<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Though the British left India in 1947 and though the new country has heavily borrowed the best out of both the British Westminster and American presidential systems, the situation hasn’t changed on how the post-colonial rulers govern the new nation like a police state. Indian law makers continue to frame new laws or amend colonial laws which are essentially draconian. When a state guns after its own people under the plea of maintenance of law and order or national security, by using these draconian laws as ammunition, there can be no doubt that India is becoming a police state. The purpose of the legislature is to make laws that uphold the fundamental rights of all citizens. However, the Indian legislature has made laws that not only neglect fundamental rights, but also contradict them. Some of the laws that are in force today include- the National Safety Act (NSA), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the Public Safety Act (PSA), and Armed Forces(Special)Powers Act 1958.Often the use of these draconian laws continued well after the circumstances in which they were created have passed. These laws may have been enacted by rulers who feel they are doing the country a great service as part of their patriotic duties. It is the innocent people who more than anyone else, get victimised as these laws endow the state with excess powers to violate constitutionally guaranteed rights at both the individual and community level. Today, the frequent use of these laws has put a serious question mark over the fundamental democratic rights of the common citizens. There is a need to conceptualise these laws in terms of what they purportedly combat, and what they actually combat. Usually, these unconstitutional laws are designed with a protectionist rhetoric against a threat (which could be real or imagined). However, what they actually protect is the ruling dispensation’s ability to bypass human rights. It is a tragedy for the world’s largest democracy that those in power unhesitatingly opt to use draconian laws against their own people as means to suppress them but only ending up in promoting authoritarianism. For instance, India still depends on archaic Police Act, the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and the Evidence Act. These laws need to be reformed in order to ensure the protection of human rights of the ordinary citizens who always end up as victims of lawless police violence. Under NSA any person branded as a terrorist can be held under preventive detention for as long as 12 months by the District Magistrate of Commissioner of Police. Those branded as Naxalites or anti-government also have fight their way out against the government even if they could be innocent. The Public Safety Act (PSA) is another act that has been used indiscriminately and has been called as a “lawless law” because of the arbitrary nature in which it is used. The other Act which people in Nagaland and some north east states including Kashmir are dreadfully aware of is the Armed Forces(Special)Powers Act (AFSPA). The Act grants enormous powers to armed forces, such as shoot to kill, arrest anybody without a warrant, and detain local people without any specific time threshold. The Act also insulates soldiers from prosecution in civil courts unless okayed by the Centre. All these Acts prove that India is being run like a police state though the rulers prefer to call it effecting rule of law, no matter how brutal and draconian they are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s repressive laws<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}