The Supreme Court’s recent suo motu intervention over an NCERT textbook passage allegedly portraying judicial corruption is a welcome and timely assertion of institutional responsibility. By acting swiftly and decisively, it has reaffirmed a foundational principle: That public institutions, especially those entrusted with constitutional authority, must be protected from casual or deliberate disparagement — more so in educational material that shapes young minds. More importantly, the Court has signalled that reputational harm, when normalised, can erode public trust in ways not easily reversible. The authority of institutions rests not only on legal mandate but on public confidence; once this is systematically weakened, constitutional governance itself begins to fray.
This intervention, however, opens up a larger constitutional question. If the dignity of institutions must be protected against misrepresentation, does the same principle extend, by necessary implication, to the dignity of communities who form the fabric of the republic? The Constitution does not recognise hierarchies of dignity. Its guarantees are structured on the premise that respect for persons, groups, and institutions is mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.
India’s textbooks have long been instruments of nation-building. They do more than convey information; they shape civic imagination. What is included, what is emphasised, and what is omitted influence how citizens come to understand their society and each other. Recent revisions have, therefore, drawn attention not merely to what is written, but to what is no longer there.
In 2022-23, references to the Gujarat riots were dropped from Class 12 Political Science textbooks. References to the Babri Masjid demolition were first diluted, then removed, while the treatment of the Mughal period was significantly reduced. The treatment of caste struggles and Dalit assertion was pared down, with much of its earlier texture and nuance diminished. Each of these changes may be defensible in isolation. But taken together, they suggest a movement away from contested histories that democracies must learn to confront.
The concern is not partisan. Curricular revision is a constant feature of governance, and no political era is untouched by it. The deeper issue is structural: The relationship between education and honesty. A textbook that sanitises history produces ignorance dressed as truth, as shaped by prevailing public discourse.
Representation in textbooks is not merely academic; it shapes civic imagination in ways both subtle and enduring. When a community is encountered largely through episodes of conflict, its contributions recede and its identity risks being reduced to a stereotype. Equally, when a community with a long and well-documented history of oppression is presented primarily through narratives of suffering, an unintended distortion can arise: Its agency, intellectual traditions, reform movements, and leadership risk being overshadowed, leaving an incomplete picture. Acknowledging historical injustice is essential, but so is recognising the fullness of a community’s experience.
These are not falsehoods in the conventional sense. They are partial truths, which, repeated often enough, harden into prejudice. The damage is deeper precisely because it is invisible, absorbed before the tools to question it are formed.
It is in this broader context that the Court’s recent articulation assumes far wider significance. Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has observed that it is constitutionally impermissible — whether by the state or non-state actors — to vilify or denigrate any community on grounds of religion, caste, language or region. Grounded in the constitutional value of fraternity, this observation elevates the discussion from institutional protection to a more expansive doctrine of social dignity.
Fraternity, often the least discussed of the Constitution’s founding ideals, is in fact the glue that binds liberty and equality into a functioning democratic order. Without fraternity, equality becomes formal and liberty becomes fragmented. The Court’s reminder is therefore not ornamental; it is structural. To vilify a community is not merely to injure sentiment — it is to weaken the constitutional promise of belonging.
The constitutional architecture supporting this principle is both explicit and expansive. The Preamble speaks of fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law. Article 15 prohibits discrimination on specified grounds. Article 21, as expansively interpreted, protects dignity as an intrinsic component of life and liberty. Article 51A(e) imposes a duty to promote harmony and common brotherhood. Read together, these provisions create not merely a set of enforceable rights, but a normative framework within which public discourse must operate.
The statutory framework reinforces this position. Provisions such as Sections 153A, 153B, 295A and 505 of the Indian Penal Code criminalise the promotion of enmity and the vilification of communities. These are not obscure or rarely invoked provisions; they form the backbone of the legal response to hate speech and communal incitement. Yet, their enforcement has often appeared uneven, particularly when such narratives are normalised in everyday discourse. The law exists, the prohibitions are clear, but the threshold of intervention seems to shift depending on context, visibility, and perhaps even the identity of those affected.
This gap between constitutional promise, statutory clarity, and institutional response is where the challenge lies. A democracy cannot afford selective vigilance. If the law acts decisively when institutions are maligned but hesitates when communities are stereotyped or vilified, it risks creating an unintended hierarchy of concern. Such asymmetry does not strengthen institutions; it ultimately weakens them by eroding the moral coherence of the constitutional order.
Seen in this light, the Court’s intervention marks more than a defence of institutional reputation. It gestures toward a broader constitutional doctrine: That dignity — whether of institutions or communities — is indivisible. The same constitutional morality that protects courts from defamation must, by extension, protect citizens from vilification.
What this moment offers, therefore, is an opportunity for greater consistency in the application of constitutional values. If dignity is to be defended, it must be defended across the board, with the same clarity, urgency, and seriousness. For the real test of a democracy lies not only in how it protects its institutions, but in how it protects its people.
Let this landmark order mark a turning point — an end to a pattern of judicial hesitation in confronting the broader ecosystem of vilification, and a reaffirmation that the Constitution’s promise of dignity must be defended with equal clarity, whether the subject is an institution or a community.
Quraishi is former Chief Election Commissioner of India and the author of books including Democracy’s Heartland: Inside the Battle for Power in South Asia
