The protesters courting detention while peacefully demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 10 brings back to life Mahatma Gandhi’s statement during a 1922 sedition trial in a colonial court on how dissent must confront power.
Broomfield, to make a statement in open court. Mahatma Gandhi was on trial for publishing three articles in his journal ‘Young India’. He and his editor, Shankarlal Ghelabhai Banker, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months’ simple imprisonment. The court had held that public streets were the natural choice and venue for expressing opinions. The right to assembly was subject to reasonable restrictions for the sake of public order, but the police cannot arm themselves with arbitrary powers and impose blanket bans on meetings. Shah v. Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad . Pecuniary compensation could also be awarded for violation of fundamental rights.
March 18, 1922, which happened to be a Saturday like October 10, saw Mahatma Gandhi accept an offer from the Ahmedabad District and Sessions judge, C.N. The Supreme Court, in post-Independence India, has enshrined the spirit of dissent voiced by Mahatma Gandhi in Article 19 of the Constitution, making the right to free speech and expression and the right to association and peaceful assembly fundamental rights. Nearly half a century later in 2016, the Supreme Court ensured that the right to peaceful and public dissent did not wane by declaring that holding a peaceful demonstration to air grievances was a fundamental right.
The court had held that a violation of fundamental rights due to police misconduct could give rise to a liability under public law, apart from criminal and tort law.
“The state can only make regulations in aid of the right of assembly of each citizen and can only impose reasonable restrictions in the interest of public order… While prior to the coming into force of the Constitution, the right to assemble could have been abridged or taken away by law, after the coming into force of the Constitution, the right cannot be abridged except by imposing reasonable restrictions,” a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held in a 1972 judgment in Himat Lal K.
