The Court That Proved the Textbook Right
This is one of those stories where the more you dig into the facts, the worse it gets. Rishi Kumar's breakdown of what happened is thorough and worth reading in full. This is my take on it, because I think it matters and I don't think it got enough attention.
In February 2026, the Supreme Court of India banned an NCERT Class 8 civics chapter. Seized physical copies, pulled digital versions, prohibited republication. Then in March, blacklisted the three authors from any publicly-funded curriculum work. The authors found out about the blacklisting after it happened. No hearing before the penalty.
The reason? The chapter mentioned that corruption exists in the judiciary.
What the chapter actually said
The chapter is eighteen pages on how courts function in a democracy. It profiles Justice Kuldip Singh, who fought for environmental law. It discusses public interest litigation, the National Judicial Data Grid, mobile courts, and mediation. It calls the judiciary the "watchdog of democracy." It says, explicitly, that democracy cannot survive without a strong, fair court system.
About two pages of it contain this sentence: "people do experience corruption at various levels of the judiciary. For the poor and the disadvantaged, this can worsen the issue of access to justice."
The source cited for the corruption section? Former Chief Justice B.R. Gavai, on how corruption damages public confidence in courts.
That is what the Supreme Court decided to ban. A chapter that is broadly flattering to courts, written for fourteen-year-olds, citing their own chief justice to make its one critical point.
What the court said about it
Chief Justice Surya Kant called the chapter a "deep-rooted, well-orchestrated conspiracy" to malign the judiciary. He said the "judiciary is bleeding today." He said the chapter "washes off with one stroke of the pen, the illustrious history" of the courts.
The February 26 proceedings were striking in tone:
Heads must roll… There must be a deeper probe… Who are the persons behind this? We won't close the case.
This is a constitutional court talking about a school civics chapter. That language does not come from a bench that is confident in its record. It comes from one that has taken something personally and lost its sense of proportion.
The March 11 hearing was worse:
Some elements have acted irresponsibly… we firmly believe in catching the bull by the horn… No one will be spared… Even if they are hiding outside the country, I will not spare them.
Then the court ordered the government to identify websites and individuals posting critical commentary about the episode for unspecified "action in accordance with law." Not defamation proceedings. Not specific legal violations. Just a directive to find and flag people who commented critically online.
A court that uses state machinery to identify critics is not doing its constitutional job. It is trying to police a conversation about itself.
The court's claims versus the actual text
If you are going to ban something, your stated reasons for banning it should match what is actually in it. The court made four specific arguments. None of them hold up.
The court claimed the chapter "washes off" the judiciary's history. The chapter profiles Justice Kuldip Singh and calls courts the "watchdog of democracy."
The court claimed the chapter ignores the judiciary's constitutional role. The chapter states explicitly that the judiciary ensures laws stay within the constitutional framework.
The court claimed the chapter ignores the judiciary's "transformative initiatives." Public interest litigation, the National Judicial Data Grid, mobile courts, and mediation are all in the chapter.
The court said fourteen-year-olds lack the "perspicacity" to handle the content. These students are studying algebra and light refraction in the same term. The civics chapter is the least demanding thing they are reading.
The court described a chapter that does not exist. Either the bench did not read it carefully before issuing the order, or they chose to misrepresent it. Neither option is reassuring for an institution whose authority rests entirely on its credibility.
The legal problem
Gautam Bhatia's analysis makes the constitutional issue clear. Article 19(2) allows speech restrictions only through law made by the State. Courts are not "State" for Part III purposes and judicial orders do not constitute "law" in this sense. The court cannot directly ban speech.
The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 caps punishment at six months imprisonment or a two thousand rupee fine. The court imposed a professional blacklisting that exceeds that ceiling, before any hearing, without invoking the Act's formal procedures.
Bhatia's second piece calls the March 11 order a judicial bill of attainder: punishment of named individuals by decree, without trial. This is a practice democracies spent centuries abolishing because it is incompatible with the rule of law.
The irony writes itself. If any government department issued an order like this, the Supreme Court would strike it down.
The corruption that cannot be argued away
The court's implicit argument is that the chapter's corruption claims were unfair or inaccurate. That argument collides with a documented record compiled largely by the court's own former members.
Transparency International data shows over 45 percent of Indians believe the judiciary is corrupt. India's 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index score was 38 out of 100, ranking 96th of 180 countries. There are fifty million pending cases in Indian courts. That backlog does not build up in a functioning, clean system.
The individual cases are on the public record and not disputed.
Justice Soumitra Sen misappropriated funds. He resigned before the Lok Sabha voted on impeachment and kept his retirement benefits. Justice P.D. Dinakaran faced findings of assets beyond known income, resigned mid-inquiry, and also kept his benefits. Justice S.N. Shukla was found by the court's own inquiry to have "credibly accepted a bribe", refused to resign, and collected his full salary for over a year until retirement.
Justice Yashwant Varma had a fire at his residence. The fire revealed partially burnt stacks of cash. Impeachment proceedings are ongoing.
Former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan filed an affidavit in court stating eight of the previous sixteen Chief Justices of India were corrupt. Former CJI Markandey Katju alleged three former Chief Justices compromised to protect a corrupt High Court judge, and was taken to contempt proceedings for saying it. Former CJI V.N. Khare said in a published interview: "Corruption in the lower courts is no secret. Rates are fixed for quick divorce, bail and other favourable verdicts."
All of this is on the record. The NCERT chapter cited a sitting Chief Justice to make the same point. The court's response was to ban the chapter and pursue the authors.
How it started
The proceedings were triggered on February 25, the day before the court order, when two senior advocates appeared before the Chief Justice's bench with a newspaper article about the chapter and expressed shock at its contents.
One was Kapil Sibal, former Law Minister and sitting Rajya Sabha member. The other was Abhishek Manu Singhvi, former Additional Solicitor General and parliamentarian. Two of the most senior legal figures in the country.
The reference to 'corruption', particularly in relation to judiciary, seemed deliberate.
Singhvi suggested the chapter was unfairly singling out the judiciary, as if other institutions were being let off the hook:
It is as if there is no corruption in other organs of governance — ministers, bureaucrats, police, politicians.
The problem is that the chapter does criticise other institutions. There are cartoons showing candidates distributing cash. Sections on pending criminal cases against legislators. Multiple accounts suggest both advocates had not read the full chapter before walking into court to express outrage about it.
This whole episode was initiated by people who had not done the reading. And it escalated into a ban, a blacklisting, and a government directive to identify online critics.
What the government did
Prime Minister Modi reportedly expressed displeasure and directed accountability be fixed for those who approved the chapter. The government complied with everything the court asked.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court the authors "would never work with UGC or any ministry." He also said, on the section about case pendency: "We can't teach that justice is denied."
Fifty million pending cases. The official position of the Indian government, stated in open court, is that this is not appropriate material for eighth graders.
There is no charitable reading of that. It is a government and a court, aligned, deciding that accurate information about the functioning of democratic institutions is too dangerous for children.
The part that should concern everyone
After Rishi published his original piece, someone called his university demanding it be taken down. His follow-up is about that. He kept the article up.
But the call was made. In a context where the court had already ordered the government to find and pursue online commentators, that call is not an isolated event. It is the environment the court created, playing out in practice.
That environment does not stay contained to lawyers and academics. It reaches students, journalists, teachers. Anyone who might someday need to say something accurate about a powerful institution and has to calculate whether it is safe to do so. That calculation, the act of measuring your words against potential consequences before you say a true thing, is the chilling effect. And the court built it deliberately.
Justice H.R. Khanna, who dissented alone against the suspension of habeas corpus during the Emergency, put it clearly: "Contempt of court should not be used as a means to uphold our own dignity. This must rely on surer foundation. We must rely on our conduct itself to be its own vindication." Conduct, not suppression. That is the standard the current bench failed to meet.
My take
A confident institution responds to criticism by demonstrating the criticism is wrong. It publishes data, invites scrutiny, and uses the moment to show rather than tell. What the Supreme Court did instead is the most effective possible confirmation that the chapter's concerns were valid.
It banned accurate information about judicial accountability by issuing an order that itself violated the constitutional principles judicial accountability exists to protect. The chapter said courts can behave unaccountably when unchecked. The court responded by behaving unaccountably, in public, on the record.
The Supreme Court of India has produced genuinely important jurisprudence. It has checked executive overreach and expanded rights at key moments. None of that makes this episode acceptable, and it does not cancel it out. Institutions do not get to bank goodwill from past decisions and spend it on current ones.
What happened here is straightforward. A chapter told kids that courts can be corrupt. The court proved the chapter right.
This post is a response to Rishi A. Kumar's original piece, which goes considerably deeper on the constitutional law arguments. His follow-up on what happened after he published it is also worth reading.
Liked this post? Share it with someone on 𝕏 Twitter or LinkedIn. If you found it useful or have a question, send me a message and I'll do my best to get back to you.
If this was worth your time, .