On January 20, the Supreme Court of India reserved orders on a batch of writ petitions concerning hate speech, signalling what may be the end of a prolonged and unusually intensive phase of judicial engagement with hate speech as a constitutional problem.
A Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta indicated that all matters in the batch would be closed, while explicitly preserving the liberty of parties to pursue other remedies under law. One case alone—Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Ors.—was kept pending, limited to monitoring the progress of trial and allied proceedings arising out of a 2021 alleged hate crime against a Muslim cleric in Noida.
The January 20 hearing was not merely procedural. It functioned as a consolidated reckoning—bringing together nearly every strand of hate-speech litigation that has occupied the Court since 2020, and laying bare the Court’s evolving understanding of its own role, the limits of judicial supervision, and the persistent failures of enforcement.
The Beginning: 2020 and the turn to the Supreme Court
The present batch of cases originated in 2020, at a moment when hate speech entered the Supreme Court not as a marginal criminal issue, but as a structural constitutional concern.
The immediate triggers were:
- The “Corona Jihad” campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic, which communalised disease and cast Muslims as biological and civic threats; and
- Sudarshan TV’s “UPSC Jihad” programme, which alleged a conspiracy by Muslim candidates to infiltrate the civil services.
Petitioners argued that these narratives violated equality, dignity, and fraternity, and that State authorities had either failed to act or were complicit through inaction.
In 2020, the Supreme Court intervened to restrain the telecast of the “UPSC Jihad” programme, marking an early acknowledgment that certain forms of hate speech—especially when amplified through mass media—implicate constitutional values beyond ordinary criminal law.
This was the Court’s first decisive signal that hate speech would not be treated merely as offensive expression, but as conduct capable of restructuring social hierarchies and legitimising exclusion.
Expansion of the Docket: Dharam Sansads and genocidal speech (2021–2022)
The hate-speech docket expanded dramatically in 2021–22, following Dharam Sansad events and religious gatherings where speakers openly called for:
- Violence against Muslims,
- Economic boycotts,
- Armed mobilisation, and
- Genocide.
Petitions by Qurban Ali, Major General S.G. Vombatkere, journalists, civil liberties organisations, and religious bodies highlighted a disturbing pattern:
- Hate speech events were openly announced,
- Police often granted permission or remained passive, and
- FIRs, if registered at all, rarely resulted in arrests or prosecutions.
This phase forced the Court to confront not isolated speeches, but a systemic failure of enforcement.
October 2022: The Court steps in
In October 2022, the Supreme Court issued what remains its most consequential intervention on hate speech.
The Court directed that police authorities must register FIRs suo moto in cases involving:
- Promotion of communal hatred, or
- Offending religious sentiments,
without waiting for a formal complaint. Failure to act, the Court warned, would invite contempt proceedings.
The reasoning was explicit: Hate speech strikes at fraternity, corrodes secularism, and threatens constitutional morality. It cannot be left to the discretion of local authorities who may be unwilling to act.
This order marked the Court’s shift from reactive adjudication to supervisory constitutional enforcement.
2023: Nationwide application and preventive policing
In April 2023, the Supreme Court extended its October 2022 directions to all States and Union Territories, making clear that:
- The obligation to act was nationwide;
- Enforcement must be religion-neutral; and
- Police must act proactively, not defensively.
Throughout 2023, the Court:
- Passed preventive orders ahead of announced rallies,
- Directed videography of events,
- Required status reports on FIRs and investigations,
- Entertained contempt petitions alleging non-compliance.
The Court also began drawing upon its Tehseen Poonawalla (2018) jurisprudence on mob lynching, exploring whether similar preventive, remedial, and punitive frameworks could be adapted to hate speech.
Yet even as directions multiplied, enforcement remained uneven—setting the stage for judicial introspection. Across these six years, the Court was not operating in an evidentiary vacuum. Ground-level documentation repeatedly entered the record, including through material placed by Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) under its Hate Watch (HW) programme. These compilations drew from verified complaints filed by CJP across multiple States before police authorities, district administrations, minority commissions, and other statutory bodies. The same may be accessed here.
During various hearings, this data—reflecting patterns of non-registration of FIRs, selective enforcement, delayed action, and repeat offending by the same speakers—was intermittently brought to the Court’s attention. The material served a dual function: it both corroborated petitioners’ claims of systemic enforcement failure and demonstrated that hate speech was not episodic, but embedded in everyday administrative practice. While the Court acknowledged these inputs at different stages, their presence underscored a recurring tension in the proceedings: between empirical evidence of ground-level inertia and the Court’s increasing reluctance to continue long-term supervisory engagement.
Recalibration: “We cannot monitor the entire country” (2024–2025)
By late 2024 and 2025, a notable shift occurred.
Benches—including Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta—began articulating concern that the Supreme Court:
- Could not act as a permanent national monitoring authority;
- Could not substitute itself for police stations, magistrates, and High Courts; and
- Would not legislate from the bench in the absence of parliamentary action.
This was not a repudiation of earlier orders, but a recognition of institutional limits: judicial directions had reached their ceiling without corresponding executive will. The trajectory of this batch of litigation—from its inception as a broad constitutional intervention to its present narrowing—mirrors a discernible shift in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence when confronted with complex societal harms. What began as a wide-ranging judicial attempt to frame hate speech as a threat to fraternity, secularism, and constitutional morality gradually contracted into a posture of institutional restraint, marked by repeated assertions of jurisdictional and functional limits.
Over time, the Court’s role evolved from norm-setting and preventive oversight to a more confined emphasis on statutory remedies, executive responsibility, and case-specific adjudication. The impending closure of most petitions reflects not a denial of the harm caused by hate speech, but a judicial recalibration—signalling that the enforcement deficit cannot indefinitely be remedied through continuing mandamus. This recalibration forms the immediate backdrop to the January 20 hearing.
January 20 Hearing: A comprehensive closing of the docket
The January 20 hearing brought together every unresolved dimension of the hate-speech litigation. At the outset, the Bench indicated that it was inclined to:
- Close all connected matters, and
- Leave parties free to pursue statutory and constitutional remedies elsewhere.
The sole exception would be Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani, which involved a concrete hate crime and an ongoing criminal process.
Arguments of the petitioners
- The problem is enforcement, not law: Advocate Nizam Pasha, appearing for Qurban Ali, made a central submission:
The crisis is not legal inadequacy, but institutional reluctance—especially when alleged offenders are linked to the ruling establishment.
He argued that:
- Hate speech events are often advertised in advance;
- When the Court previously intervened, events were cancelled or toned down, proving the effectiveness of oversight;
- The same habitual offenders operate across States;
- FIRs are registered but arrests and follow-up are absent, enabling repetition.
Pasha also referred to an application seeking takedown of an AI-generated video, allegedly circulated by the BJP’s Assam unit, portraying Muslims as poised to overtake the State if the party lost elections. He argued that hate speech frequently prefigures hate crime, calling for precisely the acts that later occur.
- Hate speech as a constitutional tort: Advocate Sharukh Alam, appearing in Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani, urged the Court to reject the framing of hate speech as merely a law-and-order problem.
She argued that:
- Hate speech entrenches discrimination and exclusion;
- It should be understood as a constitutional tort, engaging Articles 14, 15, and 21;
- In the Noida case, the Maulana was stripped and assaulted because of his religious identity.
The State of Uttar Pradesh denied the hate-crime characterisation, stating that:
- A chargesheet had been filed,
- Trial was underway, and
- Departmental action had been taken.
The Bench decided to retain this matter alone, limited to monitoring progress.
- The sanction question: Senior Advocate Siddharth Aggarwal, appearing for Brinda Karat, raised a distinct legal issue: Whether prior sanction is required at the FIR stage, a view adopted by a Magistrate and upheld by the Delhi High Court.
Aggarwal argued that:
- Sanction is required only at the cognisance stage, not for FIR registration;
- The issue is pending reference in Manju Surana.
Justice Vikram Nath asked him to submit a brief note, recognising the issue’s doctrinal importance.
- Media, elections, and civil liberties:
- Senior Advocate M.R. Shamshad (Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind) highlighted the growing targeting of religious personalities, with FIRs refused on erroneous sanction grounds.
- Advocate Amit Pai cited failure to register FIRs even in cases of casteist speech by elected officials.
- Senior Advocate Sanjay Parekh (PUCL) recalled the Court’s earlier reliance on Tehseen Poonawalla, while acknowledging the need for adaptation.
- Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, as amicus curiae, posed a structural question: Can hate speech be meaningfully curbed when social-media and broadcast platforms profit from virality?
State and institutional responses
- ASG S.V. Raju claimed substantial compliance, stating FIRs were registered in most cited cases.
- NBDA sought to be heard, citing self-regulatory guidelines.
- Election Commission, through Senior Advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, stated it already had enforcement mechanisms and was open to strengthening them.
The court’s direction
After hearing all parties, the Bench:
- Directed brief written notes within two weeks,
- Reserved orders,
- Ordered closure of all matters except Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani, which will continue on the next date.
Conclusion: What January 20 ultimately signals
From restraining a television programme in 2020, to mandating suo motu FIRs nationwide, to threatening contempt, the Supreme Court spent nearly six years attempting to compel the State to confront hate speech as a constitutional harm.
The January 20 hearing marks an institutional conclusion: the Court has articulated the law; enforcement must now occur elsewhere.
Yet the decision to keep Kazeem Ahmad Sherwani alive—and to seek notes on unresolved legal questions—suggests that the Court has not abandoned the field entirely. It has instead stepped back from continuous supervision, leaving behind a dense jurisprudential trail that future courts, litigants, and lawmakers will have to grapple with.
As matters stand, the Supreme Court has reserved orders, directed the filing of brief notes, and indicated closure of all but one surviving case. Final orders are imminent, and with them, a formal conclusion to one of the Court’s longest-running engagements with hate speech as a constitutional issue. Whether this moment comes to be seen as a principled withdrawal in deference to institutional boundaries—or as a premature retreat from constitutional guardianship—will depend less on the text of the final order, and more on what follows on the ground. Whether this represents constitutional restraint or constitutional retreat is a question that will outlive this batch of cases.
Detailed reports of these matters may be read here and here.
Related:
The Politics of Processions: How the Sanatan Ekta Padyatra amplified hate speech in plain sight
CJP urges NCM action against hate speech campaign vilifying Bengali Muslims as ‘Infiltrators’