Climate of treason

Apex court should order scrapping all sedition cases

The Supreme Court’s verdict quashing the sedition case against TV anchor Vinod Dua has been widely praised for upholding the principle of journalists’ basic right to criticise or comment on the government. The apex court has underlined the fact that every journalist is entitled to protection and every detention or FIR “is subject to the law laid down earlier”. The court was referring to the frequently quoted ambit of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as laid out in the 1962 case Kedar Nath Singh versus the State of Bihar, which stated that spoken or written words that do not subvert the government by violent means or spark public disorder cannot be considered seditious. As importantly, the court had ruled that comments “however strongly worded, expressing disapprobation of actions of the government, without exciting those feelings which generate the inclination to cause public disorder by acts of violence” would not be construed a penal offence. This is reassuring, but the court would have done well to sharpen the pronouncements it made in Kedar Nath Singh in its latest verdict.

The reason this basic principle has been increasingly observed in the breach is that the apex court in 1962 upheld the constitutionality of Section 124A on grounds of maintaining public order. It has also unwittingly given governments considerable scope to interpret its definition that the penal provisions would be attracted to acts that “have the effect of … bringing the government into contempt or hatred or creating disaffection against it … [or] import the idea of tendency to public disorder by the use of actual violence or incitement to violence”. A “tendency to public disorder” can well lie in the eye of the beholder; the more sensitive an administration the more likely it is to see seditious “tendencies” lurking everywhere.

Though the repeal of this provision, which is urgently needed, lies within the responsibility of Parliament, a definitive pronouncement about its constitutionality would have limited the hands of governments and law enforcement agencies. This apart, since the apex court had said every journalist was entitled to protection, it could have declared the seriousness of intent by quashing sedition cases pending against other journalists — including the six that were filed this year against reputed journalists for their reporting on the farmers’ protests and the communal riots in Delhi. They were booked for allegedly “misleading the public”, a standard expression that all governments adopt for comment they don’t like.

Even assuming these sedition laws are read down, political administrations have an armoury of statutes to harass critics — from the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) to the National Security Act and any other law a government can think up. The bizarre case of comedian Munawar Faruqui is an example. He was arrested for jokes he did not crack, was jailed under five provisions of the IPC that ranged from “intending to outrage religious feelings” to the Kafkaeseque “acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention”. Similarly, a Kerala journalist and three others who were on their way to UP to report on a controversial rape case were arrested under sedition laws, the UAPA, and the Information Technology Act. Their predicament reflects those of journalists in Manipur and Kashmir as well, underlining the fact that, 74 years after independence, the citizen remains largely defenceless against the state.