Judicial Integrity, Classroom Silences, and Constitutional Ironies

-Ramphal Kataria

When the Guardian Becomes Silent: Judicial Power, Pedagogy, and Constitutional Decline

Abstract

The recent suo motu intervention by the Supreme Court of India to stay a Class VIII NCERT textbook chapter referring to judicial corruption has reopened an unresolved constitutional question: how should judicial accountability be discussed, and by whom? While the Court justified its action on pedagogical grounds and the need to protect public faith in the judiciary, this episode reveals a deeper and more troubling asymmetry. Over the past decade, the Court has shown marked restraint or delay in adjudicating issues involving executive power, minority rights, electoral integrity, and constitutional secularism, while simultaneously exercising exceptional urgency to protect its institutional image. This article situates the NCERT controversy within the Constituent Assembly’s vision of judicial independence, analyses recent constitutional jurisprudence, and compares India’s experience with that of the United States and the United Kingdom. It argues that judicial legitimacy depends not on insulation from criticism, but on consistent counter-majoritarian conduct. The growing gap between constitutional promise and judicial practice has generated a genuine apprehension among citizens that judicial independence is being selectively deployed.

Keywords:  

When the Watchdog Looks Away

The recent controversy surrounding a Class VIII social science textbook published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has exposed not merely a pedagogical misjudgment, but a deeper constitutional anxiety. The Supreme Court of India, taking suo motu cognizance of a chapter referring to judicial corruption, banned the book, calling the inclusion a “well-orchestrated conspiracy.” The NCERT apologized; the Union Education Minister promised accountability. Formally, the episode ended there.

Substantively, it did not.

This incident re-ignited an old but unresolved question: who guards the guardians, and where may that question be asked?

 

I. Judicial Authority and the Fragility of Public Faith

Courts do not command armies, nor do they control budgets. Their authority flows from two sources alone: the Constitution and public trust. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that judicial legitimacy rests on confidence rather than coercion. Yet, that same Court has also held that narratives which “scandalize” the judiciary can corrode this trust.

The position — that adolescents are not an appropriate forum for discussions on judicial corruption — is not unreasonable. Children require civic education before civic scepticism. However, the problem lies not in what was barred, but in what is tolerated elsewhere.

If judicial corruption is deemed too corrosive for a textbook, why is judicial passivity in the face of constitutional erosion rarely treated with equal urgency?

II. The Constituent Assembly’s Warnings: Power Without Accountability

The framers of the Constitution were acutely conscious of judicial fallibility. During the Constituent Assembly debates, B. R. Ambedkar repeatedly warned against hero-worship of institutions:

“If things go wrong under the Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.”

Judicial independence, Ambedkar clarified, was never meant to imply judicial infallibility. Articles 124–147 establish the Supreme Court; Articles 32 and 226 empower it as the protector of fundamental rights. But nowhere does the Constitution grant it moral immunity.

Minority rights, particularly under Articles 14, 15, 21, 25–30, were framed precisely because majoritarian impulses could capture institutions — including courts. The Assembly debates reflect deep anxiety that constitutional guarantees must not depend on the ideological disposition of judges.

III. Sardar Patel, the Sub-Committee, and the Myth of Homogeneous Nationalism

It is historically inconvenient but constitutionally vital to recall that the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights and Minorities was steered by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — now routinely projected as a symbol of cultural majoritarianism.

Patel, in the Assembly, defended group-differentiated protections for minorities as essential to national unity. The safeguards he endorsed were not acts of appeasement but of constitutional realism. That same Constitution now witnesses judicial reluctance to robustly enforce these protections when they intersect with executive ideology.

IV. Landmark Judgments and the Perception of Alignment

Several recent decisions have generated a widespread — and dangerous — public perception that the Supreme Court has become ideologically accommodative rather than constitutionally adversarial:

Article 370 (2019): The abrogation of Jammu & Kashmir’s special status was upheld despite unresolved questions on federalism, consent, and constituent power.

Ayodhya (2019): While legally reasoned, the judgment openly acknowledged illegality yet rewarded it with restitution, unsettling the rule-of-law principle.

Electoral Bonds (delayed adjudication): Years of silence allowed opacity in political funding to flourish before eventual intervention.

Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA): Despite clear implications for Articles 14 and 21, the matter remains pending as ground realities altered irrevocably.

Justice delayed here was not justice denied — it was justice neutralized.

Timeline: Judicial Deference vs Intervention (2014–2026)

Year	Event	Judicial Posture
2014	Hate speech petitions post-election	Deference/ delay/ silence
2016	Demonetisation challenges	1Deference/ delay/ silence
2017	Right to Privacy judgment	Intervention / Assertion
2018	Tehseen Poonawalla (lynching)	Intervention / Assertion (weak enforcement)
2019	Ayodhya verdict	Deference/ delay/ silence
2019	Article 370 abrogation	Deference/ delay/ silence
2020	Prashant Bhushan contempt	Intervention / Assertion
2020–22	CAA challenges	Deference/ delay/ silence
2023	Article 370 upheld	Deference/ delay/ silence
2024	Electoral Bonds struck down	Intervention / Assertion (delayed)
2026	NCERT textbook ban (suo motu)	Intervention / Assertion

 

Pattern:
Intervention peaks when institutional authority is questioned; restraint dominates when executive power is implicated.

V. Selective Urgency: Hate Speech, Surveillance, and Silence

When petitions concerning hate speech by constitutional functionaries, mass surveillance, or communal violence reach the Court, deferment often becomes the norm. The statement that the Supreme Court is “not a political playground” sits uneasily with Article 32, which Ambedkar called the “heart and soul of the Constitution.”

Ironically, the same Article has been invoked expansively to stay UGC guidelines or executive policies that inconvenience the state less.

This asymmetry fuels the public belief that judicial discretion is no longer ideologically neutral.

VI. Contempt as a Shield, Not a Scalpel

India’s contempt jurisprudence reveals a troubling pattern:

E.M.S. Namboodiripad (1970): Criticism imputing motives punished.

Arundhati Roy (2002): Symbolic imprisonment for questioning institutional conduct.

Prashant Bhushan (2020): Tweets treated as an existential threat to democracy.

Yet, political leaders who undermine courts through legislative circumvention or public defiance often escape similar scrutiny.

Justice Krishna Iyer’s caution in Mulgaokar — that contempt power must be exercised sparingly — appears increasingly forgotten.

VII. The NCERT Ban and the Larger Silence on Historical Revisionism

If judicial corruption is unfit for textbooks, what of historical distortion?

Mughal erasure

Sanitisation of communal violence

Canonization of ideological figures like Savarkar

Replacement of historiography with mythology

Petitions challenging such curricular interventions are routinely dismissed as “policy matters.” The contrast is stark: the Court intervenes to protect its own image but defers when constitutional secularism is diluted.

VIII. Comparative Constitutionalism: India and the US and UK

A revealing contrast emerges when compared with the Supreme Court of the United States. Even amid ideological polarization, the Court has recently constrained executive overreach — including tariff-related assertions of authority by Donald Trump, arguably one of the most powerful executives of the modern era.

In India, by contrast, judicial deference has often preceded constitutional adjudication.

Comparative Table: Judicial Independence in India, the US, and the UK

Dimension	India	United States	United Kingdom
Apex Court	Supreme Court of India	Supreme Court of the United States	Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
Appointment Mechanism	Collegium system (judicial self-selection); opaque, non-codified	Presidential nomination + Senate confirmation (political but transparent)	Judicial Appointments Commission (independent statutory body)
Security of Tenure	Until 65 years; removal only by impeachment	Life tenure; removal by impeachment	Until mandatory retirement (70–75); removal by Parliament
Contempt Powers	Broad, undefined; includes “scandalising the court”	Extremely limited; strong First Amendment protection	“Scandalising the court” abolished in 2013
Response to Executive Overreach	Often deferential or delayed (Article 370, CAA, electoral bonds)	Increasingly assertive even against strong executives	Traditionally restrained but institutionally independent
Public Criticism of Judges	Frequently met with contempt proceedings	Fully protected as free speech	Permissible unless it interferes with justice
Perceived Independence (Global Indices)	Declining; concerns of executive alignment	Polarised but institutionally resilient	High institutional trust
Judicial Review Culture	Expansive in theory; selective in practice	Robust and adversarial	Constitutional but restrained

 

IX. The Final Irony: From Instrument to Target

The ruling establishment has frequently benefited from judicial restraint, delay, or endorsement. Yet today, it appears willing to let the judiciary absorb public anger — as seen in the NCERT episode — portraying courts as fragile institutions needing protection from scrutiny.

This is the deepest irony:
an institution used to legitimize power is now portrayed as endangered by critique.

Conclusion: The Common Citizen’s Anxiety

The average citizen does not demand a perfect judiciary. They demand a courageous one.

Judicial integrity is not preserved by silencing uncomfortable truths in textbooks, nor by wielding contempt as a deterrent. It is preserved when courts speak most clearly when power is loudest.

The NCERT episode is not an aberration; it is a symptom. The deeper crisis lies in the selective deployment of judicial authority — assertive when institutional image is questioned, restrained when constitutional guarantees are hollowed out. Democracies do not collapse when courts are criticized. They weaken when courts fear criticism more than power.

Children may not be the right audience for debates on judicial corruption.
But if adults are left with no credible forum either, democracy itself becomes the casualty.

As Ambedkar warned, constitutional failure is rarely textual.
It is institutional — and ultimately, moral.

References 

1. Constituent Assembly Debates, Vols. VII & IX.

2. Constitution of India, Articles 14, 15, 21, 25–30, 32, 124–147.

3. S. P. Gupta v. Union of India (1981) Supp SCC 87.

4. S. Mulgaokar, In re (1978) 3 SCC 339.

5. E.M.S. Namboodiripad v. T.N. Nambiar (1970) 2 SCC 325.

6. In Re: Prashant Bhushan (2020) SCC OnLine SC 646.

7. M. Siddiq v. Mahant Suresh Das (2019) 18 SCC 1.

8. In Re: Article 370 (2023).

9. Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 (as amended).

10. Crime and Courts Act, 2013 (UK).

 

 

 

You Can’t Rename Away Poverty

-Ramphal Kataria

Renaming Without Reform: Memory Politics, Symbolic Power, and the Poverty of Cosmetic Decolonisation

Abstract

The contemporary surge in renaming cities, streets, monuments, and even welfare schemes is increasingly presented as an act of historical correction or cultural decolonization. This essay argues that such practices, when detached from institutional reform and material redistribution, function primarily as symbolic politics rather than transformative governance. Drawing on Indian and international scholarship, the paper situates renaming within a global history of memory control and demonstrates how, in the Indian context, it increasingly operates as a majoritarian project of cultural homogenisation. Through a comparative analysis of India, Europe, and Africa, the essay shows that renaming alone neither alters development trajectories nor resolves structural inequalities. Instead, it risks substituting spectacle for substance, erasure for understanding, and identity performance for social justice.

1. Introduction: The Seduction of the Symbol

There is something deeply unsettling about the ease with which nations claim to have healed themselves through acts of renaming. A city, a road, a railway station, a public scheme—once rechristened—becomes evidence of moral progress. As observed recently in The Tribune, the past does not loosen its grip because a signboard changes. History persists not in names alone, but in institutions, hierarchies, social relations, and everyday practices of power.

This essay interrogates the assumption that renaming constitutes decolonization or development. It asks three interrelated questions:

1. What historical and political purposes does renaming serve?

2. Does renaming alter the material conditions of people’s lives?

3. Why has renaming increasingly replaced substantive policy reform?

2. Renaming as a Political Technology

Scholars of memory studies have long argued that naming is never neutral. Urbanonyms—the names of streets, cities, and public spaces—function as tools of orientation and as symbolic inscriptions of power (Azaryahu 1990). They encode official history into everyday life, turning movement through the city into a repeated act of remembrance.

Eric Hobsbawm famously described such practices as part of the “invention of tradition”—rituals designed to establish continuity with a selectively constructed past rather than to engage critically with history.¹ Renaming, in this sense, is less about truth than about authority over memory.

In India, post-Independence renaming initially targeted colonial symbols—Kingsway became Rajpath, Queen’s Way became Janpath. This phase was tied to a genuine rupture with imperial rule. However, the contemporary wave differs fundamentally: it targets internal histories, especially those associated with Muslim rulers, Persian-Arabic linguistic traces, or syncretic cultural formations. Since Independence, successive Indian governments have utilized "symbolic power" to forge a post-colonial identity—most notably when recently the bust of Edwin Lutyens in Rashtrapati Bhavan was replaced with that of C. Rajagopalachari. While such acts signal a break from imperial aesthetics, they often function as a placeholder for material redistribution.

3. From Historical Correction to Cultural Policing

The renaming of Aurangzeb Road after A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is often defended as a moral act—replacing a “tyrant” with a “national icon.” Yet, as Romila Thapar cautions, historical judgment must distinguish between critical evaluation of policies and wholesale vilification of historical personhood.² Moral simplification collapses history into caricature.

Urban historian Tapati Guha-Thakurta demonstrates how monuments and names are repeatedly re-signified to serve contemporary nationalist projects, often masking political intent as cultural revival.³ In this process, renaming becomes an act of symbolic purification, premised on the idea that certain histories contaminate the nation’s present.

As Milan Kundera observed, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Selective forgetting, however, is not healing—it is discipline.

4. Comparative Perspective: India, Europe, Africa

Table 1: Renaming and Its Outcomes – A Comparative View

Region	Historical Context	Nature of Renaming	Accompanying Reforms	Outcomes
India	Post-colonial, multi- religious society	Erasure of Muslim/ colonial names; renaming of schemes	Largely absent or cosmetic	Symbolic polarization; no clear development gains
Europe (post-1945)	Post-fascist/ post- communist transitions	Removal of totalitarian symbols	Institutional reform, welfare expansion	Democratic consolidation (Judt 2005)
Africa (post-colonial)	Anti-colonial nation- building	Renaming cities and streets	Often limited redistribution	Persistent inequality despite symbolic change (Mbembe 2001)

In post-war Europe, renaming was accompanied by constitutionalism, welfare states, and accountability. As Tony Judt notes, symbols mattered only because they were embedded in deep institutional reform.⁴

In contrast, many African states renamed cities but retained colonial economic structures. Achille Mbembe argues that without material redistribution, symbolic decolonization merely rebranded elite power.⁵

India increasingly resembles the latter trajectory.

5. Renaming Schemes: When Language Replaces Policy

A significant escalation in India is the renaming of existing welfare schemes rather than designing new ones. This marks a shift from governance to performative politics. Programmes addressing poverty, nutrition, or health are rebranded, while structural determinants—informal employment, agrarian distress, underfunded public health—remain unresolved.

George Orwell warned that political language often “makes lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” Renaming schemes creates the illusion of innovation without the burden of outcomes.

Economist Amartya Sen reminds us that development is the expansion of substantive freedoms—not symbolic ownership of the past.⁶ A renamed programme that fails to reduce hunger is not progress; it is administrative theatre.

6. Assimilation Versus Amputation

Civilizations endure by absorbing contradictions, not amputating them. India’s historical strength lay in its layered identities—linguistic, religious, cultural. The attempt to impose a purified past disregards how cultures actually evolve.

As Hannah Arendt argued, regimes obsessed with spectacle often replace political responsibility with symbolic acts, producing motion without movement.⁷ Renaming becomes a substitute for reform.

7. Does Renaming Change Development Trajectories?

There is no empirical evidence that renaming improves employment, healthcare, education, or living conditions. What it reliably produces is political mobilization through grievance. Cultural resentment becomes a resource to mask policy failure.

The energy invested in renaming is energy not invested in institution-building. The obsession with the past often signals discomfort with the present.

8. Conclusion: Change the Rules, Not the Name

Nations do not progress by repainting signboards. They progress by dismantling inequality, expanding rights, and strengthening institutions. Renaming, when divorced from these goals, is not decolonization—it is cosmetic nationalism.

History cannot be healed by erasure. It can only be understood, debated, and learned from. Until governance moves from symbolic conquest to material justice, renaming will remain what it largely is today: noise in place of reform, memory politics in place of development, and spectacle in place of substance.

Footnotes

1. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (1983): The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press. ↩

2. Thapar, R. (2000): Cultural Pasts, Oxford University Press. ↩

3. Guha-Thakurta, T. (2004): Monuments, Objects, Histories, Permanent Black. ↩

4. Judt, T. (2005): Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Penguin. ↩

5. Mbembe, A. (2001): On the Postcolony, University of California Press. ↩

6. Sen, A. (1999): Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press. ↩

7. Arendt, H. (1958): The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press. ↩