Home

Why Subscribe ?

Popularise CC

Join News Letter

Editor's Picks

Press Releases

Action Alert

Feed Burner

Read CC In Your
Own Language

Bradley Manning

India Burning

Mumbai Terror

Financial Crisis

Iraq

AfPak War

Peak Oil

Globalisation

Localism

Alternative Energy

Climate Change

US Imperialism

US Elections

Palestine

Latin America

Communalism

Gender/Feminism

Dalit

Humanrights

Economy

India-pakistan

Kashmir

Environment

Book Review

Gujarat Pogrom

Kandhamal Violence

WSF

Arts/Culture

India Elections

Archives

Links

Submission Policy

About CC

Disclaimer

Fair Use Notice

Contact Us

Search Our Archive

Subscribe To Our
News Letter



Our Site

Web

Name: E-mail:

 

Printer Friendly Version

Section 124 A: An Evil Law

By Ajit Sahi

27 October, 2010
Countermedia.in

Affection cannot be manufactured by law Mahatma Gandhi

It is past 3am on Wednesday, October 27, 2010, and leading Indian news websites are reporting that Delhi Police have found they can arrest and bring Arundhati Roy to prosecution for sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code.

A long-time campaigner seeking freedom for the rebellious state of Jammu and Kashmir from the Indian Union, Roy has now reportedly said that Kashmir was never an integral part of India. Besides Delhi Police, many commentators, too, are saying that Roy’s defiant assertion is an open challenge to the territorial integrity of the Republic of India.

At the heart of this controversy lies a black-and-white issue: can an Indian citizen justify and support a call for a part of the country to secede? The sentiment against such behaviour is legally enshrined in Section 124A of the IPC, written in the late 19th century — more than a hundred years ago — by the imperialist British.

If Delhi Police do arrest Roy in a few hours or a few days, it could well turn out to be the most celebrated case built on Section 124A of the IPC since Independence more than sixty years ago, and arguably the second most famous case on the law in nearly ninety years.

The most famous use yet of Section 124A of the IPC was against Mahatma Gandhi in 1922 in what came to be known as the Great Ahmedabad Trial, in which Gandhi was charged with sedition and with “spreading disaffection” against the then British-ruled government. As the trial gained worldwide attention, Gandhi was found guilty — he pleaded guilty outright — and sentenced to six years in jail.

Section 124A of the IPC simply announces that spreading sedition and disaffection is a crime. (The full text of the law is quoted at the end below.)

Given the repressive nature of the Indian State, it is hardly surprising that Section 124A today stands exactly as it stood before Independence in 1947, during which time the colonial British abused it for decades to suppress the people’s struggles for their legitimate democratic rights. (Except, of course, after Independence, the term “His Majesty’s Government” in this law was replaced with the term “Government established by law in India”.)

The irony is that the most decisively damning commentary on Section 124A came from none other than Gandhi during his epic defence in the Ahmedabad Trial. In short, Gandhi dismissed this law as anti-liberty and hence, anti-justice and anti-truth.

At the time, Gandhi was being tried for writing three articles in his newspaper, Young India, in which he sharply criticised the government’s repressive measures to suppress the people’s struggle. (In her writings, Roy is doing exactly the same: “spreading disaffection” against the government by actually criticising the Indian government’s brutal violence against the Kashmiri people.)

In mounting his defence in the 1922 trial, Gandhi struck at the very foundation of this law. (One commentator writes: “The trial was endowed with classic grandeur enveloped with a Socratic passion for truth emanating from Gandhi’s lips.”)

As mentioned above, Gandhi proudly — and unsurprisingly — pleaded guilty to the charge of sedition and spreading disaffection.

Most importantly, and this is relevant now more than ever before, Gandhi called Section 124A the “prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizens”. “Affection,” he famously said, “cannot be manufactured or regulated by law.” He added: “If one has no affection for a person or thing one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence.”

Here is what he told the judge: “I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a government which in its totality has done more harm to India than any previous system.” How true that is of the way New Delhi has dealt with Kashmir for 20 years — using only brute military repression.

Gandhi said: “Non violence is the first article of my faith; it is also the last article of my faith; but I had to make my choice. I had either to submit to a system which I consider has done an irreparable harm to my country, or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when they understood the truth from my lips.”

In fact, Gandhi defiantly suggested that spreading disaffection against a repressive government is the “highest duty”: “. What in law is a deliberate crime. appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.”

He told the judge: “The only course open to you, the Judge, is either to resign your post which I know is impossible for you to do, and dissociate yourself from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil thing and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country, and that my activity us, therefore, injurious to the public.”

While convicting Gandhi, the judge, R.S. Broomfield, conceded that “It would be impossible to ignore the fact that in the eyes of millions of your countrymen you are a great patriot and a great leader.”

This trial and its conclusion in Gandhi’s conviction proved to be a shot in the arm for India’s freedom-seeking nationalism. Exactly a quarter century later, India was free of colonial rule.

So what did Gandhi write in his articles that brought the full might of Section 124A against him?

Sample this: “We seek arrest because the so-called freedom is slavery. We are challenging the might of this Government because we consider its activity to be wholly evil. We want to overthrow the Government. We want to compel its submission to the people’s will. We desire to show that the Government exists to serve the people, not the people the Government.” He could well be speaking for the people of the Kashmir valley!

And finally, he said: “.to preach disaffection towards the existing system of Government has become almost a passion with me.”

Roy is no Gandhi. But if she is tried for sedition and for spreading disaffection, she should proudly accept the charge and happily go to jail. That will make the future so much easier for Kashmir’s millions of freedom fighters.
——–

TEXT OF SECTION 124A

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 the Government established by law in India, shall be punished with 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.