New Delhi: Tamil Nadu National Law University (NLU) has allegedly asked a final year student to take down a sub-stack post criticising the Supreme Court’s ban on the class eight Social Science textbook published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) which included references to “corruption in judiciary”. The student, Rishi A. Kumar, in a subsequent blog post, said that the university authorities cited external pressure from the legal community, and asked him to take down the post “immediately in the best interest of the university and yourself”. While Kumar in his second blog post has said that he will not take down the post, this has reignited the debate around whether the Supreme Court’s intervention in the NCERT book case, has sent out a chilling message, that the judiciary is above criticism. In his blog post on March 14 titled “The Supreme Court of India has No Spine”, Kumar criticised the Supreme Court’s actions in the NCERT case. Kumar wrote that the Supreme Court only has power of judicial review but has “now inserted themselves into both roles simultaneously: it is restricting speech as if it’s the Parliament and reviewing that restriction too.”“This is just judicial power-brokering where they have turned the machinery made to protect the rights of the citizen to protect their own reputation,” he wrote.Kumar noted in his post that the chapter on the judiciary actually praised it “more than enough and, in the spirit of honesty, briefly mentions that the judiciary also has problems.” Kumar wrote the data on judicial corruption in India is “not hard to find” and he made a “four page list of such news reports in 10 minutes”. He also wrote that the issue was created after prominent senior advocates including Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi brought it up in court and questioned if education should only contain “approved knowledge”.“The sad truth is that these doyens of the bar, as we call them in Madras, walked into the Supreme Court, with half-baked knowledge, and triggered one of the most sweeping acts of educational censorship in history,” he wrote.On February 26, the court issued a complete ban on the NCERT class eight Social Science text book which included references to “corruption in the judiciary” and issued show-cause notices to the secretary of school education in the Union ministry of education and the NCERT director. It also directed that no further publication, reprinting or digital circulation be allowed and all physical copies should be seized and removed from circulation. The court had earlier taken suo motu cognisance after concerns were raised by senior lawyers in open court. Since then, the Union government has informed the court that a four-member panel has been formed to rewrite the chapter on the judiciary in the current class eight textbook including former Supreme Court Justices Indu Malhotra and Aniruddha Bose, former Attorney General K.K. Venugopal and one vice chancellor.In a second post on March 20 titled “I wrote about Judicial Corruption and Overreach. And they called my University”, Kumar alleged that the university had written to him asking him to immediately take down the post in his interest and the university’s, following a “spate” of phone calls from advocates of the Supreme Court, various high courts and some judges.“I am receiving a spate of phone calls from advocates of the Supreme Court, various high courts, as well as a few judges and students of Law complaining and criticising your article posted in LinkedIn. The reputation of the institution is at stake. Therefore, I request you to take down the article immediately in the best interest of the university and yourself,” the email read, according to a redacted screenshot linked by Kumar on his blog.Kumar responded to the email and said that the phrase “best interest of the university and yourself” is “nothing but a veiled threat”. “I wholeheartedly believe that I have acted within my rights and I have nothing to apologise for. Nor should this university feel that its reputation is at stake because its students speak the truth. The truth is that this very act of bowing to outside pressure puts our reputation at stake,” he wrote.The university’s email to Kumar came after the post was shared widely on social media including on X by various prominent handles of lawyers, journalists and activists. Kumar updated his second blog post on Monday evening to say that the university had given a statement to state that the “communication referred to by the student was in the nature of a request and advisory, made in good faith.”Speaking to The Wire, Kumar said that his position remains unchanged.“My position remains unchanged. I will not be taking the article down,” he said.In a written response to The Wire via e-mail, Tamil Nadu National Law University also said that it “did not issue any directive or mandate requiring the student to take down the article.”“The communication referred to by the student was in the nature of a request and advisory, made in good faith,” it said, adding “At the outset, we wish to state unequivocally that the University firmly upholds the principles of free speech and expression. We take pride in nurturing our students to be torchbearers of law, justice, and constitutional values. The University does not, and will not, kowtow to the external pressures that seek to undermine these foundational principles”Further, it said: “In the present instance, it is clarified that the University did not issue any directive or mandate requiring the student to take down the article. The communication referred to by the student was in the nature of a request and advisory, made in good faith. This was necessitated in light of representations received from certain members of the legal fraternity who had expressed strong objections to the language employed in the article and had called upon the University to initiate action against the student. The University, however, categorically declined to take any punitive measures.”“Our communication to the student was solely intended to apprise him of the situation and to suggest, in his best interests, that he may consider revisiting the content. It was neither a veiled threat nor a coercive direction.”Meanwhile the university’s actions has reignited a debate sparked by the Supreme Court’s intervention in the NCERT book case, about whether the judiciary is outside the purview of criticism, even as Kumar himself and his second article detailing the university’s communication to him has brought him support on social media, while raising questions about censorship.“In the student’s case, the university may be acting up primarily because each of these national law schools has some judge or the other as their chancellors. It may well have been that someone may have raised objections to the administration. I was among the earliest to call out the NCERT books but after the judiciary has passed orders, any further steps like this are simply an overkill,” said Sanjay Hegde, senior advocate in the Supreme Court.“The objection to the NCERT textbook was the singling out of the institution before young minds, who are told that there is an institution which is corrupt and at that point the full facts were not there so the judiciary took umbrage, thereafter it passed its orders and the matter should have ended there. Now whether there should be some kind of a super gag order, that is much beyond the scope of the issue,” Hegde added.On March 20, the Supreme Court refused to entertain a petition which sought to remove a remark against judgments from the NCERT Social Science textbook for class eight, and observed that expressing a viewpoint about a verdict was not wrong.“It’s a view point, why the judiciary should be so oversensitive about that?” Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was quoted as saying by LiveLaw.Hegde said that there is a situation where “some people are more loyal than the king.”“That is what has essentially happened. The intervention at the time was limited, and required at that point of time. But saying that nobody should say anything about it, will be counter productive.”The Wire has previously reported on the irony in the Supreme Court’s order banning the NCERT books. The order, while on one hand praises rigorous discourse as democracy’s lifeblood, it also declares that “uninhibited criticism” in a school chapter, despite being combined with an inadequate quota of praise for the institution of the judiciary, can amount to criminal contempt. Following the Supreme Court’s ban, NCERT issued a statement acknowledging that the content was “inappropriate” and attributing it to an “error of judgment”. In the eye of the storm, union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan vowed action and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking accountability, according to reports citing sources. The actions of a law university, then in attempting to gag a student raises further questions about the boundaries now erected of criticism of the judiciary. “It’s difficult to say if the Supreme Court’s intervention has had a chilling effect,” said Former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B. Lokur.“It certainly didn’t have a chilling effect on the student, but it seems to have had a chilling effect on the University. I think it is important to remember that it’s alright to criticise the legal reasoning in a judgment, its conclusion or an administrative action.“Similarly, constructive criticism in the form of an expression of opinion is perfectly alright. But criticism for the heck of it or meaningless or unrestrained criticism is silly. Some people do it, but it can’t be helped. Institutions such as the subject University should appreciate that the Supreme Court can take care of itself,” he said.