Speech, Sedition and the State

Much debate has ensued since the comments of Arundhati Roy on Sedition & with the prosecution of Dr. Binayak Sen on the same; Sedition has become the buzz word for the media today. However this is not an article about Binayak Sen or Kashmir or Arundatti Roy for that matter, though one should thank her and the Chattisgarh government for creating an opportunity to once again engage with the archaic colonial law of sedition. It is about free speech within a bourgeoisie nation-State.

Freedom of Speech is a basic right that forms the bedrock of any State that claims to be democratic. But the right of free speech is not an ahistorical right. Socrates was poisoned for asking people to question facts. The elected nobility in the English parliament did not have the right of free speech; they had to fight with the King to gain such a right. For a long time in history the right to speak one’s mind and articulate one’s thoughts were subjected to extreme penalty. Copernicus was brunt to death for saying something as inconsequential as the Sun being the center of the solar system. Many were deported, incarcerated in prisons for life, or killed for speaking what they believed was just and true. It was the struggles of the masses, entire populations, the working and toiling common men and women that has eventually recognized the freedom of speech and in constitutional statutes, engraved it as law. This struggle continues even today under the so called ‘democratic states’ which is no more than an expression of unequal relations under capitalism.

The fear of words emanates from inequalities and inherent contradictions that underlie human civilization as we have witnessed. From the slave societies to modern capitalism under democracy, there remains the inherent contradiction between those who toil to produce and those who appropriate the products. From even further in history, there remains a socially created exploitative relationship based on patriarchy, which denies equal space for women. These unequal social relations are encoded into legal systems of the particular era such that the interests of the dominating classes are protected. Thus you have the Hamunrabi’s code but closer home the Manu smirthi and the Artha Sahastraⁱ, But mere laws cannot maintain a system with inherent exploitative relationships and thus emerges, Gautam Buddha’s and Jyothibha Phule, but more importantly Periyars and Ambedkars; Bhagat Singhs and MK Gandhi who question the law and the inequalities in the society. It is their ideas, spoken, written and enacted that unravel the falsity that sustains exploitative and often irrational social relations of production and appropriation. When speech challenges the status quo, it becomes dangerous to the ruling class and has to be subdued through law. One such law with a long history is the Law of Sedition.

Once decorating the English law, Sedition was defined as any act that showed disloyalty or disaffection to the sovereign. This law has survived through the ages, though with many iterations and dilutions, well into bourgeoisie democracy. It has also come to adorn Indian penal code which remains a vestige of British rule. The reason that it has survived in a political system that uses the rhetoric of democracy, is because the inherent contradictions between the people, clubbed together as a nation persist. The post colonial nations were master art works of prominent anti colonial leaders and colonial States. Together, they painted imaginative nation States into the political geography of the world. Every State, presents itself as the true representative of all the population under its domain. It tries to conceal the class, caste, gender inequalities within a unifying rhetoric of loyalty to crown or (in modern terms) Nationalism. These States, in order to remain integrated and protect national and international capitalist interests, have to propagate powerfully the idea of nationhood. Anything that questions this fragile setup was dangerous and the State armed itself with laws such as sedition.

The case of Arundhati Roy is very instructive about the manner in which the modern Bourgeoisie State function. The speech of Arundhati Roy, one may agree or disagree with her politically, but it has surely questioned the foundations of what has become the nation state of India. For the ruling classes of India irrespective of the different political spectrum representing it, the exposition of Roy questioning he very “UNION” has dangerous implication and hence all the furore across the board. But the use of laws like sedition within a democratic system will expose the real face of Indian State and the bankruptcy of its democracy. Caught in this conundrum the government unleashed a media trial on her. Allowed the right wing media, its anchors and commentators to castigate her and literally seek her banishment. But the government prudently refrained from acting. The threat was enough. The intention was not to silence her, but to silence the rest and arrest the spread of such a spirit and idea. But in this they revealed the nature of media which claims to be the fourth pillar of democracy, as only a mere tool of capitalist interest. Were they successful? Only the future will tell.

It is here that we need to ponder deeper over free speech, sedition and the State. It is clear that democracy will remain incomplete until free speech is not protected and freely practiced. But the existence of State, which is no more than an expression of class interest, makes free speech impossible. It is clear that only by the replacement of capitalism by a democratic socialist society will it be possible for the blooming of fuller democratic spaces.

When we advocate Socialism we are aware of the monstrous experiments that the people around the world have come to suffer in the name of ‘SOCIALISM’, we do not stand by that caricature of Socialism. For us, the New Socialist Alternative, CWI – India, democracy is the Oxygen of Socialism without which it is bound to decay and perish as in the case of Stalinist states. It is precisely keeping all those experiences of dangers and pitfalls of the past that we unequivocally campaign for a system of Democratic Socialism.

The only way forward for a future socialist society is to allow historical materialism to play out through spaces of democracy. To this the recognition of the inalienable right of free speech is essential. From the way the economy is organized, to the right of self administration and right to the practice of culture, freedom to act, speak and express will remain the bedrock of a democratic socialist system. It is here that sedition will finally be expunged from our statutes.