LAST FRIDAY, Home Minister Amit Shah, during a sudden tirade against the INDIA Bloc’s Vice Presidential Candidate former Justice B. Sudershan Reddy (who served as a judge at the Supreme Court between 2007 and 2011), accused the latter of being a supporter of the Naxalite movement. Shah particularly brought to attention Justice Reddy’s judgement in 2011 in Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh directing the disbandment of the “Salwa Judum”, a militia consisting of tribal youth from Chhattisgarh who were paid by the State to undertake counterinsurgency work against Naxalite operations in the region. Shah went so far as to allege that if not for Justice Reddy’s judgement, the central government would have wiped off the Naxalites from the tribal area.
The home minister’s allegations have been retorted through a strong, collective condemnation by several retired judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, as well as a senior advocate and a jurist. In their public statement released today morning, the retired judges have termed the remarks “unfortunate”, and noted that the Nandini Sundar decision, neither expressly nor by implication, lends support to Naxalism or its ideology.
The statement further noted:
“Prejudical misinterpretation of a judgment of the Supreme Court by a high political functionary is likely to have a chilling effect on the judges of the Supreme Court, shaking the independence of the judiciary”.
The retired judges have also urged that political campaigns for gubernatorial posts be conducted with civility and dignity. The name calling of candidates and attacking them in lieu of their alleged ideology, the judges noted, must cease.
How the Salwa Judum case has stood the test of time
At this point, it might be fruitful to try and understand how the judgement in the Salwa Judum case may have provoked the home minister. In the case brought to the Court by senior academics Nandini Sundar, Ramachandra Guha and former senior bureaucrat E.A.S. Sarma, while laying down certain directions for the Union and Chhattisgarh government, Justice Sudershan Reddy observed as follows:-
“Both the Union of India, and the State of Chattisgarh, have sought to rationalize the use of SPOs in Chattisgarh, in the mode and manner discussed at length above, on the ground that they are effective in combating Maoist/Naxalite activities and violence, and that they are "force multipliers." As we have pointed out hereinabove, the adverse effects on society, both current and prospective, are horrific. Such policies by the State violate both Article 14 and Article 21, of those being employed as SPOs in Chattisgarh and used in counter-insurgency measures against Maoists/Naxalites, as well as of citizenry living in those areas. The effectiveness of the force ought not to be, and cannot be, the sole yardstick to judge constitutional permissibility. Whether SPOs have been "effective" against Maoist/Naxalite activities in Chattisgarh, it would seem to be a dubious, if not a debunked, proposition given the state of affairs in Chattisgarh. Even if we were to grant, for the sake of argument, that indeed the SPOs were effective against Maoists/Naxalites, the doubtful gains are accruing only by the incurrence of a massive loss of fealty to the Constitution, and damage to the social order. The "force" as claimed by the State, in the instant matters, is inexorably leading to the loss of the force of the Constitution. Constitutional fealty does not, cannot and ought not to permit either the use of such a force or its multiplication. Constitutional propriety is not a matter of throwing around arbitrarily selected, and inanely used, phrases such as "force multipliers." Constitutional adjudication, and protection of civil liberties, by this Court is a far, far more sacred…duty to be swayed by such arguments and justifications.”
This judgment has stood the test of time. However, what perhaps emboldened the home minister to engage in this tirade was, again, the weakness of the judiciary. Despite the directions laid out in the Nandini Sundar judgment, the Chhattisgarh government did not give effect to it, and on the contrary continued to arm the police force under the State of Chhattisgarh by providing powers to it through the enactment of the Chhattisgarh Auxiliary Armed Police Force Act, 2011. That said piece of legislation was again challenged before the Supreme Court and, when Professor Sundar put forward an application for contempt, the top Court, in 2025, rejected the request. The Court gave its justification as follows:-
“We note that it is [the] duty of the State of Chhattisgarh as well as the Union of India, having regard to Article 315 of the Constitution, to take adequate steps for bringing about peace and rehabilitation to the residents of State of Chhattisgarh who have been affected by the violence from whatever quarter it may have arisen.
We also observe that the passing of an enactment subsequent to the order of this Court by the legislature of the State of Chhattisgarh cannot, in our view, be said to be an act of contempt of the order passed by this Court. It is observed that every State Legislature has plenary powers to pass an enactment and so long as the said enactment has not been declared to be ultra vires the Constitution or, in any way, null and void by a Constitutional Court, the said enactment would have the force of law. However, if any party wishes that the said Act be struck down for being unconstitutional, then legal remedies in that regard would have to be resorted to before the competent Court of law. Indeed, the Judiciary is vested under the Constitution with the power to resolve interpretive doubts and disputes about the validity or otherwise of an enacted law by the Parliament or any State Legislature.”
The question that arises is how, when an executive act has already been considered unconstitutional, the state legislature, while re-enacting a legislation on the same issue, could contend that they are immune from any constitutional interdiction. However, this turn about has emboldened several pro-executive, and right-wing commentators to attack the rivals as “pro-naxals”.
When the BJP itself batted for Justice Reddy’s impartiality
It is a true irony that whereas the BJP has now raised these allegations against Justice Reddy’s vice-presidential candidature, they had expressed a starkly different view of him before. In 2013, when BJP captured the Goa legislature, Manohar Parikkar became its first Chief Minister. As usual, when there is a change of regime, there is usually an attempt to fix the erstwhile ruling party and in Goa’s case, the erstwhile ruling regime was that of Congress. In their election promise, Parikkar had announced that within 100 days of the BJP resuming power, they would appoint the Lokayukta, or parliamentary ombudsman, for the state. Immediately, the search list was prepared and the condition was that only a person who was neutral and could not be approached by anyone would be the ideal choice for the post of a Lokayukta. Not because it was their general belief, but because in dealing with their opposition, they did not want to be wicketed by a judge with loose morals.
The BJP’s choice, interestingly, was Justice Sudarshan Reddy, who had just retired from the Supreme Court and not even two years had passed since he had delivered his internationally acclaimed judgment in the “Salwa Judum” case. Parrikar had chosen Justice Reddy despite this, and for that reason he was even willing to amend the Lokayukta Act to provide for an extended term for the incumbent. In March 2013, Justice Reddy assumed office.
The two opposition parties — INC and NCP — who had lost the assembly election, had attacked the decision to appoint Justice Reddy, accusing him of being a stooge of the BJP. However, as there was some personal tragedy, Justice Reddy resigned from the office in October 2013 and the post could not be filled up for the next three years.
After the announcement of Justice Reddy’s candidature by the INDIA Alliance, supporters of the ruling regime were quick to remind Congress of its old accusations against the judge, questioning why he was now their choice for the vice president’s position. In my reading, by unearthing this accusation, the pro-executive commentators have only helped further substantiate that Justice Reddy has had a reputation of being fair and neutral, just as Parikkar himself had believed at one point.
Who is a Naxal?: The attack on public intellectuals and the judiciary’s silent complicity
Of late, supporters of the ruling regime have weaponised the label of ‘Naxal’ and ‘urban Naxal’ to name-call public intellectuals who have opposed them. We saw similar allegations being deployed against intellectuals and social activists who have been imprisoned under the notorious Unlawful Lawful Activities (Prevention) Act (‘UAPA’) in the Bhima Koregaon case.
Those trapped in the case, all grounded social activists and lawyers, have faced relentless struggles under incarceration, and the passing away of Fr. Stan Swamy, whose tribal rights activism over decades was invaluable, must be etched into the tragic history of our justice system.
Will the home minister explain why some of the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, such as human rights lawyer Surendra Gadling, have still not gotten bail, or what truly are the charges against the fifteen accused, even as six years have passed by?
It is also notable that the exercise of accusing someone as ‘Naxal’ is not limited to the accountability of political circles alone. The judiciary, also, has been complicit by not desisting or condemning the usage of such epithets. Benign terms of political theory, such as ‘Marxism’, ‘Communism’ or ‘Revolution’ have come to be so apprehended by the judiciary that the courts have found it important to go out of their way to highlight the “dangers” associated with these ideologies.
For instance, in October 2022, while rejecting the bail plea of JNU scholar Umar Khalid, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court gave their own interpretation of the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindaabad’. The Bench noted:
“…..However, this court is not impressed by the argument of the Appellant in as much as the call to revolution does not have to affect only the immediate gathering. The call to revolution may affect many beyond those who were visibly present, which is why this court finds it apt to mention Robespierre, who was at the vanguard of the French revolution. This court is of the view that possibly, if the appellant had referred to Maximilien Robespierre for what he meant by revolution, he must have also known what revolution meant for our freedom fighter & first prime minister. The very fact that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru believed that democracy has made revolution superfluous after independence and how it meant the complete opposite of a bloodless change.
Revolution by itself isn’t always bloodless, which is why it is contradistinctly used with the prefix - a 'bloodless' revolution. So, when we use the expression ’revolution’, it is not necessarily bloodless. This court is reminded of that although, the activity of "revolution" in its essential quality may not be different but from the point of view of Robespierre and Pandit Nehru, in its potentiality and in its effect upon public tranquillity there can be a vast difference.”
It is not only that the word ‘Revolution’ has come to be seen as alarming by the judiciary. Even constitutional interpretations, such as the observations of Justices V. Krishna Iyer and O. Chinappa Reddy, both intellectual stalwarts in the judiciary’s history, regarding the interpretation of Article 39(b) of the Constitution, have been alleged to have brought in ‘a particular school of…thought’ to judicial interpretation.
In 2024, in his leading opinion in a nine-judge Constitution Bench decision, the then Chief Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud wrote:
“Significantly, both Justice Krishna Iyer (in Ranganatha Reddy and Bhimsinghji) and Justice Chinappa Reddy (in Sanjeev Coke) consistently referred to the vision of the framers (of the Constitution) as the basis to advance this economic ideology as the guiding principle of the provision.
“To declare that Article 39(b) includes the distribution of all private resources amounts to endorsing a particular economic ideology and structure for our economy. Justice Krishna Iyer’s judgment in Ranganatha Reddy, which was followed inter alia in Sanjeev Coke and Bhim Singhji, was influenced by a particular school of economic thought.”
Commendably, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, who was also on that bench, quite bravely highlighted the significance of the contribution of the two judges. In his dissenting opinion, he wrote:
“The Krishna Iyer Doctrine, or for that matter the O. Chinnappa Reddy Doctrine, is familiar to all who have anything to do with law or life. It is based on [the] strong humanist principles of fairness and equity. It is a doctrine which has illuminated our path in dark times. The long body of their judgment[s] is not just a reflection of their perspicacious intellect but more importantly of their empathy for the people, as human being[s] [were] at the centre of their judicial philosophy. In the words of Justice Krishna Iyer himself: “The Courts too have a constituency – the nation – and a manifesto – the Constitution”.”
The labelling of political opponents as ‘Naxals’ is a critical political strategy of the Hindu majoritarian regime to criminalise intellectuals competing for higher posts in wider public discourse. At the base of this is the attempt to distort the public imagination of what the word ‘Naxal’ truly means.
What comes to our mind is Justice Chinnappa Reddy’s concurring observations in Mohammad Yousuf Rather v. The State Of Jammu & Kashmir (1979), where he frowned upon the labelling of someone as Naxalite. He wrote:
“The grounds of detention begin with the statement that the detenu is a 'die-hard Naxalite'. Dr. Singhvi described a Naxalite as a 'votary of change by resort to violence' and urged that as the meaning ascribed to the expression by the daily press (Marxist Exclamation: the Capitalist Press !). Many may not agree with Dr. Singhvi. Some think of Naxalites as blood-thirsty monsters; some compare them to Joan of Arc. It all depends on the class to which one belongs, one's political hues and ideological perceptions.”
Remembering Justice Reddy’s words is crucial in times where public imagination is being sought to be shaped by the ruling regime to invalidate the reputational standing of not only political opponents, but the entire bodies of work of judges of our constitutional courts.