ON February 28, 2025, a Division Bench of Justices Vivek Kumar Birla and Anish Kumar Gupta of the Allahabad High Court rejected an application for quashing of an FIR filed by Priyanka Bharti, a spokesperson for the Rashtriya Janata Dal and a PhD scholar, had termed the book Manusmiriti as ‘holy’. During a heated television debate on India Today and TV9 Bharatvarsh, Bharti allegedly tore pages of the Manusmriti. On December 29, 2024, an FIR was filed in the Roravar Police Station in Aligarh against Bharti under Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which lays down the punishment for “deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic means or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class.”
The Court ruled that public acts of religious desecration had the potential to incite unrest and disturb public order.
But can the characterisation of being a “holy” textbook be, at all, attributed to the Manusmriti, particularly given its contents?
