BOOKS: SEC. 124A AND THE GREAT REPRESSION
It is a disturbing sign of our times when a new book on sedition law in India feels like it needs to be updated upon its release. This is especially chilling given that the book begins with a case as late as June 2018 where a group of eight people (including five minors) were arrested for dancing to a seditious song (whose content had barely registered on them). Less than two weeks ago, yet another absurd sedition case was filed against a group of prominent intellectuals and artists for writing an open letter to the prime minister expressing their concerns over mob lynching. Chitranshul Sinha’s The Quiet Repression: The story of sedition in India, therefore, could not have been more timely even when doomed to never being on time, since it seems unlikely there will be any letting up in the gross misuse of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code.
For those who are charged under this provision, it will doubtless be worth their while to read Sinha’s book as they will find themselves in esteemed company, rubbing shoulders with political and literary figures— Gandhi, Nehru, Tilak and Arundhati Roy, to name just a few. Or if they prefer the company of commonplace citizens, they will find in the pages of this book a wide variety of ordinary seditious hearts to choose from.
Gandhi famously termed Sec. 124A as a ‘prince’ among penal provisions, but this royal epithet, alliteratively memorable as it is, may have been conceptually misplaced. In Sinha’s encyclopaedic biography of the provision, the image that one gets of sedition is a combination of Forrest Gump and Dorian Gray. Like its first namesake, Sec. 124A has displayed remarkable resilience as a protean political tool and, like the latter, its youthful vitality intensifies the older it gets.
Sinha traces the career of this shape-shifter though three phases. In the first phase, we see its inception as a nervous English teenager overreacting to the political turmoil of the nationalist movement. In the second phase, the more mature GrayGump decides to make India home after his parents have returned. This, despite opposition from many in the Constituent Assembly, who believed that sedition was no longer welcome in India. But having decided to stay, the law ensconces itself comfortably in the republic, mingling with all parties regardless of their political hues. Finally, in the last phase of the book, Sinha turns our attention to the 160-year-old provision that ages only in the books but whose aggressive vitality betrays its underlying grotesque and cruel nature. Like the Sibyl at Cumae, Sec. 124A is cursed with age but blessed with eternity and Sinha forcefully makes the point (using data from the National Crime Records Bureau) that nothing less than an absolute obliteration of the provision can save us from its curse.
Targeted at a popular audience, Sinha’s book does not dive into the doctrinal deep in the way that Gautam Bhatia’s book on free speech does, nor does it provide an analytical account of the kind that we find in Anushka Singh’s political history of sedition. Instead, it falls into a genre of books that can only be termed as “so you don’t have to” books. For example, Ammon Shea’s madcap idea of reading the whole of the Oxford English dictionary resulted in a book in which we encounter gems such as the word ‘accismus’ (an insincere refusal of a thing that is desired, as in “I would like you to have the last biscuit”). Sinha’s book laboriously mines the history of sedition law so that we don’t have to and for which all of us should be grateful because it is a history that we urgently need to know. Not just for intellectual but for very pragmatic reasons as it is our doors that we may find this bastardly provision knocking at tomorrow. ■
NOTHING LESS THAN AN ABSOLUTE OBLITERATION OF SEC. 124A OF THE IPC CAN SAVE US FROM ITS CURSE