the goan I network
PANAJI
Amid a general atmosphere of retribution by the State across the nation following the back-to-back developments of the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and sustained protests by the student community over the tweaking of the Citizenship law through the CAA, proceedings at ‘difficult dialogues’ a forum which annually deliberates on crucial issues of currency brought past record of the judiciary under the scanner.
At the International Centre, Dona Paula over the weekend, many opined that upholding the right to dissent was quintessential for a thriving democracy, while others gave the apex court a mixed report card on the issue.
Justice Mahesh Sonak set the ball rolling by stating: “The remedy against the attacks on free speech is more free speech.”
Justice Sonak, credited along with some other peers of rejuvenating the students movement in Goa in the 1980s, spoke candidly on the ‘free speech’ topic at the forum. He is a sitting judge of the Bombay High Court.
Senior Counsel Geeta Luthra added to where Justice Sonak signed off.
“If you dissent, the State has to respect it,” Luthra said, adding however that India’s is indeed a vibrant democracy.
“I believe we will have to redefine freedoms in view of the fact that we live in the social media world so that due process is not lost,” the respected lawyer who represented former union minister MJ Akbar in the sexual harassment cases that came up following the #MeToo outrage in the journalism world last year.
Media mogul Annurag Batra, who is chairman and editor-in-chief, BW Businessworld minced no words to articulate the ongoing taming of the media.
“We as media owners are becoming puppets of the government,” Batra said matter-of-factly stunning those in attendance and leaving them jaw-dropped.
US-based jurist Divya Sarang however contradicted
Batra in a way saying: “I think we have a healthy media in India.”
Sarang a judge on the 16th Circuit Court of Illinois, cited American news organisations Fox, CNN, MSNBC among others and called them “opinion channels”.
“You’re free to listen to what you want and the economics of it will shut it down or make it grow,” Sarang said, agreeing with the doctrine that the market defines the boundaries of freedoms.
“I think we need to respect each other’s space and trust that our democracy works,” Sarang added.
Elsewhere at the venue, a group of lawyers put to scrutiny the record of the Indian judiciary, including the Supreme Court, and concluded with a mixed report card when deliberating on ‘Discrimination, law and minorities’.
Mohsin Alam Bhat, who teaches at Jindal Global Law School in New Delhi and heads its Centre for Public Interest Law, opined that the Indian judiciary has had a mixed record and cited cases where High Courts in the country have upheld Muslim reservations as ‘Constitutional’.
“I don’t think everything is only because of bias. We have to go deeper and see what institutional biases there are and why,” Bhat said, citing Ambedkar’s argument that fundamental rights should be for human beings, not animals.
He also advocated dialogue in civil society on economics and social justice and opined that laws wouldn’t help deal with mob-lynching, citing implementation hurdles.
“When you talk to people in small towns, they call it self-defence and don’t even differentiate between local citizens and terrorists coming from outside,” Bhat added.
Author and activist advocating minority rights Farah Naqvi dwelt on the biases of past judgements delivered by the Apex Court.
She opined that judges in the Indian judicial system were meant to be the counter valve to the majoritarian view.
“In India we love idols and we pedestalise the Constitution,” Naqvi said, adding that the lack of a broad-based law against discrimination in India is embarassing.
Delhi-based journalist Manoj Mitta highlighted the inability of the Supreme Court to deal with habeus corpus cases from Kashmir.
