Every Republic Day, we reaffirm our faith in the Constitution - its promise of liberty, dissent, and the idea that citizenship is not contingent on obedience. Yet, the recent incident involving 9 Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) students, who were granted interim protection from arrest for attending a gathering commemorating G N Saibaba's death anniversary, exposes how fragile that promise can be. A Mumbai sessions judge's warning that their careers were 'ruined' before they had even begun crosses a clear constitutional red line.
The Constitution does not bar anyone from being in a particular place, holding a certain ideology or attending a memorial. At its most basic, even attending a court hearing, protest or remembrance cannot be read as an endorsement of any individual or cause. To suggest otherwise is to hollow out freedoms guaranteed under Articles 19 and 21, reducing them to conditional privileges. The judiciary wields immense moral and legal authority, and the language it deploys shapes public understandings of justice. Framing young adults' lawful conduct in such moralistic, career-threatening terms risks collapsing criminal procedure into personal judgement.
Even by the most 'mai-baap' standards of judicial admonishment, such statements should not be normalised. The Supreme Court must take a stern view of remarks. Every citizen is a political being. Normalising such rhetoric signals that the mere filing of an FIR - a stick the state can wield at will - can be used to shame, intimidate and police the boundaries of acceptable political life. Courts may caution against illegality, but equating attendance at a memorial with the ruination of careers dangerously blurs the line between legal warning and moral surveillance.
The Constitution does not bar anyone from being in a particular place, holding a certain ideology or attending a memorial. At its most basic, even attending a court hearing, protest or remembrance cannot be read as an endorsement of any individual or cause. To suggest otherwise is to hollow out freedoms guaranteed under Articles 19 and 21, reducing them to conditional privileges. The judiciary wields immense moral and legal authority, and the language it deploys shapes public understandings of justice. Framing young adults' lawful conduct in such moralistic, career-threatening terms risks collapsing criminal procedure into personal judgement.
Even by the most 'mai-baap' standards of judicial admonishment, such statements should not be normalised. The Supreme Court must take a stern view of remarks. Every citizen is a political being. Normalising such rhetoric signals that the mere filing of an FIR - a stick the state can wield at will - can be used to shame, intimidate and police the boundaries of acceptable political life. Courts may caution against illegality, but equating attendance at a memorial with the ruination of careers dangerously blurs the line between legal warning and moral surveillance.
