Treating any random act of indiscretion as seditious has no place in a democracy.
The propensity of elected governments to trample on character freedoms has been normalized to an absurd quantity. In the modern-day climate of high-pitched nationalism, obvious violations of primary rights are being dismissed as recurring. Yet another living proof is the arrest and extended detention of Imphal-based journalist Kishorechandra Wangkhem under the draconian sedition law and National Security Act (NSA) for criticizing the Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh as a “puppet” of Hindutva and the use of allegedly “obscene” language in opposition to the CM and the Prime Minister.
The journalist was booked under Section 124A of the IPC, sedition, and subsequently underneath the NSA. He was sacked from the nearby television channel that he labored for and spent months in prison in where he fell critically ill. The Manipur High Court has ordered his release. Such excesses have come to be not unusual. To take only the latest example, former JNU pupil union president Kanhaiya Kumar, the candidate for the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Bihar’s Begusarai, is facing charges of sedition for being part of the scholars’ assembly that chanted allegedly seditious slogans.
The law on sedition has an egregious record. It returned to the modification in the Indian Penal Code for the duration of the British rule to broaden the ambit of Section 124A, contemplating the enduring trial of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Defending the change, the member-in-charge of the Bill (Mr. Chalmers) said: “Language can be tolerated in England, which it is risky to tolerate in India, because in India it is apt to be converted into movement as opposed to passing off as harmless gasoline.” Since then, sedition has been outlawed within the UK but is commonly used here. It is staunchly defended through the ruling BJP, which has termed Congress’s manifesto promise of repealing Section 124A as an effort to endanger national protection. What passed off as “fuel” inside the more advanced parts of the world a century returned continues to be seditious and dangerous these days in India.
In the Constitution and the Constituent Assembly debates, a majority of the participants had resisted the inclusion of the term “sedition” within the exceptions in Article 19(2) to the liberty of speech and expression, guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a). While the Supreme Court has, in the Kedar Nath Singh case of 1962, upheld the Constitutional validity of 124A, it has significantly constrained its scope. However, because this regulation is open to misuse, it needs to have no region inside the rulebook. Apart from sedition, defamation ought to be dealt with as a civil rather than crook offense. The State should be made to catch up on wrongful convictions. In the Malleshwaram bomb blast case of April 2013, Bengaluru police released three accused after failing to show fees. The Karnataka State Human Rights Commission had sought reimbursement from the State for wrongful incarceration, placing a precedent for State responsibility.
