Countering A Political Act That Has A Legal Garb

Context: With sedition cases rising, often solely based on word usage, people need to have a political and legal defence.

Pre-independence usage of the law: The British Raj used the law to suppress political liberty in India.

• Bal Gangadhar Tilak and sedition charges: Tried in 1897 on an accusation that articles in Kesari, a Marathi paper owned by him, inciting violence that led to the killing of two British officers.
  • In 1908, he was again tried and later sentenced for writing “seditious” articles and by connecting them with certain instances of ‘social disorder’.
• Sedition charges on Gandhi: In the great trial of 1922, Mahatma Gandhi, charged with sedition, described the provision as “perhaps the prince among the political sections of the IPC designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen”. Gandhi’s remarks on sedition charges:
  • He admitted the charge of preaching disaffection towards the then existing regime.
  • He justified his act and said that it was his duty to do so as it is “a sin to have affection for the system (under the British Raj)”.
  • He explained that “Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law.”

Post-independence usage of the law

• Judicial interpretation –
  • In the Kedar Nath Singh case, 1962, Supreme Court asserted that incitement to violence is the gist of the offence of sedition.
  • In Balwant Singh (1995), slogans for an independent Sikh nation were not found to be seditious for want of ingredient of incitement to violence.
  • This proposition was followed by Supreme Court consistently, till the Vinod Dua case 2021, where Court said that a journalist could not be booked for sedition for expressing dissent.
• The politicisation of draconian legal provisions: From Gandhi, till the day, the law is used for registration of crimes against political opponents, thus essentially a political act than legal.
  • According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), between 2016 and 2019, there was a 160% increase in registration of sedition cases, whereas the conviction rate during this period fell from 33.3% to 3.3%. - The process itself becomes the punishment.
  • After 2014, cases of sedition are frequently and intentionally registered solely based on words spoken, written, or tweeted, having a chilling effect on people’s movements.

Way forward

• Call for furthering judicial activism: Supreme Court and High Courts shall take suo motu cognisance of incidents where the state ostensibly uses draconian laws to suppress criticism and protest.
• Build up the political and legal defence: When charges are under ‘political sections’, as Gandhiji eloquently described, they need to be countered by a political praxis as well.
  • Only such a course would expose the egregious motive of the state in accusing its citizens of the offence of sedition without any legal or factual foundation whatsoever.