Another reason for sedition to go
The recent conviction of Tamil politician Vaiko, chief of the MDMK, for sedition is a rare instance of a case filed under the often-used and misused Section 124A reaching a legal conclusion. The verdict of the sessions court judge, however, again brings to the fore the need for the Section to be repealed. Section 124A deals with the charge of sedition. A 1962 Supreme Court judgment limited the law’s applications to “acts involving intention or tendency to create disorder, or disturbance of law and order; or incitement to violence”.
The case against Vaiko involves a speech he made at a book release function in July 2009. It was filed by a DMK government at odds with him and he is being convicted while in an alliance with the same party that plans to send him to the Rajya Sabha.
According to the prosecution’s witnesses, in his speech, Vaiko spoke against the Centre in the context of the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka. The war, that had lasted a quarter of a century, had ended with the elimination of the LTTE, a banned terrorist organisation. Vaiko and other Tamil leaders have long nursed a kinship with the group, despite its acts of violence.
The judge, taking a literal reading of the Section, and accepting the views of the prosecution’s witnesses (most of them police personnel) to establish Vaiko’s intent (to incite violence) found him guilty of sedition. In fact, she found him guilty despite arguments that pointed out that no violence or disturbance of law and order had occurred due to his speech.
The verdict, in short, revealed how subjective the interpretation of the law can be. Should a colonial-era law, rooted in an intent to curb dissent and police free speech, wielded as a political weapon, and interpreted in an arbitrary manner, remain in books? A well-established politician such as Vaiko may not only have the resources to fight such a case for a decade but also to survive his sentence of one year in prison. The common woman, writer, activist, filmmaker, village protester or folk singer may not.