Opinion: Supreme Court’s refusal to quash FIR against Anand Teltumbde damages the right to dissent
The Supreme Court’s refusal to quash the first information report against Professor Anand Teltumbde in the Bhima Koregaon case has caused widespread distress. Both the refusal and the distress need to be understood in context, if for no other reason than that the top court takes note of citizens’ expectation that it will play a proactive role in safeguarding fundamental rights at a time when the Constitution itself is in peril.
This expectation has grown particularly vocal and visible (desperate even) since 2017, when the court took an expansive view of its own brief in the right to privacy judgement by “resurrecting dissents” from 1950 to 1976 in cases concerning the denial of personal liberty. The court’s preoccupation with judicial dissents continued through the press conference called by four senior sitting judges (the present chief justice among them), intimating citizens that the court was being undermined. This was followed by the spectacular decision in the Navtej Johar case, where the court burst into poetry and public apology while affirming the right of queer people to personal liberty and dignity without restraint or threat of criminalisation. In the Sabarimala case, in yet another stunning judicial interrogation of majoritarian rule, the court challenged Hindu orthodoxy in matters of untouchability and held anti-caste resistance aloft. Its judgement quoted at length from Savitribai Phule, a development unparalleled in India’s Constitutional jurisprudence.