[Reader-list] Two Essential Commentaries on Sedition

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

Here are, two, (in my opinion) absolutely briliiant commentaries on  
the question of sedition, that some people have been arguing about on  
this list. The first, 'Sedition is the Highest Duty of the Citizen'  
is by Nivedita Menon, and the second, The Restitution of the Conjugal  
Rights of the State, by Lawrence Liang over the past two days on  
Kafila.org. Apologies in advance for cross-posting. The two texts can  
be accessed at

1. Sedition, the Highest Duty of the Citizen, by Nivedita Menon

http://kafila.org/2010/10/26/sedition-the-highest-duty-of-a-citizen/

2. Restitution of the Conjugal Rights of the State, by Lawrence Liang

http://kafila.org/2010/10/27/the-restitution-of-the-conjugal-rights- 
of-the-state/

Personally, I never cease to be surprised at how quickly my e-mail in- 
box, and the comments section after allegedly 'seditious' posts made  
by me fills up with suggestions that I be raped by someone, or that I  
be forced to have sex with someone, (often a female blood relative).  
These suggestions invariably stem from upright and self-declared  
Indian nationalists, using 'handles' like 'Indian National' - whose  
prime pass-time seems to be fantasizing about alleged seditionists  
like my self and some of my friends being made to entangle in some  
form or the other of forced sexual activity against our consent.

On second thoughts, there is no real reason to be surprised. Given  
the predeliction that sections of the state security apparatus (the  
army, the CRPF, the BSF and the various police organizations) have  
for adopting rape and the sexualized humiliation of men and women as  
an integral part of their operational counter-insurgency doctrine all  
over the territory administered by the Indian Republic, it is not  
surprising to consider the content and tenor of the outraged  
patriotic comments. They  are merely the sophisticated discursive  
edge of the practical sledge-hammer operational doctrine often  
actually wielded by the custodians of the unity and integrity of the  
Indian state against those who are, as Liang and Menon, put it,  
simply 'disaffected'.

Perhaps the repressed 'primal scene' that foreshadows the current  
surge of Indian nationalist indignation at the mere thought of losing  
Kashmir has some interesting dimensions that could do with some  
astute, and might I add, compassionate, pyschoanalytic investigation.  
An idle speculation - does any of this have to do with the  
unacknowledged incestuous relationship between sections of the  
(colonial) Government of India Act of 1935 and the (republican)  
Constitution of India of 1950, of which Section 124(A), which our  
patriots invoke with such intensity, is the fruit. They don't call it  
Mai-Baap Sarkar for nothing, do they?

best

Shuddha

-----------------

1.

Sedition, The Highest Duty of  A Citizen

by Nivedita Menon, Kafila, October 26, 2010

Sedition: the attempt “to excite disaffection towards the Government  
established by law in India”, a crime under Section 124 A of the  
Indian Penal Code, a provision introduced by the British colonial  
government in 1860.

The only revisions to this colonial legal provision since its passing  
have been over the years, to remove anachronistic terms like “Her  
Majesty”, “the Crown Representative”, “British India”, “British  
Burma” and “Transportation for life or any shorter term”.

But it seems “Disaffection towards the government”, the archaic usage  
notwithstanding, is a timeless crime. Section 124A, therefore, these  
few cosmetic changes apart, has remained unchanged for the last 150  
years.


(That’s what we mean when we say we are an ancient civilization.)

In 1922 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Shankarlal Ghelabhai Banker,  
editor, and printer/publisher respectively of Young India, were tried  
under this section before the District and Sessions Judge, Ahmedabad.

Pleading guilty to the charge, Gandhi said:

“I have no desire whatsoever to conceal from this court the fact that  
to preach disaffection towards the existing system of Government has  
become almost a passion with me…” Sedition, said Gandhi, “in law is a  
deliberate crime”, but it “appears to me to be the highest duty of a  
citizen.”

Today, almost a hundred years later, the government of “the world’s  
largest democracy” threatens to invoke this exact same colonial  
provision instituted to curb resistance to foreign rule,  against a  
writer whose bright integrity has never faltered, and whose powerful  
voice has been consistently raised against injustice. Arundhati Roy  
is tragically right, we can but pity ourselves,  citizens (so-called)  
of a nation “that has to silence its writers for speaking their  
minds… that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal  
killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and  
those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.”

Disaffection means “the absence or alienation of affection or  
goodwill; estrangement”.  Does it look like there is a whole lot of  
goodwill towards the Government of India in Kashmir, which Roy has to  
work hard towards alienating? All over the North-East and Kashmir,  
reeling under the military jackboot of the draconian AFSPA, the  
Government of India is nothing but an occupying army, a spontaneous  
disaffection generator.

A young Manipuri lecturer in  Delhi University tells of sitting at a  
roadside dhaba in Imphal with a few friends, when a uniformed Indian  
Army officer passing by, stopped. Stand up, he barked. Sing the  
national anthem. They had barely begun, when he slapped one of them.  
Your accent is wrong, he said. Do it again. They did it again.

No isolated incident this, but simply the routine humiliation of an  
occupied people. The Indian Nation rampant in all its pride and  
glory, generating affection.

“Sedition” and “contempt of court” have no place in a modern  
democracy. No justification whatsoever for provisions that  
criminalize and silence dissent, critique and ethical challenges to  
the dominant order. These provisions are unconstitutional, anti- 
democratic and utterly intolerable.

Sedition is no longer a criminal offence in Uganda after a recent  
High Court ruling, and the provision is being challenged in Malawi  
and also in Australia. (The last person prosecuted under Australia’s  
sedition laws was Brian Cooper, a patrol officer in Papua New Guinea,  
then under Australian colonial rule. He was charged and convicted in  
1960 because “he advisedly spoke and published seditious words” when  
urging “the natives” to demand PNG’s independence from Australia.)

If disaffection from the government is a crime, who would remain out  
of jail? Kashmiris, all of the North-East, populations dislocated by  
dams, corporations, Commonwealth Games, SEZ’s, tribal people in  
Niyamgiri, Chhattisgarh, farmers in Raigarh, Maoists…

The people, said Bertold Brecht, have lost the confidence of the  
government.

Therefore the government has decided to dissolve the people, and  
elect another.

2.

The Restitution of the Conjugal Rights of the State, by Lawrence  
Liang, Kafila, October 27, 2010



Despite the many thoughtful critiques of the relationship between  
family and the state, I have always found it a little surprising that  
there is very little commentary on the relationship between two  
strange legal fictions. The first is the idea of the restitution of  
conjugal rights (RCR), and the other is sedition. The restitution of  
conjugal rights basically consists of the right of a spouse to demand  
that his or her- though more often his than her- spouse cohabit with  
him after she has ‘withdrawn from his society’. Away from the misty  
world of legal euphemisms, we all know what this means: that you can  
be forced to sleep with a somewhat less than pleasant person against  
your wishes. A legal commitment to love in a marriage is a serious  
thing indeed which only warns us that we must proceed with such a  
choice very carefully.

But like many marriages, the question of choice is somewhat  
restricted for many people- as is indeed the case of the choice of  
loving your country. After all isn’t sedition a crime of passion, and  
the punishment of an offence of the withdrawal of love for your  
nation. It is interesting to see that while treason in Sec. 121 of  
the IPC is about the waging of war against the state, sedition is  
about a forced love. It is about the creation of ‘disaffection’. As  
Nivedita Menon points out in her post, disaffection means “the  
absence or alienation of affection or goodwill; estrangement”.

A legal commitment to love your nation is also a serious thing  
indeed, and what then is the punishment of sedition if not, the  
restitution of the conjugal rights of the state?




Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net