When Macaulay's Code of 1837 was enacted in 1860, sedition was added as Section 124A to the penal code in 1870.

It became an instrument to silence the "freedom" movement. In the Constituent Assembly in 1947, lawyer-politician KM Munshi suggested that including "sedition" was notorious and the word must be removed as a restriction on free speech. It should be replaced as it "undermines the security of or tends to overthrow the state".

Of this, after the Chinese invasion, only the phrase "security of state" was retained and, in 1963, "sovereignty and integrity of India" was added to the Constitution Amendment of 1951.