[Reader-list] Barun Das Gupta in Kafila on Sedition Provision Gagging Free Speech

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all,



Here is an other excellent analysis of the Section 124 (The Sedition  
Law) and its implications for Free Speech. By Barun Dasgupta (Guest  
Post on Kafila.org)



best,



Shuddha

-------

Sedition Provision Gags Free Speech, by Barun Das Gupta, posted on  
Kafila.org

http://kafila.org/2010/10/26/sedition-provision-gags-free-speechbarun- 
das-gupta/

The detractors of Arundhati Roy have found a fresh casus belli  
against her for her recent speech (Oct. 21) in New Delhi, on Kashmir.  
The participants in the polemics include such intellectuals as Swapan  
Dasgupta, a journalist and a BJP leader. The burden of their  
criticism is that Arundhati should be arrested for sedition because  
by her speeches she has caused hatred and disaffection towards the  
Government and actually championed the secession of a part of India,  
that is, Jammu and Kashmir.

Let us examine this matter of “creating hatred and disaffection”  
towards the Government, not from the legal point of view but from the  
political point of view. Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code says:  
“Whoever brings or attempts to bring in hatred, contempt or excites  
disaffection towards the Government shall be punished ……” Before  
proceeding further, let us note that the concerned section speaks of  
“disaffection towards the Government”, without specifying whether by  
“Government” the Central Government is meant or the State  
Governments. Since there is no explanation, it may be inferred that  
“Government” means both Central and State Governments.

Now, going by the letter of Sec. 124A of IPC, any speech or writing  
or action that brings in “hatred, contempt or disaffection” towards  
the Government, attracts the provision of this Section and becomes  
punishable. Let us try to understand the political implications of  
this Section.

Someone delivers a speech or writes an article against the POSCO  
project in Orissa and alleges that the Government is surrnedering the  
interests of the people to satisfy the profict motive of  
industrialists (whether indigenous or foreign) and that the project  
must be opposed. His speech/writing causes “hatred” of the people  
against the Government and holds the Government in “contempt” and  
therefore he becomes liable to prosecution (and conviction) under the  
law.

Or suppose someone speaks or writes against the projects of  
“industrial development” being taken up and/or implemented by the  
Government of West Bengal, like the steel factory project of the  
Jindals in Medinipur district, uprooting and displacing thousands of  
adivasis from the lands. He attracts Section 124A. And if he or she  
organizes and/or leads a mass movement against the project, then he/ 
she only further compounds his/her offence. The same goes for anyone  
anywhere in India who may be opposing the eviction drive of the  
Government in the adivasi areas all over the country. If someone were  
to say that the Government’s motive behind the large-scale eviction  
of the adivasis is to hand over their land so that the rich mineral  
wealth lying buried in their land can be exploited to swell the  
profits of the monopolists and multationals, he brings the Government  
into contempts and therefore commits sedition.

So, if Sec. 124A is taken literally, it will put an end to all  
criticism of the Government, all mass movements against it. It will  
change the character of the Indian polity as enshrined in the  
Preamble to the Consitution that ours is a sovereign, democratic  
Republic where ultimate power lies in the people. India will cease to  
be a democratic polity and thereby the “basic sructure of the  
Constitution” will be is changed. But the Supreme Court has already  
given its verdict that the basic structure of the Constitution cannot  
be changed and any law which seeks to do that is ultra vires of the  
Constitution and therefore void ab initio. If the official  
interpretation of the scope of Sec.124A is accepted, India will cease  
to be a democracy and become a totalitarian State, whether of the CPI- 
M brand, or of the BJP-RSS brand.

Therefore, this whole gamut of issues – no less political than legal  
– has to be brought under the scanner and analysed in a larger  
perspective.

Secondly, the issue of secession, so dear to the hearts of the self- 
styled patriots. Secession from India, or anything that overtly or  
covertly supports secession, we are told, is an unpardonable act of  
treason that should be punished by the eternal banishment of the  
traitor to Hell (or ananta narakvaas).

Really ? Let us go back into past history, more than half a century  
ago – on September 10 1958, to be precise. On that day the Prime  
Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, signed an accord with the then  
Prime Minister of Pakistan, Feroze Khan Noon, which came to be known  
as the Nehru-Noon Pact. Under the terms of the treaty, India agreed  
to cede to (East) Pakistan a rich and fertile tract of West Bengal,  
named Birubari, situated in North Bengal. The land was not only  
fertile but several lakh East Pakistani refugees had been settled on  
it. Nehru took the decision to hand over Birubari to Pakistan without  
the consent of the Government of West Bengal, run by his own Congress  
Party.

The news created a wave of anger and resentment all over West Bengal.  
The resentment snowballed into a powerful mass movement. Ultimately  
the people foiled the attempt to cede Birubari to (East) Pakistan.  
Nehru became the target of trenchant criticism but the charge of  
sedition was never hurled at him.

Let us go further back into history – to 1951. The Assam Legislative  
Assembly passed a piece of legislation called the Assam (Alteration  
of Boundaries) Act, 1951, (Act 47 of 1951) under which 32.81 square  
miles of land in Assam’s Kamrup district was ceded to Bhutan. Nobody  
called it a treasonable action or the legislation a treasonable Act.

These instant patriots are perhaps blissfully ignorant of the fact  
that for decades, a separatist movement has been going on in Wales in  
the extreme west of England. The separatist movement is led by the  
Welsh Nationalist Party and its avowed aim is the secession of Wales  
from the United Kingdom. There is no witch-hunt against them and no  
suppression of their movement for openly preaching secession. As a  
democratic country, Britain takes such demands and such movements in  
its stride.

One of the charges that the CPI-M is frequently hurling at the  
Maoists is that they are anti-State. Well, well, well. The Communist  
Party of India (Marxist) is supposed to be both communist and  
Marxist. (The nomenclature suggests as if Marxism and communism were  
two mutually exclusive political categories and a Marxist need not  
ncessarily be a communist and vice versa. One has to be a communist  
as well as a Marxist!) It is the avowed aim of the communists (the  
aim Marx said the communists “disdain to conceal”) is the forcible  
overthrow of the bourgeois State. The CPI-M admits that the Indian  
State is a bourgeois-landlord State. How come then that a party  
opposing a bourgeois State and seeking to change this State, becomes  
an “anti-State” party in the eyes of another party which also swears  
by Marxism? Let us recall Marx’s passionate support for Irish  
independence in the First International in 1871.

Patriotism is a weapon which has been used by the bourgeoisie  
throughout history to perpetuate their class rule. It is precisely on  
the question of the task of the Social Democrats in the First World  
War that the Second International broke down as Social Democrats of  
most European countries thought it their “patriotic” duty to support  
their respective bourgeois governments in the War. They ignored  
Lenin’s call to “turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Three  
successive conferences held at Zimmerwald could not convince the  
Social Democrats of the need to maintain the unity and solidarity of  
the working class in the face of the War. From that day, “Social  
Democrat” became a term of abuse in the lexicon of the Marxist- 
Leninists.

The the way “sedition” is being interpreted in India today is  
ominous. It will put an end to all political debates, gag all  
criticism of the Government and outlaw all mass movements. It is a  
danger which is looming large over our polity and needs to be fought  
and defeated.

(The writer is a senior journalist who had worked as Special  
Correspondent in Patriot, Financial Express, Indian Express
and The Hindu, from which he retired in 2004. He is a free-lancer now.)


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