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authoritarianism, Culture, Debates, Democracy, Right watch

Citizens for Democracy Writes Open Letter to CJI Protesting “Cockroach” Remarks

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We are publishing below the Open Letter to the Chief Justice of India, written by Citizens for Democracy

Hon’ble Chief Justice of India
New Delhi.

Esteemed Sir,

Citizens for Democracy (CFD) strongly protests your comment equating environmentalists, RTI activists and others with cockroaches and parasites

While hearing a petition filed by a lawyer seeking designation as a senior advocate, you said in the court on May 15, 2026, “There are already parasites of society who attack the system, and you want to join hands with them?… There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists, and they start attacking everyone.”

Your comment generated heat and anger among the activists following which you tried to clarify your position the next day: “I am pained to read how a section of the media has misquoted my oral observations made during the hearing of a frivolous case yesterday. What I had specifically criticised were those who have entered professions like the Bar (legal profession) with the aid of fake and bogus degrees. Similar persons have sneaked into the media, social media, and other noble professions as well, and hence, they are like parasites. It is totally baseless to suggest that I criticised the youth of our nation. Not only am I proud of our present and future human resource, but every youth of India inspires me. It is not an exaggeration to say that Indian youth have great regard and respect for me, and I too see them as the pillars of a developed India.”

This is a lame explanation as your comment does target activists who you have presumed that if they are young, and have become activists they must have failed to get “any employment”. In short, using a context of a lawyer seeking the designation as ‘senior lawyer’ you tried to cast aspersions on all those who speak for the ordinary citizens of the country.  We wonder, if you, from the chair of a judge would accept such an explanation. It would have been proper for you to withdraw your uncharitable remarks and apologize for your inadvertence.  What was the judicial rationale behind your comment? Continue reading Citizens for Democracy Writes Open Letter to CJI Protesting “Cockroach” Remarks →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates

We should be there: The Left and the Anna moment

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My head has been in a whirl the past few days with a single question – how do we on ‘the Left’ manage so unerringly to be exactly where ‘the people’ are not, time after time?

At this moment I don’t mean the organized Left, for the Left parties  have been cautious about criticizing  the current upsurge; they strongly defended the right to democratic protest when Anna Hazare and his colleagues were arrested, and now have launched a Third Front initiative on the issue of corruption and the Lokpal Bill; the students’ front of CPI (ML), AISA, has been organizing militantly on the issue for a very long time now, and is very much part of the campaign.

I mean the few hundreds who form my own community, the people with whom I have organized protests and run campaigns and sat on dharna and drafted petitions;  struggled against communal violence and sexual harassment,  for queer freedom and workers’ rights, against the nuclear bomb and nuclear energy, in support of reservations and against the moves in our universities to hold up appointments to reserved posts. Many of these people I know personally, some are among my closest friends, and many more I know as part of the broad Left/secular non-party tendency in the country’s politics, where I feel most at home.

Continue reading We should be there: The Left and the Anna moment →