On March 18, 1922, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi pled guilty to Sedition before the District and Sessions Judge, Ahmedabad, and was sentenced to six years of imprisonment.

In the thick of the Non-Cooperation Movement, Gandhi had written three articles in his weekly journal Young India titled “Tampering with Loyalty”; “The Puzzle and its Solution”, and “Shaking the Manes”.

The British Empire arrested him on March 10, 1922 and charged him with Sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for "bringing or attempting to excite disaffection towards His Majesty's Government established by law in British India". The printer and publisher of the journal, Shankarlal Ghelabhai Banker, was also slapped with the same charge.

Before the Court of Judge Robert Broomfield, Gandhi, after pleading guilty to the charge, read out a statement that he had prepared in advance.

He criticised the provision for being designed to silence political opinion under the assumption that affection for a government can be manufactured or regulated by law.

"Section 124 A, under which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence. But the section under which Mr. Banker and I are charged is one under which mere promotion of disaffection is a crime."

Gandhi freely admitted that preaching disaffection towards the existing system of government had become almost a passion which had only grown with the enactment of the Rowlatt Act (a law which empowered the police to arrest any person without providing any reason), the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and other indescribable horrors in Punjab, and the breaking of the Khilafat promise.

"I came reluctantly to the conclusion that the British connection had made India more helpless than she ever was before, politically and economically."

He also spoke of inequality and exploitation, and opined that the administration of law has been for the benefit of the exploiter.

"Little do town dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of India are slowly sinking to lifelessness. Little do they know that their miserable comfort represents the brokerage they get for their work they do for the foreign exploiter, that the profits and the brokerage are sucked from the masses."

Given this, non-cooperation was a duty, he said. As a proponent of non-violence in all movements, Gandhi said it was only proper that he submits to whatever sentence may be imposed on him.

"In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good. But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiples evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen."

Gandhi also noted that some of India's most beloved patriots had been convicted under Section 124A, and said that he considers it a privilege to be charged for having disaffection to the British government in India.

He added that even though non-violence is the foundation of his beliefs, he had to make a choice: one between submitting to a system harming the nation or speaking the truth and risking setting off the masses down non-violent paths.

"I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system. And it has been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against me. In fact, I believe that I have rendered a service to India and England by showing in non-co-operation the way out of the unnatural state in which both are living."

Concluding his statement Gandhi said,

"The only course open to you, the Judge and the assessors, is either to resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil, and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty, if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country, and that my activity is, therefore, injurious to the common weal."

Even though Gandhi pled guilty, Advocate General JT Strangman insisted on a full-fledged trial considering the nature of the case and the accused. The judge disagreed, and after Gandhi read out his statement, proceeded to give his ruling.

Judge Broomfield said that while the law doesn't discriminate between persons, it would be impossible to ignore who Gandhi was to the people.

"I do not forget that you have constantly preached against violence and that you have on many occasions, as I am willing to believe, done much to prevent violence, but having regard to the nature of your political teaching and the nature of many of those to whom it is addressed, how you could have continued to believe that violence would not be the inevitable consequence it passes my capacity to understand."

The judge deemed it fit to impose the same sentence that had previously been imposed on Bal Gangadhar Tilak under Section 124A, which is of six years' imprisonment. Banker was sentenced to one year in prison.

Just over a century after the "great trial" against Gandhi concluded, the Supreme Court of Independent India asked the Central and state governments to refrain from registering any cases for the offence of Sedition under the provision.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli had stated that the rigours of Section 124A were intended for the time when country was under colonial law. The Centre then agreed to keep the provision in abeyance till it conducted the exercise of reviewing Section 124A.

The IPC has since been replaced with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). In the Lok Sabha, Home Minister Amit Shah said that the new law completely repeals the offence of Sedition under Section 124A.

However, as critics have pointed out, the BNS contains Section 152, which perhaps reintroduces the colonial provision in a new package. The new provision punishes "acts endangering sovereignty unity and integrity of India".

Under BNS, such conduct is punishable with imprisonment for life or with imprisonment which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Section 124A IPC as it stood before the enactment of the BNS punished Sedition defined as "whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Government estab­lished by law in India"

Under IPC, this could be punished with im­prisonment for life and/or with a fine, or with impris­onment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

Section 152 has certainly avoided the use of the term 'Sedition'. However, a bare reading of the provision makes it obvious that the definition has merely been altered slightly. The sentence has also been made harsher.

Moreover, the new definition is more vague and open to wide interpretation, and consequently, to wider misuse.

It is anybody's guess what Gandhi, who called 124A a "prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen," would think of Section 152 of the new BNS.