Advertisement
India
OpinionComment
Aakar Patel
Aakar Patel

Opinion | How Modi’s India is silencing criticism and failing to uphold the right to free speech

  • The state has a fondness for laws that are broad and draconian in their ability to detain people, such as on sedition and preventive detention
  • Free speech in India, while apparently guaranteed by the constitution, is in many cases forbidden in practice

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Members of the All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation hold placards in a silent protest in front of the Consulate General of the United States in Hyderabad on June 4 in solidarity over the death of George Floyd. Photo: AFP
Aakar Patel

India is an unusual liberal democracy where civil rights and liberties are guaranteed by the constitution but denied by its footnotes. The first amendment to the US Constitution says Congress shall make no law prohibiting or abridging the freedom of speech or the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Advertisement

India’s first amendment, passed under its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, does the opposite. Article 19 says all citizens have freedom of speech and expression. However, the first amendment to Article 19 says that nothing shall prevent the state from making any law that imposes “reasonable restrictions” on that right.

It lists the “interests of the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence” as being grounds for this “reasonable restriction”.

The right to assemble peacefully, which is in the same article, is denied through the requirement that police permission be sought before any public gathering. Permission can be given, denied or merely withheld, making meaningless the right to peaceful assembly – among the most essential of civil liberties.

The right to free expression is curbed further by the liberal use of India’s sedition law, a colonial relic which can be invoked by any citizen who takes offence to something said or done. In August 2016, Amnesty International India – where I worked until last year – was booked under the sedition law after a complaint by a student group associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

02:22

Public mourning begins for Indian soldiers killed in border clash with China

Public mourning begins for Indian soldiers killed in border clash with China

In January 2019, after filing an 80-page document detailing a two-year investigation costing hundreds of thousand of dollars, the judge threw out the case. The complainants did not turn up in court once.

Advertisement