I missed out on sending this on Sunday because of some pressing commitments (and this week is also going to be difficult): but if you can read only one thing this week, I recommend Prashant Bhushan’s Statement to the Supreme Court in his contempt case. I did not intend for this newsletter to have legal/political content; but there are some things which are difficult to pass over.
The background is that the Supreme Court of India found Bhushan guilty of contempt of court in respect certain tweets where Bhushan had raised questions over the functioning of the Supreme Court of India (and certain Chief Justices of India). The Court found Bhushan guilty of contempt. During the sentencing hearing, this is what Bhushan had to say (the statement itself has been reported in the media and was read out by Bhushan during the court proceedings:
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I have gone through the judgment of this Hon'ble Court. I am pained that I have been held guilty of committing contempt of the Court whose majesty I have tried to uphold — not as a courtier or cheerleader but as a humble guard — for over three decades, at some personal and professional cost. I am pained, not because I may be punished, but because I have been grossly misunderstood.
I am shocked that the court holds me guilty of "malicious, scurrilous, calculated attack” on the institution of administration of justice. I am dismayed that the Court has arrived at this conclusion without providing any evidence of my motives to launch such an attack. I must confess that I am disappointed that the court did not find it necessary to serve me with a copy of the complaint on the basis of which the suo motu notice was issued, nor found it necessary to respond to the specific averments made by me in my reply affidavit or the many submissions of my counsel.
I find it hard to believe that the Court finds my tweet "has the effect of destabilizing the very foundation of this important pillar of Indian democracy". I can only reiterate that these two tweets represented my bonafide beliefs, the expression of which must be permissible in any democracy. Indeed, public scrutiny is desirable for healthy functioning of judiciary itself. I believe that open criticism of any institution is necessary in a democracy, to safeguard the constitutional order. We are living through that moment in our history when higher principles must trump routine obligations, when saving the constitutional order must come before personal and professional niceties, when considerations of the present must not come in the way of discharging our responsibility towards the future. Failing to speak up would have been a dereliction of duty, especially for an officer of the court like myself.
My tweets were nothing but a small attempt to discharge what I considered to be my highest duty at this juncture in the history of our republic. I did not tweet in a fit of absence mindedness. It would be insincere and contemptuous on my part to offer an apology for the tweets that expressed what was and continues to be my bonafide belief. Therefore, I can only humbly paraphrase what the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had said in his trial: I do not ask for mercy. I do not appeal to magnanimity. I am here, therefore, to cheerfully submit to any penalty that can lawfully be inflicted upon me for what the Court has determined to be an offence, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.
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I do not agree with everything that Bhushan says or does (and, in particular, I am no fan of activism disguised as courtroom advocacy). That said, I do not think that there can be any real doubt that Bhushan has real strength of character and courage.
The statement paraphrases the words of M.K. Gandhi; and (without intending to compare Bhushan himself either to Gandhi or Tilak) the following statement of Tilak (on being found guilty of sedition) also comes to mind.
“In spite of the verdict of the Jury, I maintain that I am innocent. There are higher powers that rule the destiny of men and nations and it may be the will of Providence that the cause which I represent may prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free.”
Those words are now commemorated on a marble plaque outside Courtroom 46 of the Bombay High Court.