Eminent Supreme Court lawyer Colin Gonsalves said some eye-opening things yesterday while delivering a long lecture on the topic ‘Rise of Fascism and the Question of Law and Judiciary’. According to him, during the Emergency, except for a few, all the judges had surrendered to the government, but what happened in the last 10 years has never happened before. The Modi government has in a way destroyed the judiciary. Justice Hosbet Suresh, Justice Dawood and Justice Muralidhar took the stand, and they were immediately ‘punished’. Discussing the federal infiltration in the judiciary, Colin mentioned a recent speech given by a judge of the Gujarat High Court at a program, in which the judge said that we need ‘military elements in civilian clothes’ to maintain morality and order in the society. His direct reference was to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadre.
Allahabad High Court Judge Shekhar Yadav made a blatant communal statement at a Vishwa Hindu Parishad event. The Supreme Court Collegium summoned him to Delhi for talks, but took no action, whereas an FIR should have been registered against him immediately for hate speech. The Collegium headed by the then Chief Justice DY Chandrachud recommended that a woman who made blatant communal remarks be made a judge of the Madras High Court. In the capitalist system, the judiciary was considered the last line of defense for the people, but in the last 10 years, the loyalty and integrity of the judiciary have completely collapsed. The unjust face of the judiciary was exposed in the case of Saibaba and Father Stan Swami.
The way in which 85-year-old Stan Swami, suffering from Alzheimer’s, was deprived of even the most basic facilities during his illness is beyond imagination. After Saibaba was acquitted of all charges by two brave judges of the Bombay High Court, Justice MR Shah sent him back to jail after an overnight hearing, as if he had come out and committed a major crime. Justice Shah had given a good decision in the land acquisition case, but in the last few years, there was such a change in him that he declared Modi as his God. According to Colin, it is clear that the Modi government is running the judiciary and things like independence of the judiciary and the third pillar of democracy have become useless. How many excellent youths are in jail for years just for giving a speech and they are being denied bail repeatedly, while no action is taken against the leader who was a minister of Modi’s who gave the terrible slogan ‘Goli maro salon ko’ and the petition has been bouncing between the Supreme Court and the High Court for many years. There is so much fear among the judges that no judge is ready to take up the matter.
Justice Muralidhar, a judge of the Delhi High Court, took the stand and said that the government should respond by the next morning, but he was transferred overnight.
However, Colin is not pessimistic. According to him, many young people are fighting for not just superficial but fundamental change. Not just fascism, but the capitalist system that gave birth to it.
