The constitution belongs to us.

Aseem Trivedi was arrested in Mumbai on 9 September on a charge of sedition and has been remanded in custody. His crime? He drew cartoons against corruption. This in a country where our esteemed judges routinely give " anticipatory " bail to murderers and rapists. If they are rich or connected to politicians, that is. So, it is alright for criminal politicians and thieving civil servants to plunder trillions from the people but sedition, which means actions or speech inciting rebellion, if we protest. Yet cartoons are a staple for all newspapers. The Guardian a British newspaper, regularly publishes cartoons showing the Prime Minister,David Cameron with, what looks like, a condom over his head. When Tony Blair was in Number 10 cartoons showed George Bush as a chimpanzee holding Blair, the poodle, on a leash. Blair won 3 elections and Bush won 2 terms in the White House. That is because these people were not personally corrupt and would not tolerate any criminal act by anyone, no matter how rich or powerful. They had pride and self respect. On 10 October 1973, Spiro Agnew, then Vice President under Richard Nixon resigned on a charge of taking a bribe while he was Governor of the State of Maryland. He was fined $10,000 and put on probation for 3 years. So why do our lot behave like wild animals at the slightest criticism? The answer can be found with our friends, the Italians. On 2 May 1992 Judge Giovanni Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo were blown up by a huge car bomb on the motorway near the town of Capaci in Italy. He was investigating the mafia gang, the Sacra Corona Unita. His successor Judge Paolo Borsellino was also killed by a car bomb in Palermo on 19 July 1992. On the 20th anniversary of the death of Falcone this year a bomb killed 16 year old Melissa Bassi outside the Francesca Laura Morvillo Falcone Fashion Institute in Brindisi. This was seen as a warning to police to keep away. In the US the First Amendment guarantees right to free speech to every citizen. During a Republican Convention in Dallas in 1984 Gregory Lee Johnson poured kerosene on an American flag and burnt it while shouting anti-American phrases. He was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison and fined $2000 by a Texas court. On appeal the US Supreme Court accepted Johnson's argument that this was a violation of his right to symbolic speech and reversed the judgement. Justice William J Brennan said,"... if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of any idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." The US Congress passed a federal law barring flag burning but the Supreme court struck it down again. Honorable politicians accept free speech as the foundation of democracy while criminals hate it. Merely shouting that " Parliament is the light pillar of democracy " will not make it so.