Measure for measure: On India's courts and criticism

📌 Summary:

• Context: Recent observations by Supreme Court Benches have created the appearance of a judiciary increasingly intolerant of external scrutiny and criticism

• Core argument: While punishing contempt is the courts' prerogative, the judiciary has failed to draw consistent lines between contemptuous attacks and constitutionally protected criticism by journalists, lawyers, activists and scholars

• Why this is happening (causal chain): the judiciary faces misinformation, political pressure, abusive online discourse and declining public trust, while its means of responding are limited -> judges sometimes resort to rhetorical excess in oral observations -> such excess gets confused with legal doctrine and produces a chilling effect on legitimate criticism

• Specific instances cited: CJI Surya Kant described certain actors in the legal ecosystem as "parasites" and young lawyers engaged in RTI-based activism as "cockroaches" (he later said the remarks targeted those with bogus degrees); in the NCERT textbook controversy three academics were effectively excluded from public-school curriculum work without a prior hearing; in the Ali Khan Mahmudabad matter the Court granted relief from coercive action but imposed a gag order and urged the state to decline prosecution

• Causal harm: when a CJI makes such comments outside formal contempt proceedings, they amount to institutional condemnation without the due-process safeguards of contempt proceedings, creating a chilling effect; treating RTI-based activism as illegitimate has a similar effect, even though the RTI Act is a legitimate instrument

• Court as "aggrieved party and arbiter": when a journalist sought data on complaints against specific judges, the Supreme Court Registry first denied such information existed; when the journalist produced a Law Ministry disclosure proving otherwise, the Registry's legal representative dubbed the inquiry "fishing and roving" — raising concerns of the Court arguing its own case

• Better precedent / solution: Former CJI D.Y. Chandrachud held that judges are public actors exercising state power and courts should not react defensively to every line of criticism — an attitude that improved how the bar, the press and the academy experienced the courts; the editorial urges a return to that approach and warns the recent comments have "set the clock back"

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 (Polity and Governance) — judiciary, contempt of court versus freedom of speech under Article 19, judicial accountability and transparency, use of the RTI Act, and the principle that a court should not be both aggrieved party and arbiter.

🔑 Key Term: Contempt of court — conduct that disobeys or disrespects a court's authority; while "criminal contempt" includes acts that scandalise or lower the court's authority, fair and reasonable criticism of judicial conduct is constitutionally protected and exempted.