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Arundhati Roy and Sedition Under ‘IPC 153A’
The Case of Arundhati Roy
In October of 2023, renewed controversy surrounded acclaimed author and political advocate Arundhati Roy for potential sedition charges for past statements. Roy has long had a contentious relationship with Indian speech codes; after the publication of The God of Small Things, Roy was charged and acquitted of obscenity, and, amid environmental protests in 2002, she was tried and arrested for unlawful assembly. This most recent tryst with Indian speech restrictions implicated her 2013 speech at the “Azaadi: The Only Way Ahead” conference, where Roy spoke in affirmation of Kashmiri separatism stating that “Kashmir is not an integral part of India” and called for, “the people who are leading this struggle to take it further.”
That same year, a civilian filed a case of sedition, or treasonous speech, under the pretense that Roy’s claims implied that “Kashmir was never part of India and was forcibly occupied by the Armed Forces of India and every possible effort should be made for the independence of the State of Jammu & Kashmir from India.” But it wasn’t until ten years later, in October of 2023, that the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi affirmed the charges to pursue the case in a court of law.
Roy’s sedition charges emerged in tandem with new scrutiny surrounding sedition within India and its post-colonial legacy. The Indian Supreme Court is currently reviewing the constitutionality of colonial-era sedition law 124A concerning its historical relationship to imperial censorship, invoked in the cases of nationalist Indian heroes such as Mahatma Gandhi and Bal Ganghadar Tilak. As a result of the constitutional inquiry, all cases of sedition under 124A are suspended. Thus, in order to continue prosecuting Roy, IPC 153A, which is more traditionally associated with hate speech, is being leveraged as a substitution for the retired sedition law.
At this point it is unclear whether the case itself will have any weight, as these charges arose out of a particular political situation within the Modi Government. However, rather than consider the charges against Roy as merely a political spectacle, I am interested in what this case illustrates about the intersections between political expression, public order, and the legacies of imperial-era speech codes in India.