The colonial-era law is widely misused to serve partisan political ends.
Under this current BJP/RSS regime, every liberal public educational institute is under attack. From the last four years, we have seen the physical as well as the policy level attacks on the educational institutions. The institutional murder of Rohit Vemula in HCU, the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmad from JNU campus as well as the violence on AMU students from these right-wing hooligans.
There have been constant attempts from this godi media to malign the picture of minority institutes like AMU and Jamia. The attack and media trial on AMU is to communalize the atmosphere and spread the agenda of hatred and divide which has been the historic agenda of entire sang parivar.
There have been continuous attempts from this government to exclude these universities and to make maximum efforts to use them for the invoking of communal consciousness. It happened in last year when the elections of two Lok Sabha seats was happening in UP and now again in this crucial juncture of coming 2019 Lok Sabha general elections.
This BJP government is so afraid of its students that the Charges of sedition a colonial law is being implemented on the protesting students. First on the JNU student and now on the AMU students.
Ruling on the ideological strains of foreigners like Hilter/ Mussolini the mass Murderers/ Racists/ Fascists and Worst Dictators. It looks like, that imperialism has come back to India under this BJP led NDA government.
Fourteen students of Aligarh Muslim University were booked for sedition on Tuesday evening following an altercation with Republic TV crew.
The students were charged on the basis of complaints filed by Bharatiya Janata Party Yuva Morcha district leader Mukesh Lodhi and a Republic TV correspondent.
In Aligarh, for one, suggesting that the students were trying to overthrow the Indian government which is what is implied by sedition would be absurd. The sedition law then is simply being used by the BJP government to prepare the ground for the upcoming general election.
This situation exists despite a very high legal bar for the sedition law to apply. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that only incitement to imminent lawless action could be criminalised. This means convictions for sedition are few and far between. From 2014 to 2016, out of the 112 cases of sedition filed across India, only two led to convictions, clearly indicating that the law is being used to serve political ends.
Still, governments keep using the sedition law. In Assam, a state facing turmoil, as many as 251 sedition cases have been filed by the BJP government since 2016.
Aligarh then is yet another reminder: the colonial-era sedition law has no place in a democratic country such as India. The longer it stays on the statute books, the more it will be misused by politicians for personal gain.
Tawfeeq Irshad Mir
GMC Srinagar
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