PUCL Delhi Condemns the Action of Delhi Police in Arresting JNUSU President on Charges of Sedition.
Tags: Sedition, Unlawful Arrest, Hate Speech
Related Issue: Right to Protest, Right to Dissent, Preventive Detention
It is shocking that the Delhi Police has arrested the President of the Jawahar Lal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) on the charges of ‘sedition’ –a provision of law about which Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, had said in 1951, “Now, as far as I am concerned, that particular Section is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place…in any body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better”.
The provision of section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code, which provide punishment for ‘sedition’ was enacted by the British to silence all opposition to its autocratic rule. This provision had been used by the British against Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, M.N. Roy, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, and many other freedom fighters. It is unfortunate that the governments in free India have been misusing this anachronistic colonial era law from time to time in order to silence the voices of dissent. The human rights organizations, especially PUCL, have for many years been campaigning for the repeal of sec. 124A IPC.
The action of the Delhi Police is in violation of the law laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the celebrated case ‘Kedar Nath Das Vs. State of Bihar’ (AIR 1962 SC 955) which held that “…comments, however strongly worded expressing, disapprobation of the actions of Government, without exciting those feelings which generate the inclination to cause public disorder by acts of violence, would not be penal.” It appears that there was no intention on the part of the President of JNUSU to incite violence and therefore the action of the Delhi Police in arresting him is condemnable.
PUCL appeals to the Home Minister (Central Government) to instruct Delhi Police to release the arrested leader immediately.
The governments should remember what Gandhi said in 1922 in his trial for sedition, “Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law”.
Note: The arrest by the Delhi Police of Kanhaiya Kumar, President, JNU Students Union (JNUSU) on sedition charges for a speech allegedly made by him in the campus, was followed by a well choreographed hate campaign being launched on numerous left-affiliated and progressive student leaders as `anti-nationals’ and traitors. The hate campaign became very vicious and violent and included a cascading set of violent incidents inside the campus, in courts and outside it. The orchestrated attacks by lawyers claiming to be members of ruling BJP on Kanhaiya Kumar, other students, faculty members and lawyers appearing to help them were all committed openly in the full glare of media and included a BJP MLA who beat up a CPI leader in full media glare with the police conveniently playing a supportive role as bystanders to the attacks. We carry the English Transcript of the speech given by Kanhaiya Kumar in the campus which was the basis of the personalised attack on him. We thank the Telegraph, Calcutta for publishing the transcript thus making it accessible for non-Hindi speaking people in rest of India. We leave it to the reader as to whether the speech makes out a case of sedition or whether the allegation of sedition was a ruse to order a crackdown on JNU, a politically active and vibrant educational institution with the potential to continually challenge the fascist politics being unleashed by the ruling NDA dispensation at the centre.