It’ll be hard to charge Arundhati Roy with sedition

In the late’80s, when three Supreme Court judges had declared that members of Jehovah’s Witnesses sect cannot be compelled to sing the National Anthem, there was a big hue and cry. Some people felt that the judgment was ‘anti-national’ and the judges ought to be tied for sedition. They failed.

When the Khalistan movement as at the peak in the troubled Punjab,  top cop KPS Gill had hauled up a number of people for pro-Khalistan sloganeering. They were tried for sedition under the stringent Tada. But, the court let off some people saying that raising slogans doesn’t amount to an offence of sedition.
Lawyer KTS Tulsi, who had appeared in some of the Punjab cases and had had the time to examine sections 123 and 124 IPC, doesn’t find any basis for registering a case under the extreme provision against author-activist Arundhati Roy for what she said about Kashmir.

“Intellectuals use words in the context of a larger canvas of the scenario. These expressions shouldn’t be read within the restrictions of the criminal law,’’ says Tulsi.

Moreover, there is no basic ingredient in Roy’s speech that can attract the grave charge of sedition. The views offered by a former attorney-general and a former additional solicitor-general are no different. But they want to remain unidentified. 

In this context, it is worth noting of what the Supreme Court had said after delivering judgment in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Our tradition teaches tolerance, our philosophy preaches tolerance; our Constitution practices tolerance, let us not dilute it.”