Regression Dressed as Reform: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Shifting Contours of Political Speech

Authors

Anushka Singh, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi

Abstract

This paper examines the shifting contours of criminal law in relation to political speech, with a focus on Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). It advances three arguments. First, the decolonising narrative behind deleting sedition glosses over substantive continuities between colonial and post-colonial periods, with Section 152 BNS refashioning the colonial-era bifurcation between ‘sedition’ and ‘sedition-like’ activity. The BNS provision represents a backslide in the way it converges the various legal and political connotations of sedition from colonial to contemporary times, creating a new criminal category constructed through popular political-extra-legal discourses. Second, Section 152 BNS borrows from the UAPA but abandons its originating context, which could have potentially enabled a restricted reading of speech offences under UAPA. Sedition, UAPA and Section 152 BNS share a transitive relationship, progressively expanding the ambit for criminalizing political speech. Third, rather than asking whether a speech threatening national sovereignty and security should be criminalized, the paper examines, through theoretical perspectives on speech crimes, whether and under what circumstances speech can threaten national security. In conclusion, the paper argues that the legal framework in India has moved beyond regulating seditious expressions to encompass a ‘sovereignty clause’, first articulated in the UAPA and subsequently expanded under the BNS. This expansion is facilitated through lexical equivocation between different speech forms, which lowers the threshold for criminal liability, presuming uniform harm even where causal links remain tenuous. At its core, this framework presumes national security as a perpetual, overriding interest and imagines the addressee of ‘dangerous speech’ as perpetually susceptible to its ‘ill effects’. It marks a regression to a position where political speech, in and by itself, is deemed dangerous.

Recommended Citation

Singh, Anushka (2026) "Regression Dressed as Reform: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Shifting Contours of Political Speech," National Law School of India Review: Vol. 36: Iss. 2, Article 5.
DOI: doi.org/10.55496/LVOZ2667
Available at: https://repository.nls.ac.in/nlsir/vol36/iss2/5

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

doi.org/10.55496/LVOZ2667