Supreme Court lawyer launches book on sedition law in India

New Delhi: At a time when sedition law is being used more frequently than ever, Supreme Court lawyer Rohan J Alva has written a book on it in an effort to discuss the crucial aspect of the pre-independence era law to modern Indians.

"Ensuring the survival of democracy in India is the greatest justification for doing away with the law on sedition and unleashing the full potential of the freedom of speech," he said in the book. 'A Constitution to Keep: Sedition and Free Speech in Modern India' is described as a 360-degree view of the much-debated law of sedition and seeks to demystify crucial aspects of it for the common reader.

"To allow sedition to hang like the sword of Damocles over the heads of the Indian people is to give the kiss of death to political speech, and in turn to Indian democracy itself. Ensuring the survival of Indian democracy is the greatest justification for doing away with the law on sedition and unleashing the full potential of the freedom of speech," added the lawyer.

The author thinks that the sedition law is one from the colonial era that generated the most controversy and interest. "There is perhaps no other law with which the freedom struggle for India’s independence is so intimately intertwined. Today every citizen yearns to understand how the Constitution can be utilised to prevail over such laws."

He is hoping that the book will help people to get "a good grasp of the issues at stake and appreciate the abiding importance of free speech rights and its role in preserving and improving Indian democracy."

He said that the promise of India’s freedom lies in the right to free speech. "The need for the realisation of this promise is the central message of the book."

The book is published by HarperCollins India.

Associate publisher Swati Chopra said that the colonial era law was used to stifle the voice of the people prior to 1947. "It should have been anomalous in the Constitution of independent India. Yet, the law on sedition continues to exist due to legal, political, and historical complexities, all of which are explored and explained at length in this book."

Sedition law was created during the British Imperial rule to silence people who questioned it. From the mid-1800s to 1987, sedition as sanctified in Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code was often used to quell the voice of the people. Freedom fighters criticised the law. The Constitution, in its early days, did not have sedition law but it was brought back in 1962 via a dramatic constitutional amendment driven by a series of events.

In 2022, the Supreme Court suspended Section 124A and questioned the relevance of the law in modern India.