Perhaps Judges Needn't Wait for Retirement to Join RSS; Censorship Looms as Draft Law Says ‘News Influencers' Are ‘Broadcasters’

Priyanka Vadra attacks 'genocidal' Israel, MEA 'wrong to challenge Kerala' for 'external cooperation' officer, UN Human Rights Committee red-flags India on violence, discrimination against minorities

Jul 26, 2024

Snapshot of the day

July 26, 2024

Siddharth Varadarajan

The Bombay High Court has rejected the default bail to Dalit rights’ activist and advocate Surendra Gadling and co-accused Mahesh Raut, in the infamous Elgar Parishad case of 2018. A division bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Shyam Chandak pronounced the order in their chamber. Bail was also denied to Sudhir Dhawade and researcher Rona Wilson. Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen, also part of the petition, has also been denied default bail though she is already out on regular bail thanks to the Supreme Court. Gadling was earlier refused default bail in December 2021, when the HC bench had granted default bail to co-accused Sudha Bharadwaj and denied bail to 8 others. In the instant proceedings, Gadling had challenged a June 28, 2022 order of a special court designated to hear cases under the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Act, which turned down his default bail plea.

The prosecution opposed the bail plea, arguing that most of the grounds urged were considered and dismissed by the division bench earlier when it denied bail to Gadling in December 2021.

The numerous tactical victories achieved on the Kargil slopes at a tremendous sacrifice of young men cannot absolve those who should have been held guilty. A celebration that evades questions of accountability only dishonours the valour of those soldiers, writes Sushant Singh.

The Madhya Pradesh high court has extended its support to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and said that a renowned organisation like that was “wrongly placed amongst banned organisations of the country”. The court was disposing of a 2023 plea filed against the ban on government officials from joining or participating in RSS activities. On July 9, 2024, the Union department of personnel and training (DoPT) issued a memorandum lifting this 58-year-old ban issued in 1966. “It took almost five decades for the Central Government to realise its mistake; to acknowledge that an internationally renowned organisation like RSS was wrongly placed amongst the banned organisations of the country and that its removal therefrom is quintessential. Aspirations of many central government employees of serving the country in many ways, therefore got diminished in these five decades because of this ban,” a bench comprising Justices Sushruta Arvind Dharmadhikari and Gajendra Singh said. [See Long Cable]

But let us not forget. The green signal for government employees to participate in RSS activities has worrying repercussions, scolds an editorial in The Telegraph. “The ideological fountainhead of the sangh parivar has been banned thrice — M.K. Gandhi’s assassination, the Emergency, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid being the three instances — in independent India’s history, with the first and the third events exposing the RSS’s complicities in disturbing ways. Moreover, the organisation’s commitment to a majoritarian ethos in violation of India’s constitutional vision of pluralism strengthened further the need to insulate the State and its personnel from the RSS’s reach. The crumbling of this distance is likely to have serious implications.”

The merging of RSS and government servants, which include civil servants belonging to All India Services, with this entity, whatever semblance of governance is left will also sink, writes MG Devasahayam. He writes, “The way RSS operates, the membership of this communal organisation could soon become an essential qualification for entry into government service. As it is, several senior functionaries in government including Governors are actively participating in RSS activities including holding of Shakhas”.

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday condemned Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza in the strongest terms so far used by her party. She labeled it as “unacceptable” and “genocidal”, and called on “every government in the world”. “It is no longer enough to speak up for the civilians, mothers, fathers, doctors, nurses, aid workers, journalists, teachers, writers, poets, senior citizens and the thousands of innocent children who are being wiped out day after day by the horrific genocide taking place in Gaza,” the Congress leader posted on X. “It is the moral responsibility of every right-thinking individual including all those Israeli citizens who do not believe in hatred and violence, and every government in the world to condemn the Israeli government’s genocidal actions and force them to stop,” she added. Priyanka Gandhi also took on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who on Wednesday was given a standing ovation and repeated applause during his address to the joint houses of the US Congress which has been labelled as “historic” by many.

In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of India has set aside the murder conviction of Rajesh Kumar, who had spent nine years behind bars for a crime he did not commit. The Supreme Court’s bench, headed by Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice Aniruddha Bose, reviewed the case meticulously. In their detailed judgement, they pointed out several inconsistencies in the prosecution’s narrative and the glaring lapses in the investigation. “We cannot allow an innocent man to languish in prison due to the inefficiencies and negligence of the investigating authorities,” the bench stated. The Supreme Court noted that the evidence against Kumar was purely circumstantial and did not meet the standard required for a conviction in a murder case. The decision has highlighted significant concerns about the inefficiencies and systemic delays plaguing the Indian judicial system.

The Supreme Court has extended till August 5 its stay on directives by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments requiring eateries along the Kanwar Yatra pilgrimage route to display their owners’ names outside the establishments. The apex court clarified that it had not barred any eatery owner from voluntarily displaying their name outside the establishment. In its affidavit to the court, the UP government said:

"The idea behind the directives is transparency and informed choice of the consumer/Kanwaria regarding the food they eat during the period of the Yatra, keeping in mind their religious sentiments so that they don’t, even accidently, fall foul of their beliefs. Such situations would obviously lead to flare ups where lakhs and crores of people are walking barefoot carrying holy water. A mishap in the form of taking a meal unwittingly of a place that would have otherwise not been of their choice, could, for the Kanwaria, vitiate the entire Yatra, peace and tranquillity in the area, the maintenance of which, is the bounden duty of the State."

The affidavit cites the minutes of an official meeting held in Saharanpur on July 13 in which it was decreed:

“All such food shops/restaurants/hotels on the Kanwad routes which are being run in the name of religious/Hindu Gods-Goddesses but their operators/proprietors belong to other specific sects/communities should be identified and the names of their operators should be written in big letters so that no dispute arises.”

External affairs minister S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Laos yesterday and claimed the two sides concurred on the need for “strong guidance” to complete the disengagement process along their border. China’s own statement on the meeting, though, does not seem to concur – it instead hoped both sides “will meet each other halfway, actively explore the correct way for the two neighbouring major countries to get along, and guide all sectors to establish a positive understanding of each other”. The Wire has more.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has expressed concern about the violence and discrimination faced by minority groups in India, including Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, and called for comprehensive legislation to prohibit such discrimination. “While appreciating the measures adopted by the state party [India] to address discrimination, the committee was concerned about discrimination and violence against minority groups, including religious minorities, such as Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and LGBTI people,” the committee said. “The committee also voiced its concern over the application of counter-terrorism legislation for decades in ‘disturbed areas’, such as districts in Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, has led to widespread and grave human rights violations, including excessive use of force leading to unlawful killings, prolonged arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced displacement and torture,” the report said.

Uttar Pradesh police data shows that 1.26 crore people have been “issued warnings” by ‘Anti-Romeo squads’ since 2017. Why is every social interaction in public between genders fraught with fear of being questioned by state government’s anti romeo squads? Samridhi Tewari and Ashna Butani report on this culture of moral policing and its impact on the youth who are left without safe public spaces.

After the home ministry granted an FCRA license to the Institute of Economic Growth earlier this month, it has become the second prominent institution so far to be denied an FCRA licence renewal only to end up getting a license later, Rahul Tripathi reports. The ministry did not renew the IEG’s license earlier citing violation of the Act’s rules.

When Kerala appointed a bureaucrat in charge of ‘external cooperation’, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said state governments “should not intrude into matters that are beyond their Constitutional jurisdiction”. Now former diplomat Venu Rajamony tells Kallol Bhattacherjee that Jaiswal’s statement was “most unfortunate” – he pointed out that the MEA has a states division meant to support state governments’ external contacts and that the MEA and Indian missions abroad actively support the Vibrant Gujarat summit every year.

Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla said BJP MP and former Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay has been ‘cautioned’ against making remarks like the ones he did in the House on Wednesday. Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi asked Gangopadhyay what he thought of Nathuram Godse – the former judge had said in a recent interview that he was unable to choose between Godse and Gandhi – following which he responded by asking Gogoi not to “talk like a stupid”. Gangopadhyay’s ‘objectionable’ remarks have since been expunged.

Law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal was asked in parliament yesterday whether the previous law commission really did say in a 2018 document that a uniform civil code was “neither necessary nor desirable” – it did – and if so, what the government thought of it. But Meghwal dodged the question by apparently contesting his questioner John Brittas calling the commission’s document a ‘report’ – no, it “did not submit any report”, Meghwal said, but instead released a “consultation paper” after soliciting the public’s views. He did not address the remark in question.

*(Image: Sandeep Adhwaryu in The Times of India)*

Budget slash in food subsidy funds “shocking”: activists

The Supreme Court has directed that ration cards be issued to migrant or unorganised workers who did not have them under the National Food Security Act and who were registered under the e-Shram portal, and even pulled up the Union and state governments just a week before the budget was presented for their non-compliance with its orders. Given this, it’s surprising that the funds for food subsidy have been slashed by 3.3% compared to the previous year’s revised estimates, Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri write, pointing out that crores of people remain excluded from subsidised food programs because of the delayed census and that India’s figures for food insecurity measures are not pretty.

‘News influencers’ classified as ‘broadcasters’ in new draft of broadcasting bill

Those who routinely post videos, make podcasts or write about news or current affairs online could be classified as “digital news broadcasters”, as per the latest second draft of the broadcasting bill, reports Hindustan Times. Besides proposing to bring content creators under its ambit, the new draft of the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2024 also defines “news and current affairs programmes” to include “texts” apart from “audio, visual or audio-visual content, sign, signals, writing, images” which are “transmitted directly or using a broadcasting network”. The revised definitions of ‘programme’ and ‘broadcasting’ also include “texts” and “textual programmes”, respectively. Thus, all news and news-related content on social media – videos, commentary, websites, newsletters, and podcasts – will be covered by the bill. A direction towards complete takeover and control.

States can rightfully tax mineral-bearing lands, constitution bench holds

State governments have the right to tax mineral-bearing lands – as opposed to the Union government’s claim to the contrary – and the royalties that mining companies pay to state governments do not count as taxes, a nine-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court held with an 8:1 majority. The decision overrules the 1989 judgement by a seven-judge bench that said these royalties were taxes and that state legislatures lacked the competence to tax mineral rights, Ananthakrishnan G reports.

The Long Cable

Perhaps Judges Need No Longer Wait for Retirement In Order to Join the RSS

Siddharth Varadarajan

Since the National Democratic Alliance government is led by someone who is from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and spent his formative political life there before ‘migrating’ to the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1985, it is hardly surprising that it has lifted the official ban on civil servants joining or taking part in RSS activities.

What is surprising and even shocking is the Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment which not only supports the lifting of the ban but also “laments the fact that it took almost five decades for the Central Government to realise its mistake (sic); to acknowledge that an internationally renowned organisation like RSS was wrongly placed amongst the banned organisations of the country and that its removal therefrom is quintessential.”

On July 9, 2024, an office memorandum was issued by the Department of Personnel and Training – which reports to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — saying that “it has been decided to remove the mention” of the RSS from earlier government orders issued in 1966, 1970 and 1980 which had held Union government employees who joined or otherwise associated themselves with the activities of the RSS and Jamat-e-Islami liable to disciplinary action.

No reason or rationale was given but the context of this order was evidently a PIL filed by a retired civil servant in the Madhya Pradesh High Court alleging that the official ban stood in the way of his working with the RSS. Even though the ban applied only to those in service and could not possibly have affected a retired person’s freedom of association, the court decided to entertain his petition and issued notice to the Union government. This then became the government’s alibi to remove the RSS from its earlier orders.

As amended, the official ban on government employees is now confined to the Jamaat-e-Islami.

The basis for the original ban was Rule 5 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964, which prohibits government servants from associating with political parties or organisations involved in politics.

Now let us consider the merits of the 1966 order, which the court now says was a “mistake” as far as its reference to the RSS is concerned.

The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is an organisation of Muslim Indians, formed in 1948. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is an organisation of Hindu Indians founded in 1925. Both of these organisations may claim to be cultural, religious and nationalist but they have a broad political agenda—which is why they have spawned political parties and regularly comment and intervene in public and political matters.

Both of these organisations have also fostered non-political organisations that do all kinds of religious, cultural, pedagogical, charity and relief work. But because both parent bodies are involved in politics, the Union of India in the 1960s took the view that Rule 5 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 must apply to the RSS and JeI.

One of the questions the High Court raises in order to impugn the 1966 ban is what the “material” and the “compelling survey/ study” was “that constrained the Central Government to include RSS in the list of banned organisations, which the Central Government employees were restrained from joining. Whether actually the said material existed or it was merely issued on the mere ipse dixit of the erstwhile government of the day simply to crush an organisation … opposed to its ideology.”

The court’s question makes one wonder whether the learned judges understand what Rule 5 is all about. Government servants are meant to be apolitical and unbiased in their work and dealings with the public, which is why they are not allowed to join or work with organisations that are political. Just as there is no need for any research or data to reach the conclusion that civil servants may not associate themselves with the Congress or BJP or Communist Party, the same is true for the RSS and Jamaal, which are also political organisations.

Of course, the question of “material” and “data” would certainly be relevant if the Union of India wishes to ban the RSS. It would then need enough data and evidence to convince the relevant UAPA tribunal about the validity of its decision. But in order to tell civil servants that Rule 5 applies to the RSS, the only condition the government needs to satisfy itself about is the political nature of the organisation. And the political activities of the RSS are so undeniable that the court itself had to acknowledge this when it noted that “the majority of the activities of RSS today are not at all related to the political sphere.” (Emphasis added)

If if the ‘minority of the activities’ undertaken are political, there can surely be no dispute about the fact that the RSS – as a parent body – is patently political. It does not matter whether it has created over a hundred other ‘non-political’ bodies to extend its influence in various fields and sectors. The essence of the RSS is political and it would be rank dishonesty to deny that. Laughably, the court mentions the Saraswati Shishu Mandir as an example of the kind of ‘non-political' activity civil servants should be allowed to associated themselves with. This despite the fact that the link between the RSS’s pedagogical interventions and its political agenda is well established. As a small example, consider the following list of questions and answers from as RSS schools’ primer:

Q: Which Mughal invader destroyed the Ram temple in 1582?
A: Babur
Q: From 1582 till 1992, how many devotees of Ram sacrificed their lives to liberate the temple?
A: 350,000.
Q: When did the program of collecting bricks for the Ram Mandir begin?
A: September 30, 1989.
Q: When did the Karsevaks fly the saffron flag on Ramjanmabhoomi?
A: October 30, 1990.

Two further observations are in order.

The court misreads the 1980 circular, which noted in abstract – without a reference to the RSS and Jamaal – that:

“In the context of the current situation in the country, the need to ensure a secular outlook on the part of government servants is all the more important. The need to eradicate communal feelings and communal bias cannot be over-emphasised.

“No notice should be taken by government and its officers, local bodies, State-aided institutions of petitions or representations on communal basis, and no patronage whatsoever should be extended to any communal organisation.”

Despite the general nature of these instructions which make no reference to the RSS but to “petitions and representations on communal basis” and says there should be “no patronage [of] any communal organisation”, the court asks on “what study or basis” were “the activities of RSS organisation as a whole… treated in the decades of 1960s and 70s as communal or anti-secular; what was the empirical report, statistical survey or material, that led the then government of the day to arrive at an objective satisfaction that involvement of Central Government employees with the RSS & host of its activities (social, political, health, disaster management support, religious and educational) would precipitate communal feelings and communal bias in the whole community.”

Second, while noting that the original government order banning government employees from joining the RSS had no evidence to back up the ban, the court makes no demand on the Union government to provide evidence to back up the continuing ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami in the same 1966 order. Instead, it only declares that if a future government wants to restore the ban on the RSS, it will have to provide material to justify the decision. Remember, the petitioner before the court was not the RSS but an ordinary citizen who had challenged the validity of the 1966 ban. Clearly, what is sauce for the (Hindutva) goose is not so for the (Islamist) gander.

To conclude, the court’s judgment is poorly reasoned and seriously flawed. It is also dangerous, because the unwarranted praise it has showered on the RSS will serve in coming days as an advertisement for a political organisation whose members, supporters and myriad outfits are at the forefront of efforts to turn India from a constitutional republic to a ‘Hindu rashtra’.

Last month, a judge of the Calcutta HC, Chitta Ranjan Dash, promptly joined the RSS upon retirement. Judges are not civil servants and we would like to believe they hold themselves to a very high standard of independence. But if the wider logic of the Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment is accepted, perhaps judges driven by the same urge as Dash need not wait till they retire.

Deep dive

IIM Bangalore’s Arpit Shah has studied medical crowdfunding in India and finds that people from dominant castes receive more money through these campaigns, and that those from SC and ST communities initiate “disproportionately fewer campaigns” than their dominant caste counterparts. “Our study highlights how crowdfunding on for-profit platforms may exacerbate existing caste-related health disparities in India by disproportionately favouring privileged groups,” he says.

Prime number: 75%

661 high court judges have been appointed in the past six years, with over 75% from the general category. “The issue of poor representation of persons from socially backward sections such as SCs, STs and OBCs among high court judges prompted a Rajya Sabha member to demand reservation in the higher judiciary”, reports The Telegraph.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

Pravin Sawhney says that Kargil was a total failure of strategic, operational and tactical intelligence. “The fact that not a single military officer has questioned Malik’s doctrinal wisdom is evidence that senior military leaders read very little and think even less. No wonder they are not confident about speaking their minds to the political leadership. Perhaps, today is the time for introspection and resolve to build credible deterrence to safeguard national sovereignty.”
Sharda Ugra on India’s relationship with the Olympics – after its Tokyo “Moon Landing”.
Sabka saath, sabka vikas? The slogan may turn heads abroad, but at home, we know that when “Muslim traders are compelled to advertise their identity at yatras and fairs, the mirage of equal treatment for all will remain what it is meant to be – only a mirage,” Julio Ribeiro says.
Modi’s visit to Moscow “was an acknowledgement that Russia has already weathered the worst and that it would be pointless for India to continue” skipping its annual summit with Russia, in addition to being an exercise in asserting its options and cultivating ‘geo-economic’ advantages, Suhasini Haidar writes.
Rajasthan’s urban Indira Gandhi Shahri Rozgar Guarantee Yojana, launched in 2022, has worked well so far and should be continued, write Shiuli Vanaja, Niruj Deka and Amit Basole. But “implementation needs to be bettered, the reach has to be extended and more kinds of work have to be covered in the programme.”

Listen up

Is the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill draconian? Yashovardhan Azad and Brinda Adige discuss the question in a conversation moderated by Vijaita Singh. Listen here.

Watch out

Former chief statistician of the Union government Pronab Sen minces no words in an interview with Karan Thapar. He says, the “budget is nondescript, not what India needs” and that the Modi government’s steps to generate jobs “barely scratch the surface”.

Over and out

Earlier this year, an old Persian song went viral after appearing in the controversial bollywood film Animal. Known as Jamal Kudu, the original lyrics actually reference an Afro-Iranian man fleeing enslavement. How did Jamal Kudu go viral? Siavash Rokni decodes the mystery.

Dive into the fascinating tale of Behram o Gul Andamay, a captivating Pashto and Urdu epic that has its roots in Persian folklore. Originally part of Nizami’s celebrated Haft Paykar, also known as the Behramnama, this story offers a rich tapestry of cultural narratives and legendary characters. The epic was translated and published in 1872 in the British textbook Khalid-i-Afghani, intended to educate British officers and soldiers who were to be stationed in what was then the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

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