Right to Protest

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

In the wake of the violence that rocked Amravati last week, the Women and Child Welfare minister said that the violence was planned. A senior Congress leader termed the happenings as an intelligence failure. Another minister rightly said that protest and expression is anyone’s right. Making it violent deliberately is not constitutional.

ARTICLE 19

• Article 19 guarantees freedom of speech and expression there are two significant aspects involved-

• Instrumental aspect- it acts as an instrument to promote democracy, truth and acts as a watchdog
• Intrinsic value- the article has value in itself in order to achieve the fullest capacity of an individual

• The right to peaceful protest is guaranteed under article 19 all fundamental rights to the citizens of the country
• It is implicit under the right to assemble peacefully without arms
• The right to associations becomes the right to associate for political purposes like to collectively challenge government decisions and to even aim peacefully and legally the displacement of government
• This is the basis of a multi-party system where opposition parties are valuable adversaries and not enemies and compete healthily for a political party
• The right to peacefully assemble allows political parties and citizenship bodies like University student groups to question and object to acts of government by demonstration, agitations and public meetings to launch the sustained protests

SUPREME COURT CASES

Shreya Singhal case

Section 66A of the Information Technology Act was declared null and void by the apex court. The Supreme Court observed that the section was vague as it had a chilling effect on freedom of speech & expression. The  court came up with the difference between discussion, advocacy and incitement

Anita Thakur case

The Supreme Court noted that organised and non-violent protests were key weapons in the struggle for independence.

A distinguishing  feature of any democracy is legitimate dissent and the court said that the right to peaceful protest is a fundamental right

Ramlila Maidan incident- supreme Court stated that citizens have a fundamental right to assembly and peaceful protest which cannot be taken away by an arbitrary executive or legislative action

DEMOCRATIC INDEX

• The democratic index is a report published by economist intelligence unit India stands at 51st position and dropped by 10 ranks
• According to the report, the primary cause of this lowering of rank is the erosion of civil liberties in the country it also criticized the international downs and categorised India as a flawed democracy
• The report used the term democratic regression because of erosion of civil liberties, imposition of section 144

MASS MOVEMENTS IN INDIA

• The movement for India’s freedom was itself a mass movement
• India has witnessed a lot of mass movements in the past like the Jayaprakash Narayan movement, Anna Hazare’s  anti-corruption movement, Chipko movement
• New social movements Nirbhaya case farmers movement and also many leaderless movements

SIGNIFICANCE OF RIGHT TO PROTEST

• There is the instrument as well as the intrinsic value attached to freedom of speech and expression
• The right to protest is implicit in other rights like the right to associate and assemble
• It facilitates active citizenship and political freedom
• Right to protest helps in keeping a check on abuse of power
• The right exercise by citizens makes law making a more inclusive and efficient process
• Example anti-citizenship amendment protest- the process became more inclusive by the mass movement it and large scale participation of students and women
• LGBT community- the consistent peaceful protest by the community led to the transformation of the constitution in the Navtej Singh Johar case and the court has taken the counter-majoritarian role

Electoral Federalism

• Since the opposition is not having a major role to play in the parliament, states are becoming a strong opposition voice. State government surfing the opposition deficit
• Voters are voting in two different manners: general elections and state elections. The contradictory baton of voting also leads to the division of pass

2 core political rights of democracies

Right to vote – the right of every citizen to elect freely the government and when dissatisfied with its performance to vote it out of power in a legitimately held election (Article 326)

To politically participate not only during but between elections- the right to protest to publicly question and force the government to answer is a fundamental political right of people that flows directly from a democratic reading of Article 19

CHALLENGES

How are States responding?

According to experts, there is a different level of protests-

Hot clampdown

The protectors are suppressed so that they will give up, this is the nature of an authoritarian state

People’s power 

The protester succeed in resulting in the government’s backdown 

Example- India’s independence movement

A cold frizzle 

In this, the dilution of enthusiasm leads to a gradual loss of momentum among the protesters

Prolonged confrontation

Neither the protectors nor the government is backing down. It may lead to other incidents like destruction of public property change in government’s plan etc

Example Hong Kong protests

WAY FORWARD

The doctrine of proportionality- according to the doctrine the punishment should not be disproportionate to the offence committed or the means that are used by the administration to obtain a particular objective or result should not be more restrictive than what is required to achieve it

Legislative impact assessment-for a democratic country it is very necessary to analyse the impact of legislation on citizens. The impact assessment would make it a more inclusive and democratic process.

The Indian Express Link:

https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/amravati-violence-planned-yashomati-thakur-7631991/

Question: Account for the significance of the right to protest in a democracy?