Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Sunday said that students cannot be threatened with punitive action for expressing a different point of view or asking questions, stressing that the right to question is an essential part of citizenship, liberty and constitutional responsibility.
Justice Bhuyan was delivering the convocation address at the 13th Convocation of National Law University Delhi for its postgraduate programmes. In his address, he spoke on the importance of dissent, tolerance and independent thought in a constitutional democracy, particularly within universities.
“In a democracy, the right to question is not an act of defiance. It is an essential expression of citizenship, liberty and constitutional responsibility,” Justice Bhuyan said.
He added,
“So when students express a different point of view, when students ask questions, they cannot be threatened. They cannot be threatened with punitive action. That is unconstitutional. That is misuse of power and office.”
The judge said that the Constitution does not seek uniformity of thought, but creates a framework within which people holding different beliefs, opinions and convictions can live with equal dignity and participate in democratic life.
He emphasised that tolerance of disagreement is essential to democracy.
“A democratic society cannot be built on the edifice that everyone will think alike. It is built on the understanding that differences will exist and that those differences must be accommodated within the broader constitutional framework,” he said.
Justice Bhuyan added that constitutional democracy requires the State to listen to citizens, citizens to listen to one another, institutions to remain accountable and society not to treat every dissenting voice as a threat.
Referring to Justice Chinnappa Reddy’s judgment in Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala, Justice Bhuyan recalled the observation,
“Our tradition teaches tolerance, our philosophy preaches tolerance, our Constitution practises tolerance. Let us not dilute it.”
Justice Bhuyan said the words, delivered four decades ago in 1986, were even more relevant today.
“Tolerance is not merely a matter of personal courtesy. It is a constitutional value. A democracy becomes meaningful not when everyone speaks the same language of thought, but when different voices can coexist, be heard and be treated with dignity,” he said.
The maturity of a democracy, he added, is reflected not merely in how it treats popular opinions having majoritarian mandate, but in how it responds to opinions that are “difficult, unpopular or sometimes very inconvenient”.
Justice Bhuyan went on to say,
“An intolerant mind, by its very nature, is at odds with the spirit of the Constitution. It is a manifestation of another form of violence.”
He cautioned that intolerance begins to undermine the constitutional framework when disagreement or dissent is no longer treated as a legitimate difference of opinion, but as something to be “silenced, rejected or punished”.
“The ability to live with disagreement is therefore not merely a social virtue. It is the very essence of a liberal constitutional democracy,” he said.
Justice Bhuyan also underscored the role of universities in fostering such a culture.
“A university, in my view, should be one of the first places where the habit of thinking freely begins,” he said.
Universities, he added, should be spaces where ideas are not accepted merely because they are familiar and students do not hesitate to ask difficult questions simply because the answers may be uncomfortable.