There is a fierce clash going on in our country. The people of our country – workers, peasants, adivasis, women, various nationalities – are refusing to accept the oppressive and exploitative conditions and are demanding a change in these conditions.
There is a fierce clash going on in our country. The people of our country – workers, peasants, adivasis, women, various nationalities – are refusing to accept the oppressive and exploitative conditions and are demanding a change in these conditions. On the other hand, the Indian state is escalating the unleashing of communal and fascist terror against the people to keep the people divided and suppressed. The ruling class is doing everything in its means to preserve this system while maintaining the facade of democracy and the pretence that it safeguards the interests of all. Towards this, it seeks to legitimise the suppression of all struggles of the people to resist and oppose its fascist rule.
The ruling class invokes the Constitution, the multi-party political system and the fact that elections are held from time to time across the country, to claim that India is the biggest democracy in the world. At the same time, it uses fascist laws to ensure that any serious opposition to its rule is eliminated, in the name of preserving the “unity and integrity” of the country and maintaining “law and order”.
It is in this context, that we must review the sedition law, which has come into public discourse in recent times, with the release of a circular by the government of Maharashtra. This circular issued on 27th August 2015 instructed the state police that Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code (sedition law) can be invoked against “whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representation, is critical of politicians and elected representatives belonging to the government.”
Subsequently, the Mumbai High Court stayed the application of this circular, and clarified that unless the object of the offending expression (any view expressed in words or in writing) is to overthrow or subvert the government (central or state) established by law by “violent means”, it should not be considered sedition.
It must be noted that the High Court has not ruled against the Sedition Law. It has only asked the state machinery to use the law in such a manner that the credibility of the state and its system of multi party repesentative democracy is not damaged. This is because the functioning of this system demands that members of the opposition parties hurl charges and discredit the ruling party and its government on every possible issue or non-issue. In giving its ruling, the High court has been silent on the right to conscience of citizens to hold and express views about their vision for India. The sedition law, which has existed since 1870, has been and can be used against any individual or members of an organisation that opposes or even calls to question existing conditions that have been legitimised under this Constitution and other prevailing laws.
Historical background
Sedition was inserted into the Indian Penal Code by the Imperial Legislative Council Act No. 27 of 1870. It was clear from the Ghadar of 1857 that large sections of the Indian people wanted to throw the British out of India. The purpose behind the law was to criminalise the spread of ideas opposed to colonial rule and crush any attempt by patriots to rouse the people for another rebellion (See box: Application of…). The law was amended in 1896 and the current law is substantially the same as the amended law.
Section 124-A of the current Indian Penal Code states that, “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 British had the single minded aim of plundering our country. The colonial Indian state they established in 1858 was a terrorist dictatorship over the Indian people. The sedition law was a tool to carry out the brutal suppression of the people when they arose to protest this oppression. The legitimate question is – why did the Independent Indian state declaring itself to be a Republic, need such a law?
The answer to this lies in the fact that those who inherited the Indian state from the colonialists looked upon India and its people in the same manner as the colonialists did. They have had the same aim of ruthlessly plundering the land, labour and resources of our people. It is with this purpose they retained all the weapons in the arsenal of the colonial state, and legitimised it in the 1950 Constitution. The Sedition law was and remains part of this arsenal.
Legitimising suppression of opposition and criminalising dissent
Since 1947, this law has been used in innumerable cases, across the country. It has been used against communists, against working class fighters and people fighting for their rights. In recent decades the charge of sedition has been invoked against a fighter for human rights who spoke out against the state terror in Punjab in the 1980s when hundreds of youth went missing or were killed in “encounters”, against those who protested against the commissioning of the Koodankulam nuclear plant, against those who have condemned the state terror in Kashmir, Northeast and Chhattisgarh, against anyone who has questioned the legitimacy of this Indian Union which was formed on the basis of the forcible annexation of some states and territories, against a politician for questioning the Indian state’s stand on the brutal genocide of Tamils in Sri Lankan state’s war on LTTE, etc (See box: Some examples..).
A law to ensure that people do not protest against their conditions is totally unjustifiable. It shows that this Indian state is illegitimate. The authority of the Indian state is not derived from the people of India. It is not based on what is in the best interests of the people. It is responsible for the oppressive and inhuman conditions of the majority of people. These conditions are responsible for the disaffection and discontent of a majority of people with the state and this entire system. In such conditions, the state is wielding its authority to dictate what people should say or write, what view they can hold about issues that affect their lives. This sedition law gives the state the power to justify “legal” action as the ultimate weapon to silence opposition that challenges its authority. Those who oppose the state for its anti-people acts are made to appear as the criminals.
Today, the right to conscience is blatantly violated at the will of the rulers. Those who spout communal, fascist, racist, and sexist views attacking definite communities and lowering the dignity of the human being are allowed full freedom to spew their venom, On the other hand, those who are fighting for the rights of people to live in peace, for justice and progress are being threatened with such laws as the sedition laws.
The right to conscience – the right to hold and express views that are not racist, fascist, communalist, or otherwise lower the dignity of human beings – is inviolable. Persecution of any one for exercising his/her right to conscience is totally unjustified and must be unequivocally condemned and opposed.
The struggle to remove the Sedition law from the statute books of India is part of the struggle to establish a modern Indian Republic in which the human rights of all, including the right to conscience, are guaranteed with enforceable mechanisms.
Application of the law in India before 1947After the revolt of the 1915, organised by Hindustan Ghadar Party members who returned to India from foreign lands and various Indian revolutionary groups, the British brought in many emergency provisions in the law. One of the main targets of the Defence of India Act of 1915 was the Ghadar Party. This Act granted the Colonial Administration very wide powers of preventive detention, internment without trial, restriction of writing, speech, and of movement. The Act was used to an overwhelming extent against Indian revolutionaries. It was first applied during the First Lahore Conspiracy trial in the aftermath of the failed Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915, and was instrumental in crushing the Ghadar movement in Punjab and the Anushilan Samiti in Bengal. The Rowlatt Act (1919), which was brought in ostensibly as a more lenient substitute for the Defence of India Act, backed capital punishment to check political dissent. The Rowlatt Committee Report of 1918 recommended dealing with sedition by continuing the special tribunal system with the option of holding closed trials. The Rowlatt Act gave more powers to the State by allowing search and arrest without warrant. Certain provisions in the Act justified holding secret trials without jury. Judgment was final and did not allow for appeal. The charges of sedition were first invoked against Bal Gangadhar Tilak on two occasions. In 1897, he was charged for speeches that allegedly incited violence and resulted in the killings of two British officers. Tilak was convicted but got bail in 1898. In another incident in 1908, he was prosecuted for sedition for his newspaper writings. The presiding British officer in the earlier case held that the term ‘feelings of disaffection’ meant ‘hatred’, ‘enmity’, ‘dislike’, ‘hostility’, ‘contempt’ and every form of ill will to the government. He equated disaffection to disloyalty, said the law would apply to “any writing which consists not merely of comments upon government measures, but of attacks upon the government itself, its existence, it’s essential characteristics, its motives, or its feelings towards people”. |
Some examples of those charged with seditionJustice A.S. Bains, a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, was charged with sedition in 1992. It was alleged that Justice Bains gave the call for Khalistan. According to the police and official sources, the government has every right to arrest those who, according to their judgment, have made “highly inflammatory or seditious” statements that are a threat to the “unity and territorial integrity” of India. In fact, Justice Bains was active as a defender of human rights, and had condemned the arrest, torture and disappearance of hundreds of youth in Punjab. Dr. Binayak Sen is a doctor and human rights activist in Chhattisgarh. Sen was charged with sedition in May 2007 by a trial court in Chhattisgarh for being directly involved in the distribution, “circulation of seditious materials” as well as substantial involvement in seditious activities to spread hatred and disaffection towards the government established by law. Sen was a fierce critic of the state-sponsored terrorist group called Salwa Judum which carried out numerous massacres of tribal people. MDMK’s (a political party in Tamilnadu) general secretary, V. Gopalsamy, aka Vaiko, was arrested under sedition for his speech in 2009 warning that India would not remain one country if the war against the LTTE in Sri Lanka was not stopped. The charge was justified on the basis that, “Mr. Vaiko had not only spoken in support of the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, he had also eulogised its leader V. Prabakaran, a proclaimed offender in India. Besides, he had spoken against national unity, integrity and sovereignty.” E. Rati Rao, who was the Resident Editor, Varthapatra was charged with sedition in February 2010 in Mysore, Karnataka for an article in Varthapatra alleging encounter deaths in Karnataka. Eleven leading activists amongst those protesting the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) were charged with sedition in March 2012. Earlier, in just four months between September (when the protest movement against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant began to gather momentum) and December 2011, over 6,000 people were charged under Section 121 (waging war against the government) and Section 124-A (sedition) IPC at the Kudankulam police station. The most recent case, in 2014, is that of K Kavitha, TRS MP. Police have registered a case of sedition against for questioning the annexation of Nizam’s Hyderabad by the Indian Army following political independence from British rule. It was alleged that Kavitha, in an interview, had made observations that Jammu and Kashmir and Telangana were not part of India earlier. |