The End of Naxalism: The End of Accountability

https://thewire.in/rights/the-end-of-naxalism-the-end-of-accountability 

In conversation with Kunal Kamra on Adivasi rights

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DeNNqzvl6M&t=185s

Post-mortem of a PIL

I am writing this blog for my own satisfaction, after the Supreme Court disposed of our public interest litigation without proper hearing, on May 15 2025. We had filed the cases in 2007. This post must be read in conjunction with my chapters on litigating against counterinsurgency in my book, The Burning Forest, which deal in more detail with the 2011 judgement. 

Interview by CG Khabar, 20 April 2025

 Raghavendra Singh of CG Khabar interviewed me on the sidelines of a meeting in Dalli Rajhara on the need for peace talks. He asked about how I came to Bastar, the murder charges against me, and about the situation in Bastar. I argued that whatever the outcome of the peace talks between govt and Maoists - and its extremely important that there be peace talks - we need justice. All those killed, raped and displaced during this conflict should get some justice.  There is a third party to the talks - which is the most important - and that is the people of Bastar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvE7IuV-7s0

Why the Places of Worship Act Must Be Preserved

The Allahabad High Court judgement dismissing a PIL asking for the removal of the Shahi Idgah in Mathura is a relief, even though it is on the technical ground that similar petitions are pending before it.  Given the Supreme Court’s willingness to entertain an archaeological survey of the Gyan Vapi Mosque in Benaras and a challenge to the Places of Worship Act 1991, both the Gyan Vapi mosque and Shahi Idgah may go the way of the Babri Masjid. The template is set– a local dispute elevated to a national issue, a self-appointed next friend of the idol, a court mandated archaeological survey, and a judiciary which values faiths differentially. 

When Chief Justice Chandrachud argued that ascertaining the religious character of a place was not barred under the Places of Worship Act, and agreed to examine the Act itself, he reneged directly on a commitment the Supreme Court had made barely a few years ago. In an otherwise disappointing judgement, handing over the site of the Babri Masjid to the very people who vandalised it, a five-judge bench of the Court reiterated the importance of the Places of Worship Act of 1991: 

In providing a guarantee for the preservation of the religious character of places of public worship as they existed on 15 August 1947 and against the conversion of places of public worship, Parliament determined that independence from colonial rule furnishes a constitutional basis for healing the injustices of the past by providing the confidence to every religious community that their places of worship will be preserved and that their character will not be altered. The law addresses itself to the State as much as to every citizen of the nation. Its norms bind those who govern the affairs of the nation at every level. Those norms implement the Fundamental Duties under Article 51A and are hence positive mandates to every citizen as well. The State, has by enacting the law, enforced a constitutional commitment and operationalized its constitutional obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism which is a part of the basic features of the Constitution. The Places of Worship Act imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism under the Indian Constitution. The law is hence a legislative instrument designed to protect the secular features of the Indian polity, which is one of the basic features of the Constitution. Non-retrogression is a foundational feature of the fundamental constitutional principles of which secularism is a core component. The Places of Worship Act is thus a legislative intervention which preserves non-retrogression as an essential feature of our secular values (para 82 of the 2019 Ayodhya judgement, M Siddiq (D) v. Mahant Suresh Das and ors, emphasis mine)

 

The Supreme Court in Modi's India

In what is globally called ‘autocratic legalism’, current authoritarian regimes maintain a semblance of legality and constitutionalism while in practice attempting to remake the judiciary in their own image. In this article, published in the new Journal of Right-Wing Studies, published out of Berkeley University,  I look at how the Indian Supreme Court (SC) has responded to executive incursions under the Narendra Modi regime since 2014. Even today, the court continues to deliver important democracy-enhancing judgments, breaking away from India’s colonial inheritance in matters like criminalizing same-sex relationships and adultery. However, the last decade is strongly marked by two features: first, an unwillingness to hear major constitutional issues that might challenge the regime; and second, judgments that serve as an advertorial for the regime, reinforcing an antiminority ideological orientation, justifying the government’s actions, and promoting Modi’s personality cult. By outsourcing several political decisions to a seemingly disinterested and neutral judiciary, the Modi government has been far more successful than it would have been if it had imposed those decisions purely by legislative majority. In turn, by addressing a variety of political issues as purely procedural matters and not addressing them as constitutional questions, the courts have collaborated in the delegitimization of dissent and reinforced the claims of the Modi regime.

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/313700c7

La Trobe University: Protest, Dissent, and the Struggle for Justice in India

Protest, Dissent, and the Struggle for Justice in India on 28 July 2022.

 

In this conversation, Professor Nandini Sundar discussed her widely read 2020 report on threats to academic freedom in India, recent arrests of academics journalists, and activists, and her three decades of writing and scholarship about Adivasi communities in Bastar district, Chhattisgarh. The conversation took place on the two-year anniversary of the arrest of Delhi University professor of English Hany Babu.  Professor Sundar discussed his arrest, and the arrests of other lawyers, activists and academics who have been charged in the infamous Elgar Parishad case. The conversation concludes with Professor Sundar’s thoughts on the rights granted to all citizens by the constitution of India.

 

We are extremely grateful to Professor Sundar, Ian Woolford and Gerald Roche for giving so generously of their time to share their knowledge and expertise with us.

 

If you were unable to attend the live event or would like to view or listen again, you will find the recording as follows: (you are welcome to share the links)

 

  YouTube 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEEZMZPlIiY

Setalvad, Sreekumar's Real 'Crime' Was Raising the Question of Modi's Command Responsibility

It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that Teesta Setalvad and former Gujarat police officer R.B. Sreekumar were arrested on June 25, 2022, the anniversary of the Emergency.

Another former police officer Sanjeev Bhatt, who is already in jail, has also been charged in the alleged common conspiracy to tarnish the image of Gujarat’s administration. They have been booked under Sections 468, 471 (forgery), 194 (fabricating false evidence), 211 (instituting criminal proceedings to cause injury), 218 (public servant making incorrect record or writing with intent to save person from punishment), and 120B (criminal conspiracy). On July 2, they were remanded to 14 days of judicial custody, after four days of police custody. 

As a tit-for-tat gesture for their ‘audacity’ in getting the Special Investigative Team (SIT) to question Prime Minister Modi – even such a friendly SIT as the one headed by formerCBI chief R.K. Raghavan – the Gujarat Police has now set up its own SIT to investigate Setalvad, Sreekumar and Bhatt, alleging that they were aided by foreign funds and opposition politicians in their purported enterprise. 

The clear signal being sent out by the courts, police and ruling political dispensation alike is that we are in a de facto Emergency, in which a legal fight for constitutional rights or calling the administration to account, is a crime.

In Bastar's 'Shaheen Bagh', a Youth-Led Movement Quietly Perseveres

In Bastar's 'Shaheen Bagh', a Youth-Led Movement Quietly Perseveres

Amit Shah's 'Bhima Koregaon Model' Used For Anti-CAA Protests

The recent arrest of Jamia student Asif Iqbal Tanha and two JNU students, Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, both activists with Pinjra Tod, shows that the Union home ministry is convinced the ‘Bhima Koregaon model’ works and must be replicated.

What is this model? You start with a few arrests, for instance, the first round of the Bhima Koregaon five or the Jamia students Safoora Zargar and Meeran Haider. Then you widen the net indiscriminately to build up a picture of an immense threat to the nation from a nexus of Dalits and Maoists, Islamists and Marxists or whatever. In actuality, the major threat this government fears is the Constitution, in whose name all these activists have worked, and which the ruling party wants to gut.

As with the Bhima Koregaon struggle which was a symbol of Dalit assertion against neo-Brahminism, the BJP government is trying to completely change the narrative around the anti-CAA protests. At least six clear motives appear to be at work in both cases.

Why India Needs Scheduled Tribes to Educate Future Judges

https://thewire.in/rights/why-india-needs-scheduled-tribes-to-educate-future-judges

Five Acres in Lieu of Citizenship: Parsing the Ayodhya Verdict

The Muslims of India approached the Supreme Court for affirmation of their citizenship.  Instead, they were given five acres of land.

In their verdict on the Ayodhya dispute, the bench recognised “it is necessary to provide restitution to the Muslim community for the unlawful destruction of their place of worship.” But in sharp contrast to their lengthy exegesis on other issues – like the indubitability of faith, the archaeological evidence for a temple below the mosque, the way that historical texts must be read – there is absolutely no discussion of what ‘restitution’ means, and more importantly, what it might involve in this specific context.

“Go back to India and cover every statue of Gandhi so that he doesn't have to face this shame”: Kashmiris mark the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birthday with Satyagraha

“Go back to India and cover every statue of Gandhi so that he doesn't have to face this shame”: Kashmiris mark the 150^th anniversary of Gandhi’s birthday with Satyagraha

Nitya Ramakrishnan (Advocate) and Nandini Sundar (Sociologist)      

We visited the Kashmir Valley between 5^th and 9^th October 2019. We spoke to a cross section of people in three different regions.

The art of creating ‘happy’ open-air prisons

In 2005 the BJP government of Chhattisgarh claimed that  Salwa Judum was a self-initiated people’s movement aiming to finish Naxalism, and people were flocking to Salwa Judum camps which would be models of development. Instead, all the people who were forcibly incarcerated in Salwa Judum camps fled back to their villages as soon as they were able and fifteen years on, the Naxalites are hardly finished, even if weakened. The villagers whose homes were burnt by Salwa Judum or those whose family members were killed in the conflict, and who have still not got justice, are living testaments to how lies purveyed by the media and ruling parties remain simply lies.

Pathalgadi is Nothing But Constitutional Messianism So Why is the BJP Afraid Of It?

Across the country, the engagement of citizens with the Constitution appears to be in direct proportion to the administration’s abandonment of it. That is why the government is trying to criminalise the belief that it will deliver anything more than it is doing already.

(Jharkhand): On the freshly tarred road from Ranchi to Ulihatu, where Birsa Munda lived and which is now a prominent CRPF camp, several villages sport newly painted green stone slabs at the entrance, covered with constitutional provisions carved in white lettering. Protected by bamboo enclosures, these stones – symbols of the Pathalgadi movement – are anywhere between 8 and 15 feet high. In the past year and a half, this movement has spread rapidly across Jharkhand and the continguous areas of Chhattisgarh and Odisha. And the state governments concerned are not pleased.

The preamble to the Indian constitution asserts that “We The People of India.. Adopt, Enact and Give to Ourselves This Constitution.” If the people gave rise to the constitution, it stands to reason that they also gave themselves the right to interpret, analyse and propagate its contents in any form they want to so long as this is done peacefully.

Nothing stops citizens from asserting their fundamental rights by way of speeches or written pamphlets, or in stone pillars outside our homes. There are thousands of statues across the country of Ambedkar holding the constitution which serve not just as a reminder of his role in drafting it, but as a symbolic assertion of the document itself – that it is meaningful in people’s lives and it is they who give meaning to it.

Yet the Pathalgadi movement’s deep engagement with the constitution has state governments panicked, perhaps because it raises questions that they are finding hard to answer.

The Constitution as a Living Document

The Republic has never felt more endangered than it does at 69. When Union Minister Hegde let slip the public secret that the BJP/RSS government is here to change the Constitution, the problem is not that the Constitution cannot and should not be changed, but what direction that change will take, and whether it will destroy the very basis of the Republic or strengthen it.