Rana Ayyub: The destruction of India’s judicial independence is almost complete
Last week, as India rolled out plans to deal with the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Supreme Court quashed the bail petition of Anand
Teltumbde, one of India’s leading scholars, and asked him to surrender to the
police in the second week of April.
Teltumbde, an advocate
for India’s most disadvantaged communities, including Dalits, once called
“untouchables," has been swept up in a broad crackdown against lawyers,
activists and dissent in general. He has been accused of supporting a banned
group of Maoist militants, known as Naxalites, who seek to overthrow the
government — charges he of course denies. Many of those charged have been
languishing in jail for a long time.
Teltumbde’s work
against the caste system in India and his fight against majoritarian politics
made him a target of right-wing leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra
Modi. Teltumbde has been on the forefront of condemning the communal politics
unleashed by Modi and has compared him to Hitler. He also rightly accused Modi
of being complicit in the
anti-Muslim carnage of 2002 that left more than 1,000 people dead in the state of Gujarat, when Modi was
chief minister.
Teltumbde’s unfair treatment by our judiciary underscores the loss of independence by India’s institutions. The refusal by the Supreme Court to grant him bail came soon before a former chief justice, Ranjan Gogoi, joined Parliament after being nominated by the Modi government. Gogoi delivered some of the most crucial rulings in recent times that helped enable the Modi administration’s majoritarian agenda. His appointment, just four months after his retirement (and after he was accused of sexual harassment), has raised big questions about justice in the era of hypernationalism that Modi has come to represent.
In November, Gogoi delivered a big victory to Modi when he ruled on the
Babri Masjid, an important mosque for Indian Muslims demolished in 1992 by
right-wing Hindu nationalists. The court ended up awarding the land to a Hindu
litigant. It was a judgment by Gogoi that also cleared the Modi government in
allegations of corruption in a defense deal involving the purchase of Rafale
fighter jets. The administration was accused of bypassing procedures and
compromising national security to clear an arms deal that benefited an Indian
billionaire.
Now Gogoi has been
rewarded with a place in the Indian Parliament, putting a spotlight on the
unholy nexus between political power and the Indian judiciary. It’s clear India’s
Supreme Court has been politicized and has become pliant toward the current
administration. Recently, Justice Arun Mishra, who has also ruled in favor of Modi,
hailed the prime minister as a versatile genius, an internationally acclaimed
visionary who thought globally and acted locally. The comment was widely
criticized, including by the Supreme Court Bar Association. Mishra led the
justices who refused to grant relief to Teltumbde, despite the
flimsy evidence presented in his case.
The hall of shame of
the Indian judiciary in recent times is sullied with brazen cases of human
rights violations. In February, when Delhi saw horrifying communal carnage that
led to the loss of 53 lives, arson and hundreds injured, the Delhi
High Court called out the state police for its complicity and asked to take
action against ministers from the BJP government who gave hate speeches against
Muslims. The judge who delivered the order was transferred overnight.
The Supreme Court
once called Modi a modern-day Nero for looking the other
way as innocent women and children were burning in the 2002 attacks on Muslims
in Gujarat.
But those days seem to
be long gone. The appointment of a former chief justice to the Parliament by
the ruling government has only exacerbated the country’s governance and moral
crisis. The appointment not only casts a shadow on the rulings delivered by
Gogoi, but it also strikes a blow to the impartiality of the Indian judiciary.
While almost every
constitutional office in the country has been compromised in the past few years
by the Modi regime, it was the Supreme Court that gave hope to the common
Indian that justice could prevail in the most turbulent times. Now the
integrity of our judges and the character of the Indian judiciary has been called
into question at a moment when we’re heading down an increasingly authoritarian
path. The highest court in the land is meant to preserve and enforce the
integrity of the Indian constitution. India’s vibrant democracy rests on its
shoulders.
India is roiled by
economic despondency, induced by demonetization and a clear lack of trust by
investors, protests against the divisive and unconstitutional Citizenship
Amendment Act, an atmosphere of religious intolerance that led to the Delhi
pogrom and our seemingly under-preparedness to fight the coronavirus. Now the
independence of our country’s judicial authority is under attack, which could
further erode the moral consciousness of our nation and its people, endangering
the idea of India forever.
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