INTERNATIONAL LAW & WORLD AFFAIRS  — LIFE AND LIBERTY

RAVI NAIR — NOVEMBER 21, 2022

NHRC’s radio silence on the absence of express definition of torture in Indian law and jurisprudence is deafening.

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THE Working Group on the United Nations (‘UN’) Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (‘UPR’) held its review of India on November 10. The delegation of India was headed by the Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta. At its 16th meeting, held on November 16, the Working Group adopted the draft report on India.

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India’s continued refusal to ratify U.N. Convention Against Torture lacks substanceRead More »

GOVERNANCE AND POLICY

RAVI NAIR — NOVEMBER 16, 2022

India’s paranoia over the review of its human rights record by outside agencies reflects its insecurity, not  strength.

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THE Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta while presenting India’s fourth periodic report at the United Nations (‘UN’) Human Rights Council session in Geneva on November 10, stated that human rights defenders should conform to the law of land.

That is a no brainer. Unless, one had the moral courage of a Mahatma Gandhi, whose name Mehta is undoubtedly aware of, but is perhaps less conversant with Gandhiji’s teachings on the primacy of the moral law. “Gandhi’s sedition trial of 1922 was one that brought into sharp focus the conflict between obedience to the law of the land and obedience of one’s moral conscience in opposing an unjust law”, lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan aptly said in a lecture on Gandhi Jayanti in 2020.

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India played out a false dichotomy by emphasising domestic law over human rights at the Universal Periodic ReviewRead More »

SEDITION & UAPA

RAVI NAIR — NOVEMBER 10, 2022

The Indian State has conceived itself as a ‘security State’, and as the police apparatus is heavily overburdened, the fabricated arrests of members of minority communities are sacrifices made to create the appearance of relative safety and a protective State.

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THE Counter Terrorism Committee (‘CTC’) of the United Nations (‘UN’) Security Council met in New Delhi in the last week of last month. It adopted the Delhi Declaration which is State-centric, and had little concrete suggestions to protect and enhance citizens’ rights. The UN, as one wag underlined, was “nations united” against “people’s rights”.

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The lack of compulsion to prove wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt is at the heart of the security laws’ enduring appealRead More »

RAVI NAIR·AUGUST 18, 2022

RAVI NAIR·JUNE 25, 2022

RAVI NAIR·JUNE 25, 2022

Perhaps the legal community would care to demonstrate how they make the fine distinction between an Emergency regime that subverts the Constitution and suspends fundamental rights, and other regimes that do likewise in a society that is bereft of due process of law and is yet considered an electoral democracy, however tawdry.

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