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When Modi sarkar reveals its plans to bring in a more draconian sedition law

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Angshukanta Chakraborty
Angshukanta ChakrabortyMar 02, 2017 | 16:49

When Modi sarkar reveals its plans to bring in a more draconian sedition law

Even though Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has been trying his level best to reason with Parliament and have the sedition law removed/read down from the Indian Penal Code, it seems the current regime is hell bent on giving the colonial relic of a law an even more macabre makeover. 

Union minister Venkaiah Naidu, in an interview to India Today’s managing editor Rahul Kanwal, has said that the act of raising azaadi slogans is treason, anti-national and that the Narendra Modi government is preparing to make the sedition law more potent. 

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Naidu’s proclamations come in the wake of reports that Delhi Police has not been able to prove the charges of sedition or chanting slogans against JNUSU leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who was accused of sedition last year, along with fellow JNU scholars Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya.

Moreover, the equally important context is the ongoing crisis over the #RamjasRow, in which ABVP members beat up college students and teachers for peacefully protesting against the RSS-affiliated students union’s problems with routine academic seminars on “cultures of protest” in adivasi belts, and related topics.

ABVP’s regular and systemic threats across universities hampering freedom of expression and independent academic inquiry, which call for political alertness, importance of justice, equality of representation, political and economic freedoms, among other rights, are in sync with the current regime’s attempts to crush dissent at all levels.

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Venkaiah Naidu saying even chanting azaadi slogans is “treason” and then equating ABVP violence that follows any peaceful sloganeering inside a university campus with sedition is state propaganda at its worst. [Photo: DailyO]

The ugliest display of this came when the collective hounding, trolling with rape threats from ABVP members surfaced against Gurmehar Kaur, LSR student and daughter of a late Kargil War veteran.

Naidu’s words that the government is thinking of strengthening the sedition law, which would outlaw even political sloganeering and demands of freedom and justice, are therefore extremely ominous.

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Current sedition law

As it is, the current sedition law in India, the Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, has been a tool of successive regimes to curb internal dissent and freedom of expression. The law states:

“Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards. 2 [* * *] the Government established by law in 3[India], 4[* * *] shall be punished with 5[imprisonment for life], to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.Explanation 1 - The expression "disaffection" includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.Explanation 2 - Comments expressing disapprobation of the measures of the attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence under this section.Explanation 3 - Comments expressing disapprobation of the administrative or other action of the Government without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence under this section.”

Colonial relic

It is obvious that this legal relic, which was introduced into the IPC in 1870 to specifically curb the growing independence movement and its revolutionaries, and which holds the government sacrosanct and above scrutiny by its own people, is unfit in a democracy. The Indian Penal Code was an express legal treatise from a colonial master for a colonised subject, the Indians in this case, and sedition – “attempts to excite disaffection towards … government established by law” – has little meaning in a democracy.

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That the sedition law has not been done away with already is a striking example of bipartisan hypocrisy affecting successive Indian governments, and interventions to strike it down by the likes of Tharoor have been few and far between.

Charging Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and others with sedition once again brought to light the strong conflict between having a sedition law and the very foundation of democracy in being able to express freely one’s political opinion.

At the very least, one needs to distinguish between disaffection against the government, which is non permanent and chosen by the people as their representatives, and disaffection against the country as a whole.

A more nuanced and thoughtful position is to decipher when political sloganeering against one’s country is about the country’s policies, such as illegal occupation of territories, or giving voice to aspirations of political self-determination (as in Kashmir), illegal incarceration of subjects protesting over urgent environmental, political issues, and charging individuals for criticising the state.

Sedition law is a fallacious legal instrument of a totalitarian state, which treats its subjects not as citizens with unassailable rights but as simply political entities to be governed minus rights to free and fair self-expression. On the other hand, in the USA, even burning the national flag, or “disrespecting” it, is not illegal because it’s considered part of free speech.

Sedition and Modi government

The rampant invoking of sedition law and being branded an “anti-national” by the Modi government and its enormous MSM and social media ecosystem of rightwing sympathisers is a sign of extremely dangerous times. These are the times in which intellectual independence and criticism of the regime’s thoroughly authoritarian policies and xenophobic politics have brooked the full wrath of the state.

But legally, sedition as a charge, has not stood the jurisprudential test since the courts have not found anything seditious in healthy slogans of freedom from poverty, bigotry, sexism, patriarchy, discrimination and other issues. 

However, now with even judgments from the Supreme Court, such as in the national anthem case, beginning to resemble a page torn out of the saffronised Sangh playbook, we need to brace for worse.

Venkaiah Naidu saying even chanting azaadi slogans is “treason” and then equating the Sangh/ABVP-orchestrated violence that follows any peaceful sloganeering inside a university campus with sedition is not only duplicitous, it is state propaganda at its worst.

While it’s the UPA government that in an unpardonable act of pandering to cheap xenophobic theatrics, went ahead and hanged Afzal Guru on February 9, 2013, despite many loopholes in the case against him and despite his deep, documented dislike for the military state in Pakistan, the Modi government has exploited the resentment amongst Kashmiri Muslims and those who wanted further, fairer inquiry into Afzal’s case, to the hilt.

So Naidu saying – “These people giving slogans are taking to arms in Kashmir, in Chhattisgarh, in Jharkhand. They believe power comes from the barrel of the gun... Sponsors of terrorism (also) believe that they can get azaadi by use of force. The slogan of azaadi is followed by violence" – is as wrong as his equating an academic inquiry within universities on why and how the protests take place, or what they mean with sedition.

“Such acts on university campuses are trying to create a divisive mindset and we have a right to condemn it,” said Naidu, and in one fell swoop put political leaders on the left, such as Sitaram Yechury, in the same bracket as armed militants in Kashmir or Maoists in Chhattisgarh, who wage an armed battle against the Indian state.

This is sickening conflation of issues that must be fought back at all fronts. However, we need to keep a firm eye on Parliament proceedings and not allow a reinvigorated and more punitively amended sedition law to come into effect.

Exactly when the government is trying its best to outlaw democratic resistance in the name of sedition, we need to come together, resist – legally, discursively, journalistically – and thwart its perverse intentions.

Last updated: March 03, 2017 | 15:39
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