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Campaign
February 1995
 

SC Must Entertain Citizen’s SLP Against
Bal Thackeray’s Hate Speech

 

Communalism Combat’s Campaign

Appeal

 

The Chief Justice, Supreme Court of India,
New Delhi - 100001, India.

Sir,
We fully share the shock and dismay of legal luminaries such as Mr. H.M. Seervai, Mr. Nani Palkhiwala, Mr. Fali S. Nariman, Mr. Soli Sorabjee and Justice Hosbet Suresh of the Bombay High Court (retired) at the Supreme Court's dismissal of the special leave petition against the Bombay High Court's failure in directing the government of Maharashtra to prosecute Saamna - a Marathi daily edited by Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray - for its communally inflammatory writing during December, 1992 - January, 1993.


In their own ways, these eminent legal experts named above have opined that the High Court's verdict and the subsequent dismissal of the special leave petition by a division bench of the Supreme Court amounts to a subversion of law and the secular foundations of the Indian constitution. This is all the more serious in view of the "explosively plural society" that India is today.


The detailed reactions and opinions of the outstanding legal authorities have been published in the January, 1995 issue of Communalism Combat, a Bombay-based monthly committed to promoting national unity and communal harmony. We understand that a copy of the magazine has already been couriered for your urgent attention.


In view of the above, we wholeheartedly support the opinion of jurist and constitutional expert, Mr. H.M. Seervai that the Supreme Court of India should recall its order, admit the special leave petition and decide the matter on merits. As Mr. Seervai has pointed out, a precedent for this exists and that national interest demands it.
Yours,

NAME:……………………………… SIGNATURE:………………..
ADDRESS: …………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………….

 

 

Responses to CC Campaign

We are encouraged by the energetic response from our readers to the campaign initiated by Communalism Combat last month in support of eminent jurist Mr. H.M.Seervai’s opinion that the Supreme Court should recall its order, admit the Special Leave Petition and decide the matter on merits in the Saamna case. We have accepted the suggestion of the Delhi-based People’s Movement for Secularism (PSM) for a public meeting in Delhi in the last week of March or April to focus attention on the issue. We are also thankful to the Urdu Times and Hamara Mahanagar, for translating the text of the appeal in Urdu and Hindi and printing them in their papers.

Meanwhile, we reproduce below some of the responses received by us so far. We are also reproducing the appeal for those who may have missed the January, 1995 issue of Combat.

Response 1 

D’Souza vs. State of Maharashtra
Why SC should have admitted the petition

     There are several reasons why the Supreme Court ought to have allowed the Special Leave Petition which was filed against the judgement of the Bombay High Court in J.B.D’Souza vs. State of Maharashtra and heard the appeal on merits.

     In the first place, a bare reading of the extracts from the editorials of Bal Thackeray in his paper, Saamna, which have been reproduced in the high court judgement, would lead any unbiased reader to the conclusion that they consist of communalist propaganda of the most rabid type.

     They amount to “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion,” which is an offence under section 153A of the Indian Penal Code. They also contain “imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration” which constitute an offence under section 153B of the Indian Penal Code.

     The high court has held that the statements in the editorial do not constitute an offence because they refer only to anti-national Muslims or to those Muslims who supported the two-nation theory. The judgement of the high court, however, does not show that the editorial refers to the existence in India of any other type of Muslims who are patriotic and who did not support the two-nation theory.

     The rejection of the Special Leave Petition is bound to give the impression, not only to the editor of Saamna but also to writers of other journals, that this type of communalist propaganda does not have any penal consequences.

     It was all the more necessary for the Supreme Court to hear the case on merit because, for the first time after independence, the secular democracy of India is in real danger. Thackeray’s political party, Shiv Sena, is allied with another all-India political party which has been fomenting Hindu communalism for the last 4 or 5 years, with the purpose of getting votes and coming to power.

     Thousands of Indians, the majority of whom belong to the Muslim community, have been killed in communal riots which resulted from this vicious propaganda. Majority communalism has now spread amongst some sections of the police force and also amongst some of the higher echelons of the bureaucracy.

     In the recent nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court in S.R.Bommai’s case, the court rightly held that secularism is one of the basic features of our Constitution. That being so, it is the obvious duty of the Supreme Court to protect the secular character of the Indian state.

     The high court has observed in the penultimate paragraph of its judgement that the D’Souza writ Petition deserves to be dismissed because it is not desirable, in view of the presently restored communal harmony, to “reopen the old issues afresh.”

     Apart from the fact that communalist propaganda is very likely to continue in the country in the pursuit of power politics, for some years to come, past experience has shown that the attitude adopted by the high court does not serve the purpose of preserving communal harmony.

     The lesson to be drawn is that those who foment communal riots or actively participate therein should be promptly tried and punished for their offences. The dismissal of D’Souza’s writ petition by the high court and the refusal of the Supreme Court to interfere with that decision would give a wrong signal that one can indulge in rabid communal propaganda even during a period of communal tension without any fear of criminal prosecution.

V.M.Tarkunde
(The writer is the founder-president  of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties—PUCL)

 

Response 2 

February 14, 1995

Mr. A.Ahmadi

Chief Justice

Supreme Court of India

Tilak Marg, New Delhi
India.

    Sir,
    On behalf of myself, of the directors of NRISAD and its many members and supporters, I write this to express our shock and dismay at the manner the justice system of India has failed the secular and democratic aspirations of the people of India.

     I refer to the judicial matter concerning the Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, who must indeed be gloating self-righteously at the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the Special Leave Petition in the Saamna case, as he indeed must have when the Bombay High Court earlier gave its verdict in the same case. Regarding himself above law, Bal Thackeray after all has been arrogantly flouting his contempt for judiciary publicly declaring his intention to “piss on the court’s judgements”, and by calling most judges “plague-ridden rats against whom direct action should be taken.”

     Such scornful views of the Shiv Sena chief about judiciary could be easily dismissed had they not been a part of his and his organisation’s total agenda which have been posing a most serious threat to not only the lives and property of Indian citizens but also to the constitutional, moral and social fabric of Indian society.

     Although living thousands of miles, and in many cases, many generations away from India, we people of the Indian origin deeply cares for what happens in that society. We take pride in the history of India and in the multi-cultural, multi-religious social tapestry woven over a period of  many centuries. People of many faiths, many religions, affiliations and many distinct cultural identities have contributed to form the composite Indian way of life and civilisation. We feel very concerned that this rich heritage is being threatened by the forces of bigotry and fascism which are trying to convert India into a “Hindu Rashtra”. Having followed the sayings and doings of Bal Thackeray and his organisation, we maintain that they are part of these threatening forces.

     On the matter of the judgement of the division bench of the Bombay High Court in J.B.D’Souza vs. State of Maharashtra, and the subsequent order of the Supreme Court dismissing the Special Leave Petition, we have followed at length the views of legal experts like H.M.Seervai, Nani Palkhivala, Soli Sorabjee, Fali Nariman and retired Justice Hosbet Suresh of the Bombay High Court. Like them, we too are concerned and alarmed.

     We appeal to you to consider the opinion of the constitutional scholar, H.M.Seervai, that the Supreme Court of India should recall its order, admit the Special Leave Petition, and decide the Saamna case on merits. We have been given to understand that a precedent for such recall exists, and national interest demands it. Failure to do this would send out a dangerous signal to the country.

     We hope that the Supreme Court of India will live upto the supreme mandate given to it by the people of India: to uphold the rule of law in the country.

     Yours sincerely,

Hari P. Sharma
President, NRISAD
Non-Resident Indians for Secularism and Democracy
8027, Government Street
Burnaby, BC, V5A 2E1
Canada

 

Response 3 

The editors
‘Communalism Combat’
Bombay

     As desired by you, I got xerox copies of the appeal on inland letters. This will help like-minded people to post it to the Chief Justice of India without financial or other difficulty. Presently, about 50 copies have been posted. In the next phase, I intend to go to the extent of 1,000 copies.

Yours sincerely,
Dalit M.A. Saleem

Head, Department of Commerce
Tara Government
Degree College
Sangareddy—502001
Dist. Medak, Andhra Pradesh.

Follow Up of CC Cover Story, January 1995, Crime and Punishment


 

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