The Law as a Political Tool

The registration of sedition cases under Section 124A of IPC, now almost an everyday affair, is mainly critiqued as a misuse of law. However, framing it as ‘misuse of law’ fails to look at how misuse is part of the design of this law and its intended use. Critics of the law point to its misuse citing Supreme Court judgments defining sedition. In 1962, the Supreme Court, in , defined sedition as and , asking for only those expressions to be criminalised which amount to incitement to imminent lawless actions. The lived reality of the law, however, is far removed from the judicial discourse, which begs the question ‘why’.