Sedition: a slippery slope argument devised to protect the state's magnates. Issue 4 (2nd October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lilienthal, G.; Ahmad, Nehaluddin
• Is Part Of: Commonwealth law bulletin. Volume 44:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 588
• Page End: 606
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02
• Subjects: Law -- Commonwealth countries -- Periodicals; 349.11241
• DOI: 10.1080/03050718.2019.1673199
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-0718

Abstract

Abstract : The Indian law on sedition is a hangover from India's colonial past. It was devised by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay and was incorporated into the Indian Penal Code in 1870, used as a tool primarily to oppress. The objective of this article is to conduct a critical analysis of the meaning and use of laws against sedition. The research question is that, since scandalum magnatum apparently did not deal with how these words actually caused the problem division, what might be the underlying reasoning for anti-sedition laws. Argument tries to show that sedition is an attack by exposure on the state's secret administrative processes. Sedition appears to have been based on a judicially applied slippery slope argument against exposing the secret machinations of the state's magnates. There is a strong inference that the state's magnates are deeply afraid of exposure, as their power rests only on the conventional administrative procedures of sinecures. Sedition is a crime designed to frighten those who might understand and then criticise either publicly or privately the state's more feeble methods of governance.