“Tum saala ghulam log hamaare jooti ke neeche hi rahega!”

~ Iconic British dude from Lagaan

Rulers love to rule. For that, they need legal weapons to keep their subjects in line. Our erstwhile British rulers have left a rich legacy of these weapons such as Sedition and Defamation, both of which were used against people who opposed their rule.

Sedition would immediately declare a person as a criminal and a traitor who is ‘against the country’ while Defamation is mostly used by the powerful to make artists, journalists and activists shut up. After the Brits upped and left, our newly formed Indian Government should have gotten rid of these laws, but… they didn’t.

Why? Because it serves them well too.

We saw how The Wire was threatened with a Rs 100-crore civil defamation case and even a criminal case for revealing details of Jay Shah’s company. We saw how the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar and Hardik Patel were charged with sedition, just to make sure they toe the establishment line. Even in modern day India, people in power tend to exploit these tools to curb freedom of expression and thought. The establishment works hard to oppress ideas that might prove to be a hindrance to their own survival.

To add to these wonderful legal weapons, back in 2008, the UPA Government brought in Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which was used against people posting material that caused ‘annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will’. A person publishing anything using a ‘communication device’ (read: Online) that fell into either of these vague categories was booked.

This law led to the arrest of people like Aseem Trivedi, a cartoonist, Ambikesh Mahapatra, a professor and two ladies who happened to complain about Bal Thackeray’s funeral, amongst many others. The misuse of this law was so rampant that the Supreme Court intervened and struck it down in 2015. It observed that the terms used in this law were “open-ended, undefined and vague”. It said –

“Every expression used is nebulous in meaning. What may be offensive to one may not be offensive to another. What may cause annoyance or inconvenience to one may not cause annoyance or inconvenience to another.”

That ghastly chapter should have ended there. But it looks like the prodigal 66A is about to make an epic comeback, in a shiny new form. That is if you go by the recommendations given by the Central Government-led expert committee that is looking into the matter of hate speech.

The recommendations were leaked by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) on Wednesday (read them here) and they are worrying, to put it mildly.

The objective of this expert committee is clear.

They have recommended changes in the Indian Penal Code. They have recommended that a new section (505A) should be inserted which reads as follows:

The reason why this is being seen as the return of 66A is because it (yet again) contains vague terms like “highly disparaging”, “indecent” and “grossly offensive”. Any law which has broad stroke terms like these should be looked at with suspicion. These are subjective terms, as the Supreme Court had also pointed out when it struck down 66A earlier, and what is ‘grossly offensive’ for one person might not be so for another.

For example, remember the Tanmay Bhat-Snapchat controversy where he made fun of Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar? Some said it was offensive while others thought it was quite hilarious. Should he be punished for that?

Under this proposed law, he might be. Read the top part again about the law being applicable on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, gender etc. That might seem like a deterrent, but there is a change it might be twisted to suit the case. People might say that since Bhat was imitating Lata Mangeshkar, a woman, he is insulting womankind. Or since Mangeshkar is old, he’s making fun of old people which can be considered a ‘community’. The possibilities of how this can be applied is endless. Exactly like 66A.

What is also worrying about this committee is that the people who were a part of it were all Government representatives and, according to IFF, nobody from the public was invited to give any comments, opinion or views on the matter.

This needs to be called out. If IFF hadn’t gotten their hands on this document, we would practically, for all intent and purpose, never have found out that this was happening and that our Government was thinking in this direction.

It is likely that a new law will be brought in soon before the Parliament to make these alterations in the IPC. The last time they did this for 66A, back in 2008, the law was clubbed up with 8 other bills and passed in under 15 minutes. Without debate.

Vaguely worded laws being passed is absolutely bloody dangerous.