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Shiv Sena and sedition.

While I get that BJP needs to be paid back in their very same coin, and I understand that they heed no other language, I am against the very charge of sedition in a democracy.

I would have thought that the newly independent India back in 1947 would do away with it by declaring it ultra vires as part of the first order of business. Unfortunately, we have been only too happy to inherit colonial laws (the IPC was written by Lord Macaulay, yes the same, in case you are wondering) just after the First War of Independence in 1857 and was so conceived, structured, and worded as to consolidate the Raj’s rule over the mutinous natives, giving extraordinary discretionary powers to local Magistrates (all European) and Collectors (also European) as well as writing such complicated rules couched in such obscure language as to make it impossible (by design) to be fully compliant at any time for anyone, thus making the discretionary authority even more powerful.

That said, it is, even now in 2022 under the much mellower Uddhav, a bad idea to provoke the Shiv Sena in Mumbai, and a combative Sena with their own CM is a dangerous enemy to make. So, despite my personal belief about sedition, and regardless of any existing law on the books that could be used to bring the full power of authority down upon its detractors, I think the Ranas poked, if not exactly sleeping, a snoozing tiger. And made it very angry. To repeat, a very bad idea.

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