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Sedition provision gags free speech: Barun Das Gupta
This is a guest post by BARUN 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...
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Sedition: ‘The highest duty of a citizen’
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...
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The Restitution of the Conjugal Rights of the State
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...
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Minutes of the seminar on ‘Azadi: The Only Way’
(Shuddhabrata Sengupta has written eloquently his account of the day-long seminar, ‘Azadi: The Only Way’. The seminar was organised by the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners. Given below...
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Reflections on the Bigots of Embedded Media: Biswajit Roy
Guest post by BISWAJIT ROY Now that the xenophobic and paranoid big media clamour for slapping sedition charges against Arundhati Roy and others for speaking up their mind on Kashmir, has temporarily...
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Kitne aadmi the? We are all seditious now
Here is a very short, utterly incomplete, hastily compiled list of people charged under Section 124 A in the last two years alone. Our very own Shuddhabrata Sengupta figures in this roll of honour....
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We are all seditious now, but when did this start?
I am afraid that unlike in Sholay, where the reply to Gabbar’s question and in our time, the reply to Nivedita’s question would have to be more than ‘Do sarkar’. But regardless of the rather large...
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How Sedition crept into the constitution: Siddharth Narrain
Part 2 of a 3 part series by SIDDHARTH NARRAIN. First published on The Hoot While in their Draft Constitution, the Constitutional Framers included ‘sedition’ and the term ‘public order’ as a basis on...
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Clamping down on the dissenting voice
Part 3 of a 3 part series by SIDDHARTH NARRAIN. First published on The Hoot. While the Supreme Court’s decision lay to rest the debate on the scope and constitutional validity of the sedition law,...
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On sedition: Sarim Naved
In this guest post, SARIM NAVED gives a chronological account of sedition in Indian law, and discusses the procedural aspects laid down for a magistrate to take cognisance of sedition After the 1857...
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“Are the stone pelters real heroes? Discuss.” Hundred marks?
Noor Mohammed Bhat, a college lecturer in Srinagar, who decided to get creative with the English examination paper. Amongst his essay topics: “Are the stone pelters real heroes? Discuss.” It also asked...
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The Trial: State of Chhattisgarh versus Pijush Guha, Binayak Sen and Narayan...
On Christmas Eve, the Raipur Sessions court delivered a surprisingly harsh sentence in the case of The State of Chhattisgarh versus Pijush Guha, Binayak Sen and Narayan Sanyal, where B.P. Verma...
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An index of incompetence
One of the issues that the Binayak Sen trial has revealed is the quality of the investigative process in the case and the nonchalance with which the police has flouted even routine guidelines,...
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A Case of Conscience: Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the...
This open letter by SHIV VISWANATHAN has been circulated by Communalism Combat Dear Professor Manmohan Singh, I hope you don’t mind the temerity of this letter. It is written as one scholar to another,...
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Silence as Sedition
A true measure of being democratic is not the cycles of elections – it is the dignity given to disagreement, to dissent. Why must we dignify dissent? There are the arguments that we hear everyday: so...
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The Logical Urges of Sedition
[An edited version of this article by me has appeared in the November-December 2010 issue of Conveyor, a magazine published from Srinagar.] On 22 October 2010, there was a public seminar in Delhi,...
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Full text: The Binayak Sen Judgement (English Translation)
(Given below is the full text of the judgement sentencing Dr Binayak Sen for life. It is a translation from the Hindi. The translation has been done by the Free Binayak Sen Now campaign. You can...
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A curtain call for the world’s largest democracy: Neerja Dasani
Guest post by NEERJA DASANI Please ladies and gentlemen… A round of applause for this worthy verdict! Please understand now: Silence is molten. Please no more talk of freedoms that aren’t for sale....
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Periyar on ‘independence’
It is hard to introduce E.V.R.Periyar. A good sign of the fact that his thoughts are broad based and radical is the way in which they can be used in different contexts. With each context, the...
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Periyar on the Constitution
As a follow up to the earlier piece, here is a translation of excerpts from Periyar’s speech on the constitution soon after it was framed. Here there is a need for a note on how we can read these...
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