ED to Close Money Laundering Case Against Poor Dalit Farmers; Chandrachud Era: Creativity in Courtroom, Stirring Rhetoric Outside It

Govt promotes visits to PM’s school but stymies Urdu body, inspired by US peers, Bollywood screenwriters ask for more, India denies selling ammo to Ukraine, is a new Jim Crow emerging in India?

Jan 05, 2024

Snapshot of the day

January 5, 2024

Pratik Kanjilal

“Our manifesto will not come from a conference room but from the midst of people. We will reach out to all sectors. It will be a people’s manifesto.” The Congress has discovered the rubric of its manifesto, and the blanks may be filled in by responses gathered from the people during Rahul Gandhi’s forthcoming east-west march. The party expects to have seat-sharing issues ironed out by the third week of January. The Indian Express reports that the party will focus on just 255 seats in the Lok Sabha, indicating that it is open to leaving room for other members of the INDIA alliance.

The Indian Navy has responded to a distress signal from a Liberian-flagged ship, which was boarded by armed men in the Red Sea and commenced operations to evict the pirates who had taken control.

Tomorrow, ISRO’s solar probe Aditya L1 will be placed in final orbit around the sun at Lagrange Point 1, a zone of stability where the gravitational attraction of the sun and the earth cancel are in equilibrium.

Scroll enters the looking-glass world of Hindutva activists, profiling the young men who get themselves photographed with BJP leaders to establish their Hindutva credentials, and also raise fictitious scares about imaginary people threatening to blow up the Ram Temple. It’s all in a good cause.

India had glutted itself on deep-discounted Russian oil after Western sanctions kicked in, but now discounts are much lower, and India’s imports from Russia have been the costliest in November in all of last year. “Refiners in the world’s third-largest oil consumer paid an average of $85.90 a barrel for shipments from its largest supplier, up 1.8% compared with $84.46 in October,” reports Bloomberg.

Despite India’s ban on onion imports, imposed to stabilise domestic prices, Indonesia seeks to import 900,000 tonnes of onions from it. It’s a big deal, says Mint, because Indonesia is India’s largest trading partner in ASEAN. It can also seek onions from the US and New Zealand.

A day after Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena recommended an inquiry into allegations of corruption in the capital’s mohalla clinics, the Union Home Ministry has directed the CBI to probe the matter. The alleged irregularities first came to light in September.

The Union Education Ministry has launched a portal with details of the programme under which students from across the country will visit PM Modi’s school in Vadnagar. Students from class 9-12 must register on the portal to participate in the programme named ‘Prerana’. Applicants will then go through a three-stage selection process which will involve activities like recording a short video, writing essays/poems/stories and other forms of creative expression on topics like ‘Why I should be selected for Prerana’ or ‘My Vision of India @ 2047’. Meanwhile, the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) has been unable to organise the World Urdu Conference and support research and seminars for two years, reports The Telegraph. It says that successive proposals for the world conference have been stalled by the central government.

*(Source: Sajith Kumar in Deccan Herald)*

Meanwhile, Divya Bhaskar’s Gujarati poster suggests that Savarkar was a Gujarati writer. The newspaper is the official partner for Gujarati Sahitya Parishad’s session which starts at Bhopal today.

Most Bangladeshis are so caught up in the struggle for survival, as the cost of living soars with rising prices of essentials, that they have no interest in national elections due on Sunday, reports BBC. “If I buy fish, I cannot buy spices. If I buy spices, I can’t buy rice,” a person in Bangladesh told the service. The situation is worst in the region of the mouths of the Ganga, which is most vulnerable to climate change.

In an opinion article for The Economist, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was arrested in August 2023, has warned that “Pakistan’s election could be a farce.” “Today, Pakistan is being ruled by caretaker governments at both the federal level and provincial level. These administrations are constitutionally illegal because elections were not held within 90 days of parliamentary assemblies being dissolved,” the former prime minister wrote from prison.

Asked about indices of democracy sliding in India, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that coverage in the foreign press should not be taken at face value because it has “multiple standards”, reports the Tribune. Referring to his new book Why Bharat Matters, he said that when he took office in 2014, PM Modi had felt the “need for a new construct” to deal with “mind games”.

ED to close laundering case against poor Dalit farmers

The Enforcement Directorate will close a money-laundering case against two Dalit farmers from Tamil Nadu, brothers aged 72 and 66, who were summoned last year, reports The Hindustan Times. This comes days after outrage over the agency’s summons having mentioned the farmers’ caste. Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi president and MP Thol Thirumavalavan had demanded that the agency’s officials be booked under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The farmers, Kannaiyan and his brother Krishnan, live in Attur village of Salem district, Tamil Nadu. The summons, sent by the ED in July, had described the farmers as Hindu Pallars. According to their lawyer G Pravina, the summons had no details of the case. The summons also came at a time when the farmers are engaged in a legal battle pertaining to an alleged land grab attempt by G Gunashekar, the secretary of the BJP’s Salem East district unit, the lawyer told the news website. At the time, reports Indian Express, the two farmers had only Rs 450 in the bank.

Banned drug imported by India continues to sell

In 2013, India banned the sale of Deanxit, a psychiatric drug whose approval process had flouted several rules. The manufacturer, Lundbeck, shut shop in India but a decade on, it continues to be sold in India under other names, by other manufacturers. Scroll uncovers another worrying story of drug (mis)regulation ― the drug should never have been cleared for use in India because it was blocked in Denmark, where it was developed.

Inspired by US strike, Bollywood screenwriters ask for more

The success of the 2023 Hollywood strike in the US has emboldened Indian screenwriters, who have traditionally got a raw deal in Bollywood. In December, the Screenwriters’ Association, which has over 55,000 members, met to find ways to bring producers to the bargaining table and make contracts more equitable. Historically, they have been anything but. Writers are often held to punishing deadlines and producers can exit arbitrarily. Writers need better pay and security. However, these are early days, and a strike like the months-long standoff in the US, in which top of the line stars participated, cannot be contemplated in India.

The Long Cable

Chandrachud era: Creativity in the courtroom, stirring rhetoric outside it

Apoorvanand

While listening to the year-end interview of the Chief Justice of India Dhananjay Y Chandrachud, I was reminded of a lesson learned long ago: being eloquent does not mean that you are an honest speaker. Oratory is an art and one can be an expert in it, but is the orator speaking the truth or speaking honestly? That’s why I often warn my students about the dangers of being a ‘debater’. There is no education on the ethics of speech in debating in our schools. A speaker is taught to be able to argue for and against an issue with equal eloquence. Which side you are on, is not important.

But the side is important. Clever speakers choose sides or gather arguments for a given side. They cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility of what they say by claiming that the stand was not theirs, their job was only to gather arguments to prove it right. We know that they have chosen their side. The debater gets away by calling it an inevitability of his profession. He often does not take responsibility for what he says,which is his action.

We saw Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud answering difficult questions with ease. There were questions related to the judgement, he was part of, to build a Ram Temple on the land of the demolished Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. A critical question was why the judge who wrote the decision chose to not put his authorship on the order, as is the custom. In response to this, the Chief Justice said that it was a unanimous decision of the entire bench, hence the bench decided not to give the name of the person who wrote it. It was the decision of the court, hence no need for the name of the person who voices the bench. But his explanation does not hold because this is not and has not been the tradition of the court.

One reason for the author not giving his name may be modesty. Second, simple cowardice. We know from previous examples that you cannot often accuse justices of humility. The satisfaction of settling such a vexed matter of historical importance in a just way can be imagined. What could be the reason for restraining the temptation of being known as the author of such a monumental judgement? Or did our judges know what they were doing was justifying and rewarding an unjust act and did not want to take credit for that? At the very least, it tells us that there is still some shame left in our elite!

Is this because the decision, as Gautam Bhatia and Suhrith Parthasarathy wrote, was an example of ‘Matsya Nyaya’? Analysing this decision, jurists said that it is based on the principle of ‘the strong shall have the right and the weak shall have to suffer’. It has been noted after analysing the order that the court created two unequal sides in this case and made Hindus the stronger side. Even when they had no case, they would have to be given more weight than the Muslims.

The court did it in a very creative way. First, it declared that all of the 2.77 acres of land on which the Babri Mosque stood is one indivisible property. Then it divided it into two parts. One, the inner part which was being used for a long time by the Muslims. Second, the outer part, which was separated from the inner part by a railing after Hindus committed violence and started praying there.

Since the Hindus had been laying claim to the inner part of the mosque also for a long time, including through acts of violence, the court held that there was merit in their claim on that portion of the land. Even when Muslims had been using it continuously, the consistent insistence of Hindus for its ownership made the site disputed. But since the Muslims did not insist like the Hindus for the ownership of the outer part of the mosque which was taken over by the Hindus, the court held that they were not that interested in that part. It has been pointed out that this is factually wrong. Muslims did keep registering their protest from time to time even if they did not do it forcefully, that is violently, as Hindus had been doing. Does it mean that the outer part, which again was only a part of the whole, is beyond any dispute a Hindu property as the court held?

It was a funny and dangerous argument that since the Hindus kept offering worship with their faces turned towards the interior of the mosque, they had some right over it. On the other hand, Muslims were not praying looking towards the outer side. That meant that they could not claim it. It has been pointed out that Muslims could not have kept their faces turned towards the outer side as they pray with their faces turned towards Kaaba. Is this how you create rights of possession? I remember a jurist friend chuckling that if this argument is taken to its logical conclusion, all the properties lying between a praying Muslim and the Kaaba would have to be surrendered to him!

The court, with its arguments, created two unequal parties and gave more weight to Hindus than Muslims. Despite accepting that smuggling Hindu idols into a mosque in 1949 and demolishing the mosque on December 6, 1992 were criminal acts, the court handed over the land to those who had committed these crimes. But if we follow the logic of the court, these two crimes should also be considered as examples of Hindus’ deep interest in the mosque. Through these, Hindus were trying to prove that they loved this place so much that they could commit crimes repeatedly to annex it. The court was impressed by the Hindus’ commitment to the mosque land and decided that their claim was strong.

Thinking about it at this moment, I wonder if Israel should ask our CJI to argue its case before the International Court of Justice to prove that its violence is in fact the demonstration of its love for the land, and since it has never ceased its violence, it shows that it is deeply interested in it and the land of Palestine should be given to Israel as it has proven its rights of possession, and the Palestinians should be given an alternative piece of land to build themselves as a nation. The five acre justice!

Along with this, despite repeatedly saying that it was not giving its decision on the basis of faith and belief of any community, ultimately it decided on the basis of a manufactured faith of Hindus. The faith is that this land is the birthplace of Ram. The weight of this faith was considered greater than the fact that there was a living mosque there and Muslims were worshipping in it.

The court wanted us to believe that the court was driven by the pious intent of creating peace and tranquillity in the country. If it means appeasing the strong who can keep committing crime and violence, one should do it by manufacturing honourable arguments for his dominance.

Justice Chandrachud said that the case was very old, long and complicated and he was satisfied that he had brought it to a conclusion. But the question remains whether this decision was able to do justice. And did it calm the turbulent waters?

The photograph of the five judges locking their hands and celebrating their act that very night tells you about their minds. It will remain the most obnoxious image of our judiciary. What should have been a sombre moment of introspection for them was turned into a celebration!

They wanted, even at the cost of justice, peace for the nation. What about that? We know the answer. After handing over the land of Babri Masjid to Ram’s parents, Justice Chandrachud, again deploying his creativity, has made the Gyanvapi Masjid a disputed site. He did it by inventing a jurisprudence of curiosity. He argued that someone might be genuinely curious to know what was inside the mosque. It is their right to satisfy this curiosity. Hence, the Gyanvapi mosque could be surveyed to know what was inside it. It did not mean changing its title. But the mosque has already, for all practical purposes, lost a part of its premises after Hindus started claiming that they had found a shivling during the survey. Justice Chandrachud was inclined to name the object a shivling. It was the sober, persistent argument of the lawyer of the masjid committee which forced Justice Chandrachud to desist from doing it. But that part, which is the Wazoo Khana of the mosque, was sealed and is now out of bounds for worshippers.

So Justice Chandrachud, taking the cover of the principle of complete justice and turning justice on its head for peace and tranquillity in the case of Babri Masjid, has also ensured that the cauldron remains boiling forever. His order in the Gyanvapi mosque has now opened a floodgate for more such claims. The BJP or the RSS could not have imagined that its cause would be made to look so just by the judiciary and it would not need to take recourse to violence to achieve that.

Justice Chandrachud will also get credit for decisively shaking the basic structure of the Constitution and nation. It was widely expected that his bench would hold the abrogation of Article 370 constitutional, but he went a mile further. His bench also decided that if the federal government wants, it can break any state and carve out a part of it as a Union Territory. This single decision has made the states slaves to the will of the Centre. And India, a Union of States, no longer exists!

Justice Chandrachud is a skilled orator and all his statements suit the mood of contemporary politics. He is always politically correct in his out of court orations. He sounds pleasant. But he has not been appointed the chief orator of this country. His job is to do justice. Which normally should inconvenience the strong. But we have seen him and his colleagues asking all of us to trust the words of the solicitor general. The same SG who had said that there were no people on the roads during the Covid pandemic and that the court had closed the case. People were dropping dead on the roads. But the court did not have eyes and the state had its ears. He wants people to trust the decision makers. But the conduct of decision makers does not inspire confidence. He cannot use this admonition to answer a just question as to why the bail petitions of all the critics of this government are being sent to a special judge. The answer cannot be that he had to be trusted.

The Chief Justice can sing Christmas carols. That will get him applause. Not long ago, in one of his lectures, he had said that in times of majoritarianism, the responsibility of the highest court increases. At that time, we did not know that this meant that the court would interpret the Constitution in such a way that majoritarianism would start appearing constitutional. Does it not lead to peace after all?

(A political commentator, Apoorvanand teaches in Delhi University.)

Reportedly

Shivraj Singh Chouhan is the ruling BJP’s longest-serving chief minister. The former Madhya Pradesh CM continues to make news for his emotional appeal. A week after he vacated the CM’s residence in Shyamla Hills to shift to his new bungalow in the posh 74 Bungalows area in Bhopal, the former CM named his new residential address Mama ka Ghar (maternal uncle’s house), highlighting his connection with the people, especially girls and women. Earlier, in his home district of Sehore, Chouhan had said, “Kahin na kahin koi bada uddeshya hoga, kayee baar raj tilak hote hote vanvas ho jaata hai.” (Sometimes, a coronation ceremony turns into banishment.)

Prime Number: 100 out of 1,127 crore

Since April 2021, Rs 1,127 crore has been blocked in several bank accounts on complaints by 4.3 lakh cyber fraud victims through the 1930 helpline. Only Rs 100 crore has been returned to complainants. The government is working on a mechanism to help people get back blocked money without a court order, which banks demand.

Deep Dive

“In 2023, the Supreme Court failed to protect electoral democracy, the health of our economy, our own health, federalism, and the fundamental rights of citizens,” says Indira Jaisingh on the surajmukhi court. It is a clinical analysis of the contribution of courts to India’s democratic backslide, unmoved by the stirring speeches that the Chief Justice of India is known for.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

AI is changing the meaning of sovereignty, not only by taking agency away from humans, but also by operating across borders, says Upendra Baxi.

Kashmir is coming to terms with its altered situation, says Zulfikar Majid.

Madhav A. Deshpande argues that EVMs cannot be hacked but they can be compromised. The key to digital election trust is a complete audit trail, he writes.

Ramayana is back on Indian TV—this time on news channels, notes Shailaja Bajpai.

“We are all for reform. But in the name of reform, let us not become more repressive than the colonisers,” writes Derek O’Brien.

“To demolish a structure that even our colonial occupiers recognised as valuable would be a huge betrayal to our own history.” Fahad Zuberi on what NDMC’s Sunehri Masjid plan overlooks.

India does well in science projects with clear goals, like brain research or space technology. But the country still can’t compete with the most scientifically advanced nations, says The Economist.

Recent developments in Chin State raise more questions on India’s approach towards Myanmar, writes Salai Van Bawi Mang. “Given Naypyidaw has lost significant territory, New Delhi should not be putting all of its resources behind the military dictatorship.”

The Supreme Court has done and dusted the Hindenburg report, but questions will remain, because SEBI has not actually investigated the charges against the Adani group.

An excerpt from The Life and Times of David Hare: First Secular Educationist of India, by Sarojesh Mukherjee. Hare surprised Bengal by democratising access to education, instead of restricting it to the elites.

Listen up

Is a new Jim Crow emerging in India? In this episode of Democracy Paradox, Ashutosh Varshney draws eerie parallels between white supremacist politics in the American South a century ago and Hindu supremacy in India today. Listen here.

Watch out

Dhirendra K Jha and Valay Singh in conversation with Seema Chishti on the events leading up to the Babri Masjid demolition and the events leading up to the building of the Ram Temple [in Hindi].

Over and out

Google has finally launched its grand plan to block third-party cookies in Chrome that many websites use to track your activity. Starting yesterday, Google is testing its new Tracking Protection feature that will eventually restrict website access to third-party cookies by default. It will phase out third-party cookies in the second half of 2024.

In the Annamalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, a baby elephant snuggles after being reunited with its mother.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

The India Cable