Jonah Achumi
The Editors Guild of India’s organized Lecture on the Centrality of Right to Dissent witnessed the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen saying “The silencing of dissent and the generating of fear in the minds of people violate the demands of personal liberty, but also make it very hard to have a dialogue –based democratic society. The problem is not that Indians have turned intolerant. In fact, quite the contrary. We have been too tolerant of even intolerance.”
Just a few days back, the national government has ordered a review in the sedition law which is now under a review by the Law Commission after it was being demanded by the members of the Rajya Sabha. The Sedition law which is also popularly known as ‘A Colonial Legacy’ and ‘A Relic’ should be got rid of and done away with. This Sedition Controversy has become a serious debate after the JNU issue. The chanting of the anti-national slogan against India and pro- Pakistan slogans by some students in the country’s most premier institution has shaken the collective conscience of India. The government’s invoking of sedition law has snowballed into a high voltage debates, creating a sharp chasm in the country’s already myriad divisions and putting a wedge which is now being celebrated by those who wants to slice the nation further into pieces. In all this among other things, whether the persons in the scene can be charged under sedition or not has become the million –dollar question in this entire quagmire. One of the most important statements on the sedition issue was said by Ghulam Nabi Azad, former union minister who said, ‘Half of the political parties in the country would be anti-national if there is a ban on speaking against the government because anybody who speaks against the government can be booked under sedition law’. The Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju also said “I would like the Law Commission to consider a very comprehensive review”. Further the Minister informed the upper house that a Law Commission report in 1997 had admitted that the sedition law was defective, but did not ask for its deletion. In 2006, the 156th report of the Law Commission also sought substitution of the word ‘sedition’ but did not ask for its deletion.
Most of the time sedition is born out of an exaggerated sense of insecurity which abhors the very idea of the disruptor. Sedition in fact is the freedom to repudiate the power that sets the limits of your freedom of dissent and expression. Sedition becomes a weapon for the rulers, those who thinks and believes that the authority they yields and possess is so fragile that they lack confidence amongst themselves to govern and put corrective reforms or bring contentment on the ruled. As a result punishment is meted out for those who stood in the interest of their inherent rights they believe that is due to them. When a state makes a seditionists out of those who tries to pinpoint the government fallacies, lapses and lacunae they abandon their cause and become immune to all they have once stood for. The state makes stoic heartless living dummies of the few ones who once rose to speak out about the loopholes stemming out from governmental inaction, ineptness and incompetency of a shady administrative apparatus and a fallacious system. The nation today has been rocked and sharply divided by the charges of sedition on JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar and some other students of JNU. Whether the anti-national sloganeering and chanting of anti- India slogans and whether those tapes were doctored will be only a matter of time for the truth to come out. Sedition rarely stands the scrutiny of the courts but India’s slow justice system ensures that the process becomes the punishment. Until then, this edict has only remained unaffected and unchanged and used even after independence by us which as a matter of fact was framed and used as a tool to suppress the tide national movement that was sweeping across the country.
Some history of famous Sedition charges on some eminent personalities and leaders and the court judgments.
1. J.C.Bose,1891:Jogendra Chandra Bose criticized the government in an editorial in Bangobasi newspaper. Prosecution dropped after he apologized.
2. Bande Mataram,1907: Aurobindo Ghosh was arrested for habitually publishing seditious matter in Bande Mataram but had to be acquitted.
3. Kamal Krishna Sircar Vs the Emperor,1934: Charged for condemning Communist Party ban and supporting the government in Russia. The Calcutta High Court commented:“ It is absurd to say speeches of this kind amount to sedition”
4. Niharendu Dutt Majumdar Vs King Emperor,1919: For his speech that the Bengal government hadn’t taken any steps to stop communal disturbances during Dhakha riots but was later acquitted.
5. Kedar Nath Singh Vs State of Bihar,1962: Was charged for a seditious speech but the Supreme Court held: A citizen has a right to say what he likes to say about the government,or its measures,by way of criticism,as long as he does not incite violence.
6. Alavi Vs State of Kerala.1982: The court held that sloganeering or criticizing Parliament or t-he judicial set up’ did not amount to sedition’.
7. Balwant Singh ANR Vs State of Punjab,1995 They had raised slogans of “Khalistan Zindabad” in a cinema hall the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated. But their conviction was set aside by the Supreme Court.
8. Simaranjit Singh Mann Case,2005: President of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Amritsar was arrested for raising pro-Khlaistan slogans at the Golden Temple on the 21st Anniversary of the Operation Blue Star. The court held that raising slogans at a public meeting ‘is not sedition’.
9. Aseem Trivedi ,2012: The Kanpur cartoonist was arrested for mocking the constitution. He did not apply for the bail until the charged was dropped. The Bombay High Court held; “Expressing criticism of the government with a view to obtaining a change of government by lawful means without any above is not seditious.
10. Hardik Patel.2015: the 22 year old quota agitation leader from Gujurat was booked by the police under charges of allegedly instigating a youth to kill policemen instead of suicide.
11. Arun Jaitley,2016: The present Union Finance Minister was charged on an article he wrote on the National Judicial Commission Act case. The Allahabad High Court quashed it and said” A citizen has a right to say or write what he like about the government as long as he does not incite violence.”
Deliberating and dwelling on any issues that confronts the people can be either supported or stand firmly against any governmental policies, systems and steps is one true essence and the hallmark of democracy. Disagreeing and pinpointing out the loopholes and inefficiencies of a governmental system can never amount to sedition in any way. Isn’t the Right to Expression the very soul and the pulse of a democracy? If the government elected by the people doesn’t deliver the goods to people who voted them to power, the people have every right to question them, criticize them or even ask them to step down. Because they have been elected to perform and serve, so if they don’t, the electorates and the masses have every right to question them or criticize them. Legislators are not just elected to do according to their own whims and give countless irrelevant justifications but that doesn’t mean the people don’t have right to question them. Any legislation and policy carried out in the name of service of the people continues to be anti- native if it fails to protect the indigenous rights of its land. What good is it or whose benefit will it be in the end if those malcontents and sponges that swarm all over the land is not done away with? The real seditionist are the ones who sit behind the desks and sell away the entire generations by issuing the birth certificates, indigenous certificates, driving licenses etc. and patronize them knowingly in every possible way for some measly sum of money. In suppressing the democratic voices, the law-keepers only give upper hand to those who betray their own salt and works against the very system that feeds them. By giving them the acknowledgment those incorrigible rascals continue without respite. And while it goes on then it only emboldens those inimical forces deterrent for our inherent indigenous rights which will only give them of their fullest salvation and deliverance of us to some foreign domination in our land.
The definition of nationalism or the sedition laws under the Article 124A of the IPC that are remnants of the British Raj and that are continued to be mostly (mis)used or are used as a weapon to clamp down democratic opinions and voices over all these last 68 years of independence and statehood. The constitution very clearly interprets and gives us freedom to express dissent among the other freedoms which are offered in the democratic India. In our democracy, governmental machineries, law and order agencies should be confident and bold enough to take any sort of criticism and not be reduced to a sort pressing serious sedition charges bodies on people who stand and speak out for the indigenous security of land and the people.
Another point of contention of the great Sedition debate that shook the whole nation which stemmed out from the JNU protests is that Sedition was never a part of the original Indian Penal Code that came in 1862. It was added to the IPC in 1870 and its scope and ambit was broadened in 1898 to deal with the freedom movement that was gaining ground. But being the world’s largest democracy there should be scope and avenues where we should and agree to disagree too.
Clamping down voices of dissent in a democracy may work for a while but it will not cow down everyone in the long run. In many social upheavals it backfires and has serious repercussions on the rulers themselves. Governments come and governments go, so do leaders but a nation must go and we and our children are going to live in it. If an existing law does not act for the goodwill of its indigenous inhabitants what good is that law? Or if the government of the day cannot implement it to save its subjects from the gigantic inflow of human tide then what good is that government? At this juncture, the only option for the youths is complete disillusionment a total system failure. When there’s a consistent energy yearning for far-reaching tangible results for a change in the almost anti-indigenous acts and policies in our state, it is not an act of sedition but a whiff of a revolution. Throughout the history of sedition charges, almost all happen to be either just circumstantial or far-fetched alibis. Most are found to be an ironic line of reasoning in the end. Maybe today in this land we have so many revolutionists who are not yet ready for a revolution because of that.
Sedition is a serious matter and when the charges of sedition are showered it shows lack of confidence of any power upon themselves that they be. As the doors of liberty to express clang and shut loudly right in our faces ringing extremely with high decibel to divide creating more differences, the hatred and bitterness meets applause, and writers remain to emerge as the nation’s conscience keepers. Today many intellectuals who are raising up in order to let their voices be heard and be counted to do away with archaic, outdated and primitive laws that needs to be shelved off and reminds us of our core values and what India and its states might lose if we do not wake up to what is just and what is right. Even here the potential of the youths will remain frozen forever if they are charged of sedition for every voice they raise out or if they disagree with flaws of governmental misdemeanors. There will a famine of brave-hearts even when our own doors have been barged in. Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation in 1919, when he was charged by the British Government, at the trial he famously said, ‘For me Sedition is the highest duty of a citizen’. The price of sedition is what one pays when he is trapped in a land lead by leaders and whose followers carry out their undaunted tasks of their myopic and bigoted political masters who are immune to ideas of bringing a change and stem the tide of influx by outsiders are kept alive by the rotten debris of corruption all over. The right to dissent is a fundamental as the right to free speech. But again any democratically elected government should not lose the capacity to engage with those who dissent. As they only hanker over how to remain in power, their subjects remain to be the least importance to them. And all this while the land gently weeps on but who cares anyway?
