Introduction
Partheeswaran. P, Tamil Nadu National Law University
‘The Constitution fails when a cartoonist is jailed for sedition.’
-Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud
In 1922 The most important person of the Indian Independence Movement, Gandhiji was prosecuted for sedition under the Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code When he appeared, in British court of Ahmedabad. Gandhi described Sec 124-A of IPC as “the prince among the all other civil laws of the Indian Penal Code framed to subdue the freedom of the citizen”1 and also said during the trial proceeding said that “Affection (towards the country) can’t be manufactured or regulated by law”
More than two third of the globe was under European colonization and it was ruled for many centuries and now the countries got decolonized and became a sovereign state. The fundamental concepts of Imperialism is to deep rooted in day to day life of the colonized country that’s why even after the colonizers left, but their foot prints are still seen in the roads of law. Still the colonized countries follow the path of their colonizer mainly in the arena of Anti-terror law, where it is became the tool to suppress the voice of the people just like before the freedom. Many International jurists see that as an impact of Euro-centrism and the soul of colonization still exist in the form of law established by the commonwealth countries. The Europeans tried to control the native population by legislating unreasonable acts and procedures to stop the national independence movements. In India even after 70 years of independence there are remnants of British laws in the legal frame work of the nation. The European ideologies are still followed in emergency, preventive detention provision and mostly in Anti-terror laws. So this approach is still being used by the government when is there is any expression against the ruling government. So when the people protest gets initiated even when it is in peaceful manner the people get retrained by unreasonable laws. Even recently in Romila thapar v Union of India we can understand how the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) is being used beyond the limit of justice and how the entire village of kudankulam in Tamil Nadu got slapped with various offence under IPC after the protest against nuclear power plant and Adivasis population of Jharkhand got booked under sedition, so from with this we can clearly understand the misuse of power just like how colonizer ruled. Even though the colonizer left the nation but the process of decolonization is a slow operation. This study is about the changes anti-terror law reform after decolonization and how it subsists in the legal framework of India and how it’s supervised by the judiciary.
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