Supreme Court Of India Quotes

From the opinion of California Supreme Court Justice H. C. Murray: When Columbus first landed upon the shores of this continent… he imagined that he had accomplished the object of his expedition, and that the Island of San Salvador was one of those islands of the Chinese Sea lying near the extremity of India… Acting upon the hypothesis, he gave to the Islanders the name Indian. From that time…

The traditional reluctance in this country to confront the real nature of racism is once again illustrated by the manner in which the majority of American whites interpreted what the Kerner Commission had to say about white racism. It seems that they have taken the Kerner Report as a call merely to examine their individual attitudes. The examination of individual attitudes is, of course, an indispensable requirement if the influence of racism is to be neutralized, but it is neither the only nor the basic requirement. The Kerner Report took great pains to make a distinction between racist attitudes and racist behavior. In doing so, it was trying to point out that the fundamental problem lies in the racist behavior of American institutions toward Negroes, and that the behavior of these institutions is influenced more by overt racist actions of people than by their private attitudes. If so, then the basic requirement is for white Americans, while not ignoring the necessity for a revision of their private beliefs, to concentrate on actions that can lead to the ultimate democratization of American institutions. By focusing upon private attitudes alone, white Americans may come to rely on token individual gestures as a way of absolving themselves personally of racism, while ignoring the work that needs to be done within public institutions to eradicate social and economic problems and redistribute wealth and opportunity. I mean by this that there are many whites sitting around in drawing rooms and board rooms discussing their consciences and even donating a few dollars to honor the memory of Dr. King. But they are not prepared to fight politically for the kind of liberal Congress the country needs to eradicate some of the evils of racism, or for the massive programs needed for the social and economic reconstruction of the black and white poor, or for a revision of the tax structure whereby the real burden will be lifted from the shoulders of those who don't have it and placed on the shoulders of those who can afford it. Our time offers enough evidence to show that racism and intolerance are not unique American phenomena. The relationship between the upper and lower classes in India is in some ways more brutal than the operation of racism in America. And in Nigeria black tribes have recently been killing other black tribes in behalf of social and political privilege. But it is the nature of the society which determines whether such conflicts will last, whether racism and intolerance will remain as proper issues to be socially and politically organized. If the society is a just society, if it is one which places a premium on social justice and human rights, then racism and intolerance cannot survive —will, at least, be reduced to a minimum. While working with the NAACP some years ago to integrate the University of Texas, I was assailed with a battery of arguments as to why Negroes should not be let in. They would be raping white girls as soon as they came in; they were dirty and did not wash; they were dumb and could not learn; they were uncouth and ate with their fingers. These attitudes were not destroyed because the NAACP psychoanalyzed white students or held seminars to teach them about black people. They were destroyed because Thurgood Marshall got the Supreme Court to rule against and destroy the institution of segregated education. At that point, the private views of white students became irrelevant. So while there can be no argument that progress depends both on the revision of private attitudes and a change in institutions, the onus must be placed on institutional change. If the institutions of this society are altered to work for black people, to respond to their needs and legitimate aspirations, then it will ultimately be a matter of supreme indifference to them whether white people like them, or what white people whisper about them in the privacy of their drawing rooms.

The Seventh Central Pay Commission was appointed in February 2014 by the Government of India (Ministry of Finance) under the Chairmanship of Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur. The Commission has been given 18 months to make its recommendations. The terms of reference of the Commission are as follows:  1. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure including pay, allowances and other facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, having regard to rationalisation and simplification therein as well as the specialised needs of various departments, agencies and services, in respect of the following categories of employees:-  (i) Central Government employees—industrial and non-industrial; (ii) Personnel belonging to the All India Services; (iii) Personnel of the Union Territories; (iv) Officers and employees of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department; (v) Members of the regulatory bodies (excluding the RBI) set up under the Acts of Parliament; and (vi) Officers and employees of the Supreme Court.   2. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure, concessions and facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, as well as the retirement benefits of the personnel belonging to the Defence Forces, having regard to the historical and traditional parties, with due emphasis on the aspects unique to these personnel.   3. To work out the framework for an emoluments structure linked with the need to attract the most suitable talent to government service, promote efficiency, accountability and responsibility in the work culture, and foster excellence in the public governance system to respond to the complex challenges of modern administration and the rapid political, social, economic and technological changes, with due regard to expectations of stakeholders, and to recommend appropriate training and capacity building through a competency based framework.   4. To examine the existing schemes of payment of bonus, keeping in view, inter-alia, its bearing upon performance and productivity and make recommendations on the general principles, financial parameters and conditions for an appropriate incentive scheme to reward excellence in productivity, performance and integrity.   5. To review the variety of existing allowances presently available to employees in addition to pay and suggest their rationalisation and simplification with a view to ensuring that the pay structure is so designed as to take these into account.   6. To examine the principles which should govern the structure of pension and other retirement benefits, including revision of pension in the case of employees who have retired prior to the date of effect of these recommendations, keeping in view that retirement benefits of all Central Government employees appointed on and after 01.01.2004 are covered by the New Pension Scheme (NPS).   7. To make recommendations on the above, keeping in view:  (i) the economic conditions in the country and the need for fiscal prudence; (ii) the need to ensure that adequate resources are available for developmental expenditures and welfare measures; (iii) the likely impact of the recommendations on the finances of the state governments, which usually adopt the recommendations with some modifications; (iv) the prevailing emolument structure and retirement benefits available to employees of Central Public Sector Undertakings; and (v) the best global practices and their adaptability and relevance in Indian conditions.   8. To recommend the date of effect of its recommendations on all the above.

I as a Judge of the Supreme Court of America should not be emotional", said Chief Justice Earl Warren, "but I must confess that though I have travelled all over the globe but never was I moved more emotionally than by the speech of the learned Advocate General of -Uttar Pradesh Mr. K.L. Misra today". Sri Siddharth Shankar Ray, Advocate

q) Consultation with CVC or UPSC where necessary (r) Forward the inquiry report to the delinquent employee together with the reasons for disagreement, if any and the recommendations of the CVC where applicable - Rule 15(2) (s) Considering the response of the delinquent employee to the inquiry report and the reasons for disagreement and taking a view on the quantum of penalty or closure of the case. Rule 15(2)A (t) Pass final order in the matter – Rule 15(3) (u) On receipt of copy of the appeal from the penalized employee, prepare comments on the Appeal and forward the same to the Appellate Authority together with relevant records. - Rule 26(3) 9. What happens if any of the functions of the Disciplinary Authority has been performed by an authority subordinate to the disciplinary authority? Where a statutory function has been performed by an authority who has not been empowered to perfrom it, such action without jurisdiction would be rendered null and void. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in its Judgment dated 5 th September 2013, in Civil Appeal No. 7761 of 2013 (Union of India & Ors.Vsd. B V Gopinathan) has held that the statutory power under Rule 14(3) of the CCA rule has necessarily to be performed by the Disciplinary Authority. as under: “49. Although number of collateral issues had been raised by the learned counsel for the appellants as well the respondents, we deem it appropriate not to opine on the same in view of the conclusion that the charge sheet/charge memo having not been approved by the disciplinary authority was non est in the eye of law. ” 10. What knowledge is required for the efficient discharge of the duties in conducting disciplinary proceedings? Disciplinary Authority is required to be conversant with the following: � Constitutional provisions under Part III (Fundamental Rights) and Part XIV (Services Under the Union and the States) � Principles of Natural Justice 7

Robert Clive, one of the architects of British India, got married in St Mary’s Church. But that was much later. The very first marriage recorded in the register, on 4 November 1680, is that of Elihu Yale with Catherine Hynmer. Yale was the governor of the Fort from 1687 to 1692. It was during his tenure that the corporation for Madras and the post of the mayor were created, and the supreme court, which evolved over time into the present-day Madras high court, was set up. But despite an eventful stint, Yale was sacked because he used his position for private profit—he was engaged in an illegal diamond trade in Madras through an agent called Catherine Nicks. Yet he stayed on in Madras for seven more years, having packed off his wife to England. He lived in the same house with Mrs Nicks, fathering four children with her, and a Portuguese mistress called Hieronima de Paivia, who also bore him a son. He finally returned to London in 1699, an immensely wealthy man. As he busied himself spending the money he had made in India, a cash-starved school in the American colony of Connecticut requested him for a donation. The Yale family had lived in Connecticut for a long time before returning to England in 1652 when Elihu Yale was three years old. So when the college sought financial assistance, he shipped across nine bales of exquisite Indian textiles, 417 books and a portrait of King George I. The school kept the books and raised £562 from his other donations and, in gratitude, decided to rename itself after him. Thus was born Yale University, with the help of ill-gotten wealth amassed in Madras.

However, the legislature is supreme vis-à-vis the executive, which is accountable to it under Articles 75(2) and 164(2), and Parliament is supreme vis-à-vis the judiciary as it has the power to remove a judge of the higher judiciary through a resolution in both Houses supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and not less than two-thirds of the members of the House present and voting. It is also supreme in the sense that it has powers to decide the constitution, organisation, jurisdiction and powers of the Supreme Court and High Courts. (Article 246, Entries 77, 78 and 79 of List I.)

According to International Diabetes Foundation, diabetes had long moved from being “a rich man’s disease”. With diabetes now affecting all the segments of Indian population, India stands on the verge of becoming “the diabetes capital of the world” with around 61 million people affected by the disease and expecting to cross 100 million people by 2030. Given the scale of diabetes epidemic, the NPPA justified its price control orders. On hearing the above, all hell broke loose in the Indian Pharma. The Indian pharma industry reacted very aggressively to this decision. Both Indian and multinationals raised concerns that “India’s investment image” had gone to the dogs and that the industry would have to shut down if the same trend continues. The Indian pharma lobbies also filed in the Delhi and Bombay High Courts, and prayed for a stay order which they were not granted, as many Supreme Court judgments had earlier justified price controls on medicines in public interest Modi’s Government rescues India’s Investment Image Given the relentless Industry demands, the Modi government decided to clip the wings of NPPA which was supposedly an expert body of regulators and withdrew their powers to pass such orders in the future. The decision of Modi government to withdraw the powers of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to set price caps on drugs raises serious questions on the state’s commitment to the welfare of the poor. As a result, over 108 essential drugs will now lie outside the ambit of NPPA and its internal guidelines on regulation and control of drugs would cease to apply to them. According to the government, the reasoning for withdrawal of powers of NPPA and clipping of its wings was because “it lacked legality”. Interestingly, the Modi government has found that NPPA was not legally competent to pass price control orders after over 17 years of its creation and immediately after it passed orders that would restrain pharma companies from making super normal profits.

In March 1973 the government appointed a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. In the past, once a chief justice retired, the most senior member of the bench took his place. This time, Justice A. N. Ray was elevated while three colleagues were ahead of him. The choice was politically motivated, a manifestation of the government’s increasing desire to control the judiciary.

The U.S. legal system drew on Blumenbach’s definitions to decide who was eligible to become a naturalized citizen, a privilege the 1790 Naturalization Act restricted to “whites.” This schema created dilemmas. Blumenbach’s Caucasians included such groups as Armenians, Persians (Iranians), North Indians, Arabs, and some North Africans. In 1923, however, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the naturalization petition of an immigrant from North India, saying he was Caucasian but not white and citing, among other things, his skin color.

The first wave of immigrants from India...[arrived] in the first decade of the twentieth century. Initially, Indians were classified as 'Caucasians' and consequently were allowed to intermarry with US-born Whites. Because previous Supreme Court rulings had established that being Caucasian was synonymous with being White, a group of Asian Indians...pursued their right to become citizens but were denied because of their brown skin. In 1923, the case went to the Supreme Court—United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. The judges ruled that while Asian Indians were Caucasians (descended from the Caucasoid region of Eurasia), they could not be considered White and consequently were not eligible for US citizenship. This ruling made explicit the concept of skin color as a bar to becoming a citizen. As the court ruling stated, '...the intention of the Founding Fathers was to "confer the privilege of citizenship upon the class of persons they knew as white"'.

F.S. Nariman rightly found some similarity between the decision of the ADM Jabalpur and that of Dred Scott, rendered more than a century ago in 1857 by a 6:2 majority of the American Supreme Court. The majority in Dred Scott held that a black person could never be a citizen of the US. A strong criticism of this view by Abraham Lincoln got national attention and ultimately helped him win the presidential election, which changed history. In both the cases, powerful dissenting opinions brought about far-reaching changes in these two democracies.

The Supreme Court also held that the right to know is a facet of the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression of a voter under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. The Supreme

This was the first time that the Supreme Court equated the right to vote with the fundamental right of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution and further held that for a fair election in an open participatory democracy, proper information is a must for voters to make a meaningful choice.

Shah Bano, a sixty-two-year-old Muslim mother of five from Indore, had been divorced by her husband in 1978. She filed a criminal suit in the Supreme Court, in which she won the right to alimony from her husband. This was a landmark secular judgment in which the court decided that maintenance was payable even if it were in conflict with Muslim personal law—Sharia. India seemed to be moving towards a uniform civil code—one that did not distinguish between Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh.

From the opinion of California Supreme Court Justice H. C. Murray: When Columbus first landed upon the shores of this continent… he imagined that he had accomplished the object of his expedition, and that the Island of San Salvador was one of those islands of the Chinese Sea lying near the extremity of India… Acting upon the hypothesis, he gave to the Islanders the name Indian. From that time… The American Indian and the Mongolian or Asiatic, were regarded as the same type of human species. OLDER BROTHER Murray’s reasoning here is breathtaking in its twisted audacity. The legitimacy of categorizing “Asiatics” in such a way as to justify lumping them into the clause “Blacks and Indians” (in order to deny them the right to testify against Whites) is based on the subjective state of mind of a single man (Christopher Columbus) at a particular historical moment hundreds of years ago, who happened at that moment to be spectacularly and egregiously mistaken about where on the globe he had drifted into; thus a navigational misunderstanding of the world itself becomes the justification for a legally binding category.

Thus access to education, which was virtually impeded in T.M.A. Pai, was somewhat restored in view of three factors: (1) Article 15(5) of the Constitution, which was inserted by the 93rd Constitution Amendment Act; and (2) the RTE Act 2009 and (3) the Supreme Court judgment in Society for Unaided Private Schools, which upheld the RTE Act 2009.

When a citizen challenged a particular piece of legislation it was the duty of the Supreme Court to state whether the legislation was right or wrong. If the courts did not know what their function was, there would be dictatorship. While law was necessary for the upkeep of society, equally essential were courts to determine whether the legislature passed the law within the written word of the Constitution.4

Before August 5, 2019, the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over Jammu and Kashmir, now? And that too is being challenged within the same Supreme Court against the indian parliament decision in August 5. This is clear evidence that the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India on 3 points and Article 370 were both temporary, if 370 was temporary. Of course, the accession was also temporary. Jammu and Kashmir is still a disputed territory within the UN charter.

India’s Supreme Court banned the sale of blood in 1996.43 It has also banned untouchability. Both bans are equally flexibly interpreted and both banned activities flourish happily. In 2008, for example, police acting on a tip-off raided a series of squalid tin sheds near Gorakhpur, Madhya Pradesh, and found blood slaves.44 As Scott Carney reported in The Red Market, poor migrant men were kept in sheds by a local dairy farmer, Pappu Yadhav, and persistently bled to the point of death. Police found five sheds and freed seventeen men, who had been bled twice a week. Some had been imprisoned for two and a half years. Hemoglobin levels in a normal adult male should be 14 to 18 grams per deciliter of blood. The blood slaves had 4 grams.

Let me take you back in time a little,” says Anumita Roychowdhury, an elegant woman in a beige and pale blue wrap. She’s the director of the Center for Science and Environment, a group that’s played a leading role in the years of battles over air quality. In the 1990s, she tells me, Delhi’s air was so bad “you couldn’t go out in the city without your eyes watering.” India had no regulations on vehicles or fuel, so despite advances elsewhere in the world, engines here hadn’t improved for 40 years, and fuel quality was abysmal. It was the activist Supreme Court that changed that. Its judges started issuing orders, and from 1998 to about 2003, a series of important new rules came into force. Polluting industries were pushed out of the city, auto-rickshaws and buses were converted to CNG, and emission limits for vehicles were introduced, then tightened. “These were pretty big steps,” Roychowdhury says, and they brought results. “If you plot the graph of particulate matter in Delhi, you will see after 2002 the levels actually coming down.” The public noticed. “I still remember the 2004 Assembly elections in Delhi, where the political parties were actually fighting with each other to take credit for the cleaner air. It had become an electoral issue.” So how did things go so wrong? The burst of activity petered out, and rapid growth in car ownership erased the improvements that had been won. “If you look at the pollution levels again from 2008 and ’09 onwards, you now see a steady increase,” Roychowdhury says. “We could not keep the momentum going.” Indeed, particulate levels jumped 75 percent in just a few years.14 Even the action that was taken, she believes, “was too little. We had to do a lot more, more aggressively.” Part of the reason government stopped pushing, Roychowdhury believes, is that the moves needed next would have had to address Delhiites’ growing fondness for cars, so would surely have prompted public anger. “There is a hidden subsidy for all of us who use cars today,” she says. “We barely pay anything in terms of parking charges, we barely pay anything in terms of road taxes. It is so easy to buy a car because of easy loans. So there is absolutely no disincentive.” About 80 percent of transportation spending is focused on drivers, even though they’re only about 15 percent of Delhiites. “The entire infrastructure of the city is getting redesigned to facilitate car movement, but not people’s movement.

Under the Delhi Agreement of 1952, the state was given complete internal autonomy. The Delhi agreement was decided between Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and the Government of India, in the same agreement, Article 370 was brought into existence and it was included in the Indian Constitution. The creator of Marza Muhammad Afzal Begi was under Article 370, the state had its own separate flag, its own court, its own high court, its election commission, etc. But Khawaja Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq, late in 1964, to weaken Article 370 The positions of the Prime Minister and President of the state were changed to the positions of Chief Minister and Governor respectively Central laws were implemented Supreme Court of India and Election Commission of India's jurisdiction was extended up to the limits of Jammu and Kashmir!!!

Barbarism, thy name is Britain. In this day and age, if any societal structure is a revolting blot on the fabric of the democratic world, it's not Russia or North Korea, but the not-so-great Britain. The queen might have been a nice person, I don't know. But when a person is declared the supreme authority (head of state) of an entire people by birth, it's not something to take pride in, rather it's something to be ashamed of. Britain may mourn the death of the queen as a person, but no land deserves to be called civilized while mourning the death of a monarch. Let me put this into perspective. Almost every week a country celebrates independence from britain - if this doesn't tell you why the monarchy is the antithesis of everything that is civilized, nothing can. I wonder, they can throw a homeless man in jail for lifting a bread out of hunger, yet the empire walks free, even after raping, pillaging and looting from 90% of the world's countries! Where is the ICC (International Criminal Court) now, when one monarch after another sits on the throne, wielding the crown jewels encrusted with national treasures stolen from all over the globe!

it was not until 1937 that Justice Curdozo of the US Supreme Court formulated for the first time the concept of fundamental rights as a doctrine in Palko v. Connecticut and held that some rights are fundamental as they ‘represent the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty… principles of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be marked as fundamental’.

The Supreme Court found that there was an absence of a domestic law protecting the rights of women in working places and therefore the court, in the exercise of its power under Article 32, gave some guidelines and norms. In

The UPA government, instead of implementing the Supreme Court order—which would have been the defining indicator of its bona fides in retrieving the black money looted from the people of India— instead demanded a recall of the order. This establishes its complete mala fide, connivance and conspiracy, and confirms that it has no intention of taking any substantive steps to recover the black money stashed away abroad, or take any serious action to combat this grievous economic crime impoverishing our nation—the 21st century version of UPA imperialism. The nation should be informed that no investigation has taken place regarding the issues before it since the Supreme Court judgement, but the finance minister chose to conceal these extremely pertinent facts in his Paper. The White Paper coyly discussed the dimensions of black money stashed away abroad by quoting statistics that are more than a decade old, saying that these are being researched upon by three agencies whose report is expected in September 2012. From this it would appear that the government had no knowledge of the quantum of black money lying abroad. One wonders why the government presented the paper at this stage. Interestingly, the Paper officially disclosed a figure regarding Indian accounts held with Swiss banks, at around only US $213 billion (as against $88 billion projected by the International Monetary Fund, and $213.2 billion by GFI), down 60% between 2006 and 2010. A reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that black money holders, in anticipation of international and national public pressure (not governmental) transferred their money to other safe havens, the safest, it is said, being India. The last two years have seen several enabling statutes and mechanisms to stealthily repatriate the ill-gotten wealth back to India. I am also given to understand that there is evidence of a huge disparity between export figures, particularly of metals quoted by the government, and actual exports through data available from independent sources. The same applies to figures regarding FIIs. The game is clear. Use every government tool and instrument available to repatriate the money to India, without disclosure, culpability or punishment. There must be ways, and ways that we can never fathom or document, but the black money holders control legislation, either through being important politicians, or big businesses, who can buy safe passage, necessary loopholes and escape routes through statute or legislation. The finance minister through his negligence and active cooperation with the criminals allowed the stolen money to be removed from the accounts in which it was held and only a small fraction now remains, which too he is determined to place beyond the reach of the people of India who are its legitimate owners.

After the initial rebuff from the United States of America court of Judge John F. Keenan, the Union of India filed its proceedings at the district court in Bhopal in 1986, claiming $3.3 billion (approximately 50,000 cr.) One must assume that the claim was quantified after careful calculation and competent legal advice. Yet, without fighting the suit and without any transparency, the government, by negotiation, the facts of which even today are a complete secret, settled the claim of the unfortunate victims for a ludicrously low sum of $ 470 million, that is 2,400 cr (and this at 1986 rupee values.) In the interlocutory relief petition pending before the Supreme Court, this overall settlement for $470 million was recorded by consent of the parties, on 14 February 1989. The victims of Bhopal could not have been betrayed more inhumanly and cruelly.

This was an extraordinary exercise of judicial power, to say the least. Apart from the meager settlement of the civil claim, criminal proceedings arising out of the disaster, wherever they may be pending, would stand quashed. What was surprising was that five Supreme Court judges, the learned attorney general of India, others taking daily interest in the litigation, and the press, which gets terribly hot under the collar about lesser matters, did not object to this unusual settlement reeking of corruption. This settlement, agreed upon without consulting either the victims, the NGOs working for their welfare, or their well wishers has been characterized by Prof. Upen Baxi, India’s best scholar jurist, as an ‘unconscionable settlement’ by an unscrupulous Congress government.

The Sunday Guardian, in its issue of 22 August, 2010 stated, on the basis of credible information, that a settlement took place at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and that it was worked out by Warren Anderson and a personal friend and representative of the then prime minister of India. Under this unofficial settlement, the government wanted to be paid secretly, under the table. When Union Carbide officers raised serious doubts regarding the Supreme Court’s acceptance of this unfair and corrupt settlement, they were assured that the Supreme Court was not their worry. The negotiators would manage everything. And manage, they did. The entire manifestly illegal and corrupt settlement did go through the judicial filter. A somnolent Supreme Court permitted composition of non-compoundable offences and quashed proceedings without falling under the well settled rule of quashing jurisdiction. Surely, if there was an honest and real negotiated settlement between Union Carbide and the Indian government it would require large and complex correspondence evidencing genuine bargaining prior to the settlement being finalized. Such huge claims are not settled by a telephonic talk of which no record exists. It is worth recalling here an interesting faux pas that occurred in connection with the financial settlement of the Bhopal gas tragedy. When N.D. Tewari became external affairs minister, he went to the United States to plead with potential investors to come to India. The consul general of India was present at the meeting addressed by the minister. The minister innocently referred to the Bhopal gas tragedy and the inadequate compensation received from Union Carbide. A Union Carbide representative present in the audience, stood up and caused consternation by declaring in public that Union Carbide had paid almost everything that India had asked for, but a large part of the amount was paid as out of court settlement, ostensibly for the purposes of the Congress party. If the Indian government denies the truth of the story that some people in or connected with the government swallowed a big fortune, they must produce the documents which were exchanged during the pre-settlement negotiations and until their final termination. The government must produce them even now. The people of this country are entitled to know how a claim of $3.3 billion came to be settled for a paltry amount of $475 million. However, neither has the government given any explanation, nor has the story been refuted till today.

Throughout the decades after Independence, the political culture of the country reflected these ‘secular’ assumptions and attitudes. Though the Indian population was 80 per cent Hindu and the country had been partitioned as a result of a demand for a separate Muslim homeland, three of India’s eleven presidents were Muslims; so were innumerable governors, cabinet ministers, chief ministers of states, ambassadors, generals, and Supreme Court justices. During the war with Pakistan in 1971, when the Pakistani leadership was foolish enough to proclaim a jihad against the Hindu unbelievers, the Indian Air Force in the northern sector was commanded by a Muslim (Air Marshal, later Air Chief Marshal, I. H. Latif); the army commander was a Parsi (General, later Field Marshal, S. H. F. J. Manekshaw), the general officer commanding the forces that marched into Bangladesh was a Sikh (General J. S. Aurora), and the general flown in to negotiate the surrender of the Pakistani forces in East Bengal was Jewish (Major-General J. F. R. Jacob). They led the armed forces of an overwhelmingly Hindu country. That is India.

Unsurprisingly, the nation’s xenophobia has seeped into popular culture. Bollywood, long known for its extensive Muslim involvement across the entire industry, is being forced to toe the anti-Islam perspective. Many in Bollywood happily pushed the hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda, releasing films that openly celebrated the actions of the Indian armed forces. In a similar vein, the Israeli series Fauda, which features undercover Israeli agents in the West Bank, has been hugely popular among right-wing Indians, looking for a sugar hit of war on terror and anti-Islamist propaganda in a slickly produced format. During the May 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the right-wing economist Subramanian Swamy, who sits on the BJP national executive, tweeted that he loved Fauda.28 The post-9/11 “war on terror” suited both India and Israel in their plans to pacify their respective unwanted populations. To this end, Israel trained Indian forces in counterinsurgency. Following a 2014 agreement between Israel and India, pledging to cooperate on “public and homeland security,” countless Indian officers, special forces, pilots, and commandoes visited Israel for training. In 2020, Israel refused to screen Indian police officers to determine if they had committed any abuses in India. Israeli human rights advocate Eitay Mack and a range of other activists petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court in 2020 to demand that Israel stop training Indian police officers who “blind, murder, rape, torture and hide civilians in Kashmir.” The court rejected the request, and in the words of the three justices, “without detracting from the importance of the issue of human rights violations in Kashmir.

The Jihadis who bombed Coimbatore and killed 58 innocents have just been released in a vile display of appeasement. Here, I ask the Chief Justice of India: The very terrorists who you denied bail are roaming free. Why are you silent? Where is your power? Where is your justice?