30th August 2020
Prashant Bhushan is a lawyer
and activist – not a Mahatma Gandhi in any way like he fervently projected
himself earlier this month. He did so when
the court was hearing him to decide if it should award any punishment for two contempt-of-court
charges it upheld against him.
The supreme court first examined
Prashant Bhushan’s defence to the two charges of contempt of court, but was not
convinced and found him guilty on both the charges on 14th
August. As a next step, it heard him on what
punishment would be right for his offence. That was when Prashant filed an
elaborate statement which included these lines. “I can only humbly paraphrase
what the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had said in his trial: I do not
ask for mercy. I do not appeal to magnanimity. I am here, therefore, to cheerfully submit to
any penalty that can lawfully be inflicted upon me for what the Court has
determined to be an offence, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a
citizen.”
To know why Prashant sounded hollow
and pretentious in comparing himself with Mahatma Gandhi, consider a few
things.
Prashant
Bhushan has ongoing proceedings against him for contempt of court on three charges. The first is about a statement he made in a 2009
interview to Tehelka magazine when he said: “In my view, out of the last 16 to
17 chief justices, half have been corrupt. I can’t prove this though we had evidence
against ____, ____ and ____ (the 3 names he said are omitted here) on the basis
of which we sought their impeachment.”
Prashant
is a seasoned lawyer. He knew he had no proof on his claim, and he said it too
in his interview. Still he went public with his claim. When he had to explain himself
to the supreme court in an affidavit, the core of his reply was “That is my honest and bona fide perception” and he built his
defence on that plank, offering no proof for his accusation – and he knows what
proof means in a court.
The supreme court is yet to give its finding on the charge over his
2009 statement, and the hearing in this case comes up next month. Of the three charges against Prashant, this
one reflects his severest attack on the supreme court and its many chief
justices, with no proof against the judges he had in mind. So be sure that Prashant
will want to look more Gandhian over here too.
The second charge of contempt the supreme court
laid against Prashant was about his tweet in June this year, alleging that in
the last six years democracy had been destroyed in India even without a formal
Emergency and that the supreme court, especially its last four chief justices, had
played a particular role in that destruction. The third charge against him, less severe than
the other two, is about his another tweet in June this year, cheaply commenting
on the photo of the present chief justice mounted on a motorcycle on its stand,
as if the chief justice was responsible for the supreme court “denying citizens
their fundamental right to access justice” because it
was on lockdown mode.
The supreme court has already found Prashant guilty
of contempt on the second and third charges and will soon pronounce punishment for the
same, while the
hearing on the first charge is yet to be completed. Let the court form its opinion. Meanwhile, scores of well-known lawyers,
retired civil servants, former judges, activists, writers, journalists and public
men have come out in support of Prashant on all the three charges against him and
are critical of the supreme court in this regard. All this, as also Prashant’s
claim to be Gandhi-like, need a look.
Are you attracted
to Mahatma Gandhi and his ways and the all-round effect of what he did humbly,
truthfully and steadfastly? Do you also know what Prashant Bhushan had said for
which he is facing contempt-of-court proceedings, and the effect of what he
said? If yes, you will see Prashant in his true colours.
If you
have only heard that Mahatma Gandhi is the father of our nation and know
nothing much about him, and if you have not known much about Prashant or the
effect of what he had said in contempt, you could find his allusion to Mahatma
Gandhi stirring.
Just look
at the effect of Prashant’s claims about many former chief justices of India. In
2009 he said that “out of the last 16 to 17 chief justices, half have been corrupt”. So, he clearly meant that half out of those 16
or 17 chief justices were not corrupt and were clean. But he did not publicly point out who among
those 16 or 17 chief justices were corrupt according to him, and who were clean
in his view.
What did
Prashant expect all other judges, all other lawyers and the general public in
India to understand? Would they not suspect,
if they went by Prashant’s omnibus allegation, that the unidentified clean among
those 16 or 17 could have been corrupt – since Prashant didn’t specify who was clean
and who was not? But Prashant didn’t care. He did not identify the 8 or 9
former chief justices whom he considered as corrupt, because that could more
easily invite actions for defamation from those he specifically targeted, and
other actions too in law, and he would find it hard to defend himself,
especially when he admitted he had no proof. He cleverly combined those names
he had in mind with other names, hoping that by mixing those names he could
escape legal action. But a contempt-of-court case came to be registered against
him in 2009 itself.
Leave
alone legalities and the issue of contempt which the supreme court will address.
If Prashant considered some 8 out of 16 or 17 former chief justices to be clean
– which is what his allegation means - does he imagine what anguish and agony he
would cause to those 8 judges and their families when he clubbed their clean names
with those of others whom he thought were corrupt? If he cannot realise this,
can he compare himself with Mahatma Gandhi in any context for any purpose? If
he did realise this and still made his accusation in 2009, what a heartless person he
then was, and how unfit he now is to bring in the name of Mahatma Gandhi before
the supreme court?
All this
is just to tell ourselves that Prashant Bhushan is vague, pretentious and
self-glorifying on his own showing – not that he was right in suggesting that some
8 former chief justices were corrupt. He
has not produced any material or proof to show that any one of the 16 or 17 former
chief justices he mentioned was corrupt. So he has wantonly and deeply wounded all
those 16 or 17 individuals and their families, but still wants to stand next to
Mahatma Gandhi.
Everyone
in India uniformly understands what ‘corruption’ means. That is commonly
understood as equivalent to bribery, as the giving and accepting of money or
money’s worth in exchange for official favours.
But in his affidavit placed before the supreme court Prashant attempts
an escapist explanation. His defence is
that by the word “corrupt,” what he meant was “of doubtful integrity” and that he
had used that word “with reference to non-financial behaviour, or
other kinds of conflict of interest or misconduct by judges”. This lawyerly explanation, apart from its
doubtful legal value, cannot remind us of Mahatma Gandhi.
There
is something more to tell us why Prashant is unfit to invoke the name of
Mahatma Gandhi. In March 1922, Mahatma Gandhi
appeared before Mr. C. N. Broomsfield, ICS, District and Sessions Judge of Ahmedabad,
to face three criminal charges of sedition, for having written three articles
in Young India which according to the prosecution brought into hatred or contempt
or excited disaffection towards the government in British India.
Mahatma
Gandhi openly pleaded guilty to the charges against him, saying that preaching
disaffection was a passion with him. He also read out his statement, which he submitted
to the court, that included these words: “… I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected
towards a government which in its totality has done more harm to India than any
previous system. India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was
before. I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system. And it has
been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various
articles, tendered in evidence against me.”
Without
contesting the charges against him, and after instantly admitting guilt,
Mahatma Gandhi further said in court: “I am here, therefore, to invite and submit
cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law
is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a
citizen…….”. In the present day, Prashant Bhushan hotly contests the charges
against him, then when the supreme court adjudges him guilty he wants the hearing
on punishment to be postponed on the plea that he wants to file a review
petition, and when the court rejects the plea for postponement he files a
statement to the supreme court invoking the scenario of Mahatma Gandhi facing a
1922 trial. Can you imagine Mahatma
Gandhi telling the court he wants to file a review petition against the court’s
verdict of guilt so he could get out of conviction and then say in the same breath he would cheerfully submit to
any penalty? In his hurry to speak like the Mahatma, Prashant didn’t feel his self-contradiction.
Prashant
Bhushan has no doubt done good work in the field of public interest litigation,
and he deserves credit for all that. But
he has gone heady and arrogant too, wants to wear a halo and has gone in wrong
directions. He is unable, or doesn’t
want to, gracefully admit his wrong and genuinely apologise for the deep hurt
he has caused to some judges – contempt or no contempt, which is a secondary
issue. If these contempt-of-court charges had not been brought against him, he
would not have expressed even the half-hearted regret he has placed on record as
a way to escape punishment by court.
If
calling judges corrupt without proof but only on the basis of one’s ‘bona fide
perception’ is not contempt of court, as Prashant wants the supreme court to
rule, many powerful politicians and businessmen could employ new ways to shame
and subdue judges – that is more likely to happen in India. If Prashant Bhushan succeeds in his argument
of ‘bona fide perception’, the independence of our judiciary will be severely dented.
Surely,
judges have to remain independent and free from extraneous influences. Here, let us not also forget that they are
all drawn only from the stock of lawyers we have, who are all the products of
our law colleges. How good are our present-day
law colleges, and how well-read and principled are our young lawyers of today
and do they have enough live role models in the profession, compared to those
India saw in its initial years after independence? Why does not Gandhian
Prashant talk about shortcomings in these areas and work for their improvement?
All the good judges we have today, let’s us remember, are God’s gift in the
present environment. Let us not hound many of them.
Yes, many well-known persons - including lawyers, retired civil servants and some retired judges - have now stood with Prashant Bhushan and are critical of the supreme court over the contempt actions against Prashant. But just imagine: If Prashsant had never made any of those statements for which he faces the court now, but Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had uttered them, how many among all those who now support Prashant and fault the supreme court, would have backed Ravi Shankar Prasad? One percent, is my guess.
Not just that. If Narendra Modi, instead of Prashant Bhushan, had any time said that eight out of the previous sixteen or seventeen chief justices of India were corrupt in any sense or that some four chief justices of the supreme court had played a key role in the destruction of our democracy, or had even commented on a photo of a chief justice like Prashant did, within the next hour one man will publicly ask the supreme court to initiate suo motu contempt proceedings against Modi. That would be Prashant Bhushan.
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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2020
