A need for clearer definition of sedition

A need for clearer definition of sedition

FPJ BureauUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 01:16 PM IST
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An Indian student waves the Indian national flag at a protest against the arrest of an Indian student for sedition in New Delhi on February 18, 2016. Thousands of people rallied in New Delhi on February 18 to protest against the arrest of an Indian student for sedition, as a bitter row over freedom of speech spilled into the capital's streets. AFP PHOTO / CHANDAN KHANNA |

Though it is highly unlikely that the sedition case filed against Amnesty International for its Bengaluru event on Monday will pass the test of judicial scrutiny, the need for a clearer definition of sedition cannot be over-emphasised.

In a number of cases the police in various States have felt obliged to lodge sedition charges against political activists and others airing their views, albeit controversial and offensive.

In the absence of a lesser charge to fit the alleged offence, the police per force have to slap the colonial era section in the Indian Penal Code. The sedition law provides for imprisonment up to life for anyone who through ‘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 against the government established by law  …’ The omnibus ambit of the law can virtually drag in every vitriolic critic of the government of the day. That the law needs to be changed is obvious, especially when secessionist activity aims at the Indian State rather than any particular government.

But the question whether anti-India slogans constitute sedition needs to be answered. In the specific case lodged against the well-known human rights group, members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad claimed in an FIR that slogans against India were raised by a group of Kashmiri students.

Indeed, the same slogans which were  heard a few months earlier at the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and which had led to the charges of sedition being slapped against its student leader Kannahiya Kumar were also heard at the Bengaluru meeting. The slogans called for the break-up of India and the secession of Kashmir in favour of Pakistan.

However, the official statement issued by the organisers of the event said that nobody from Amnesty raised any slogan. The meeting was supposedly called to discuss the plight of ‘broken families’ from Kashmir. It was claimed that the focus was on human rights violations and the denial of justice to families claiming to be victims of the excesses of the security forces. A 2015 report produced by Amnesty purportedly documented all such excesses and violations of human rights.

When the security forces came in for severe condemnation from various speakers, a Kashmiri Pandit, whose family was forced to leave the Valley, rose to defend the armed forces. This led to heated exchanges which soon degenerated into raucous slogan-shouting, with the ABVP activists raising ~Bharat Mata Ki Jai~ and a group of Kashmiri students countering with ~Lad Key Lenge Azaadi~,  and more slogans in that vein.  As a panelist in a television discussion argued, even if none from Amnesty was a slogan-shouter, the fact that it had organised the meeting made it accountable for the anti-India sloganeering. The platform was lent by Amnesty to the anti-India elements.

Given the somewhat suspect record of the human rights watch group, both in regard to its funding and its highly selective approach to its avowed mission, there can be no gainsaying that on Kashmir it tends to tilt clearly in favour of the seditionists rather than it taking a more balanced approach in the matter. Maybe its stance comes from the felt need to dovetail its activities with the overall foreign policy goals of major western powers.

The Amnesty has shown little or no understanding of the hostile conditions in which the security forces operate in Kashmir, what with a handful of local insurgents creating mayhem in collusion with Pakistani terrorists and their paid surrogates going under the misleading nomenclature of Hurriyat. This cabal manages to get a lot of play in the national and international media thanks partly to the efforts of organisations like Amnesty International. Indeed, it will be instructive if Amnesty provided a proof by documenting human rights violations, say, in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, etc.

Indeed, successive Indian governments have given a long rope to the anti-India elements in Kashmir which is in sharp contrast to the treatment a country like the US meted out to the terror suspects following the 9/11 atrocity. Yet, Amnesty has had little to say in that regard. Meanwhile, the NDA Government must undertake a review of the sedition law in order to ensure that it is in tune with a democratic India. Nehru had once railed against the colonial era law but neither he nor his daughter Indira Gandhi did anything to replace it.

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