The Modi government's continuing war on the Constitution has now put it on a collision course with  the Supreme Court of India, the custodian of the Constitution. In an unprecedented display of contemptuous arrogance, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar has accused the Supreme Court of functioning like a super parliament. Dhankar described Article 142 of the Constitution of India - which gives the Supreme Court the power to "pass any decree or make any order as is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it" - as a ‘nuclear missile’ in the hands of an unaccountable authority to target an elected government! Even the pro-government Times of India had to editorially denounce Dhankhar's comments, asking the readers to discount them entirely.

It remains to be seen if the Supreme Court takes any cognisance of Dhankhar's unconstitutional remarks that undermine the very powers of the Supreme Court as upheld by the Constitution of India. As the TOI editorial put it, "This is extraordinary. Here’s a constitutional post holder critiquing a constitutional provision that defines how the country’s top constitutional court should go about its core business. There are more improprieties here than we care to count." Dhankhar's comments were no off the cuff passing remark, he made these remarks while addressing a group of Rajya Sabha interns and as part of an elaborate attack on the role of the judiciary. The salvoes fired by the Vice-President have since grown into a loud anti-judiciary campaign by the Sangh brigade.

The role of the Supreme Court is pivotal in maintaining the federal balance of India's parliamentary democracy and protecting the constitution from executive aggression. What the Modi government wants is a conformist and docile Supreme Court lending its silent seal of approval to every violation of the Constitution by the executive. But for occasional belated and partial annulment of a few brazenly unconstitutional steps of the Modi government, like the scrapping of the Electoral Bond scheme ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Supreme Court by and large avoided any confrontation with the Modi government in its first two terms. But a few recent pronouncements by the apex court have made the Modi government somewhat jittery. The pronouncements against 'bulldozer (in)justice', the upholding of the constitutional status of Urdu and the indictment of the anti-Constitution role of the Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi have indicated some welcome potential of the judiciary to offer a degree of belated resistance to executive aggression.

The most significant of these verdicts has come against the extremely shocking partisan conduct of Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi who sat on a dozen bills passed by the TN Assembly for years. This has thoroughly undermined the legitimate legislative rights of the TN Assembly and the rights of the people of Tamil Nadu to have a functional government that discharges its legislative and administrative responsibilities. The Supreme Court invoked its special powers of judicial review under Article 142 to declare the bills enacted and fixed a time frame of three months for Governor and President to decide on bills awaiting assent. In many ways, this SC verdict marks the strongest possible indictment of the Modi government's brazen subversion of the constitutional framework of parliamentary democracy. The Modi government now wants to strip the Supreme Court of its very powers of judicial review so that the executive can pass whatever law it wants and function as arbitrarily as it wishes without any institutional check or scrutiny.

Like the Citizenship Amendment Act, the stripping of statehood of Jammu and Kashmir and the now repealed farm laws, the recent Waqf Amendment Act - passed in utter disregard of widespread protests - has been another brutal assault on the basic character of the Constitution and the equal rights of minorities enshrined in it. While it is too early to predict the future of this sinister piece of legislation, the questions posed by the Supreme Court have already revealed the government's deep discomfort. The government has bought time by giving temporary assurances against deregistration of any existing waqf property and appointment of any non-Muslim in waqf boards, but even as the government has beaten a temporary retreat, the likes of Jagdeep Dhankhar, Nishikant Dubey and their ilk are using the breather to the hilt to mount a toxic campaign against the Supreme Court itself. Nishikant Dubey, the notorious BJP MP from Jharkhand and a habitual hate-monger, has blamed the current Chief Justice of India for 'all civil wars in the country', with the BJP President conveniently describing it as a personal opinion of the MP.

The 2024 Lok Sabha election results reflected the urge of large sections of the Indian people to stop the fascist aggression of the Modi regime and the Sangh-BJP brigade. With the dawning of the realization that the Constitution of India drafted under the stewardship of Babasaheb Ambedkar was no longer safe, the people began rallying around the Constitution and used their vote wisely to restrict the numbers of the BJP and its NDA partners. The BJP's no-holds-barred campaign against the Supreme Court should further alert the people about the grave threat to the Constitution and the basic character and foundation of the Republic. Even in the US, where the judiciary has historically been known for its independence, we now see signs of a calculated offensive to browbeat the judiciary. Fascist regimes worldwide have always survived with the support of a docile judiciary. At a time when most institutions of governance in India have been hijacked by the fascist regime and a palpable climate of fear subjects more and more people to self-censorship and submission, the Supreme Court deserves the fullest support of we the people of India in checking the marauding fascist bulldozer.