If the Supreme Court heeds the incessant media campaign to allow Prashant Bhushan go unpunished after duly convicting him for contempt, it will find it hard to avoid the charge that it was influenced by extraneous reasons. Courts are expected to dispense justice unswayed by all other factors other than the facts before them. Buckling under the media pressure will not only mean its scoring a self-goal but unfailingly invite others to ascribe base motives to the discharge of its judicial functions. And the grandstanding lawyer will feel encouraged to continue with his tirade against the court with added ferocity. Bhushan’s rude refusal to apologise for the offending tweets has disqualified him for a reprieve. It does not leave any scope for the court to take a lenient view of his offence. Any sensible person with regard only for Constitutional institutions would desist from dragging down the higher judiciary to the level of the street, encouraging people to abuse it as 'sab chor hain'. Those arrogantly offering gratuitous advice, and reading aloud civics lessons to the top judges, must ponder if their actions do not aid and abet a lawyer who is in the habit of routinely abusing the judiciary. Pontificating about the founding principles of the Republic and how the courts were supposed to be the bulwark of the citizens’ freedoms does not square with the defence of a serial offender who has never hesitated in traducing the highest court in the land. It is not hard to fathom Bhushan’s personal agenda. He seeks to burnish his self-image of a lone warrior fighting against real or presumed wrongdoing in the higher rungs of the judiciary. Refusing to apologise, he talks of “this moment of history” and his “responsibility to the future”. So long as such delusions of grandeur did not damage a constitutional institution which has survived the test of over seven decades and several benign and malign executives, making it vulnerable to contempt and ridicule by the aam aadmi, it was Bhushan’s personal matter. But when the impugned tweets crossed the proverbial 'Lakhshmanrekha', as these certainly did, it became a matter of grave public interest and deserved to be punished, lest it instigates others to follow his example. The failure to mention Bhushan’s offensive tweets in the lectures to the Supreme Court in the last few days is no accident. No sane person would sit on a high pedestal, issuing certificates of rectitude and integrity, or the lack of them, to the incumbent or former chief justices of India. Nor would anyone launch forth an abusive tweet on the basis of a photograph depicting the CJI astride a parked motorcycle. And then on the basis of that lone picture go on to build a case of an uncaring and irresponsible CJI who had shut out the delivery of justice. More than any other institution, courts while dispensing justice relies heavily on precedents and the case law.
If Bhushan were to be allowed to go scot-free, it would open floodgates for abuse of the courts at every tier of the judicial system. Which brings one to the media warriors who have expended a lot of editorial space in the defence of the lawyer, who in his own words, seeks to make history. Would anyone have said in so many words that “more than half of the former 16 chief justices of India were corrupt?” Would they have expected to go unscathed if they had excoriated the incumbent CJI on the basis of a mere photograph of his sitting on a parked Harley Davidson which he never drove even an inch? Bhushan talked of the 'CJI driving a Rs 40-lakh Harley Davidson motorcycle of a BJP leader while shutting down the courts’. Clearly, he was mocking the CJI, wasn’t he? Therefore, public intellectuals and others, motivated by nothing better than a visceral animus of Narendra Modi, defending the indefensible should not abandon a sense of balance, a correct perspective. Lemmings-like, they invent excuses to influence the highest court in the land in order for it to allow its own denigration go unchallenged. Those tweets lowered the standing of the highest court in the land in the eyes of the lay public. And, in the end, how the ordinary men and women perceive the highest temple of justice is all that should matter to anyone concerned about the health of the Republic. Bhushan should not be able to “make history” by undermining the apex court’s dignity and public standing. Meanwhile, we are aware we are in a minority of one in the mainstream print media to welcome the conviction of the serial PIL-filer. But we are happy to take what we believe is the correct and bona fide position. Rising above the herd needs the courage of conviction.
