New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party Rajya Sabha MP and Senior Advocate Manan Kumar Mishra’s statement, issued on the letterhead of the Bar Council of India’s chairperson, targeting the student protests in Delhi, has received significant backlash. Now, law teachers have written an open letter against it.The controversial statement, titled ‘An Appeal to the Intellectuals of the Country’, Mishra urged vigilance against what Mishra described were attempts by ‘anti-social’ and ‘anti-national’ elements to incite unrest.In it, Mishra made several unfounded claims, including that, “Foreign adversaries are acting with the intent to destabilize India, and innocent students are being misled and misused. Anti-social and anti-national forces have hijacked their agitation.”Started by assistant law professors Aswathy Madhukumar and Jatin Kalon, the open letter has 34 signatories so far, Madhukumar says.“It is extremely disheartening to see the statutory body in charge of legal education in the Country publicly issue a statement colouring the protests as anti-national,” the signatories say.Among law teachers who have made their signatures public are Aswathy Madhukumar, Jatin Kalon, Vetha Philos, Gayatri KK,, Renuka Joseph, Gurudutt, Ashwin Kunal Singh, Hartej S Kochher, Hema and Rudra Chandran.In a play on Mishra’s call to the legal fraternity, signatories have together called themselves the ‘Legal Fraternity for Freedoms.’The full text of their open letter is below.We, as concerned Indian citizens and teachers of law, take the liberty of writing this open letter in response to the BCI’s Circular to teachers, regarding student protests in various parts of India, especially at Delhi.We derive the courage to write a letter of such nature, from the previous instance of Open Letter written by Professors Upendra Baxi, Vasudha Dhagamwar, Raghunath Kelkar, and Lotika Sarkar, post the Mathura decision by the Hon’ble Supreme Court. As teachers of law, we believe that the beacon of democratic dissent must be protected at all times, and we, as people who discuss the law in classrooms, hold responsibility to the larger public that the principles we teach are in fact applied in practice. We believe that the letter of the law cannot merely resonate in classrooms while failing on the streets.The BCI Letter/Circular seems to expect students to be apolitical. That, coming from the regulator of legal education, is beyond disappointing. Such a view is antithetical to the very discipline of law, and there is no moral essence to any legal principle that is intended to be divorced from politics. Law, by its very nature and intent, is deeply political, carrying social impact even in subject areas that do not directly impact the public. It is immoral and reductionist to expect that law students distance themselves from social causes, treating law merely as a collection of technicalities.India is no stranger to public protests, and the same has led to strengthening of the Country’s democratic spirit in numerous ways. Right from the struggle of freedom embodying the peaceful Satyagraha by the Father of the Nation, the State’s political history is replete with peaceful protests by concerned citizens seeking change and accountability using their Fundamental Right.To quote the Father of the Nation from during his trial under the charge of Sedition in 1922:“In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.”“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.”While the Hon’ble Father of the Nation was referring to the British rule and its tyranny, the essence of his statement holds value at any given time, in terms of holding affection to the Nation rather than a Govt. in power at any given point of time. The context of Gandhi’s quotes and the current political context are quite distinct, especially in that Gandhi was protesting against a colonial regime, whereas our Govt is a democratically elected one.Unlike the interests of the imperial British Govt. which needed invocation of national security laws in order to be applied to the Indian populace, the elected Indian Govt.’s will need not be imposed upon its own people with force. If the democratically elected State should find itself at juncture that it must suppress its own citizens, it must introspect whether it ceased being democratic post elections. If so, it is in the Institution of Courts that we, the people, vest our hopes of restoring Constitutional values in the State’s machinery, and rightly so.Irrespective of the regime or political party in power at a given time, Indian public has witnessed authoritarian suppression of mass uprisals. One of the most prominent mechanisms is one that has been examined and interpreted by the Hon’ble Supreme Court on several occasions – the law of sedition. Numerous similar provisions and statutes then came to be enacted, aiming to protect the State’s interests, some of which the Courts struck down for their violation of Constitutional ethos (such as TADA and POTA).Historical documents, particularly relating to that of sedition, show that the laws to suppress dissent by people was rooted in the assumption that the Indian populace was ignorant and easily fooled. Sir Alexander Mckinzey, then Lt Governor of Bengal, is recorded justifying s. 124-A Sedition in this manner – “No Govt, such as ours in India, can afford to allow the minds of an ignorant and credulous oriental population to be gradually poisoned and embittered by persistent calumny of the Govt”. (ILI Report on Sedition Laws, Pg. 66, 67). Notions of national security stemming from such thought must have no place in a democracy. It is futile for the elected Govt to feel threatened by the collective voice of its own people, and incredulous for it to believe that its youth are impressionable and easily fooled.It is within the moral and ethical duty of any individual that believes in democracy and Constitutional values, to speak against the suppression of dissent by invocation of national security laws. This duty exists regardless of whether one may or may not agree with the essence or merits of the demands. Whether one agrees with the content of another’s speech is quite distinct from whether they have a right to speak or not. As people who invoke and believe in law and the Constitution, we strongly believe that irrespective of whether the State concedes to all demands of the populace, its obligation to engage with the protesters and respond with accountability is paramount and non-negotiable.It is extremely disheartening to see the statutory body in charge of legal education in the Country publicly issue a statement colouring the protests as anti-national. As humble learners and teachers of law, it is troubling to the core that public dissent is so casually dismissed by a responsible public Office, refusing to acknowledge the rich cultural, historical, and legal context of protests in the Country. As academicians reading the law with students in classrooms across the country, we feel compelled to disagree with the tone and tenacity of the BCI’s note disparaging the protests, and instead speak in solidarity with the rights of students.Furthermore, it appears that the Chairman of the Council, himself a Rajya Sabha MP, has used the Bar Council’s letterhead to express his personal views. The letter is an appeal from him to the ‘intellectuals of the country’, seeking to save the country from imagined foreign enemies driving the current political movement. Perhaps most concerning is that the letter reduces students to agency-less ‘innocent’ entities that have been misled by said anti-nationals.As law teachers, we especially wish to place on record our discomfort with the casual invocation of phrases such as ‘anti-national’, ‘national security’, and ‘foreign funding’, as convenient tools to discredit national protests. This is especially concerning when presented without an iota of evidence supporting the claims. On the contrary, the Govt. has stated that they have no information (as of the 24th July 2026) regarding any foreign funding in connection with the protests. This begs the question whether those occupying responsible Offices in the Country – one that is entrusted to ensure quality of legal education, no less – invest the time and effort to ensure the veracity and legitimacy of their seemingly official claims. It also makes one wonder whether persons occupying important offices permit their personal opinions to be presented as their Institutional stance.However, we are entirely supportive of parts of the Letter – where the Office calls upon the legal fraternity to stand firmly for the Constitution, and to act decisively to protect the future of our students. Indeed, believing in the rich political and cultural history of dissent which has shaped the Country, including the freedom struggle, anti-Emergency movements, anti-corruption protests, and more, we intend to let our students know that the Constitution indeed is more than a mere rulebook.If the law is meant to merely adorn classrooms, and its invocation in practice derives the wrath of the State, teaching such law becomes a soul-less performance. As law teachers, we feel it morally necessary to distance ourselves from such an engagement with the law, and to insist that we fill our classrooms with critical thinking, the courage to speak truth to power, and the will to uphold the Constitution.