Khauf Se Azadi: Assessing The Capacity Of India's Legal Framework To Protect 'Seditious' Citizens
- IJLLR Journal
- Dec 15, 2024
- 2 min read
Ayusshi, Jindal Global Law School, O P Jindal Global University
ABSTRACT
For a country that is celebrated and hailed as the biggest working democracy in the world, India is surely an independent republic state with some deprave statistics on press freedom1, especially in the last decade. Constraints on press freedom not only accentuate the attack on freedom of speech and expression but also should direct the attention to the laws of sedition in India with its colonial roots. 154 years ago, sedition as a separate offense under section 124A (Section 152 of Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita) in India came in effect during the colonisation when it became the part of the Indian Penal Code in 1870. The British administration charged one of the most notable freedom fighters, Bal Gangadhar Tilak for his dissenting views against the British in the newspaper, Kesari.2 Criminalisation of opinions against the government finds its place yet again in the new criminal code, BNS replacing IPC. Interestingly, the term “the Government” of Section 124A has been removed and replaced with ‘sovereignty or unity and integrity of India’ in Section 152 but the motive of silencing criticism against the State remains the same. It cannot be deemed as a missed opportunity to remove sedition as an offense in this era of modern democracy due to the addition of increased incarceration period and compulsory fine in the provision which was optional in IPC. This section now punishes the attempt, too as the wording of the statute widens the horizon for the Government to charge dissenters in greater number than before, invalidating the legal rights of the citizens. We shall analyse the capacity of Indian justice system, or the lack of thereof, in protecting the citizens charged with the draconian law such as this which has been outlawed in many democracies like the USA, South Korea, Ghana, New Zealand, Indonesia among others by discussing judgements and legacies of ‘seditious’ people in this research essay. The Urdu phrase in the title of this essay has been inspired from an event of the same name conducted by the organization United Against Hate in 2018.
