“A journalist must run the risk of being misunderstood, and should take care to make his meaning plain. If his intentions are really loyal, there can be no difficulty in doing so. If not, he cannot complain of being punished.” That was how a senior British colonial official, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, defended India’s sedition laws in 1898. Mackenzie, then the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, compared “a certain section of the native press” to scavengers and petty traitors.
Britain repealed its sedition laws, a relic of a bygone era, in 2009. But the rules it imposed on its Indian subjects 151 years ago remain intact, and are now being weaponised by the government of Narendra Modi.
Sedition charges have risen by almost a third under Modi’s government, according to research published this month by Article 14, the website I edit. Of the 11,000 people accused of sedition in the past decade, nearly two thirds of charges have been filed since 2014, when Modi was first elected prime minister. Most of the charges since then have been aimed at critics of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); almost 150 people were accused of sedition merely for making “critical” or “derogatory” remarks about the prime minister himself.
