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CONCEPT – SEDITION LAWS IN INDIA
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- What Is Sedition?
- The word sedition means, “The use of words or action intended to encourage people to oppose a government” and
- “an act or conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.”
- From the two definitions, it is clear that the word sedition has two components:
- Sedition contains three actions, namely, an act, conduct or a speech.
- All these actions are intended to incite people to rebel against the state, government or the nation.
- Sedition in the I.P.C. : This seditious act has also been given place in the INDIAN PENAL CODE under Section 124A which states as: “Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India shall be punished with imprisonment for life to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.” The point worth noting is that the word sedition is not mentioned anywhere in the IPC or the Indian Constitution!
- Need for Sedition Laws In India : Most of the laws as prevailing in India are the gifts from the British to us! The Sedition law is one such gift. It was introduced as an offence through clause 113 of the Draft Indian Penal Code by Thomas Macaulay in the year 1837. The reason for its incorporation in the draft was the increase in rebel by the Indian revolutionaries against the company rulers. The British seeing that the Indians were spreading hatred against them felt the need of a law which can suppress their rebel. As a result, the law of Sedition was introduced in the draft of Indian Penal Code. However, the Law of Sedition was not present in the original Indian Penal Code of 1860. It was in 1870 when due to rising rebels and unrest, the British government amended the Indian Penal Code and inserted Sec 124A. So we can say that the Law of Sedition took birth in 1870 in India.
- Section 124A : Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India shall be punished with imprisonment for life to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.
- Explanation 1 : The expression “disaffection” includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.
- Explanation 2 : Comments expressing disapprobation of the measures of the Government with a view to obtain their alteration by lawful means, without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence under this section.
- Explanation 3 : Comments expressing disapprobation of the administrative or other action of the Government without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence under this section.
- Section 123 : Concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war, whoever by any act, or by any illegal omission, conceals the existence of a design to wage war against the Government of India, intending by such concealment to facilitate, or knowing it to be likely that such concealment will facilitate, the waging of such war, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.
- Section 122 : Collecting arms, etc., with intention of waging war against the Government of India whoever collects men, arms or ammunition or otherwise prepares to wage war with the intention of either waging or being prepared to wage war against the Government of India shall be punished with imprisonment for life or imprisonment of either description for a term not exceeding ten years and shall also be liable to fine.
- Section 121 : Waging, or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the Government of India whoever, wages war against the Government of India or attempts to wage such war, or abets the waging of such war, shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life and shall also be liable to fine. Illustration A joins an insurrection against the Government of India. A has committed the offence defined in this section.
- Not the only law : The Sedition law wasn’t the only law which was passed by the British government to suppress the voices of Indian revolutionaries. Other laws such as the Vernacular Press Act, 1878, [repealed in 1881], the Newspapers (Incitement of Offences) Act, 1908, and the Indian Press Act, 1910 [repealed in 1921] – gave legal backing to the British government to restrict voices that went against it.
- How was the Law of Sedition used? It was a matter of privilege for Indian freedom fighters to be behind bars under the charges of 124A, as said by the Father of the Nation, “Section 124A, under which I am happily charged is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by the law. If one has no affection for a person, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence.” (M. Gandhi)
- First trial : The year 1892 saw the “first recorded state trial for sedition” in Queen Empress v. Jogendra Chunder Bose. The judgment “laid down a distinction between ‘disaffection’ and ‘disapprobation’, and observed”: “It is sufficient for the purposes of the section that the words used were calculated to excite feelings of ill-will against the Government, and to hold it up to the hatred and contempt of the people, and that they were used with an intention to create such feeling.
- Expanding scope : In 1898, in the case of Queen Empress v. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the scope of the offense was expanded by the colonial courts and mere attempts to incite feelings of disaffection could be seen as sedition. The Tilak case defined sedition law under Section 124A for the first time6 as follows: “The offense consists in exciting or attempting to excite in others certain bad feelings towards the government. It is not the exciting or attempting to excite mutiny or rebellion or any sort of actual disturbance, great or small. Whether any disturbance or outbreak was caused by these articles is absolutely immaterial.”
- Bapu, too! The sedition law got more famous after the father of our nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was jailed under the charges of sedition. Mahatma Gandhi was arrested by the British police on March 10 in 1922 for writing three ‘politically sensitive’ articles in his weekly journal Young India, which was published from 1919 to 1932. Gandhi was sentenced to a six-year jail term. Charges imposed were – ‘tampering with loyalty’, ‘shaking the manes’ and ‘attempt to excite disaffection towards British govt.’.
- Landmark Cases
- The Queen-Empress vs. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1897) : Perhaps the most famous cases of sedition in history have been of our country’s freedom fighters against colonial rule. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, staunch advocate of India’s freedom was charged with sedition on two occasions. The first in 1897 for speeches that allegedly incited the violent behaviour of others, which resulted in the death of two British officers. He was convicted and released on bail in 1898, and in 1909 prosecuted again for seditious writing in his newspaper Kesari. 1897 was the first instance where Section 124 (a) from the IPC was identified and applied. Incitement to violence and insurrection was immaterial in the eyes of the presiding Privy Council in regards to the culpability of a person that’s been charged with sedition.
- Kedar Nath Singh vs. State of Bihar (1962) : This was a landmark case, the first case of sedition tried in the court of Independent India, where the constitutionality of the very provision was challenged and the Supreme court clearly differentiated between disloyalty to the country’s government and commenting on the measures of the government without inciting public disorder by acts of violence. Similar to the alleged anti-national speech of Kanhaiya Kumar, in a way, Kedar Nath Singh, a member of the Forward Communist Party in Bihar, was charged for quite an extreme speech condemning the ruling government of the time and calling for a revolution. “Today the dogs of the CID are loitering around Barauni. Many official dogs are sitting even in this meeting,” he said as he began his speech. “The people of India drove out the Britishers from this country and elected these Congress goondas to the gaddi and seated them on it. Today these Congress goondas are sitting on the gaddi due to mistake of the people. When we drove out the Britishers, we shall strike and turn out these Congress goondas as well...” The Supreme Court imposed a narrower scope of interpretation, holding only those matters that had the intention or tendency to incite public disorder or violence as legally seditious.
- Dr. Binayak Sen vs. State of Chhattisgarh (2007) : Dr. Binayak Sen was charged for sedition, amongst other things, for allegedly aiding naxalites, and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Session Court in Raipur. He was accused of helping insurgents, who were very active in the region at the time, by passing notes from a Maoist prisoner that was his patient to someone outside the jail. Denying all charges against him, Dr. Sen stated he was under the constant supervision of prison officials during his treatments so such an action would not be possible. It was his criticism of the killings committed by a vigilante group that prompted his arrest and subsequent accusations, Dr. Sen stated to The Wall Street Journal. Salwa Judum, is the group he’s referring to, designed and supported by the state government of Chhattisgarh to curb the insurgency in the villages of indigenous tribes where it thrived, according to them. But Dr. Sen, who’s a human-rights activist apart from being a paediatrician, claims that the groups real job’s to clear village land that’s rich in iron ore, bauxite and diamonds for it to be quarried.
- His arrest gained a lot of international attention, and the U.S.-based Global Health Council awarded Dr. Sen its 2008 Jonathan Mann Award for global health and human rights in recognition of his services to poor and indigenous communities in India. In May later that year, 22 Nobel laureates sent a letter to the Indian government criticizing the incarceration and asking that he be released to receive the award in person. “We also wish to express grave concern that Dr. Sen appears to be incarcerated solely for peacefully exercising his fundamental human rights…and that he is charged under two internal security laws that do not comport with international human rights standards,” they said in the letter.
- Aseem Trivedi vs. State of Maharashtra (2012) : Controversial political cartoonist and activist, Aseem Trivedi, best known for his anti-corruption campaign, Cartoons Against Corruption, was arrested on charges of sedition, in 2010. The complaint, filed by Amit Katarnayea who is a legal advisor for a Mumbai-based NGO, condemned Trivedi’s display of ‘insulting and derogatory’ sketches, that depicted the Parliament as a commode and the National Emblem in a negative manner having replaced the lions with rabid wolves, during an Anna Hazare protest against corruption, as well as posting them on social networking sites.
- As reported by India Today, members of India Against Corruption (IAC) claimed that the cases were foisted on Trivedi by the government, as the government was angry with their anti-corruption crusade. Mayank Gandhi of the IAC said, “The case has been registered simply because Aseem had participated in the BKC protest organized by Anna Hazare and had raised his voice against corruption. So the government is trying to scuttle his protest in this manner.” Trivedi’s case seriously questioned freedom of speech and expression in the country we a young man got arrested for lampooning evident corruption in the country. It’s acceptable that some may find his cartoon offensive and in bad taste, but sentencing a person to life in prison for such an act is too extreme.
- Shreya Singhal vs. Union of India (2012-15) : This case is monumental in India’s jurisprudence as its judgement took down Section 66A of the IT Act, sought to be in violation of Article 19 (1) of the Constitution of India that guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression to all citizens. A student of law at the time, Shreya Singhal filed a petition in 2012 seeking an amendment in the section 66A, triggered by the arrest of two young girls in Mumbai, for a post on Facebook that was critical of the shutdown of the city after the death of Shiv Sena leader, Bal Thackeray; one of them posted the comment, the other merely ‘liked’ it.
- What’s critical about this judgement is the court’s ruling that a person could not be tried for sedition unless their speech, however “unpopular,” offensive or inappropriate, had an established connection with any provocation to violence or disruption in public order. The Supreme Court distinguished between “advocacy” and “incitement”, stating that only the latter is punishable by law. The Supreme Court judgement came after three years of the petition’s filing in 2015, but Shreya did not deter. “I did feel saddened in between but never lost hope. I was also hurt to see that despite the matter pending before the SC, police continued to arrest people under section 66A of the IT act.
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