SC says public spaces can’t be occupied indefinitely, upholds the right to dissent with that of commute but leaves it to police to clear site
Protests, demonstrations, mass rallies and street blockades have been resorted to by citizens across the world to register their disapproval of or discontent with the establishment. And it is because of their disruptive nature, affecting public life, that has compelled authorities to take notice or change tack. It is because of their participatory zeal that they end up becoming mass movements, encouraging change and keeping democracy alive. So the Supreme Court had an extremely tough job at hand to decide whether the prolonged protests at Shaheen Bagh, against a religion-based citizenship law, should be allowed to continue for the sake of democracy. Or whether the democratic right to dissent should also factor in the democratic right of citizens to lead their lives normally beyond a certain threshold of disruption. At the same time, would Shaheen Bagh have become a civil movement had it not been sustained over a certain period of time and forced people to sit up and take note? Would the citizens have shared a sameness of purpose if they did not have a focal point in a commoner like Bilkis Dadi and her magnetic force? But now that Shaheen Bagh has probably served its purpose and outlived its utility, the top court, which had previously sent interlocutors for mediating with protesters, has given a decisive verdict. In a carefully worded ruling, it said public spaces cannot be occupied indefinitely and that dissent and democracy must go hand-in-hand. It said protests should be held at a designated place and any occupation of public places or roads by demonstrators, which causes inconvenience to a large number of people and violates their right to movement, is not permissible under law. The Bench ruled that the right to protest had to be balanced with the right to commute. But by not mentioning the timeline and specifics, it did not disallow such blockades per se but instead entrusted the authorities concerned to act on their own in such situations without hiding behind the court. Now this latter bit could be interpreted variably by the implementing agencies in deciding to what extent could a blockade be allowed or not and what would be the contours of reasonable restrictions. This could also be open to political manipulation. The court further mentioned “parallel conversations on social media” as having fomented a polarised scenario but while these may have some mobilising ability, they cannot have as much of an impact as a physical congregation. The latter is dependent on individual will, commitment and effort. That’s why, contrary to the court’s perception, the Shaheen Bagh protest worked. Driven by elderly women against the Government’s citizenship and identity policies, it was by and large disciplined and peaceful, one which drew many sympathisers from across the spectrum. But as it led to traffic congestion over time, resulting in hardships for commuters and emergency services, it did turn off a middle of the spectrum opinion that it had galvanised in the early stages. And the clamour for clearing the protest site gained traction.
Still, Shaheen Bagh has been an example of civil society’s spontaneous combustion, one that has been taken note of by Time magazine as a change-making moment of our times. But now its sincerity of purpose has been drowned and become an easy fodder for political weaponisation. Just before the Assembly elections, Shaheen Bagh was swiftly turned into a test case of nationalism from being an anti-establishment forum, becoming a simplistic referendum on whether minority intrusion could disrupt majority lives — in this case, blockade-hit Delhiites — on whether it needed to be surgically cut out from the heart of the city. But despite the demonisation of the protesters, the women were able to draw not just liberal thinkers, who are easily perceived as public enemies these days, but all-faith community leaders, including the Sikhs. The BJP had lionised Shaheen Bagh to push the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) into a corner before the elections and though it could have very well used the Delhi Police to clear the roads, as the top court reminded it should have, it let the problem fester, hoping it would anger citizens enough to vote for it. That didn’t happen. As for the preventive role of the police that the court insisted should have settled matters, the forces were predictably acting at the behest of their political masters. One of the principles of good policing is that the forces should function without any fear and favour, which they have failed at. This brings us to the subject of police reforms that have been stalled by successive regimes since the apex court mooted this idea in 2006, though it has been more than two decades that the call for reforming our forces gained traction. And sadly, as the crackdowns on dissenters, even at dedicated spots as the court mentioned, on some other pretext or the other show, the space for alternative views is shrinking regardless of whether protesters block roads or not.