A recent Supreme Court ruling on the veteran journalist Vinod Dua case has revived the debate on sedition laws again. Dua was charged with sedition under section 124 A (IPC) who in his YouTube show last year had given some adverse comments against the Prime minister, Narendra Modi. The apex court has quashed the sedition case against Dua saying that 1962 SC verdict in Kedarnath Singh vrs. the State of Bihar entitled every journalist for protection. The most pernicious offence now- a -days, next to rape and murder, which has seized the minds of the politicians and the police, is sedition.

Section 124 A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 defines sedition which says,' whoever by words, either spoken or written ...excites disaffection towards the Government established by law, shall be punished’ This colonial law framed 160 years ago is mainly intended to supress the voice of freedom in India.

Gandhiji was the first most popular freedom fighter who was victim of this draconian law in 1922, the era of non-co-operation movement. After the violence in Chauri Chauras, Gandhiji suspended the non-co-operation movement which he himself was leading from the front. In the mid night of March 10, 1922 Gandhi was arrested from Sabarmati Ashram while he was taking rest.  He was charged with sedition under section 124 A IPC with an intention to overthrow an established Government. The trial was held in a court in Ahmedabad which the Judge Robert Broomfield presided over. Gandhi preferred to have no lawyers to defend him.

The charges of sedition against Gandhi were about three inflammatory articles he had written in the Young India at intervals during non-cooperation movement. In first article called 'Tampering with Loyalty' which appeared on September 29, 1921, Gandhi openly declared that although his task was to encourage sedition and to accept consequences, 'our self-respect and pledge required us to remain calm and non- violent'.

In another article called 'A Puzzle and its Solution' which appeared on December 15, 1921 Gandhi urged the Government to submit to the people's will. In the third article titled 'Shaking the Manes' which was published in the same Young India on February 23, 1922 Gandhi had a scathing attack on the British empire that ' no empire intoxicated with red wine of power and plunder of weaker races has yet lived long  like the British Empire'.

Gandhiji pleaded guilty to all these charges and expected a greater amount of punishment for his offences but the judge pounced six years imprisonment, two years for each offensive article written by Gandhi.  Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gandhi were classed together in context of the sedition offence  committed against the British Raj.

The judge, Broomfield had earlier awarded six years punishment also to Tilak. A person, however a great patriot he or she might be in the eyes of the millions, could not escape punishment if he preached sedition, the judge Broomfield retorted. After Gandhi, Annie Besant, Ali Brothers, Maulana Azad, Nehru, Sardar Patel and many others had suffered imprisonment under the archaic sedition law.  India got independence in August 1947, but a question of the pre independence era disturbed every politician if sedition law was to continue.

On December 10, 1948 just after independence, KM Munshi in the Constituent Assembly, had made a passionate appeal to all the members of the House to consider to delete the section 124 A of the IPC on sedition.

Moving an amendment he told, 'the word sedition has been a word of varying import and has created considerable doubt in the minds of the people including the court of law all over the world. The notorious section, 124A was sometimes construed so widely that even a criticism of a district magistrate had been considered to be sedition. But we have a democracy now. There must be criticism of the Government. But a line is to be drawn between the criticism of the Government and the incitement to overthrow the Government undermining the security of the nation.' KM Munshi's amendments to scrap section 124A on sedition were unanimously adopted in the Constituent Assembly.

But the Supreme Court brought the sedition back 14 years later in 1962 ignoring the Constituent Assembly debate. On January 30, 1962 in the case of Kedarnath Singh vrs.the State of Bihar, the SC upheld the sedition as defined in the colonial Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code.

Hearing a case on an offending speech by Kedarnath Singh, a communist who had spoken in intemperate language, the five Supreme Court Bench viewed that it was not sedition. Mere condemnation of Government in words could not be construed as sedition either. If it were, cartoonists and columnists would be out of business. But when the words written or spoken which have the pernicious tendency or intention of creating disorder of law and order, the law should step in to prevent such activities in the interest of public order .

But however the court had held that a balance was to be maintained between the individual fundamental rights and the interest of public order. The  SC's ruling however then in 1962 indirectly restored the sedition which was abolished in 1948.

For almost hundred years since the great trial happened in India in case of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi alias Mahatma Gandhi, the sedition as a bad law has been in constant debate and discussion and it (sedition) is being considered as a relic of an era where freedom of expression was not considered a right as it is today and hence needs to be abolished.Britain, the mother of sedition law, in an historic move in 2009, abolished sedition as a criminal offence and thus reportedly with pride pronounced to the world that Great Britain deleted sedition only because ' the existence of this law in this country has been used by other countries as a justification for retention of similar laws which have been actively used to suppress the political dissent and restrict the press freedom’

Hence, the recent apex court's ruling on Dua's case has given a new boost to debate now to re-look the existence of sedition law in India. But from Socrates to Gandhi and after there have plenty of examples of persecutions of modern writers by the powers that be in a bid to control the unofficial ideas. Can a modern and sovereign State afford the total abolition of sedition laws?

(The writer is a Gandhian author and a lawyer, Phone: 9861469328 )