Congress grossly misused sedition law in UPA era

AMumbai in 2012 and posting the same on his website. One cartoon titled “Gang rape of Mother India” showed Mother India dressed in a tri-colour sari, with politicians and bureaucrats about to assault her, with a gleeful beast standing by described as “Corruption”.

Another of his cartoons showed India’s national emblem, the Ashoka Lions, with foxes rather than lions. In the inscription on the emblem, the words “Satyamev Jayate” (truth alone triumphs) were replaced with “Brashtamev Jayate” (corruption alone triumphs) and a danger sign. This was enough for the Maharashtra police to book him under sedition charges. At the time, Congress-led governments were in power both at the Centre and in the state.

Hundreds of other such instances are there wherein different Congress governments liberally pressed the sedition charges against scores of dissenters. No attempts were ever made by Congress leaders to do away with the 158-year-old law.

Drafted by Thomas Macaulay, the law was introduced in the 1870s by the then British rulers mainly to use against the freedom fighters and to muzzle voices of freedom. In the decades after Independence, the law was used against people for accusing Congress governments of corruption and tyranny.

Historically, the very first Constitutional Amendment brought by the Jawaharlal Nehru government in May 1951 shows how “freedomloving” the Congress has been. The first tinkering of the original Constitution, which was hardly a year old then, came when Nehru placed restrictions on the fundamental rights of the citizens of independent India, limiting their freedom of expression. In later years, it also amply proved that the Emergency was not just an aberration, but merely the culmination of the party’s use of totalitarian laws that it retained from the British era and only added on to it rather than doing away with it.