Interestingly, Sinha also talks about another act which was brought by the British government to put restrictions on plays and artistic expressions critical of the state. The Dramatic performances Act of 1876 was introduced to “prevent performances of a seditious, defamatory or scandalous nature”, and it continued to survive in the post-Independence period and it was only repealed in 2017. But the essence of that archaic law remains which can be seen in the Bidar case.

In the second section, the book charts out the history of the application of this law in colonial India. Though the law was inducted into the IPC in 1870, the first trial under it was conducted only in 1891, i.e. after 21 years in the backdrop of assertive Vernacular Press and rising Nationalism. TheBangobasicase as it came to be known as the first such case where the trail was done under sedition law. The publisher of the journal was booked for sedition for an article that allegedly aroused ‘disaffection’ against the colonial state. The two words ‘disaffection’ and ‘disapprobation’, which forms the core of the section 124A, has been at the core of controversy over interpretation and application of this law.

This controversy and debate over the sedition law became most evident in the case of one of the most famous cases of sedition trails in the history of India, i.e. the case of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who was booked under this law thrice. His cases also lead to several changes in the language of sedition law, where attempts were made to strike a balance between sedition and freedom to criticize the state. In all these cases at the centre of the debate were a few articles which were written and speeches which were made. An interesting thing which we learn from the Sinha’s expose of the history of this law is about how different people, accused of sedition, dealt with it in courts. In the early phase of the Indian freedom movement, those who were accused of sedition tried to challenge their cases in courts and pleaded non-guilty. But in the heydays of the Indian freedom movement, after the entry of Mahatma Gandhi, those accused of sedition like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad pleaded guilty to charges of sedition without trials. Mahatma Gandhi in response to charges on him said, “affection cannot be measured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence”.