Sedition: A Minatory Frown

At a time when populism and autocracy are gathering strength even in established democracies, sedition laws have become a favourite weapon of the state. In India, where successive governments have used the sedition law to settle political scores, its extensive abuse to criminalise dissent in the past few years is an alarming trend. It could be a sign of both an erosion of dem­ocracy and the nervousness of the ruling dispensation.

The idea of sedition has an inherent connection with rabid, yet nebulous, notions of nationalism which is central to the public discourse of those in power. If the nation is under att­ack some people must be branded anti-nationals. These could be activists, artists, students, journalists, even comedians, to those inv­olved in activities ranging from campaigning for environmental justice, protesting against nuclear power plants to opposing displacement of tribals from their ancestral lands. Even outlandish charges like plotting a grand conspiracy against the nation fed into the discourse of anti-nationalism.

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Sedition simplifies things for the state, which divides the country between patriots and anti-nationals. It is also used to justify cruelty and denial of justice. There is no limit to how far can the state go; an entire university can be branded anti-nat­ional and charges can fly against celebrities for writing to the prime minister that there could be no democracy without dissent. The sedition charges, in this latter case, were filed on the orders of the chief judicial magistrate of Muzaffarpur in 2019 against 49 signatories of the letter. These included film directors Shyam Benegal, Mani Ratnam and Anurag Kashyap; cel­ebrity actors like Soumitra Chatterjee, Aparna Sen and Revathi; historian Ramchandra Guha and singer Shubha Mudgal. The case was later closed.

There are two ways of looking at the misuse of sedition laws: one by the way it is being used to silence dissent today and sec­­ond, in ways it has been used by central and state governments for decades. While it is true that, according to NCRB figures, the use of Section 124A of the IPC has increased consistently from 30 in 2015 and 35 in 2016 to 51 in 2017, going further up to 70 in 2018 and 93 in 2019, this is not the complete picture. The Act has been misused under the watch of many democratically elected leaders of varied ideologies.

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In 2015, Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalitha’s government slapped sedition charges against folk singer S. Kovam for singing songs critical of her liquor policy. A year later, Kerala police under the Congress government of Oommen Chandy arrested a man in Malappuram whose social media post allegedly showed an Indian Army martyr in poor light. In 2016, Karnataka police under Congress CM Siddaramaiah filed sedition cases against two of its own officers for demanding better wages and living conditions.

The use of sedition in these, and many recent cases filed by Delhi Police against activists and journalists, can be termed as a mindless application of the law. The point is made unequivocally in the judgment by a Delhi court while granting bail to climate change activist Disha Ravi: “citizens are conscience keepers of government in any democratic nation” and “cannot be put behind bars simply because they choose to disagree with state policies...offence of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of governments.”

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A common feature in most sedition cases under Section 124A of IPC is that they rarely lead to a conviction. But they cause unending harassment to the individuals charged. They cannot hold or apply for government jobs, have to surrender passports and bear huge legal and emotional costs. For those facing arduous trials, the process is punishment in itself. No matter the outcome, the stigma and harassment in every case of sedition has a chilling effect on others who dare to question populist leaders.  

The latest statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that sedition cases keep piling up from previous years without proper charge-sheeting, disposal or conviction. In most cases, the state or its law enforcement agencies seem to be in no hurry to serve charge-sheets. Between 2015 and 2019, sedition cases tripled from 30 to 93, while 135 cases were pending from previous years. Out of these, only 40 cases were charge-sheeted, with 29 acquittals and only one conviction.  In 2014, 58 persons were arrested in 47 sedition cases, which also led to only one conviction.

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One reason for low conviction rates is that most cases do not fit the definition of sedition and fail to stand up to judicial scrutiny. Cases involving the raising of alleged anti-nat­ional slogans should not fall into the category unless they lead to violence. The apex court had ruled in Balwant Singh v State of Punjab back in 1975 that raising pro-Khalistan slogans did not amount to sedition as it evoked no res­ponse from others in the community.

Despite this, a 19-year-old Bangalore student, Amulya Leona Noronha, was charged with sedition last year when she raised a slogan of ‘Pakistan Zindabad’, quickly followed by ‘Hindustan Zindabad’, at a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), when she was stopped before completing her point. She spent over three months in jail and was granted bail only when the police failed to file a charge-sheet within the stipulated 90 days. Many students of JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University still face similar charges of allegedly raising anti-­national slogans. Many acts aren’t clearly established or do not amount to incitement to violence. But conviction is almost immaterial, when the sole purpose seems to be of sending a chilling message to potential dissenters.

The very fact that the section on sedition was included in IPC in 1870 shows that its purpose was to suppress dissent against British rule. It was modelled on a British law, but the UK has since abolished its law on sedition and seditious libel in 2009. The Indian law not only survives, but thrives seven decades after Independence. On paper, it requires att­empts to excite disaffection, disloyalty and enmity, but these principles are mostly overlooked. Strictly speaking, comments expressing disapprobation without exciting act­ual or attempted hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence under sedition.  

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By this rule, almost all recent cases do not stand the scrutiny of law under sedition—against environmental activist Disha Ravi in Delhi for sharing a social media ‘toolkit’ in support of the farmers’ agitation, against Kangana Ranaut in Mumbai for inciting religious hatred or against politician Shashi Tharoor, journalists Rajdeep Sardesai, Mrinal Pande and others for all­egedly misreporting on the farmers’ agitation. Going by the interpretation of the law by the Delhi court while granting bail to Ravi, sedition cases should not have been registered against Ravi or other activists and journalists in the first place.

In 2016, civil society watchdog Common Cause filed a PIL in the Supreme Court to curb the misuse of sedition. The petition argued that Section 124-A was abused to stifle free speech and dissent, leading to persecution and harassment of students, intellectuals, journalists and civil society activists in complete violation of the scope of the said law, which is limited to violent acts or that involve incitement to violence. Seeking to ensure reasonable safeguards against misuse, it sought a review of all sedition cases pending in various courts to confirm beyond doubt that these were indeed “seditious acts” in accordance with the principles settled by a constitutional Bench in Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar (1962).

The apex court upheld the above judgment and rei­terated that the offence of sedition must lead to “incitem­ent to violence” or effect “tendency or intention to create public disorder”. This clearly establishes that sedition cannot be applied to acts which do not involve violence or incitement to vio­lence, like challenging or criticising the government thro­ugh discussions, slogans or artistic works such as cartoons, writings or comedy acts. The court may have discouraged the use of sedition per se, but the police have gone out of their way to book people under sedition. It shows police in India work for the rulers of the day rather than for the citizens.

While the court order in the Common Cause case seemed procedurally correct, its reluctance to be specific against misuse, such as making a prior sanction of the DGP or police commissioner mandatory, seems to have emboldened those in power. Their purpose is served if dissenters are silenced, sent to jail, and intimidated for long even if they were to be acquitted. However, a caveat in the citizens’ long fight against the abs­urdities of the sedition law is that a vindictive state can use a variety of other laws, from UAPA to criminal conspiracy, cri­minal defamation and economic offences to silence dissenters and rights defenders. A case in point is the FIR against Harsh Mander, a critic of the present government, and his Centre for Equity Studies, on a complaint alleging misuse of funds, chea­ting, forgery etc., which many saw coming for some time.

(Views are personal)

Vipul Mudgal heads Common Cause India