When Dissent Becomes “Anti‑National”

There is a phrase that has become remarkably convenient in the Indian political discourse: “anti-national”. It is indiscriminately hurled at students, journalists, activists, academics, farmers, artists, lawyers and political opponents. Sometimes it is shouted from television studios. Sometimes it appears in newspaper headlines. Sometimes it is used casually on social media. And sometimes, more seriously, it finds its way into police complaints and criminal proceedings.

The remarkable thing about the word is that it sounds like a legal conclusion without there actually being one. There is no criminal offence under Indian laws categorized as being “anti-national”. In fact, there is neither any provision in the Constitution of India or the broader statutory framework defining ‘nationalism’ nor any provision requiring an Indian citizen to be a ‘patriot’ or to be ‘nationalistic’. Yet the accusation carries an extraordinary social and cultural force and branding and comes with a strong stigma.

The mischief in the use of the term “anti-national” lies partly in its legal ambiguity. Given it is not a criminal offence as such, the phrase can be thrown around and used liberally in the political and social spheres long before a competent court is tasked with determining whether a crime has actually been committed by the allegedly anti-national individual.

Any protest in India will ordinarily begin with a demand. The Government of India passes a law and for instance, students object or farmers object or migrant labourers object or women object or displaced native residents object or citizens/ journalists object to suppression of dissent or state surveillance. The substantive questions in each case should be straightforward: does the criticism have a basis? Is the purported government policy constitutional? Is the demand reasonable? Is the government’s response proportionate? Instead, the ruling dispensation and its allies or supporters almost invariably choose an easier and more convenient but sinister route – irrespective of the demography of the protestors or the reasons for the protests, accuse the protesting individuals of being anti-national.

Once that accusation is made and the infamous ‘IT Cell’ makes it viral online, the merit of the protest takes a backseat. The protester must now first prove their patriotism towards India before being permitted to make their arguments. Else, the protesters run the risk of their entire protest being delegitimized. This is an extraordinarily effective tool to discredit dissent in the country because it completely changes the burden of the conversation. Instead of asking the State to answer its critics, critics are first required to establish their loyalty to the State.

To call someone “anti-national” is not merely to say that they are wrong. It is to imply that they are against India, placed outside the moral boundaries of the nation. And that distinction is dangerous in a democracy. There is perhaps no more politically potent accusation in contemporary India than the charge of being “anti-national”. It suggests that they are not merely wrong, misguided or politically opposed, but somehow disloyal to the country itself.

In a constitutional democracy, the Government is not the nation. A political party is not the nation. A Prime Minister is not the nation. Nor is criticism of a law, a policy, a court judgment, an institution or the exercise of governmental power equivalent to hostility towards India. A government can be criticised. A law can be opposed. A policy can be challenged. A Prime Minister can be questioned. A court judgment can be disagreed with. A government institution can be held accountable. None of these, by themselves, constitute hostility towards India. Indeed, the constitutional conception of citizenship presupposes disagreement.

Article 19(1)(a) guarantees citizens the freedom of speech and expression, while Article 19(1)(b) protects the right to assemble peaceably and without arms. These are not ornamental freedoms, to be exercised only when the Government finds the speech agreeable. They exist precisely because democracy requires citizens to be able to question those who exercise power.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognised this principle. In Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar, while upholding the constitutionality of the colonial-era sedition provision, the Court drew an important constitutional boundary: strong criticism of the Government, however unpleasant, could not by itself constitute sedition. The offence of sedition required a connection with incitement to violence or public disorder. That principle is fundamental. A democracy cannot treat disagreement as disloyalty. Yet increasingly, political disagreement is being presented as evidence of disloyalty.

A person opposes a government policy, and the narrative that takes hold is whether they are “anti-national”. A student organises a protest, and suddenly the issue is national security. A journalist investigates those in power, and the journalist’s patriotism becomes the subject of debate. A group of citizens objects to a proposed legislation and rather than addressing their arguments, their motives and loyalties are questioned and are deemed suspect.

This is not merely unpleasant political rhetoric. It changes the terms of democratic debate. The question is no longer, “Is this criticism right?” It becomes, “Does this person belong?”

The most effective way to silence dissent is not always to ban it

A Government does not always need to prohibit speech to suppress it. Sometimes it only needs to make people afraid to speak. This is the real danger of the “anti-national” label.

Imagine a young student who wants to criticise a government policy. Before speaking, she has to wonder: Will someone record this? Will my words be taken out of context? Will I be called anti-national? Will a complaint be filed? Will my university act against me? Will my family be harassed?

The speech may technically remain legal. But the fear surrounding it can make the constitutional right meaningless. This is what lawyers call a ‘chilling effect’. A democracy cannot be healthy when citizens begin calculating the personal cost of expressing an unpopular opinion.

We have been here before

India should know better. India’s own history should make us particularly cautious about equating dissent with disloyalty. The British colonial government routinely treated political dissent as a threat to the State. Leaders of the freedom movement were prosecuted for challenging or questioning colonial rule. Speeches that questioned the Government were treated as dangerous precisely because the Government conflated its own authority with the security of the State.

The irony should not be lost on us. Many of those once branded dangerous, seditious or disloyal are now celebrated as freedom fighters.

History therefore gives us a useful warning: The State’s description of dissent is not necessarily the truth about dissent. The people who challenge those in power today may be condemned by the establishment of today and ultimately be vindicated by the history of tomorrow.

JNU: when students became a national-security question

The events surrounding student protests in 2016 provide one of the clearest illustrations of how quickly political disagreement can be transformed into a question of national loyalty.

A deeply contested political episode involving students became a national controversy about patriotism, nationalism and sedition. Students and activists were publicly branded “anti-national”. The actual legal questions: what precisely was said, by whom, in what circumstances, and whether the speech actually amounted to incitement, were often drowned out by the label itself.

The point is not that every utterance made at a protest is protected. It is not. Constitutional rights have limits. Any incitement to violence will not constitute a protected constitutional right and is likely to constitute a criminal offence. Threats of violence or actual acts of violence, or conduct that satisfies the ingredients of a criminal offence hold no immunity merely on account of the underlying trigger being a protest. But the constitutional inquiry must remain precise and objective. A slogan is not automatically an act of violence. A criticism of the Government is not automatically an attack on the nation. And an unpopular political opinion expressed in a public forum is not automatically a threat to national security.

This is precisely why constitutional safeguards matter. The Supreme Court’s judgment in Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar had already drawn a crucial distinction: strong criticism of the Government cannot become criminal merely because it is angry, provocative or unpopular. There must be a constitutionally relevant connection to violence or public disorder.

That distinction is not a technicality. It is the difference between a democracy and a State in which the executive branch has the sole authority to determine the permissible boundaries of political thought.

The farmers’ protests and the politics of delegitimisation

The farmers’ protests against the three agricultural laws in 2020-21 offer another example of the political power of national-security rhetoric.

Whatever one’s position on the agricultural reforms, millions of people participated in a prolonged and genuinely broad-based democratic mobilisation. The protest was a political contest over legislation: whether the laws were beneficial, whether they adequately protected farmers, and whether the Government had sufficiently consulted those likely to be affected. Yet sections of public discourse sought to portray the movement through the vocabulary of separatism, extremism and national disloyalty.

Millions of citizens gathered to oppose agricultural legislation. One could agree with the farmers. One could disagree with them. One could believe the laws were necessary reforms or believe they were disastrous.

But the democratic question should have been: Are the laws good policy? Instead, parts of public discourse sought to transform the movement into a question of national loyalty, separatism and external influence. This was an extraordinarily effective political tool employed by the ruling dispensation.

Once protesters are classified as anti-national, the Government no longer needs to address their demands. The protesters themselves become the issue. Their motives are questioned. Their patriotism is questioned. Their ability to hold Indian citizenship is rhetorically questioned. And the substantive debate about the legislation begins to take a back seat.

If a farmer opposing agricultural legislation is described simply as a citizen opposing Government policy, the Government has no option but to address the farmer’s arguments.

This is how political labels can function as a form of censorship even without a formal prohibition on speech.

The Citizenship Amendment act, and the shrinking space for disagreement

The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act raised profound constitutional questions about equality, citizenship and the character of the Indian Republic.

People protested because they believed the legislation was discriminatory or inconsistent with constitutional principles. Many carried with them copies of the Constitution while participating in protests. Many carried with them the national flag. Many sang the national anthem. Yet protesters were consistently portrayed by the ruling dispensation and by large sections of the mainstream media as enemies of the country or as people acting against India’s interests.

Again, the important distinction is not whether every protester or every slogan was beyond criticism. It is whether disagreement with Government policy can legitimately be converted into an allegation of hostility towards the nation.

That should make us uncomfortable. Not because every protester is necessarily right. But because the patriotism of the protester is irrelevant to whether the law being protested is constitutional.

The Supreme Court has recognised the importance of dissent to democratic life. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, speaking in the context of the CAA protests, described dissent as a “safety valve” of democracy and warned that labelling dissent as “anti-national” or “anti-democratic” strikes at the heart of deliberative democracy.

A safety valve exists for a reason. It allows pressure to escape before the system explodes.

National security is real. That is precisely why the term must be used carefully.

There is an obvious objection to this argument. India faces genuine threats to its sovereignty and territorial integrity particularly from our partly hostile neighbourhood. The threat of terrorism is real. Separatist violence is real. Espionage is real. The risk of internal armed rebellion is real. Of course the State must have the power to respond. But this makes the distinction between dissent and sedition/ State subversion more important, not less.

India’s new criminal code, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, has replaced the old sedition provision with Section 152, which addresses acts endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India. Importantly, the provision itself protects lawful criticism of government measures when the purpose is to secure their alteration through lawful means.

The law therefore recognises something that political rhetoric sometimes forgets: You can oppose the Government without opposing India.

That distinction should be zealously protected. The replacement of the word “sedition” does not eliminate the constitutional requirement of careful interpretation. The State undoubtedly has a legitimate interest in protecting India’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and security. A constitutional democracy is not required to tolerate armed rebellion or genuine attempts to destroy the constitutional order through violence.

But national security cannot become a vocabulary for suppressing political opposition.

Indeed, the Supreme Court’s recent directions concerning speech-related offences have reiterated that criminal law should not be mechanically invoked against harsh or critical political speech, and that there must be prima facie material indicating incitement to violence, hatred or public disorder before such cases are registered.

The constitutional line therefore remains important: criticism is not incitement; dissent is not violence; opposition is not insurrection.

That sentence should be embedded in the hearts of the SHOs of every police station and all news anchors sitting in television newsroom in the country.

Patriotism is not obedience

There is a peculiar idea of patriotism that has of late begun to dominate public discourse: that the good citizen is the citizen who agrees.

But obedience is not patriotism. Silence is not patriotism. And criticism is not betrayal. India’s freedom struggle itself dispels such a notion. The Indian Republic was born out of dissent. It was born because people questioned authority. They refused to accept laws they considered unjust. They organised. They marched. They wrote. They spoke. They went to prison. They disobeyed.

If dissent was inherently anti-national, the Indian freedom movement would have been anti-national. It wasn’t. It was the beginning of the nation we inherited.

Who gets to define the nation?

This brings us to the more uncomfortable question. When we call someone “anti-national”, what exactly are we claiming? That they hate India? That they want to destroy the country? That they support violence? That they want India to cease to exist? Or merely that they disagree with the Government? These are radically different propositions. The first three may involve serious crimes. The fourth is democracy. The danger is that the word allows us to blur all four. And once they are blurred, the Government’s critics can be pushed outside the boundaries of legitimate citizenship without the need to prove that they have actually committed an offence. That is how language becomes a political weapon.

Who gets to decide what patriotism looks like? Is patriotism unquestioning obedience? Or can patriotism mean demanding that the Government do better? Can a person love India and oppose a law? Can a person respect the Constitution and criticise the Government? Can a citizen disagree with the majority? Can a student question the State? Can a journalist investigate those in power? Can a farmer refuse to accept legislation? Can a lawyer defend someone accused of a serious crime?

The answer to all of these questions must be yes. Otherwise, citizenship becomes conditional upon political conformity.

A democracy must protect the person we dislike

The real test of free speech is not whether we defend speech we agree with. It is whether we defend the constitutional rights of the person whose views make us uncomfortable. It is easy to defend a popular protest. It is much harder to defend an unpopular one. It is easy to demand freedom for a journalist whose reporting we admire. It is harder when the journalist is investigating people we support. It is easy to defend the right to protest when the protest is against a government we dislike. The constitutional principle must survive when the government is one we voted for. That is the point of rights. They are not rewards for political agreement.

The greatest danger presented by the term “anti-national” is therefore not merely that an individual may be insulted. It is that the term can create a climate in which ordinary citizens begin to censor themselves. A student wonders whether criticising a university policy will be considered disloyal. A journalist wonders whether questioning the Government will attract a criminal complaint. An academic wonders whether research on a sensitive subject will be interpreted as hostility towards the country. A lawyer wonders whether representing an unpopular client will invite accusations of supporting the client’s politics. A citizen wonders whether joining a demonstration will affect their reputation, employment or safety.

No law needs to formally prohibit speech for speech to be chilled. Fear can accomplish what legislation cannot.

And this is why constitutional democracies must be especially careful with words such as “anti-national”. The accusation does not merely describe. It delegitimises.

It tells the public that the person speaking is not part of the conversation.

The word should frighten us, not because it is always false, but because it is so easily abused

There will be people who genuinely seek to undermine India’s sovereignty. There will be people who incite violence. There will be people who participate in terrorism or armed rebellion or support it financially. The State must deal with them strictly and in accordance with the law.

But precisely because those threats are serious, we should resist diluting the language of national security by applying it to ordinary political disagreement. If everyone who criticises the Government is called anti-national, eventually the phrase will mean nothing. And when the genuinely dangerous person arrives, we will have weakened the language we need to describe this actual, potent threat. More importantly, we will have created a society in which citizens are afraid to ask difficult questions. That is not national strength. It is democratic weakness.

The Republic belongs to the dissenter too

The India envisioned by the Constitution was never supposed to be a country of unanimous citizens. It was supposed to be a country of equal citizens. Citizens who agree. Citizens who disagree. Citizens who protest. Citizens who remain silent. Citizens who vote for the Government. Citizens who vote against it. Citizens who change their minds. Citizens who challenge the State. All of them belong.

Perhaps we should therefore stop asking whether a protester is “anti-national” and ask the more uncomfortable question: What has the protester actually said? If it is false, rebut it. If it is unreasonable, challenge it. If it is unlawful, prosecute it. If it is constitutionally protected, tolerate it. But do not replace an argument with an accusation. Because the moment criticism of the Government becomes synonymous with hatred of the country, we have made a very dangerous mistake.

India is not the Government. Patriotism is not obedience. And dissent is not disloyalty.

A democracy confident in its own foundations should have no fear of its citizens asking whether those in power are right. Indeed, the day citizens become afraid to ask that question is the day we should all be worried, not about the patriotism of the protesters, but about the health of the Republic. The strength of India cannot be measured by how many people agree with its Government. It is measured, at least in part, by how much disagreement its constitutional order can accommodate. A confident State does not need to call every critic a traitor. A confident democracy does not need its citizens to prove their patriotism before exercising their constitutional rights. And a confident nation understands that the Government and the country are not interchangeable.

The Constitution does not promise us a Republic in which everyone thinks alike. It promises a Republic in which disagreement can coexist with citizenship. That is why the answer to an unpopular protest should ordinarily be an argument, not an accusation. If the protester is wrong, answer the protester’s case. If the policy is defensible, defend it. If the criticism is false, rebut it. If a crime has been committed, prosecute it according to law.

But do not use the word “anti-national” as a substitute for any of these things. Because once dissent itself becomes evidence of disloyalty, the question is no longer whether the Government can tolerate criticism.

The question is whether the Republic can tolerate democracy.

And that is a question that concerns every citizen, whether or not they ever intend to take to the streets.