During a recent phone conversation with lead attorney Ravi Varma Kumar, I asked him, “How is the Supreme Court doing?”
We were speaking in the background of the court ruling of three Supreme Court justices that found Prashant Bhushan’s tweets to be in contempt of court.
Ravi said: “The judiciary itself makes an accusation; he starts the process by himself and then proves the case, and then passes sentence saying that the allegations have been proven, that is what happened in our Supreme Court ”.
The three-judge court did not even seriously consider Bhushan’s answer before approving his orders. I wanted to visit the Supreme Court to see if the statue of the goddess of justice, who is blindfolded and carries a balance to be fair, still exists. Because the judgment of this court was blind.
Supreme Court attorney Gautam Bhatia captures this judgment well with a metaphor: “It reminds me of the times I used to take a soccer ball from the midline, dribble it across the field and kick it towards the goal, without any opposition. players on the field “.
This is the game that has been played in the judiciary.
So what’s in Bhushan’s tweet? Says so:
“When historians in the future look back over the past six years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the SC in this destruction, and more particularly the role of recent four CJIs “.
This tweet should have given food for thought. This tweet, and the other about the impact of the blockade on justice, should have been seen as a product of anguish. The anguish one feels trying to save the sunken dignity of the court. But Bhushan’s tweets have been described by the three-judge tribunal as acts that shake the very roots of the judiciary. And they have made judgments as if their emotions were the law. But they have also acted out of fear.
Today, fear has overwhelmed not only the judiciary, but the entire country, including the executive and legislative branches. This fear has not even escaped the media. This fear has not allowed any autonomous institution to remain autonomous. We have a clue to this fear in what Judge Markandey Katju said:
“But Gogoi (I refuse to call him justice) committed much greater faults, of various kinds, and practically prostrated himself before the BJP government and handed over almost the entire Supreme Court to the political executive, renouncing his solemn duty to protect the rights of the village “.
Precisely for this reason, when those political leaders who take an oath in the name of the constitution affirm that “we have come to change the constitution,” no one dares to accuse them of contempt. Even if they burn the constitution, it will not be in contempt of court. But Prashant Bhushan’s tweets that seek to protect the dignity of the court are viewed as contempt by these judges. After seeing this, the words of Judge Markandey Katju flooded my mind.
India has probably never had to endure such a difficult situation since independence. Even during the time of the Indira Gandhi Emergency, at least some pockets of resistance could be found within the judiciary, the Electoral Commission, the country’s federal system, the Reserve Bank of India, CBI, the media. , etc. That emergency was like a tiger. Indira Gandhi was an aggressive dictator. Everything was face to face. However, although suppressed, the protests overflowed.
But now? What exists now is a “cow-faced tiger emergency.” He presents himself masked as a savior. But behind the mask, the regime does everything it is not supposed to do. It never comes face to face. Instead, what we call the four pillars of the constitution, along with all the autonomous institutions, as well as the federal structure of the country, have had their necks cut off and crushed. It is true that these institutions still have their shape. But they are barely half alive. As a consequence, they can only work after understanding the gestures and wishes of the cow-faced tiger, the dictator who oversees the political executive.
To make this more understandable, consider what happened in the United States. President Donald Trump called on law enforcement – “dominate … you must dominate” – in response to the outbreak of nationwide violence sparked by the murder of George Floyd, an African American man, by Minneapolis police. In response to Trump’s call, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo fearlessly declared:
“It’s not about dominating. It’s about winning hearts and minds … We don’t want ignorance to ruin what we’ve accomplished to restore normalcy … Let me say this to the President of the United States … Please if you don’t have something constructive to do let’s say , keep your mouth shut “.
If you take this and apply it to our situation, then everything will be self explanatory.
Now when you come to India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, called a “versatile genius” by a Supreme Court justice, India is drowning under the ignorant blows of demonetization, GST, etc. Unemployment is eating us up. The country goes from poverty to hunger. The government can only function by selling public wealth to private companies. Therefore, surgery has been performed at the level of more or less all fundamental government institutions, including the judiciary, the media, CBI, RBI, etc. to control the outbreak of public anger. Therefore, the public interest of today has been orphaned.
Prashant Bhushan has devoted his entire legal career to this orphan public interest. After handing over the public interest to the dump, the goal now is to stifle their own voice. The emergence of the ‘cow-faced tiger’ in India appears to have used the judiciary to suppress the voice of the public interest, using Prashant Bhushan’s tweets as an excuse.
As I wrote all this, after overcoming anger, pain and regret, I thought that maybe, just maybe, Bharat Mata must be preparing the birth of a leadership with the potential of a Gandhi-Ambedkar-JP, hence this accusation against Bhushan; hence the political imprisonment of the conscience of this land with the arrest of Anand Teltumbde and others.
Devanoora Mahadeva is a Kannada writer who has been awarded the Padma Shri Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Prize, which he returned in protest against the growing intolerance in the country. A public intellectual and Dalit activist, he has been a leading force in various social movements in Karnataka and the country.
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