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Deccan Herald
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Deccan Herald
The dog-whistles and complicit silences of New India
As I sat down to pen my monthly column, I allowed my mind to take a brief wander. I pictured a dust-filled room with three cops huddled together staring at a screen, debating whether my use of 'articles' amounts to 'double meaning' and 'dog whistling', an egregious, unpatriotic act couched in Wren and Martin grammar. I have long argued with my copy editors over the grammatical choices of where to use an 'article'. Maybe the cops can finally resolve these tiny battles, I chuckled to myself, as I returned to reality and the task of meeting my editor's deadline. But this little diversion wasn't just an idle distraction. It is the chilling reality of New India. A consequence of the Supreme Court's failure to uphold citizens' right to free speech and set new standards for what is acceptable, as it has in Ali Khan Mahmudabad vs State of Haryana. The Court, while granting bail, has stripped Khan of his rights by issuing a gag order, confiscating his passport, and then, appointing a three-person SIT. The SIT will 'holistically understand the complexity of the phraseology employed and for proper appreciation of some of the expressions used' in the academic's online has been written in the last few days on challenging the constitutionality of these orders. These are critical interventions and central to the fight for protecting rights and our democracy. But we must also zoom out and take a hard, unvarnished, look at ourselves and ask what have we become as a polity, as a society. No dog-whistling, just plain entire episode around Khan's arrest is, sadly, an inevitable consequence of the path we have chosen. As a society, we have allowed jingoistic nationalism and bigotry in our polity to set the tone. Once any society becomes a blind participant in this game, it inevitably suspends all critical reasoning, essential to a pluralistic, democratic society. Fundamental rights become subservient to the demands of jingoistic nationalism. The consequences have been in full evidence in the last weeks. Any questions about the consequence of war, or challenging bigotry and violence against Muslims, all of which are legitimate acts in a democracy, were immediately labelled anti-national. Every State institution has played a shameful role in the events surrounding Khan's arrest and the broader undermining of rights. The court's reasoning or rather lack thereof should not be surprising – it is only a reflection of what we are as a are many reasons why we got here but the elite custodians of our key professions are among the prime culprits. From media to academia, rather than fight for the integrity of their professions and challenge the bully by upholding the principle, these custodians have been all too quick to scientists and authors of How democracies die, Levitsky and Ziblatt, point out that democracy's last bastion of defence is civil society. On the eve of Trump's re-election, they wrote in The New York Times: 'When the constitutional order is under threat, influential groups and societal leaders... must speak out, reminding citizens of the red lines that democratic societies must never cross. And when politicians cross these red lines, society's most prominent voices must publicly and forcefully repudiate them'. The only bulwark against a total authoritarian slide is societal leaders standing up to the bully. We are seeing this play out in Trumpland, most visibly in Harvard University's war with the federal government. The sad truth is that in India, elites left the battlefield. Indeed, they refused to leaders have been mostly silent and the mainstream media became a willing partner. Prominent anchors have been essential to the authoritarian project, routinely using their bully pulpit to rouse jingoistic fervour and unleash bigotry. This reached a crescendo in the days of Operation Sindoor. Academia has done no better. In the Khan case, 200 prominent vice-chancellors and former vice-chancellors of Indian universities signed a 'statement of objection' condemning Khan's post. They were well within their rights to do so. However, conspicuously absent were any statements from academic functionaries, think tank leaders, and Ashoka University leadership itself, speaking for the principle of academic freedom and Khan's right to free abdication of responsibility should worry us deeply. Once institutions stop fighting for the core principles that define their profession, they begin to lose their purpose. As a society, we must demand more of our institutions. Fear and narrow ambition are stripping institutions of their purpose and the costs to society are heavy. On the upside, we may end up with rather erudite police officers, as they pour over a good professor's writing. Perhaps they will learn and find the courage to defend the principle, where most others have failed.
Indian Express
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
HC strikes down Haryana's bonus marks policy for govt jobs as unconstitutional
In a major setback for Haryana's recruitment policy, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has struck down the state's 2019 notification that awarded 10 bonus marks to certain candidates in government job selections based on socio-economic criteria, holding it to be in violation of Constitutional guarantees of equality and merit. A division bench of Justices Sanjeev Prakash Sharma and Meenakshi I Mehta, which quashed the state's notification dated June 11, 2019, held that the bonus marks criteria breached Articles 14, 15, and 16 of the Constitution, which guarantee equal treatment in public employment. The ruling came on Thursday (May 22), but was uploaded on Friday. The policy in question allowed candidates to earn up to 10 extra marks — five for not having any family member in government service, and additional five marks for being widowed, having a deceased father, or belonging to specific tribes. The court found this system discriminatory and a violation of merit-based selection principles. 'By carving out an artificial class of applicants, who would be entitled to five bonus marks, the principles enshrined under Article 16 would stand violated. No other reservation, except the one as available under Article 15 and 16 of the Constitution, can be laid down by any State,' the court said. Citing Indira Sawhney vs the Union of India, the bench held that once reservation has already been provided statutorily 'under the EWS category, as well as on account of social backwardness by providing reservation for backward class, further granting benefit under socio-economic criteria would lead to breach of 50 per cent ceiling limit'. The bench said that 'what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly'. The court order came on petitions filed by government job aspirants including Neeraj and Deepak, who argued that the bonus marks unfairly pushed less qualified candidates ahead of those with higher written exam scores. The court agreed: 'If the bonus marks are deleted from the selection process, the meritorious candidates would have been selected. Such a selection (bonus marks)…would be in violation of the principles of equality as enshrined under Article 14 of the Constitution of India.' The judgment also cited a 2024 precedent — Sukriti Malik vs. State of Haryana — where similar bonus marks had been struck down by the high court. That ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court. The state had defended its policy as a way to promote social justice, citing the Latin maxim salus populi est suprema lex (the welfare of the people is the supreme law). But the court rejected this justification: 'Any process of appeasing the people on the principle of salus populi est suprema lex stands vitiated on the anvil of Article 14.' The judges also noted the absence of any legal backing or data to support the policy, calling the selection process 'wholly slipshod.' In a move to protect candidates already appointed under the flawed system, the court applied the 'no fault' principle. 'We apply the theory of 'no fault' with regard to the candidates who would be ousted from the merit list although they had cleared the written examination and have been working for quite a long time now,' the court said. It allowed these candidates to continue in service but without seniority. The court ordered the government to issue a revised merit list within three months, based solely on written exam scores. Those already appointed but who do not make the new list will be retained on an ad hoc basis until fresh vacancies arise. Newly inducted candidates will receive seniority and salary benefits from the original appointment dates of their counterparts. The petitioners were represented by Advocates Sarthak Gupta and R S Malik among others.
