SECTION 144 Cr.P.C. — Part IV: Public Order and Political Agitation (1901 to 1920)

This is the Fourth Post in a series on the Blog.

The previous post expanded upon the officers who dealt with the powers conferred under what, by 1898, was Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code [Cr.P.C.]. The post also elaborated upon the expansion of such powers by the enactment of new police legislation, or the amendment of existing laws to empower police to address public order problems. Before that, we had begun drawing a long historical arc to see the evolution of Section 144, which is at the heart of public order policing in India today. This post comes back to that effort, and sheds light on the period from 1901 to 1920.

Judicial Decisions: A Skewed Archive

The reported judicial decisions from 1861 to 1901 were few, but nevertheless, significant. The cases showed how the legislators at that point in British India were keenly tuned into how the statutes were being applied. This litigation experience was useful feedback for the legislators, who then amended the law to rectify whatever defects had been made apparent. A good example of this was the addition of a time-limit on the duration of any orders under Section 144. Where no such temporal limits were initially present, the law was amended in 1872 after courts stressed upon the need for such a limit to the powers conferred by this provision.

At the same time, the litigation history of Section 144 also helped give an idea of the social context in which the provision was being used. The few reported decisions available suggested that one of the main uses of Section 144 was to help keep the peace between rival groups — be it religious sects, landlords, or factions in a village. At the same time, a few stray decisions had Magistrates using this provision as a tool for good governance — by regulating how boats could be docked at the harbour, say — and such administrative usage of the provision was strongly deprecated by the High Courts.

I’ve added details of the reported decisions for the period from 1901 to 1920 to the Google Sheet, this time including references to cases under the Police Act. It would appear that the most common litigation in the High Courts around this provision continued to be that between rival groups seeking to enforce / defend their private rights. In this regard, it is notable just how frequently ordinary disputes over land rights ended up with Section 144 orders being passed, which were then set aside by the High Courts. A line of cases emanating from the Patna High Court is most instructive in this regard. There are also two cases that came up where orders under Section 144 / Police Act had been passed for good governance purposes: One of these regulated the carting of dogs, and the other regulated who could go through a railway station. In both cases, the orders were struck down.

Before drawing conclusions about the social context in which these provisions were being used, let’s take a step back, and square this information from judicial decisions with what else we know about this period from 1901 to 1920.

According to most accounts, this period was one of the most volatile periods in the history of colonial India. Recall that this is the era of the infamous Partition of Bengal, of the onset of revolutionary and anarchical activity across the colony and secret societies, of the First World War, of the Khilafat movement, and of the infamous Rowlatt Act. However, none of this is reflected in our small set of High Court decisions. In fact, I found zero cases where the High Courts dealt with Section 144 orders passed in such kinds of issues. The only case I found where the facts concerned political agitations was one under the Calcutta Suburban Police Act, where the Calcutta Police had banned one Leakat Hossein from carrying out Swadeshi Agitations in 1907.

Section 144, Political Speech, & the Seditious Meetings Acts

So, was Section 144 really not being used by the government to rein in political agitators during this period? Of course not. During this time, the limits of Section 144 were being tested as a strained set of administrators relied on this provision to curb political speech and expression. While it did not end in courtroom battles, there was considerable debate within the administration itself, much of which is now publicly accessible thanks to the digital repository of the National Archives of India. The tense situation created by the Partition of Bengal in 1905 led many District Commissioners and Magistrates to use Section 144 and prohibit public meetings which, in their view, involved seditious oratory. But something was clearly amiss, for in 1907 the Government brought about the Regulation of Meetings Ordinance to prevent “seditious meetings” and applied it to parts of Bengal. The debates on the eventual Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act of 1907 are silent on this aspect, and Dr. Rash Behari Ghosh’s remarks of Section 144 being enough to curb seditious meetings went unanswered.

A view to how the Government approached the issue can be gleaned from the Home Department files on the 1907 Act, specifically the one marked “HOME_POLITICAL_A_1907_DEC_64-84”. The file contains a letter dated August 12, 1907, sent by the Chief Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, Central Provinces to the Secretary of the Home Department, Government of India, giving his opinion on the draft legislation On whether Section 144 was sufficient to deal with seditious meetings, the letter reads:

“Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code would justify the issue of an order to this effect to a fire-brand orator; but disobedience, to that order cannot be punished under the Indian Penal Code unless the court will hold that his action produced or tended to produce a breach of the peace. Fear of a disturbance of the public tranquillity justifies an order under section 144 but not a conviction for disobedience of it under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code which was never correspondingly amended. The object sought could be gained by such an amendment of section 188 of the Indian Penal Code. The interpreta­tion of section 144 of the Civil Procedure Code [sic], read jointly with section 188 of the Indian Penal Code, is so overlaid by a mass of rulings that it is difficult to extract what the law on the subject really is.”

Thus, one big flaw in the potential for using Section 144 to curb political agitations was the absence of any subsequent sanction: Even if somebody disobeyed the order, punishment could only follow in very limited cases.

More arguments on the inadequacy of Section 144 are found in a letter dated July 18, 1907 that was appended to the letter sent in August. This earlier letter was sent to all Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners in the Central Provinces and Berar by the Office of the Chief Commissioner, Central Provinces, giving guidance on using Section 144 to de , which merits a full reading.

In the interests of brevity, here I only flag three of the other concerns that the letter raised in using Section 144 for the purpose of containing political speech. One point was the lack of prior notice that a meeting was to be held: it would be very difficult to issue orders under Section 144 to prevent a seditious meeting if there was no prior notice at hand. Another point was the concern of Section 144 with preventing public disorder. Thus, it could not be used “if the sole object of the Magistrate were to prevent an extremist orator from making a Swadeshi speech which might or might not contain seditious phrases“. And, finally, there was the problem of legality. There was always the chance that the order under Section 144 could be challenged, either directly or in a prosecution for Section 188 IPC, and so Commissioners were advised to only pass orders which could withstand subsequent legal scrutiny.

As a result of these issues, the Seditious Meetings Act was passed in 1907 with a three-year expiry date. It was given an extra lease of life in 1910, and then was made permanent in 1911. However, even though the legislators had stressed on the inadequacies of Section 144 to push the case for having a special law in the nature of the Seditious Meetings Act, the ordinary law continued to be used for the containment of political speech throughout British India. Indeed, the sufficiency of the ordinary law was a constant refrain of the Indian benches who were opposing the 1911 Act in the Legislative Council debates.

Perhaps it was due to this supposed adequacy of Section 144, coupled with India being placed under wartime legislation for a large part of the 1920s, that the Seditious Meetings Act was rarely used till its eventual repeal in 2018. The same can hardly be said about Section 144, which emerged as one of the “repressive laws” of the colonial regime in the subsequent decades.

Next Post: Emergence of a Repressive Law

The years between 1901 to 1920 marked a transformation in how Section 144 came to be used across India. A growing political consciousness led to this provision being used to prohibit public meetings where, according to the British, seditious speeches would be made. Yet, in spite of this, a reference to the debates of the Legislative Council when this issue of curtailing public meetings was raised shows that the Indian members of the Council were quite sympathetic to this provision. It is perhaps notable that while the Rowlatt Act, the Seditious Meetings Act, and the Defence of India Act were all part of the brief of the Repressive Laws Committee of 1922, Section 144 was not.

The resentment surrounding Section 144 was to considerably grow in the next two decades, as it became a key instrument in the legal arsenal to combat large-scale political mobilisation in India. By the end of this period, Section 144 also came to be seen as a Repressive Law, with many unsuccessful attempts being made for its repeal. All this will be the focus of the next post in this series.