Farmers have constitutional right to continue with protest
The Supreme Court (SC) said that the farmers have a constitutional right to continue with their “absolutely perfect” protest against the three agricultural laws, which they say is the basis for the success of their movement.
Right to Protest
In a country like India, so much as taking one step out of line can lead to a life affected by police brutality and harassment, let alone participating in mass actions. Protest is a fundamental aspect of democratic politics and dissent, yet we are so afraid that we sometimes refuse to exercise our rights even when it's also our duty—the right to peacefully protest is enshrined in the Indian Constitution—Article 19 (1)(a) ensures the freedom of speech and expression; Article 19(1)(b) reassures citizens the right to assemble peaceably and without arms. There are multiple clauses in these articles that permit peaceful demonstrations. However, these rights are also subject to reasonable restrictions mentioned under Article 19(2).
Supreme Court Judgements on Right to Protest
India is one of the few democracies in which the right to protest is not restricted. However, this right isn’t absolute. Although certain objections are legally valid, and violations are a punishable offence, the issue has become increasingly blurred due to conflicting statements by government officials in recent years.
- Ramlila Maidan Incident vs Home Secretary, Union Of India & Ors. case(2012): The Supreme Court had stated that citizens have a fundamental right to assembly and peaceful protest which cannot be taken away by an arbitrary executive or legislative action.
- Shaheen Bagh Judgement: The Supreme Court has upheld the right to peaceful protest against the law but made it unequivocally clear that public ways and public spaces cannot be occupied and that too indefinitely.
Significance of Right to Protest
The right to protest is a fundamental freedom - it is at the very core of human rights and democratic society. In fact, when you look back through history, the right to protest has been one of the key factors contributing to a country's development and positive changes in its political landscape. Here are some reasons that is why, Right to Protest is most important.
- People realise that they are not alone: All over the world people are questioning how power is exercised. Solidarity between different groups and communities is a key part of building understanding and empathy. One way in which the establishment maintains its power is by creating a dominant discourse from which dissidents’ views are excluded. If people think differently, they may feel isolated, marginalized, and powerless. Public demonstrations and marches empower people by showing them that there are thousands of people who think the same things.
- By protesting, we alter the agenda and start a debate: By protesting, we alter the agenda and start a debate that otherwise wouldn't have happened. We can do this collectively through civil disobedience. For example, if a group of people block all traffic to an airport, or shut down a conference on climate change. This sparks off debates about why people are doing this - and it also gets us thinking of questions we would never have thought to ask.
- In an electoral democracy, protest provides an essential voice for minority groups: The classic theorists of representational government recognised that universal suffrage and majority voting threaten to impose the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and override the rights of minorities. Protests are a vital corrective to majority rule.
- Sometimes we win: If there are enough protesters, the policies of those in power may become unworkable. When the UK government introduce the flat-rate Poll Tax in 1990, huge numbers of people protested and refused to pay the tax. It became clear that prosecuting everyone who refused would be impossible, chaos threatened, and the government abolished the tax.
- Sometimes we win in ways we had not intended or planned: Political events are unpredictable. The protests against nuclear cruise missiles at Greenham Common in the UK in the 1980s appeared to have failed when the missiles were installed, but the protests had forced the US and UK governments into saying that they had to deploy the missiles only because the Soviet Union was doing the same.
