(Mis)rule of Law: Indian Judiciary and the Politics of Protest

• In Event: Law, Disinformation, and Majoritarianism in South Asia

Abstract

India has been engulfed in a series of widespread protests over amendments to citizenship and agricultural laws since 2019. The protestors’ strategies have invited disproportionate legal debates in Indian courtrooms in contrast to the violence and statist repression visited upon the protestors. The courts have acted as critical instruments in aiding the state's interests in suppressing resistance by enfeebling the constitutionally guaranteed right to protest in India. Focusing on the Indian Supreme Court's engagement with the widespread anti-Citizenship Amendment protests of 2019 and the Farmer's protests of 2020, I highlight how the Supreme Court has placed restrictions on resistance in an ostensible endorsement of statist interests. In reimagining the politics of protest, the Supreme Court reinforces the need for restricting protests to passive, gendered, and museumized spaces. Such legal precedents are dangerous as they legitimize the state’s persecution of protestors and the use of excessive security measures. Analyzing the courts’ response to the protests through textual analysis of court proceedings and judgments, I explore how courts can act as tools of legal repression through ideological alignment with strong executive authority, as is the case with Hindu nationalist interests of the Modi government in contemporary India.

Author

• Shatakshi Singh, University of California