Reject Punjab’s life term for sacrilege
The government of Punjab has done the
nation a disservice by seeking to add a section to the Indian Penal Code
(IPC) that would make even reasoned debate of theology a crime that
warrants life imprisonment.
The Centre should reject the recommended change to the IPC. The colonial-era law already contains two sections, 295 and 295A, which provide for two-year and three-year prison terms, respectively, for damaging or defiling any place or object held to be sacred by any class of people and for hurting the religion or religious sentiments of any class of people. Punjab now proposes 295AA with life imprisonment for “injury, damage or sacrilege” to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Geeta, the Quran and the Bible.
The Akali Dal government of Punjab had proposed a similar law for defiling the Guru Granth Sahib, in the wake of repeated incidents of deliberate attempts to incite religious fury by strewing torn pages and mangled copies of the Sikh holy book in different parts of Punjab. The Centre had turned down the proposal on the ground that it was not secular. The present amendment incorporates the holy books of other major faiths and, so, seeks to clear the secular bar. This is the wrong response to deliberate attempts by anti-national forces to provoke religious disturbance. The political class should unite to ask people to be on guard against such provocation, and seek their cooperation to defeat anti-India moves. Sensible politics and law enforcement are the right response, not tougher laws liable to abuse.
To have such a law on the statute book is to invite abuse: the law on sedition is a case in point. Sedition cases have been rife across the land, in spite of repeated Supreme Court rulings that only active incitement to violence against the state constitutes sedition.
The Centre should reject the recommended change to the IPC. The colonial-era law already contains two sections, 295 and 295A, which provide for two-year and three-year prison terms, respectively, for damaging or defiling any place or object held to be sacred by any class of people and for hurting the religion or religious sentiments of any class of people. Punjab now proposes 295AA with life imprisonment for “injury, damage or sacrilege” to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Geeta, the Quran and the Bible.
The Akali Dal government of Punjab had proposed a similar law for defiling the Guru Granth Sahib, in the wake of repeated incidents of deliberate attempts to incite religious fury by strewing torn pages and mangled copies of the Sikh holy book in different parts of Punjab. The Centre had turned down the proposal on the ground that it was not secular. The present amendment incorporates the holy books of other major faiths and, so, seeks to clear the secular bar. This is the wrong response to deliberate attempts by anti-national forces to provoke religious disturbance. The political class should unite to ask people to be on guard against such provocation, and seek their cooperation to defeat anti-India moves. Sensible politics and law enforcement are the right response, not tougher laws liable to abuse.
To have such a law on the statute book is to invite abuse: the law on sedition is a case in point. Sedition cases have been rife across the land, in spite of repeated Supreme Court rulings that only active incitement to violence against the state constitutes sedition.
