Doth protest too much about protests?

Article 19(1)(b) of the Constitution provides all citizens the right to assemble peacefully and without arms. It also provides restrictions that are ‘sensible’ and ‘obligatory in the welfare of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morals, or in relation to the disdain of court, offence, or incitement to an offence’. In other words, if the first half of the law provides the letter, the second half provides the spirit. For the latter to comply with the former, one needs to obtain a ‘no objection certificate’ (NOC) from the police station within the jurisdiction of which one plans the public gathering of protest. Indeed, it is the decision – marzi (wish), if you will – of the authorities to allow or revoke gatherings of this nature by invoking Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC): curfew.

Going by this letter of law, gatherings per se can, indeed, cause ‘annoyance’ to ‘any person’ and be the source of ‘disturbance of public tranquillity’. By this reading, protests, even in a democratic space, are up for subjective hyper-scrutiny and cherry-picking. In other words, every protest can be deemed unlawful if the authorities choose to see it as being so.

By their very nature, ‘peaceful’ public protests are disruptive, anti-status quo-ist. For the allowance of such a democratic right to have any practical meaning, it would be wise to be more specific and detailed in law to define what amounts to ‘annoyance’ and ‘disturbance of public tranquillity’. All protests don’t take place in ‘Tiananmen Squares’. And they certainly don’t amount to challenging the ‘welfare of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State’.