The Supreme Court ruling on Friday which suspended Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in a criminal defamation case has come as a shot in the arm for both Gandhias well as the Congress party. When the trial court in Gujarat had declared Gandhi guilty of besmirching people with the family name ‘Modi’ based on his remarks during the 2019 general election campaign — “Why do all these thieves have Modi as their surname?” — and handed him a two-year sentence in March this year, it reflexively disqualified him from being a Lok Sabha member and kept him away from contesting the 2024 election. The SC stated, with good reason, that the trial court’s sentence is “without sufficient reason and grounds”.
The SC ruling has restored Gandhi’s political career in the short term at least; Gandhi can, if the LS office revokes his suspension, attend Parliament in the coming week itself though his ability to contest next year will depend upon whether his conviction is settled or not. The ruling can, theoretically, still be challenged. However, Purnesh Modi who dragged Gandhi to court would do his party BJP a disservice given that the sequence of events generated sympathy for Gandhi — something that the BJP does not want — and turned him into a larger-than-life hero who must be kept away from the political battlefield at all costs. It does not show the BJP as a confident ruling party if an Opposition leader and MP has to be countered this way. If the Congress strategists are smart, they have an opportunity to capitalise on this to strengthen his fighter-challenger image. Gandhi’s shackles have been broken, in a manner of speaking.
The political implications apart, this is as good an occasion as any to review the jurisprudence of criminal defamation. There have been several calls in the past to decriminalise defamation, as many democratic nations have done, and treat it only as a civil offence. The criminalisation of defamation is a legacy of India’s colonial past when the British Raj wanted to protect its interests — and severely penalise those who challenged it by speech and writing. In a democracy which professes to uphold free speech, criminalisation of defamation is unnecessary; the law of defamation as a civil offence is sufficient to take care of the harm to the reputation of others. Gandhi’s case should, in a functioning democracy, lead to searching answers on this issue.
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