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14 Dec 2024 : The Hindu Editorial

Editorial 1: Wounding the spirit of the Constitution of India

Context

‘We’ the people of India must not read down Justice S.K. Yadav’s speech and allow it to pass as something that is inconsequential

 

Introduction

We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, republic, and to secure to all its citizens justice, liberty, and equality and promote fraternity among all, have been witness to a mockery being made of our constitutional compact, in full public view, at an event organised within the precincts of a constitutional court, the Allahabad High Court.

 

Distancing ourselves would be a disservice

  • Spirit of constitution: We have witnessed a sitting judge brazenly challenge the spirit and letter of the Constitution of India, in a speech that is nothing but a dog whistle that guarantees impunity to the mobs that will act on his words and views — and have been acting on words such as his emanating from the seats of power.
  • Media and political response: The venom that Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav, judge of the Allahabad High Court, spewed on the precincts of the court, has been widely reported in the media.
    • Members of Parliament in the Opposition have initiated an impeachment motion against the judge, the Supreme Court of India has called for a report, and concerned citizens have written to the Chief Justice of India.
  • Public shock and grief: None of this, however, captures the sense of collective shock, dismay and grief that it is even possible for this level of public humiliation, violent, incendiary, genocidal street-talk to emerge from a seat of justice under the Constitution. For that is what it is.
    • And it is really time to seek remedies against an incitement to violence of this nature as a part of our solemn affirmation as citizens who gave to ourselves this Constitution.
  • Speech as an assault on citizens: The ‘sludge’ that was passed as learned judicial speech is an assault on the citizens of India and not an attack on Muslims or minorities or urban naxals or protesters or just any particular group that has become the latest target of mob violence/public incitement.
    • This is not Justice Yadav’s views on Muslims, nor is this a case of just one rotten apple.
    • In distancing ourselves from his comments, we do profound disservice to our autonomous and independent determination of the terms on which the collective ‘we’ is constituted in this country called India that is Bharat.
  • Impact of Justice Yadav’s speech: Justice Yadav’s speech is an act of wounding.
    • It is a speech that inflicts deep harms on all of us: in terms of how we experience the life of the mind, knowledge, convivial living and spiritual fulfilment in a shared space, the boundaries of which are not determined by narrow walls and fences of bigotry.
    • and in terms of the injuries that religious bigotry inflicts on shifting targets — on people, our lived lives, our dwellings, our worksites, our neighbourhoods and our places of worship.
  • Consequences of soft bigotry and mob Violence: We have also seen the disastrous effects of soft bigotry as a trigger to mob/state violence, especially in the case of places of worship.
  •  Need for accountability: Let us not read down Justice Yadav’s speech and allow it to pass as something that is inconsequential.
    • It is not something that can be adequately answered by the High Court that offered the space and the possibility for this — a High Court that did not rise in one voice to condemn and censure a member of the Bench for speaking genocide and atrocity.
    • This is a court that ought to have written to the Chief Justice of India condemning Justice Yadav’s speech long before the Supreme Court demanded a report in response to the petitioning and the protests by citizens who took note of the speech and mobilised action given the exceedingly slow wheel of the law.
  • Call for Judicial Accountability: It calls for a different order of collective judicial accountability.
    • Nor can this act be adequately redressed by subjecting it to the low, anodyne chiding that is whispered by the judicial fraternity alone within court halls that allow restricted entry.
  • Past consequences of incitement: We have seen the consequences of dog whistles of this kind over the past decade and the irreparable harms they bring in their wake.
  • Affirming collective dignity and unity: We also know that mobilising around the Constitution and its core values together as ordinary citizens, elected citizens and judicial citizens, speaking a shared language across vernaculars and faiths, is the only way of effectively affirming our collective and individual human dignity and the unity and integrity of this country — India that is Bharat.

 

A commons

  • Constitution and Citizen's Rights: This writer has long argued that the Constitution of India, and our rights and responsibilities as citizens, take shape through a deep connection between the intellectual history of constitutionalism and a grounding of that history in our evolving present-futures.
    • Neither constitutional interpretation nor the delineation of our rights need be shackled by narrow reference to precedents and prior judicial wisdom alone, since the spirit of the Constitution (and indeed the Constitutionitself) is not judicial property, but is a commons.
  • Constitution-as-Commons: It is urgent that we think of the Constitution-as-commons — that a shared ownership and shared understandinggovern its use to further the common good which is set out in the Preamble and in the philosophy of civil disobedience of various hues.
    • Satyagraha is our collective inheritance — Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, Maulana Azad, Jaipal Munda, Dakshayani Velayudhan, Anis Kidwai, A.K. Gopalan.
  • Judicial role and disobedience: It is not just rulers but when people who sit on judicial seats speak the undisguised tongue of rulers and the mobs, disobedience is the constitutional route to recuperation.
    • If norms of ‘judicial propriety’ have come undone, Justice S.K. Yadav of the Allahabad High Court has scripted its ruination.
  • Crisis of judicial propriety: In the resulting crisis that ‘judicial propriety’ finds itself in, the only resurrection is through the grammar of civil disobedience.
    • Inquiries, explanations, reports, and measured censure will amount to nothing.
  • Impeachment and political realities: Impeachment is a good move, but is only symbolic; it is destined to fail when Justice Yadav’s political masters have a brute majority in Parliament, unless of course we have an unprecedented and unlikely action by members of the ruling alliance standing with the Constitution.

 

Conclusion: The outlines of a response

It is of course a sad comment that S.K. Yadav, as a judge, has political masters. This alone should trigger some deep reflection and public discussion by citizen judges, since the barrier between judicial and political speech (and space) has been breached. Taking this further, in reinstating the dignity compass and rejecting public humiliation in judicial conduct and speech, we need to think through public and judicial action that will draw on the wellsprings of our inheritance of civil disobedience and satyagraha. We must craft tactical resistance by refusing to allow a person who speaks this language to judge our cases or judge with us. The ‘We’ that opens the Preamble to the Indian Constitution is not a ‘we’ that is a motley group of people identified randomly (with or without their consent) as Hindu. The ‘We’ is a constitutionally constituted people. A non-denominational, plural, dizzyingly heterogeneous, and diverse beyond measure people who believe in the spirit of the Constitution and its core values

Editorial 2: ​Welcome spotlight

Context

The Supreme Court’s renewed emphasis on monitoring Manipur is welcome.

 

Introduction

The ongoing ethnic violence in Manipur has prompted the Supreme Court of India to intervene, directing the state government to disclose details of destroyed and encroached properties. Despite the responsibility ideally lying with the state and union governments, the Court's involvement has become necessary due to the severity of the violence and government inaction. A committee led by Justice Gita Mittal oversees the investigations and humanitarian relief, aiming to restore peace amid ongoing hostilities and political divisions.

 

Hearing a Case on Ethnic Violence in Manipur

  • Petitioners aggrieved by hostilities: Hearing a case by petitioners aggrieved with the unremitting hostilities in Manipur,
    •  The Supreme Court of India has directed the Manipur government to disclose details of destroyed and encroached properties following the ethnic violence a year and a half ago.

 

Role of Justice Gita Mittal-led Committee

  • Extension of committee’s tenure: The Court had also, a few months ago, extended the working tenure of the Justice Gita Mittal-led Committee supervising the investigations related to the violence and also humanitarian assistance and relief in the State.

 

Judicial Intervention and Government’s Responsibilities

  • Court’s Role vs. government’s responsibility: Ideally, these steps should not have been under the aegis of the Court and, instead, under the remit of the executive governments — in this case, the State and the Union Home Ministry.
  • Reason for court’s intervention: But the violent imagery of sexual violence, the wanton destruction of property, including places of worship, and the continuing hostility between the State’s two ethnic groups had forced the Court’s hand into foraying into a supervisory role through the Justice Mittal Committee.
  • Judiciary’s imperative due to government inaction: It has also become an imperative for the higher judiciary, first, because of the remarkable reticence of the Union government in answering questions from civil society and the political Opposition related to the situation in the State, and second, due to the lack of accountability by the misfiring State government that has been ineffective in bridging the ethnic gap.
  • Political divisions within parties: Even political representatives from the same parties have been split on ethnic lines and there seems little convergence in the political demands being made by the opposite camps.

 

Rise of Non-State Actors and Armed Violence

  • Armed Non-State actors: There is also the rise of non-state actors, armed with sophisticated weapons — many of which are looted from the State armouries — exercising their illegal writ on the political process.
  • Violence in previously unaffected areas: They have also been engaged in violent acts in places such as Jiribam, which did not see any ethnic conflagrations earlier.

 

National Attention on Manipur’s Ethnic Violence

  • Violence only gains attention when escalated: Manipur’s tragic descent into ethnic hostilities receives national attention only when the scale of the violence is horrifying and reaches unconscionable levels.
  • Unlikely return to pre-Violence status quo: Despite the government averring that it is taking steps to restore the rule of law and addressing the political differences, a return to the status quo ante before May 2023 seems far away.

 

Court’s Role and Government’s Secrecy

  • Need for meaningful steps: The Court’s renewed attention is, therefore, welcome, but shorn of meaningful stepsto reverse the spiral of hostilities, this exercise would remain incomplete.
  • Government’s secrecy and national security rhetoric: The government’s attorneys have also sought to retain a veil of secrecy over the committee’s functioning and findings using the tired rhetoric of “national security.”
  • Court’s responsibility in overseeing transparency: The Court should not pay heed to this ploy which seems more a case of seeking to divert attention than helping to find meaningful solutions to the conflict.

 

Global Conflict Resolution Mechanisms

  • Focus on accountability and normative actions: Across the world, conflict resolution has focused on mechanisms such as “truth and reconciliation” exercises which have privileged accountability and normative actions, something that remains absent in Manipur.
  • Potential role of committee’s findings: The Committee’s findings may provide the necessary push in the right direction.

 

Conclusion

The Supreme Court’s involvement in Manipur’s ethnic violence underscores the urgency of addressing the escalating conflict. While ideally under the purview of the state and union governments, the Court’s intervention highlights the failure of political leadership and the rise of non-state actors. The Justice Mittal-led committee’s role remains crucial in ensuring accountability and facilitating meaningful solutions. Only through transparency, accountability, and concerted efforts can lasting peace and reconciliation be achieved in the region.