HC nixes plea challenging Ramayan, Veda workshops
Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a PIL challenging the letter issued by the director, International Ramayana and Vedic Research Institute, Ayodhya regarding organizing of summer Ramayan and Veda workshops in basic schools of Uttar Pradesh.
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With this order, these workshops proposed in the basic schools of the state can now be organised.
A division bench comprising of Chief Justice Arun Bhasali and Justice Kshitij Shailendra gave this verdict on May 22 while dismissing the PIL filed by Dr Chaturanan Ojha.
The director issued a letter on May 5, 2025, requesting all BSAs to make arrangements for summer workshops organised by the institute in all 75 districts.
Ojha challenged the letter, calling it discriminatory. He argued that it promoted a particular religion. He added that such directives in public schools were unconstitutional.
The court while dismissing the petition observed, "The petitioner, without disclosing his credentials except for as noticed hereinbefore, claiming himself to be a socially conscious citizen and an academic, has failed to comply with the requirements of the Allahabad High Court Rules pertaining to filing of the public interest litigation, which requires several declarations."
"The petitioner has nowhere indicated as to how and in what manner, he came in possession of the said documents, being a resident of district Deoria as the communication has been issued by the District Basic Education Officer, Maharajganj, a different district. The petitioner apparently has attempted to suppress his credentials," added the court.
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Here again, the concern was not whether the speech incited harm, but on whether it offended prevailing norms of taste and modesty — a dangerously subjective threshold. Similarly, historian and a professor, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, was dragged into proceedings after sharing critical views on the optics of India using a woman soldier to explain its war situation with Pakistan. The argument was that his comments hurt sentiments. That it even reached court underscores the problem: invoking hurt feelings is now sufficient to invite judicial scrutiny of constitutionally protected speech. The professor's scholarly critique became a matter for judicial assessment and a special investigation to assess whether there was any dog whistle intent that played on the fragility of the audience. A misreading Two disturbing patterns emerge from these cases. First, the judiciary is increasingly equating speech that provokes emotional reactions with legally actionable harm. 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