What is Sedition?

WE would point out that the time has come for the Government to consider if it should not discard the accepted definition of sedition in this country. Hitherto, the Government has prosecuted men for sedition as to whose guilt even under the old and accepted definition there was room for reasonable doubt. With the prosecutions, on which, according to rumour, the Government has now embarked, they start on a new experiment. For the first time they are proceeding against men who have proclaimed it to be their intention to preach disaffection to the existing form of government, to do everything in their power to destroy it by “honourable and peaceful” means. The question which the Government must definitely ask itself is, whether it is going to treat the activities of these men, when these do not lead to violence, as seditious. Let it be said to the credit of the Government that it has so far not treated them as seditious. In the case of the Ali brothers, it was stated by His Excellency the Viceroy that so long as they adhered to the pledge of non-violence, no action would be taken against them. Most of the bigger leaders were also invited by the Government to give evidence before the Military Requirements Committee, which showed that up to that time at least the Government did not regard them as undesirable associates. The foremost leader of the movement had more than half a dozen private interviews with the Viceroy, who talked with him with frankness, and who has referred to him with becoming respect and admiration. All this the Government knew just as well as it does at this moment that the professed end and aim of the movement in which those leaders were engaged was the destruction of the present form of Government. If that end, on which they rely are seditious, the present action might have been taken against them a year or at least six months ago.

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