Punishing students for dissent is unconstitutional: Supreme Court judge Ujjal Bhuyan

Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan told NLU Delhi graduates that students cannot be punished for questioning authority. He said protecting dissent in universities is essential to constitutional democracy.

In Short

• Justice Bhuyan urged campuses to address disagreements through reason instead of hostility
• He said tolerance remains a core value under India’s constitutional framework
• A free society, he noted, must always create space for dissent

Supreme Court judge Ujjal Bhuyan on Sunday said students who express a different point of view or ask questions cannot be threatened with punitive action, calling such an approach unconstitutional and a misuse of power. He said universities must nurture a culture where different ideas can be examined and disagreements are addressed through reason, not hostility.

Speaking at the 13th convocation ceremony for postgraduate students of National Law University, Delhi, Justice Bhuyan said the right to question is not an act of defiance and that a free society must make space for dissent. He underlined that tolerance is a constitutional value and said an intolerant mind runs contrary to the spirit of the Indian Constitution.

"When students express a different point of view, when students ask questions, they cannot be threatened with punitive action. That is unconstitutional. That is a misuse of power and office," Justice Bhuyan said.

He added that a university is "a place where individuals encounter ideas that may be different from their own, where established positions can be examined and questioned, and where disagreements can take place through reason rather than hostility".

"If we want a democratic society that respects liberty and difference, that culture has to begin from the universities," he said. He asserted that a university should be a place where the habit of thinking freely begins and where a student does not hesitate to ask difficult questions.

In his convocation address, he said the Constitution recognises that a free society will have different opinions and beliefs, and that participation in public life is meaningful only when there is space for dissent.

Justice Bhuyan said India, being the land of Buddha and Gandhi, has no place for an "intolerant mind", which he described as a form of violence. "Our constitution protects the freedom to speak, to think, and to believe differently. Intolerance begins to undermine that framework when disagreement or dissent is no longer treated as a legitimate difference of opinion but as something that must 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.

He also said legal professionals and scholars have a responsibility to ensure that even in moments of dissent, the constitutional values of liberty, equality, dignity and justice remain central to the understanding of law.

"A democracy becomes meaningful not when everyone speaks the same language of thought but when different voices can co-exist, be heard and be treated with dignity," he said, adding that the strength of a democracy is seen not only in how it treats popular views, but also in how it responds to opinions that are difficult, unpopular or inconvenient.

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