The Supreme Court of In­dia did not even make a pre­tence to be truth­ful and fair. The re­cent or­der on con­tentious farm laws is found want­ing in many ar­eas dis­pelling the con­fi­dence of the peo­ple in the In­dian ju­di­ciary. De­spite its best ef­forts to cam­ou­flage and al­lay its in­ten­tions and the peo­ples’ right­ful“ per­cep­tion that the Supreme Court of In­dia is in league with the Naren­dra Modi gov­ern­ment, the three judges of the apex Court have failed in their judge­ment ad­ju­di­cat­ing the con­sti­tu­tional va­lid­ity of the three con­tentious farm laws which have seen an un­prece­dented peo­ples’ up­ris­ing pi­o­neered by the peo­ple and farm­ers of Pun­jab.

THE ED­I­TOR OF THE WORLD SIKH NEWS Jag­mo­han Singh tears through, para by para, the 11-page judge­ment de­liv­ered on 12 Jan­u­ary in an Open Let­ter to the Chief Jus­tice of In­dia Jus­tice Bobde. Please pa­tiently go through this line by line. The prob­lem is huge, the chal­lenge is life-threat­en­ing, the writ­ing can­not be short, even though we live in the midst of so­cial me­dia nar­ra­tives of lim­ited char­ac­ters and words.

Ho­n­ourable Jus­tice Bobde: Wa­he­guru Ji Ka Khalsa Wa­he­guru Ji Ki Fateh! Greet­ings from Pun­jab -the land of truth, re­silience, dis­sent and re­bel­lion, which has shaken the foun­da­tions of an anti-peo­ple gov­ern­ment in Delhi through the Kisan Mor­cha. The au­to­cratic gov­ern­ment of the day has had a field day with an un­in­ter­rupted sway over peo­ples’ lives, their rights, their cul­ture, their lan­guage, their food, their thoughts and as­pi­ra­tions for the last 7 years.  

The joi-de-vivre, in the most try­ing cir­cum­stances among the farm­ers of all ages, gen­ders -in­clud­ing trans­gen­ders, re­li­gions have made the pe­riph­ery of Delhi a pil­grim­age cen­tre. The buzz­word in Pun­jab nowa­days in chaste Pun­jabi is -Have you been to Delhi? –Delhi gaye ho? The peace­ful masses have con­se­crated the na­tional high­ways with prayer, de­vo­tion, self­less ser­vice, love, unity and ca­ma­raderie which is bound­less and be­yond the ca­pac­ity of any gov­ern­ment or court to com­pre­hend. 

The in­vin­ci­ble In­dian Prime Min­is­ter’s haugh­ti­ness and the dreams of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party to have a per­pet­ual ever­last­ing lead­er­ship of the coun­try has been ar­rested by noth­ing short of di­vine in­ter­ven­tion.  No per­son, no po­lit­i­cal leader, no farm leader or group can claim own­er­ship of this Grace of the Almighty to de­liver jus­tice and track down a dic­ta­tor. 

On this day of lib­er­a­tion -Maghi, Makkar Sankranti and Pon­gal -the day the farmer and the peo­ple lib­er­ate from work and ex­press joy, the Sikhs lib­er­ate from dis­obe­di­ence to the Guru and reded­i­cate them­selves to the Sikh way of life, a life of self­less Sewa and sac­ri­fice, I write this open let­ter to you and your com­pan­ion judges Jus­tice A. S. Bopanna and Jus­tice Ra­ma­sub­ramn­ian to shout out my dis­gust and dis­trust of the mean­ing­less play­ing to the gallery dur­ing the ver­bal ex­changes in court, which was seen as op­pro­brium of the Union gov­ern­ment over the farm laws, but ac­tu­ally in writ­ing and in in­tent noth­ing has been de­liv­ered. 

In this let­ter, Sires, I scan through every word that you have men­tioned and let you know how ob­fus­ca­tion of facts and ma­l­in­tent are key fea­tures of your judge­ment on the farm laws. 

At the very out­set, the plethora of pe­ti­tions to the Supreme Court, rep­re­sented by a bat­tery of lawyers -names run­ning into three pages of the judge­ment, were meant to ques­tion the con­sti­tu­tional va­lid­ity of the three con­tentious farm laws out­rightly re­jected by 40 Farmer unions in­clud­ing the 32 Farmer unions from the Pun­jab, who started the protest with the ‘Delhi Chalo’ march on 25 No­vem­ber 2020.

Af­ter de­lay­ing the mat­ter for more than four weeks, while farm­ers were dy­ing at the peace­ful protest on the out­skirts of Delhi, you ended up only stay­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Farm laws and set­ting up a com­mit­tee of rene­gades of the Farm­ers move­ment in the coun­try –men who are staunch sup­port­ers of the law as well as the Modi dis­pen­sa­tion. 

The third para of the judge­ment lists the pe­ti­tions. It says, “One  cat­e­gory   of   pe­ti­tions  chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tional va­lid­ity of the farm laws. In­cluded within this cat­e­gory of pe­ti­tions, is a pe­ti­tion un­der Ar­ti­cle 32 chal­leng­ing the va­lid­ity of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Third Amend­ment) Act, 1954, by which En­try 33 was sub­sti­tuted in List III (con­cur­rent list) in the Sev­enth Sched­ule of the Con­sti­tu­tion, en­abling the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment also to leg­is­late on a sub­ject which was oth­er­wise in the State List.” 

Even though there is no rea­son what­so­ever for the Supreme Court to not to re­peal the 3 farm laws on its own, I fail to un­der­stand as to why the Supreme Court of In­dia has not set aside the con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment of 1954 which bla­tantly pro­vides for the in­ter­ven­tion of the Union gov­ern­ment in the sub­jects on the State list by putting them into the Con­cur­rent list.  This per se is un­con­sti­tu­tional. The whole prob­lem could be sim­ply set aside leav­ing states to de­cide what is good and bad for their farm­ers and pop­u­la­tion!

This tool of swing­ing be­tween State lists, Union lists and Con­cur­rent lists, to suit the gov­ern­ments of the day has been the tool for many a po­lit­i­cal mis­chief and machi­na­tion by many gov­ern­ments over the years.  The Supreme Court had the golden op­por­tu­nity to undo this. Alas!

Courts and jour­nal­ists look at the op­er­a­tive part of any judge­ment to re­port and un­der­stand the in­tent of the judges. The last para of your judge­ment reads and I quote, 

“While we may not sti­fle a peace­ful protest, we think that this ex­tra­or­di­nary or­der of stay of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the farm laws will be per­ceived as an achieve­ment of the pur­pose of such protest at least for the pre­sent and will en­cour­age the farm­ers bod­ies to con­vince their mem­bers to get back to their liveli­hood, both in or­der to pro­tect their own lives and health and in or­der to pro­tect the lives and prop­er­ties of oth­ers.”

This is pon­tif­i­ca­tion at its worst. You say that you do not want to sti­fle a peace­ful protest, but your words man­i­fest your in­tent to scut­tle it. You and your com­pan­ion judges may not have the time to glance through so­cial me­dia nar­ra­tives of the young and old, of men, women and even chil­dren, kids and tod­dlers who are de­ter­mined to stick to their guns notwith­stand­ing deaths and trou­bles on the high­ways en­cir­cling Delhi. 

You have not ap­pre­ci­ated the his­tory of the Sikhs who do not fear death, they ac­tu­ally em­brace death and it is this that has brought thou­sands to Delhi fight­ing for their rights. The ra­tio­nal mind, un­mind­ful of the Chardikala spirit of the Sikhs can­not eas­ily fathom this. 

To the el­derly from Haryana, Ra­jasthan, West­ern Ut­tar Pradesh, and Ut­taran­chal, Pran Jaye Par Vachan Na Jaye -The promise is more im­por­tant than life -and self-re­spect is para­mount and they are liv­ing up to this and also im­bib­ing the Chardikala -Al­ways As­cen­dant spirit of the Sikhs, whom they now lov­ingly and re­spect­fully call their el­der brethren. 

Your sug­ges­tion to the Farmer or­gan­i­sa­tions to send their el­derly, women and chil­dren is also be­ing seen as a ploy to cre­ate a vac­uum en­abling the gov­ern­ment to let po­lice and para­mil­i­tary forces to at­tack them from their protest cen­tres, even if it means blood­shed.  This is the nadir to which the rep­u­ta­tion of the In­dian ju­di­ciary has plunged to.

You have hinted that “in or­der to pro­tect the lives and prop­er­ties of oth­ers” What is the mean­ing of this? Are you not ques­tion­ing the in­tegrity of the pro­tes­tors and the Farmer lead­ers?

Sires, please look at it this way. Dur­ing the first day of the hear­ing, you told the gov­ern­ment “What is this ego that you can­not hold the laws?” To this In­di­a’s At­tor­ney Gen­eral K. K. Venu­gopal said, Do not hold the laws.  He was spelling out the di­rec­tion and ego of the Naren­dra Modi gov­ern­ment. The gov­ern­ment has such a big ego that it can­not roll back hugely mis­taken laws, framed with malafide in­ten­tions, with­out con­sul­ta­tion and with a voice vote in Ra­jya Sabha. 

Are the dy­ing farm­ers com­mit­ting sui­cides for the last decade and more not en­ti­tled to their self-re­spect?

The bat­tle is be­tween the self-re­spect of farm­ers and the ego of a fas­cist gov­ern­ment. As farm­ers leader Rakesh Tikat, son of the il­lus­tri­ous farm­ers’ leader Ma­hen­dra Singh Tikait suc­cinctly put it, Bill Wapsi toh Ghar Wapsi -roll back laws and we go home. No more. No less. There are no short-cuts, the ear­lier the state re­alises this the bet­ter.

In your re­marks in court on the first day of the hear­ing, you were con­cerned about blood­shed and re­marked that “all of us will be re­spon­si­ble if there is blood­shed. We do not want blood on our hands.” Sires, the hands of this gov­ern­ment are soaked in the blood of the farm­ers, the poor, the strug­gling mi­nori­ties, re­gional iden­ti­ties, women as­saulted by those who con­sider the Dalit women as chat­tel and kids who die in hos­pi­tals of Ut­tar Pradesh, while doc­tors who were pre­vent­ing deaths are im­pris­oned. 

Un­for­tu­nately, the Supreme Court of In­dia which re­acts with un­be­liev­able alacrity when it has to ad­ju­di­cate cases of the rich, the fa­mous and the con­nected, does not have eyes to see this hap­pen­ing. 

The Supreme Court in its wis­dom has the au­thor­ity to set aside and an­nul any law which is ul­tra vires the con­sti­tu­tion or in which due process has not been fol­lowed or which is patently anti-peo­ple. Nev­er­the­less, you have been push­ing a lot for a Com­mit­tee of ex­perts. So be it, but!

The pri­mary need for any ne­go­ti­a­tion process and dis­pute ar­bi­tra­tion process is to have in­ter­locu­tors and in­ter­venors who in­spire the con­fi­dence of the con­test­ing par­ties in a dis­pute. As the farm­ers’ bod­ies vir­tu­ally boy­cotted the Supreme Court pro­ceed­ings, it was the bur­den of the judges to form a com­mit­tee of neu­tral spe­cial­ists. 

Sires, look at what you have done! You have formed a four-mem­ber com­mit­tee of rene­gades of the farm­ers’ rights move­ment. Four pan­el­lists -two Union lead­ers and two the­o­rists and econ­o­mists, who have openly ex­pressed sup­port of the dis­puted laws and ad­mi­ra­tion for the Modi gov­ern­ment. It is not only un­der­stand­able but wise that the Kissan Ekta Mor­cha has de­cided not to pre­sent it­self di­rectly or through a coun­sel to this com­mit­tee which will only fur­ther con­found mat­ters.  This part of the or­der is ir­rel­e­vant and un­ac­cept­able, ab ini­tio.

Your judge­ment reads that “A Com­mit­tee com­pris­ing of  (1) Shri Bhupin­der Singh Mann, Na­tional Pres­i­dent, Bhar­tiya Kisan Union and All In­dia Kisan Co­or­di­na­tion Com­mit­tee; (2) Dr. Par­mod Ku­mar Joshi, Agri­cul­tural Econ­o­mist, Di­rec­tor for South Asia, In­ter­na­tional Food Pol­icy Re­search In­sti­tute; (3) Shri Ashok Gu­lati, Agri­cul­tural Econ­o­mist and For­mer Chair­man of the Com­mis­sion for Agri­cul­tural Costs and Prices; and (4) Shri Anil Ghan­wat, Pres­i­dent, Shetkari Sang­hatana, is con­sti­tuted for the pur­pose of lis­ten­ing to the griev­ances of the farm­ers re­lat­ing to the farm laws and the views of the Gov­ern­ment and to make rec­om­men­da­tions. 

The griev­ing farm­ers do not trust any of these gen­tle­men! 

Your or­der fur­ther says that “The rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all the farm­ers’ bod­ies, whether they are hold­ing a protest or not and whether they sup­port or op­pose the laws shall par­tic­i­pate in the de­lib­er­a­tions of the Com­mit­tee and put forth their view­points”. 

Sires, Is this an or­der or a re­quest or a veiled threat? The Kisan Ekta Mor­cha had an­nounced the boy­cott of any such Com­mit­tee even prior to the pre­sent Supreme Court or­der. The an­nounce­ment of the Panel has even made it worse, even for the Supreme Court. Farmer or­gan­i­sa­tions will boy­cott this typ­i­cal tell-tale woe-nar­ra­tion de­lay­ing tac­tic lead­ing to noth­ing. Will the Supreme Court take ac­tion against them for not ac­cept­ing this part of the or­der?  These lines of the judge­ment have se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions.  I mean, how is it that the Supreme Court of In­dia did not make an ef­fort to even be seen as truth­ful?

You have also di­rected that “The Com­mit­tee shall, upon hear­ing the Gov­ern­ment as well as the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the farm­ers’ bod­ies, and other stake­hold­ers, sub­mit a re­port be­fore this Court con­tain­ing its rec­om­men­da­tions. This shall be done within two months from the date of its first sit­ting. The first sit­ting shall be held within ten days from to­day.” 

Sires, will there be de­lays as it nor­mally hap­pens with gov­ern­ment and ju­di­cial com­mit­tees? What hap­pens if the gov­ern­ment does not pro­vide or de­lays the nec­es­sary fa­cil­i­ties for this Com­mit­tee as it has hap­pened in many cases ear­lier on? 

Also, will the Supreme Court of In­dia ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tions in favour of or against farm­ers? What will be the im­pact on the Farm­ers Mor­cha if the rec­om­men­da­tions are pro-gov­ern­ment as is sus­pected by all and sundry in this cli­mate of trust deficit that pre­vails be­tween the peo­ple and the ju­di­ciary and be­tween the farm­ers and the gov­ern­ment?

When was the last time that the Supreme Court or any of the State High Courts took up the case of Farmer sui­cides in the coun­try, ad­mon­ished the state gov­ern­ments and awarded ex­em­plary com­pen­sa­tion to the fam­i­lies of the de­ceased? The gov­ern­ment of In­dia and the state gov­ern­ments have ei­ther stopped count­ing or have started list­ing the deaths in a dif­fer­ent cat­e­gory to fudge num­bers? 

Is this blood not on the hands of the In­dian state, ju­di­ciary and the ex­ec­u­tive?  Can the judges and lead­ers look into the eyes of the chil­dren of the de­ceased farm­ers and oth­ers who com­mit sui­cide un­der duress and say, “trust us, we will do jus­tice as we are con­cerned about you!”  Can any hu­man be­ing do that and in­hu­manly sup­press com­pas­sion and em­pa­thy?

A visit to the houses of farm­ers in Pun­jab, Ma­ha­rash­tra, Andhra Pradesh, Kar­nataka and Tamil Nadu will bring tears to the most stone-hearted in­di­vid­ual. How­ever, it is gen­er­ally be­lieved that those in power are de­void of com­pas­sion. 

Had they and even the Supreme Court of In­dia been re­spect­ing and ho­n­our­ing the right to life, the pain and an­guish of thou­sands of farm­ers liv­ing on the roads in icy cold weather for the last 50 days could be ap­pre­ci­ated. I re­ally want to know from you as to how you would feel when the Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try tweets con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the pas­sen­gers who died in the In­done­sian plane crash but fails to even re­luc­tantly mur­mur a groan for the farm­ers who are dy­ing just a few kilo­me­tres from where he lives. If the protest­ing women wail and burn ef­fi­gies of the Prime Min­is­ter they right­fully do so only as an ex­pres­sion of anger to­wards such crass in­hu­man ap­proach.  

Does the Prime Min­is­ter like his staunch ad­mirer -the stu­pid film lady Kan­gana Ra­naut in her mis­taken no­tion of ar­ro­gant na­tion­al­ism, be­lieve that they are pro­fes­sional mourn­ers hired for Rs. 100 a day? 

The only prob­lem is that the pil­lars of the state, in a state of high ar­ro­gance, have started keep­ing aloof from such facts and now the main­stream me­dia ei­ther un­der re­ports such deaths or sim­ply kills such re­ports. 

In 2016, the Na­tional Crime Records Bu­reau re­leased a re­port which read that in that year the av­er­age num­ber of farmer sui­cides were 31 every day in In­dia. My con­science hurts me when I type these lines. We have all be­come zom­bies who do not re­act to the may­hem that the sui­cide pan­demic has been caus­ing since long. I am not men­tion­ing the num­bers of those who die due to mal­nu­tri­tion caused by bad poli­cies and zero im­ple­men­ta­tion of some so­cial wel­fare schemes.  When will we have a vac­cine for all of this?

Your judge­ment reads, “Laud­ably,  the farm­ers have so far car­ried on the ag­i­ta­tion peace­fully and with­out any un­to­ward in­ci­dent. But it was pointed out in the course of hear­ing that a few per­sons who are not farm­ers have also joined, with a view to show sol­i­dar­ity with the farm­ers. An ap­pre­hen­sion was ex­pressed that the pos­si­bil­ity of some per­sons cre­at­ing trou­ble can­not be en­tirely ruled out. In fact, a spe­cific aver­ment is made in an in­ter­ven­tion ap­pli­ca­tion filed by one In­dian Kisan Union, in I.A. No.3324/​2021 in W.P.(C) No.1441/​2020 that an or­gan­i­sa­tion by name “Sikhs for Jus­tice”, which is banned for anti-In­dia se­ces­sion­ist move­ment is fi­nanc­ing the ag­i­ta­tion. This aver­ment is sup­ported by the learned At­tor­ney Gen­eral also.”

Clearly, your praise is a re­luc­tant one with a pro­viso and a de­ter­rence clause. Still, it is the par­tial suc­cess of this huge peo­ples’ move­ment. Mer­ci­fully, so far, the Supreme Court of In­dia has not is­sued any di­rec­tions to the State chal­leng­ing the rights of the peo­ple to protest on streets as was done in the case of the Sha­heen Bagh Mor­cha. 

Who is the In­dian Kisan Union? The very nomen­cla­ture is sus­pect. Who has seen the Sikhs for Jus­tice ac­tivists in the Farm­ers Mor­cha? Where? How many peo­ple? What were they do­ing? When? Notwith­stand­ing the brag­gado­cio of the SFJ on so­cial me­dia, on what ba­sis has At­tor­ney Gen­eral K. K. Venu­gopal af­firmed the fear of likely vi­o­lence? 

On the first day of the hear­ing, the ar­gu­ment of se­nior coun­sel Har­ish Salve wor­ry­ing about the gov­ern­ment los­ing face if the apex court stayed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of these farm laws was sim­ply laugh­able. The gov­ern­ment of In­dia and its leader Naren­dra Modi has al­ready lost the un­nat­ural shine that dom­i­nated his per­son­al­ity and clothes. 

Let us read about the panic-stricken lies of the gov­ern­ment of In­dia and its pet me­dia re­gard­ing unso­cial el­e­ments hav­ing en­tered the farm­ers’ ag­i­ta­tion. When the ag­i­ta­tion be­gan, all farm­ers were anti-so­cial el­e­ments. As it con­tin­ued, fol­low­ing the true tra­di­tions of the Sikh way of life dis­play­ing ex­em­plary pa­tience, per­se­ver­ance and peace­ful work­ing, which was so amaz­ingly lapped by all oth­ers with re­spect, awe and a re­newed sense of long-lost broth­er­hood.

I re­quest you and your com­pan­ion judges to spend some time on the re­mark­able cov­er­age of free­lance web jour­nal­ist Ajit An­jum, who has chron­i­cled the Farm­ers Mor­cha from day one in a truth­ful and un­bi­ased man­ner. 

The gov­ern­ment and the me­dia changed tack and started look­ing for scape­goats. A sec­tion of the me­dia was used to ma­lign the in­ter­na­tional aid agency -Khalsa Aid, only be­cause the pi­o­neer of the or­gan­i­sa­tion Ravi Singh has a po­lit­i­cal opin­ion about the rights of the farm­ers in par­tic­u­lar and the Sikh rights in gen­eral. When that back­fired then they started search­ing for other scape­goats and your judge­ment al­ludes to the Sikhs for Jus­tice. 

World wide, the Pun­jabi Di­as­pora has en­sured that the Farm­ers rights move­ment re­ver­ber­ates in the cor­ri­dors of power if their re­spec­tive coun­tries and the in­ter­na­tional me­dia takes no­tice of the good­ness of the farm­ers, the ubiq­ui­tous Guru-ka-Lan­gar and a va­ri­ety of hu­man­i­tar­ian ser­vices,  in one of the biggest peace­ful ag­i­ta­tions in con­tem­po­rary his­tory. 

It will be in­ter­est­ing to see what more lies this gov­ern­ment cooks up when it takes up the se­cu­rity ques­tion on 18 Jan­u­ary 2021 with re­spect to the Trac­tors Pa­rade into Delhi on 26 Jan­u­ary?

As re­gards the pro­posed Trac­tor March,  Del­hites must have a live feel and taste of what farm­ers look like and what are the dif­fer­ent types of trac­tors and trol­leys -the life­line of the farm­ers and the tem­po­rary abode since the last eight weeks on the Singhu, Tikri, Gazipur, Shah­ja­han­pur and Pal­wal bor­ders.   They must wit­ness and leave mem­o­ries for their pos­ter­ity. De­spite the om­nipres­ence of the farm­ers in the so­cial me­dia, ur­ban In­dia has still to wake up to the stark re­al­i­ties of farm­ers and the poor­est of the poor land­less small farm-hand. Of course, there are ex­cep­tions. 

Lead­ing agri­cul­tural jour­nal­ist and com­men­ta­tor -P. Sainath, en­dors­ing the 26 Jan­u­ary march into Delhi clas­si­cally la­belled it as “the farm­ers re­claim­ing the re­pub­lic.” 

Un­doubt­edly and un­ques­tion­ably, the farm­ers will main­tain strict dis­ci­pline and deco­rum as ex­em­pli­fied in their dress re­hearsal trial on 8 Jan­u­ary when thou­sands of trac­tors in all shapes and sizes, dri­ven by men and women in tra­di­tional dresses of the re­gions they hail from, drove in uni­son from the Singhu bor­der, Gazipur bor­der, Pal­wal bor­der to the Tikri bor­der and back. Still, it is also the duty of the Delhi po­lice and the gov­ern­ments of Delhi and the Union gov­ern­ment to en­sure that no un­to­ward in­ci­dent takes place rather than later com­ing with the re­tort, “we told you so.” 

In the con­clud­ing paras, the Supreme Court judge­ment of the 3-bench judge led by you reads, “There­fore, we are of the view that the con­sti­tu­tion of a Com­mit­tee of ex­perts in the field of agri­cul­ture to ne­go­ti­ate be­tween the farm­ers’ bod­ies and the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia may cre­ate a con­ge­nial at­mos­phere and im­prove the trust and con­fi­dence of the farm­ers. We are also of the view that a stay of im­ple­men­ta­tion of all the three farm laws for the pre­sent, may as­suage the hurt feel­ings of the farm­ers and en­cour­age them to come to the ne­go­ti­at­ing table with con­fi­dence and good faith.”

The Kisan Ekta Mor­cha has par­tic­i­pated in 9 meet­ings in a con­ge­nial at­mos­phere, eat­ing their own food so as to not to bur­den the ex­che­quer and reaf­firm­ing their sim­plic­ity as sons of the soil.  The con­sti­tu­tion of a Com­mit­tee of ex­perts by the Supreme Court of In­dia ap­pears like a fa­cade to en­able the gov­ern­ment to strate­gize its next move. 

The Com­mit­tees formed by the Supreme Court in so many is­sues and their re­ports are gath­er­ing dust. For the farm­ers, the wa­ter shar­ing dis­pute be­tween Pun­jab which has Ri­par­ian rights with Haryana, Ra­jasthan and Delhi is hang­ing fire in the Supreme Court for decades! The in­ter­ven­tion in the courts and by the gov­ern­ment has seen many a sin­is­ter turn. How and when TADA and POTA were struck down by the Supreme Court is not for­got­ten by hu­man rights de­fend­ers and vic­tim fam­i­lies of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in the Pun­jab and In­dia where this leg­is­la­tion led to ha­rass­ment, de­ten­tion and ar­rests of thou­sands. 

We have had a very bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence since 1975. The si­lence of the Supreme Court of In­dia on many vi­o­la­tions of hu­man rights since June 1984 and which con­tin­ues till to­day. But for the role of Peo­ple’s Com­mis­sions, it would have been well-nigh im­pos­si­ble to get pe­cu­niary jus­tice for the vic­tims of the geno­ci­dal at­tacks of No­vem­ber 1984 in Delhi, Kan­pur and scores of other cities in In­dia.  

The se­lec­tive suo-moto ap­proach of the Supreme Court did not come to the res­cue of the per­pe­tra­tors of may­hem in the cap­i­tal of Delhi less than a year ago when mob­sters as­saulted and killed Mus­lim men, women and chil­dren. The list is ag­o­niz­ingly long. 

Man­age­ment ex­pert C. North­cote Parkin­son says and this is taught in man­age­ment schools, “Com­mit­tees do not achieve any­thing.” Gov­ern­ment tri­bunals and com­mit­tees barely achieve much as we know from ex­pe­ri­ence. The bi­ased work­ing and re­sults of the Iradi Tri­bunal formed to go into the wa­ter-shar­ing dis­putes be­tween Pun­jab and neigh­bour­ing states wors­ened the sit­u­a­tion in­stead of en­abling a res­o­lu­tion of the prob­lem. 

The for­ma­tion of com­mit­tees is re­lin­quish­ing the duty of the ju­di­ciary by it­self to up­hold the vires of a leg­is­la­tion or any act of omis­sion and com­mis­sion by the gov­ern­ment. In the con­text of the farm­ers, the non-im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Swami­nathan Com­mis­sion re­port is enough to put off farm­ers and cit­i­zens from any of­fi­cial Com­mit­tees, Com­mis­sions and Tri­bunals.

You have rightly re­butted the ar­gu­ment of the In­dian gov­ern­ment coun­sel who con­tended that the Supreme Court does not have the au­thor­ity to stay a judge­ment cit­ing var­i­ous pre­vi­ous judge­ments, but you could have gone one step ahead and held the laws void and ul­tra vires the Con­sti­tu­tion. There are enough prece­dents for that too. 

In the last 7 weeks, while the ju­nior lead­er­ship of the gov­ern­ment of In­dia was talk­ing to the con­stituents of the Kisan Ekta Mor­cha, they were also en­gaged in a par­al­lel sin­is­ter move to counter the protest­ing farm­ers, the gov­ern­ment in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter was talk­ing to pseudo-farmer or­gan­i­sa­tions, the like of which have pe­ti­tioned you wel­com­ing the farm laws or agreed to ap­pear be­fore the Supreme Court-ap­pointed com­mit­tee or who are wor­ried about their fruit pro­duce.  

You have or­dered that “the Min­i­mum Sup­port Price Sys­tem in ex­is­tence be­fore the en­act­ment of the Farm Laws shall be main­tained un­til fur­ther or­ders. In ad­di­tion, the farm­ers’ land­hold­ings shall be pro­tected, i.e., no farmer shall be dis­pos­sessed or de­prived of his ti­tle as a re­sult of any ac­tion taken un­der the Farm Laws.” 

How­ever, the Supreme Court is silent on the de­mand by the Farm­ers Mor­cha for mak­ing these pro­vi­sions le­gal so that the erring state gov­ern­ments are pe­nalised for non-im­ple­men­ta­tion of the gov­ern­ments’ MSP scheme, lead­ing to full and com­plete im­ple­men­ta­tion of the MSP sys­tem for 23 farm prod­ucts.  An un­der­stand­ing of the cur­rently pre­vail­ing MSP schemata will nail the lies of the state gov­ern­ments and the Union gov­ern­ment. 

Sires, one af­ter the other, this gov­ern­ment is not only killing in­sti­tu­tions but be­cause of its brute ma­jor­ity is run­ning roughshod of all dis­sent­ing pub­lic opin­ion and the points of view of Op­po­si­tion par­ties on sub­stan­tive is­sues. Call­ing this stub­born is an un­der­state­ment. 

Sig­nif­i­cantly, on the so­cial me­dia front, the BJP’s Lies and Hate Brigade, hid­den from pub­lic glare but ac­tive 24x7x365 has got its match. The so­cial me­dia ac­tivism of the Kisan Ekta Mor­cha and many other Pun­jab jour­nals, on­line por­tals, video jour­nal­ists, artists, child-artistes, painters, singers, video­g­ra­phers and film­mak­ers are giv­ing them a run for their money. 

Notwith­stand­ing the stoic and con­spir­a­to­r­ial si­lence of a ma­jor­ity of Bol­ly­wood cin­ema ac­tors, the ones who have protested or joined the protest, the hun­dreds of Pun­jabi ac­tors, singers, so­cial ac­tivists, hu­man­i­tar­ian aid agen­cies and the like have placed the truth which only the blind can miss. 

Pun­jabi singers, sports­men, ac­tors, vice-chan­cel­lors, writ­ers and ex-ser­vice­men who re­turned their awards have taken the bat­tle straight into the camp of the BJP who have hereto­fore spe­cialised in trad­ing lies and ha­tred across the coun­try, South Asia and the world and who are still par­rot­ing that only a small sec­tion of farm­ers com­prise the protest.  

For­mer Pres­i­dent of In­dia Pranab Mukher­jee in his mem­oirs The Coali­tion Years has nar­rated an in­ci­dent of No­vem­ber 1978. He says that “I re­mem­ber we had gone to Lon­don in No­vem­ber 1978, af­ter the de­feat of the Con­gress in the post-Emer­gency elec­tions in 1977. A large num­ber of me­dia per­sons in a fairly ag­gres­sive mood were wait­ing for Ms Gandhi at the Heathrow Air­port lounge. The first ques­tion that was flung at her was, ‘What have been your gains from the Emer­gency?’ Look­ing at the jour­nal­ist squarely in the eye, she replied in a level voice, “In those 21 months, we com­pre­hen­sively man­aged to alien­ate all sec­tions of the In­dian peo­ple.” Pranab Mukher­jee added a com­ment, “Self-cor­rec­tion in such sit­u­a­tions is al­ways bet­ter than self-jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

For In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Modi who is shy to ad­dress and an­swer jour­nal­ists and who trades al­ter­na­tive facts at the drop of a hat, this is dif­fi­cult.  Still, soon some­day, sooner than later, he will also have to ac­cept this in the same way as In­dira Gandhi did.  All despots have to. He has al­ready joined the ranks of ‘de­mo­c­ra­tic-au­to­crats’ of his­tory. The Supreme Court can sal­vage some of the ig­no­minies to the In­dian Prime Min­is­ter, by re­peal­ing the laws with­out any de­lay.

A suo-moto hear­ing in the first week of the Farm­ers Mor­cha is­sues lead­ing to the an­nul­ment of the farm laws could have saved close to 70 lives al­ready lost and the both­er­a­tion to pro­tect the pro­tes­tors that seem to be wor­ry­ing you. This is blood al­ready on the hands of the state, the ju­di­ciary, the ex­ec­u­tive, the Bharatiya Janata Party, their sup­port­ers and the teem­ing silent mil­lions of this coun­try. 

The gov­ern­ment of In­dia is per­haps wait­ing for some mis­take to hap­pen. I hope and pray that this di­vine mis­sion and move­ment will con­clude with vic­tory for the farm­ers and we see on the anvil the be­gin­ning of the end of a despotic rule. No tear or death shall be in vain. 

The par­lia­ment of In­dia let down the farm­ers. The Pres­i­dent of In­dia ig­nored the farm­ers and signed the dis­puted bills into law.

The Prime Min­is­ter, en­thused with the unau­dited con­tri­bu­tions to the PM Care Fund and the elec­tion kitty of the Bharatiya Janata Party from ques­tion­able sources and the haste to “elim­i­nate poverty” through hand­ful cho­sen crafty mega busi­ness houses, con­tin­ues to harp on mis­con­ceived ben­e­fits of the farm bills, par­tic­u­larly through his tele­vised speeches and au­dio pod­casts, which is be­ing com­pul­sory thrust on the un­sus­pect­ing chil­dren in schools and on prime-time tele­vi­sion and his ad­dresses to pseudo-farm­ers every­where else ex­cept where the farm­ers are. 

The In­dian Prime Min­is­ter’s friend US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has been legally im­peached through bi­par­ti­san votes. Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi is on that route and what­ever the Supreme Court does, it will not be able to pre­vent that hap­pen­ing sooner than later. 

The In­dian ju­di­ciary is un­der the strict glare and watch of the farm­ers and the cit­i­zens at large. The pre­sent judge­ment un­der re­view does not help you or the in­sti­tu­tion you rep­re­sent. The judge­ment is quar­ter-baked, not even half-baked and the link­age with the gov­ern­ment highly sus­pect.  Cae­sar’s wife has to be above sus­pi­cion. 

The Supreme Court of In­dia will have to come out of the shades of the de­gen­er­ated Ba­nana Re­pub­lic of In­dia.  

The ball is in your court. Please play a fair, un­ba­iased and im­par­tial game.

Yours truly

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, The World Sikh News