Vidhya Sankar, Adoniya Gigi and Sarah Joseph, Bharata Mata School of Legal Studies
ABSTRACT
Martin Luther King who was the crusader of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s once said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”.1 which implies that the silence of the oppressed gives more power to the oppressor. It’s the 21st century, we have been an independent country for 74 years now but even today we carry the vestige of the abusive colonial masters - The Sedition Law. The legitimate free speech in India is a myth. Why do we a Sedition law when we have Prevention of Terrorism Act and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in order to curb terrorism? Sedition law and its variants are currently wreaking havoc on Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution. Before the untimely demise of our democracy due to the failure of Judiciary, Legislature and Executive, we need to discover an antidote that not only curbs the particular variant but also obviates the spread of any other variants in future. Our research paper aims to delineate on why we need to decriminalize the sedition laws in India.
