terrible lack of enforcement of the provisions available against the misuse of the law.
In a verdict in 2016, the Supreme Court had cautioned the police against misuse of the sedition law and directed them to follow its earlier Kedar Nath judgment. The judgment said that “The provisions of the sections read as a whole, along with the explanations, make it reasonably clear that the sections aim at rendering penal only such activities as would be intended, or have a tendency, to create disorder or disturbance of public peace by resort to violence is only when the words, written or spoken, which have the pernicious tendency or intention of creating public disorder or disturbance of law and order that the law steps in to prevent such activities in the interest of public order. So construed, the section, in our opinion, strikes the correct balance between individual fundamental rights and the interest of public order.”
The 2016 verdict had come after senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO Common Cause and S.P. Udayakumar (an anti-nuclear activist against whom sedition charges had been filed), said that there had been an increase in the number of sedition cases being filed and that the law of sedition was grossly misused, misapplied and abused by the authorities who were not following the Kedar Nath judgment.
There have been many cases where a person whose inconvenient view sparks outrage has been charged under this section or Sections 153A (disturbing communal harmony) and 295A (insulting any class of citizens' religion or religious beliefs).
A two-judge high court bench termed the charges against them “stretched,” “verbiage,” and “hyperbole” and said that the state might have blurred the line between the “right to protest” and “terrorist activity” by going after the protesters.
The sedition law, introduced by the British in India in 1870, outlaws speech that “brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Government established by law in India.”
One of the original motives of the law was to suppress the Indian rebellion against British colonialists when it was gaining momentum. The first case was registered, in 1891, when the editor of a newspaper called Bangobasi was booked for publishing an article criticizing the “Age of Consent Bill.” The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict and the judge, in that case, refused to accept any verdict that was not unanimous. The editor was released on bail, and, after he issued an apology, charges against him were dropped.
Mahatma Gandhi was jailed for six years on sedition charges because of the articles he wrote for a weekly journal, ‘Young India,’ which challenged the British government and asked Indians to stop serving it. However, Gandhi did not oppose the verdict, saying it was a “privilege” to be charged with sedition. He said people should be free to express their disaffection toward the government so long as they aren’t inciting violence.
The landmark Kedar Nath Case
In 1959, the Allahabad High Court declared that Section 124A violated Art. 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution states that all citizens have the right to freedom of speech and expression.
The Allahabad Court’s decision was overruled by the Supreme Court in the Kedar Nath Case in 1962, where a certain Kedar Nath Singh was charged with sedition for making a speech where he urged people to turn out the then-Congress government “much like the Britishers were turned out of the country.”
Sedition by an alien (resident but not a national of the country) is an offense. Interestingly, England – which brought the law to India - abolished the sedition law in 2009. Scotland followed suit in 2010.
India’s sedition can be compared with similar legal provisions in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The concept of sedition, as applied to speech, is dysfunctional in most countries of the world.
The law is weirdly interpreted and applied by India’s ill-trained and sometimes mal-intentioned police forces. It appears that one measure of sedition lies in relations between India and the other state. Hence, it is not seditious if Indians support Australia in an India-Australia cricket match. Still, it is seditious if they support Pakistan when India plays against its not-so-friendly neighbor.
On July 12, at a public event, justice D Y Chandrachud emphasized that criminal laws, including anti-terror legislation, should not be used for muzzling dissent and that courts must act as the “first line of defense” against deprivation of liberty.
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