The very purpose of demonstration is to ensure that voice of demonstrators is heard by the decision makers so that it has adequate impact, and action and reform takes place. Protestors are citizens who take to the streets because they have a grievance of some sort with the State, and they see no other way to raise it. Who are these protestors, and why do they protest? In order to recognize the speciousness of this position, we must step back and start off with some elementary questions: why do people organize and participate in civil protests, and what is the objective of said protests? The Supreme Court’s ruling essentially holds that protests and demonstrations cannot occupy public ways indefinitely, and must be restricted to being held at designated spots only.
The first part used a legal lens to compare and contrast the judgment with the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the matter of civil protests, and the third part shall use a historical one that looks back at how civil protests of the very kind proscribed by the judgment are interwoven into the rich tapestry of independent India’s history.Īn inconvenient truth: Protests must disrupt the status quo
This is the second of a three-part series to analyze and critique the judgment, and shall use a principled as well as prudential perspective to break down the objective and rationale of civil protests. protests are subject to the legal position… enunciated above”. To drive home the point, it expressly posits that “future.
It further rules that “demonstrations expressing dissent have to be in designated places alone”. It does so by holding that the occupation of public ways indefinitely anywhere “for protests is not acceptable and the administration ought to take action to keep the areas clear of encroachments or obstructions”. This is because the judgment, delivered even though the petition itself had been rendered infructuous over the past seven months because of the protestors having voluntarily cleared the protest site due to the Covid pandemic (in paragraph 12 of the judgment, the bench itself states that “really speaking, the reliefs in the present proceedings have worked themselves out”), deals a further body blow to the right to civil protests in India. The judgment of the Supreme Court of India last month to a petition filed in January this year asking for the Shaheen Bagh protests to be cleared, on the grounds that the protests inconvenienced several commuters by shutting off an arterial road, assumes crucial significance.