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Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Supreme Court’s NCERT textbook order punishes the messenger, doesn’t answer the message

The portion of the NCERT Class 8 textbook that the Supreme Court deemed objectionable included remarks made by the outgoing CJI BR Gavai in June 2025.

The two recent Supreme Court orders on 26 February and 11 March 2026, concerning a small section related to “corruption in the judiciary” in a school textbook, are unfortunate. The Solicitor General enthusiastically supported them. In other words, the executive, too, assisted the court in issuing a one-sided order instead of defending the scholars responsible for the text in its own institution.

Let us first see whether those orders were appropriate. Note that the material on two points in that book—“corruption in the judiciary” and “justice delayed is justice denied”—spread across two pages, which angered the Supreme Court judges. Yet not a single sentence from that material is quoted in the judges’ decision—that is, nothing they could demonstrate as wrong or improper. Thus, it appears that the content was correct, yet the judges had it removed.

A judgment without evidence

Therefore, the order becomes contrary to freedom of expression. The famous saying of the great writer George Orwell is: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” At present, this very freedom has been struck by our Supreme Court judges, even though it is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. They had a passage removed from a book in which they could show neither error, malice, nor impropriety—yet which they simply did not want to hear. They do not even wish to see statements made by their own former justices.

Thus, the situation now appears to be that in India, one may teach about corruption among MPs, MLAs, ministers, and officials—but not about corruption among judges. Even the detailed statements of former Supreme Court justices and Chief Justices on this matter cannot be cited. What kind of decision is this?

The passage in the textbook that the Supreme Court deemed inappropriate also included a remark made by the outgoing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, BR Gavai, in June 2025, while he was still Chief Justice, made during a public event abroad. Speaking in England on the theme “Maintaining Judicial Legitimacy and Public........

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