The 152-year-old sedition law made by the British has come to an end. The Supreme Court has not declared it completely illegal, but before doing so, it has asked the central government to tell by June 10 what it wants to improve. In other words, the government also agrees that this law of sedition is unfair and untimely. If this intention of the government was not manifested, the court would have declared this law null and void.
For the time being, the court has issued a direction to suspend this law. The British made this law three years after the freedom struggle of 1857. This law is mentioned in Section 124A of the Penal Code of India. Under this law, if any person is found to be disturbing the peace and order of the country while speaking or writing, agitation or demonstration against the British government, then he can be arrested immediately, he also has the right to be released on bail. will not and he may also get life imprisonment.
Against whom did the British government not misuse this law? If done against Bhagat Singh, then Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Sardar Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru also imprisoned under the same law. This law continued even after independence. It was made even more strict under Indira Gandhi. Any citizen can now be imprisoned without a warrant for the offense of sedition. Hundreds of such people have been arrested from time to time by all the governments, whom they considered as their opponents.
Would criticism or condemnation of a prime minister or chief minister be called sedition? Many leaders of the peaceful and non-violent movement running in the country have been declared guilty of sedition and imprisoned. Many journalists also fell victim to this law such as Vinod Dua, Siddiq Kappan and Aman Chopra. Three Kashmiri students in Agra were jailed for congratulating the Pakistani cricket team through WhatsApp on their victory against India.
Disha Ravi, from Bangalore, was caught by the police because she had released a ‘toolkit’ in support of the farmers’ movement. You may disagree with the number of people who were arrested under this ‘sedition law’, they may also be wrong but to call them ‘seditioners’ is very objectionable. This law also deserves to be repealed because the allegations made under it are often not proved.
In the last 12 years, 13,306 people were tried for sedition, but only 13 people were convicted i.e. hardly one percent of the charges turned out to be true. If this is not murder of civil liberties, then what is? This stifling colonial law must be completely repealed. Many other laws are already in place to prevent genuine sedition and sedition. Those laws should also be used with great care.
