THE SEDITION COUNT
Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Karnataka account for 534 of the 816 sedition cases filed between 2010 and 2020
Cases include six filed during the ongoing FARMERS’ PROTEST in Delhi, 25 during the ANTI-CAA protests from December 2019 to February 2020, and 22 after the HATHRAS GANGRAPE in September 2020. In Tamil Nadu, FIRs alleging sedition were filed against around 3,500 people in 201011 for protesting the KUDANKULAM nuclear power plant
Young or old, rich or poor, celebrity or commoner, student or professional, no one, it seems, is beyond the long arm of sedition charges. The 124A charge has been invoked for failure to stand up for the national anthem, for daring to post a critical tweet, holding a ‘Free Kashmir’ poster, even raising an ‘Azadi’ slogan. Some 1,310 individuals have been charged with sedition just for shouting slogans in the past decade. This, when the Supreme Court, in a landmark verdict in 1995 in Balwant Singh vs. State of Punjab acquitted all the accused of sedition for chanting pro-Khalistan slogans following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The court held that the mere chanting of slogans with no attempt to incite violence cannot amount to sedition and investigating authorities must be extremely cautious before making arrests in such cases.
WHAT IS SEDITION?
Sedition under Section 124A of the IPC includes signs, visible representations or words, spoken or written, that can cause “hatred or contempt, or excite or attempt to excite disaffection” towards the government. Disaffection, specifically, has been defined as all feelings of disloyalty and enmity towards the state.
British historian-politician Thomas Macaulay first formulated the law in 1837 but it was not included in the IPC when it was enacted in 1860. Ten years later, Sir James Stephen inserted Section 124A into Chapter VI of the IPC, which deals with offences against the state, via an amendment. This was done in response to the rising radical Wahabi movement and demands for more autonomy by Indian citizens of the empire. Several freedom-fighters, including Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad, were charged with sedition during India’s struggle for Independence.
In independent India, the most high-profile sedition case involved Kedar Nath Singh, a member of the Forward Communist Party in Bihar. In a fiery speech made
at Begusarai on May 26, 1953, he lampooned the Criminal Investigation Department and the Congress party. Accusing the Congress of corruption, black marketeering and tyranny, he called for a revolution that would overthrow capitalists, zamindars and Congress leaders. The constitutional bench of the Supreme Court upheld his conviction by the high court but also defined the scope of sedition by saying that the essence of the crime of sedition requires acts that are intended to have the “effect of subverting the government” by violent means.
In its clarification, the Supreme Court said that a “citizen has the right to say or write whatever he likes about the government, or its measures, by way of criticism or comment, so long as he does not incite people to violence against the government established by law or with the intention of creating public disorder”. In short, the apex court took criticism of the government or leaders, “however strongly worded”, out of the ambit of sedition. Yet, criticism of political leaders has frequently invited sedition charges.
Many believe that sedition cases have gone up in the six years that the BJP has been in power. But there is no comparable data to ascertain if the record of previous governments was any better. It was only from 2014 that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) started pub
One of the reasons why one is seeing a surge in cases since 2014 is because government data is available only from that year. So it’s difficult to make a comparison with the past
lishing data on offences against the state, which included cases registered under provisions such as 124A and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. That is the reason why independent observers caution against statistical comparisons of various governments when it comes to the use or abuse of sedition laws. “One of the reasons why one is seeing a surge in cases since 2014 is because government data is available only after 2014 and it’s difficult to make a comparison,” says Anushka Singh, assistant professor at the School of Law, Governance and Citizenship at the Dr B.R. Ambedkar University in Delhi and author of Sedition in Liberal Democracies.
And it is not as though BJP governments alone are guilty of abusing this IPC section. In June 2019, a 53-year-old man in Chhattisgarh was slapped with a sedition notice for making a Facebook video in which he claimed that electricity shortages in the state were happening because of a tie-up between the Congress government and inverter companies.
But what’s more alarming is that the sedition charges are being invoked on the most outrageous grounds. As in January last year, when the Karnataka police arrested a primary school headmistress after registering a case
against the school management for alleged involvement in staging a play portraying Prime Minister Narendra Modi in poor light over the CAA-NRC. The mother of the student who delivered the dialogue, which mentioned slapping the prime minister, was also arrested.
Anushka also points to the significant shift in the sedition discourse before and after 2014. While successive governments used laws to suppress people’s movements, all movements and protests today get framed under the umbrella category of being ‘anti-national’. Sedition charges were slapped against thousands of people during the protest against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in 2010-11, but the protesters were seen as opponents of nuclear power— not of the nation.
“Labelling any kind of dissidence, be it expressions, acts or associations, as anti-national is the mode of operation today,” says Anushka. “This makes the use of stringent laws against the protesters very obvious. While it increases the number of cases, it also helps the government challenge the legitimacy of these protests. In popular perception, they no longer remain people’s movements but get interpreted as anti-national.”
Social media, and at times traditional media too, plays a significant role in vilifying activists and legitimising arrests. Simultaneously, there has been a growing acceptance of this narrative. When former Union home minister Rajnath Singh, during the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign, said that the BJP would make the provisions of the sedition law more stringent to check anti-national activities, he was greeted with loud cheers.
Supreme Court advocate and BJP national spokesperson Nalin Kohli justifies the use of the sedition law by invoking the alleged threat from elements willing to take the help of foreign organisations and even questionable forces to launch attacks on
BJP, Assam
A charge of sedition is filed against scholar Hiren Gohain and RTI activist Akhil Gogoi for allegedly saying at a public meeting that demands for sovereignty might arise if the Centre ignores the voice of the Assamese people against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019
BJP, Karnataka
Karnataka police arrest a primary school headmistress after a sedition case is registered against school management for a play that allegedly portrays PM Modi in a poor light over the CAA and NRC. The mother of a student who delivers a line of dialogue that mentions slapping the PM is also arrested. The sedition charge is later dropped
BJP, Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh police arrest 19 people, including a 16-year-old boy, under charges of sedition for allegedly raising ‘anti-national slogans’ and rioting during a protest against the CAA and the NRC
BJP, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana
Sedition cases are filed in three BJP-ruled states against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and several journalists for ‘sharing unverified news’ during the farmers’ tractor rally in Delhi on Jan. 26. They are booked for tweeting about a protester who died in an accident—their tweets insinuated that he had been shot dead by Delhi police during the rally
BJP, Delhi police
Delhi police arrests Disha Ravi, a 21-yearold climate activist, on charges of sedition for allegedly editing a digital ‘toolkit’ shared online. The toolkit is being investigated for its alleged role in the violence that erupted in Delhi on Jan. 26 during the farmers’ tractor rally