Sedition is perhaps the very vaguest of all offences known to the criminal law. The offence of sedition was pitchforked in the news recently, be it “Delhiriots” during President Trump’s visit in February this year: be it the “Tukade-Tukade” gang of JNU which advocated fragmentation of India, or be it the prosecution of dissident MLAs in Rajasthan in June-July this year under Section 124-A of the Indian еnal Code, 1860.

Recent a spate of cases against stand-up comics Munawar Faruqui, Nalin Yadav, Edwin Anthony, politician Shashi Tharoor, journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and young climate activist Disha Ravi, have again questioned the relevance of repressive laws of all kinds, specially sedition and criminal defamation and there is a widespread outcry as to why these provisions, from the era of colonial regime, should not be scrapped. Most recently, Supreme Court’s refusal to invoke sedition against Farooq Abdullah for his opposition to abolition of Article 370 again highlights the issue. These cases flag a fundamental infirmity in sedition law.

Generation Z, also known as Gen Z-ers and Zoomers, is born between 1997 and 2012. It has succeeded the millennials and preceded the Generation Alpha. Gen Z, comprising roughly 20% of the world’s population, is the digitally native generation as it has grown up in a world where social media – Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter (now renamed X) – is an integral part of daily life.