Meghnad Desai & the legality of buggering bullocks

Lord Meghnad Desai writes-

A group of eminent Indians had written an open letter to the Prime Minister pointing out the problem of vigilante attacks. Such attacks have been occurring for a while now and the main victims are Muslims. The attacks occur mainly in the Hindi belt.

The authors were not revealing a dark secret or a vital aspect of India’s defences. Even so, a citizen filed an FIR with the police, and a local magistrate in Bihar then filed a case for sedition under the Indian Penal Code. The case has now been closed.

Who was this citizen? It was Sudhir Kumar Ojha, a famous lawyer who has filed over 500 cases against celebrities over the last 20 years. Four years ago he hit the headlines with a case involving Bollywood stars. LiveMint reported-

'Saying he had fallen ill after eating Maggi noodles, Ojha filed a criminal case against Nestle’s managing director Mohan Gupta and the joint managing director Shabab Alam, and actors who have appeared in Maggi ads: Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta and Madhuri Dixit.
'The case was filed 11 days after authorities in Uttar Pradesh decided to prosecute Nestle, alleging high levels of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and lead in Maggi noodles.
Ojha filed the case under the Indian Penal Code sections 270 (malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life), 273 (sale of noxious food or drink), 276 (sale of drug as a different drug or preparation) and 420 (cheating and dishonesty).

Lord Desai writes-

The astonishing thing is that the person filing the FIR was not a military or a civil servant.

No. He was an officer of the Court. Soldiers don't file FIRs. The Ministry of Defense contacts the Ministry of Home Affairs if police action is needful. Certain types of Civil Servants may initiate an action which results in the filing of an FIR. However, it would be ultra vires for soldiers or civil servants to do so by themselves and in violation of the chain of command or code of conduct.

It is perfectly proper for an officer of the court to initiate a judicial procedure in the Public Interest. Since the Eighties, Indian intellectuals have favored Public Interest Litigation and seen it as a bulwark against authoritarianism. However, it was always a double edged sword.

In this case the complaint has been dismissed and the initiator is to be investigated. He may be punished if his affidavit displays a reckless disregard for the truth of the sort which Lord Desai is displaying. On the other hand, it is only fairness to mention that Desai is very very old and that his column is titled 'Out of my Mind'!

The evidence advanced for the sedition charged was that the letter is likely to bring India into disrepute. What evidence could there possibly be for this belief? Why should a section or two of the IPC frustrate the Freedom of Expression guaranteed as a Fundamental Right in the Constitution?

The Constitution describes various exceptions to the rule. Thus were I to write- Lord Desai must be prosecuted for sedition because he is seeking to overthrow the Republic of India, at the behest of his fellow British peers, and his chosen means of doing so is by writing such utter nonsense that readers, including Indian soldiers and policemen, are likely to experience a complete shutdown of higher brain functions thus leaving the country at risk of foreign invasion or seditious insurrection'- it would be open to Desai to prosecute me for libel or else for an officer of the court who believes there is some substance to my allegation to petition the court to prosecute Desai for sedition.

But, something similar could be said of British Law. American Law is a different matter, but it is possible that their Supreme Court will overturn Sullyvan v NYT in which case Newspapers will have to be very careful about what they publish.

To understand this, you have to go back into the past when the British ruled India.

Nonsense! The Indian Constitution declares all Laws, whatever their historicity, to be autochthonous. This may be a legal fiction, but it has the force of law. Thus no 'understanding' can be gained by listening to this senile economist who is ignorant of a fundamental principle of Indian jurisprudence.

They introduced the law, lawyers and law courts which Indians love so much that 33 crore cases are outstanding, waiting to be decided. As British rule spread across India, the British needed some laws.

Why? They could kill anyone they liked and grab whatever took their fancy. The Brits like other rulers turned a profit on the administration of justice which, in any case, made the country yield a fiscal surplus which the rulers appropriated.

Warren Hastings had hoped to rule using existing Hindu and Muslim legal texts but soon that friendly approach was abandoned.

How was it friendly? Is Desai utterly mad? Even white people like Sheridan and Burke protested against Hastings' looting 'the Begums of Oudhe' and so forth. Why tell such a foolish lie? Is Desai hoping to compete with Amartya Sen for the title of stupidest Indian Economist ever?

English laws were to be used to keep Indians in order.

Nonsense! Indians were kept in order by shooting them out of the mouths of canons or simply massacring them- as happened at Jallianwallah Bagh. In the North West, planes dropped poison gas bombs on innocent villagers. English laws were only used when the English, for some reason of their own, thought it more economical to keep the seditionist alive so they could use him down the line.

The British rulers never understood their subjects — the mob as they called it. They needed someone to fashion tools for keeping Indians in order.

Nonsense! Everybody knows that if you machine gun a mob and then make everybody crawl, then people will learn the lesson that resistance is futile unless you have guns and tanks.

Genghis Khan didn't need to understand anything about the various peoples he ruled. Just massacring them from time to time and building a mountain of human skulls was good enough.

The one person who met the challenge was Thomas Babington Macaulay. In the five years he had on the Governor General’s Council, he changed the face of India forever.

Rubbish. He did nothing remarkable whatsoever. The only reason he is remembered is because he wrote well and played a prominent role in British, not Indian, politics.

Forget his Minute on Education. That only trained generations of Indians in English and the treasures of Western science and history.

Balderdash! Macaulay says there were plenty of Indians who had paid through the nose to acquire such an education. What they were asking for was a subsidy for this type of instruction. They would still pay a lot of money themselves but it would be nice if the Sarkar threw in a bit of cash.  By contrast, if you wanted Indians to learn Arabic or Sanskrit in a Govt. funded institution, then you would have to pay them to study. This is also the story of Rohit Vemula. He expected to be paid almost twice the manufacturing wage to study some stupid type of Sociology. By contrast, Indians would beg and borrow to pay for a STEM subject qualification. Thousands of Indians now go to China to qualify as Doctors. This is cheaper than studying in India.

But he gave us a jewel which every government in India values as the best gift of two centuries of English rule.

Utter nonsense! Any clerk could have drawn up the IPC. Macaulay endowed it with prestige but left no other impress upon the Indian judicial system.

This is the IPC (Indian Penal Code). He boasted that he was going to prepare the best short summary of the English penal system. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

But this sort of 'short summary' could be produced by anybody. Nobody remembers who produced the Penal Code of Ceylon. It was better than the Indian one because it was produced at a later date.

The Independence movement knew the IPC well. They suffered day in and day out from it.

But, had it not existed, they would simply have been shot. Their survival and eventual power and prestige arose from its operation.

It was repressive.

But not as repressive as being beaten to death.

But when they came to power, they did nothing to remove the IPC or even amend its worst features.

Very true! They continued to punish rapists and murderers unless, of course, those rapists or murderers could get bail. 

When they had the chance, they retained not just the IPC but the entire collection of laws of repression installed by the British.

They considerably added to that collection of laws precisely because they didn't want to rule the country exclusively by extra-judicial killing.

The rulers may have changed colour but their suspicion of the mob had not gone.

Desai is absolutely right! During the 'hoodie riots' in London, the Government showed suspicion of the mob. David Cameron thought that it might loot the shops and commit arson and murder. Desai Sahib knew different. He rose up in the House of Lords and gave a ringing speech denouncing unjust suspicions against mobs. He proved, using mathematics and econometrics, that mobs don't kill people or go in for looting. They just want to cuddle and kiss policemen. Cameron should not have taken any action against the 'hoodie' mobs. He should have come out of Downing street to kiss and cuddle and be kissed and cuddled by these feral youngsters.

The British have reformed their laws and their penal system.

No they haven't. A lot of the hoodie rioters received custodial sentences. One study found that sentences were 25 per cent more severe than in normal times.

But India loves Macaulay (and British Rule) so much that it cannot abandon or reform a rusty 19th-century law.

If India loves British Rule then it must greatly love a British Peer like Desai. But does it actually do so? No. Indians think the fellow is a senile cretin. Incidentally, the fuckwit was part of the Nalanda fiasco.

The mob has to be ruled with an iron rod.

Is what we think. Desai doesn't. Why? This high caste Hindu probably wants Dalits and Muslims to be lynched by mobs. He feels the Government should not beat or shoot the members of such mobs. This cretin pretends that England has abolished laws which treated crimes by members of a mob as being worse than similar crimes committed individually.

Now even a group of writers and creative artistes have been denounced as a mob would be.

Nonsense! When a mob is denounced, little attempt is made to list out the participants. When a group of writers are identified separately in a list of names, it is a perversion of the English language to say they constitute a mob.

An officer of the court exercised his prerogative but he may be punished for wrongly doing so. This is purely a matter for the courts. Senile economists who are out of their mind can only add to their own obloquy by sticking their oar in.

The irony is that filing of the FIR has already done the damage to India’s reputation.

There is no irony here- though the sight of those 'public intellectuals' shitting themselves in fear was undeniably comic.

After a long agitation Section 377 was removed.

It hasn't been removed. Its scope has been reduced to non-consensual sex (including with minors since they lack legal capacity to consent) and sex with animals.

More needs removing.

Like what? The law against buggering your bullock? Desai wisely keeps silent about what laws he wants removed. Still, if I were you, I'd keep him away from your cattle.