BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Political Science 2 2023-24 - ATKT 60/40 Question Paper with Solutions

Definition. Max Weber: power is "the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance". Robert Dahl put it more simply: A has power over B to the extent that A can get B to do something B would not otherwise do.

How the exercise of power is legitimized in a modern democracy:

1. A constitution, which creates the offices, confers the powers and fixes their limits, so that every exercise of power has a legal source and a legal boundary.
2. Free and fair periodic elections on universal adult franchise, which decide who holds those offices and confer a popular mandate. In India this rests on Article 326 and on the Election Commission under Article 324.
3. The rule of law and due process, so that power is exercised through general rules rather than personal command, and is subject to judicial review.
4. Accountability: to the legislature, to a free press and to public opinion, and through the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Right to Information Act, 2005.

Article 21 provides: "No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law."

Its features are that it is available to every person, citizen and non-citizen alike; that it protects both life and personal liberty; that it operates against the State; and that deprivation is permissible only by a procedure established by law, meaning a valid law and not executive fiat.

Since Maneka Gandhi v Union of India (1978) the procedure must also be fair, just and reasonable, and not arbitrary, fanciful or oppressive, so Article 21 is read together with Articles 14 and 19 as part of a single scheme.

Civil disobedience is Gandhi's technique of openly and deliberately breaking a specific unjust law, non-violently, and willingly accepting the legal penalty, in order to arouse the conscience of the opponent and of the community. It is a branch of satyagraha, holding firmly to truth.

Its essential conditions:

1. It must be non-violent in thought, word and deed.
2. It must be open and public, never secret.
3. The resister must accept the punishment willingly, which demonstrates his sincerity and his respect for law in general.
4. Only a specific unjust law is disobeyed, not the legal order as a whole.
5. Lawful means must be exhausted first: petition, negotiation and arbitration precede disobedience.
6. The resister must undergo self-purification beforehand.

The Fundamental Duties are contained in Article 51A, in Part IV-A, inserted by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976, on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee. There were originally ten; an eleventh was added by the 86th Amendment, 2002.

Two of them:

1. Article 51A(a): to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem.
2. Article 51A(e): to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities, and to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women.

The right to property in India is no longer a Fundamental Right. It is a constitutional or legal right under Article 300A, which provides that "no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law".

The change was made by the 44th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1978, which repealed Article 19(1)(f), the fundamental right to acquire, hold and dispose of property, and Article 31, the right to compensation on compulsory acquisition, and inserted Article 300A in a new Part XII, Chapter IV.

The consequence is that a person deprived of property can no longer move the Supreme Court directly under Article 32, since that remedy is available only for Fundamental Rights, though he may approach the High Court under Article 226, and the deprivation must still be by authority of law, not by executive action.

An interest group, also called a pressure group, is an organised association of people with a shared interest or concern which seeks to influence government policy in that interest without seeking to capture political office itself. That last element distinguishes it from a political party.

The most popular method employed is LOBBYING: the attempt to persuade legislators, ministers and officials to adopt a decision favourable to the group. The word comes from the lobby of the legislature, where those seeking to influence members waited to meet them.

Lobbying works through direct meetings and memoranda, the supply of information and technical expertise, representations before parliamentary committees and official consultations, membership of advisory bodies, and, indirectly, by shaping public opinion through the media so that pressure reaches the decision-maker from his own constituents.

Indian examples: FICCI, CII and ASSOCHAM in business; INTUC, AITUC and BMS in labour; the Bar Council of India and the Indian Medical Association among professions.

A third method is appointment on merit through a prescribed process, as with the recruitment of the Indian Administrative Service by the Union Public Service Commission under Article 320.

What makes a law unjust

A law is formally valid when made by the competent authority in the prescribed manner. It is unjust when, though validly made, it violates morality, natural justice, human dignity or fundamental rights.

St Augustine said that an unjust law is no law at all (lex iniusta non est lex), and Aquinas developed this into the position that a law contrary to the divine or natural law does not bind in conscience. Martin Luther King Jr, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, gave the most usable test: a just law uplifts human personality, an unjust law degrades it; and a law is unjust when a majority imposes on a minority a rule it does not make binding on itself, or when it is enacted by a body the affected minority had no part in electing.

2. Legal positivism: obey, but keep the criticism separate. John Austin and, in the twentieth century, H.L.A. Hart hold that the validity of a law and its merit are separate questions: a rule can be legally valid and morally monstrous at the same time. Hart argued that this separation is a safeguard, not a surrender, because it lets a citizen say "this is law, and it is too iniquitous to obey", whereas the natural-law formula "an unjust law is no law" invites the citizen to think that whatever is law must be just.

3. Natural law: an unjust law does not bind in conscience. Aquinas distinguished laws that are unjust because they exceed the lawmaker's authority, which do not bind at all, from laws that are merely burdensome, which should be obeyed to avoid scandal and disorder. This is the position King and Gandhi work from.

4. Conditional obligation with a fenced right of resistance. Locke: government holds power on trust, and a government that breaks the trust may be resisted. T.H. Green: the citizen should normally obey, because the general maintenance of law is itself part of the common good, but may resist a law that defeats the common good, using lawful means first and weighing the consequences. Raphael: obligation rests on consent, justice and the general interest, and is conditional on them.

The Indian position

India recognises no legal right of resistance, and does not need one, because the Constitution supplies lawful channels: Article 13, which makes a law violating Part III void; Articles 32 and 226, the writ jurisdictions; Article 19(1)(a) and (b), protest and peaceful assembly; and periodic elections under Article 326. What the Constitution recognises is a right to challenge unjust laws inside the system, which is the constitutional descendant of the older right.

3. Supremacy of the Constitution, binding on Union and States alike.
4. An independent judiciary, with the Supreme Court exercising original jurisdiction under Article 131 in Union-State disputes.
5. Bicameralism, with the Rajya Sabha representing the States.
6. Constitutional status for local self-government since the 73rd and 74th Amendments, 1992.

Unitary features

1. A strong Centre: the Union List is the longest and most important, and under Article 254 Union law prevails in the Concurrent List.
2. Residuary powers with the Union under Article 248, unlike the United States.
3. States are not indestructible. Under Article 3 Parliament may by ordinary law form a new State or alter the area, boundaries or name of any State, the affected legislature being consulted but not consenting. India is an indestructible Union of destructible States.
4. Single citizenship.
5. A single integrated judiciary, with no separate State court hierarchy.

Judicial position

In S.R. Bommai v Union of India (1994) the Supreme Court held that federalism is part of the basic structure, and imposed substantial restraints on Article 356: the proclamation is subject to judicial review, the floor of the House is the proper test of majority, and a dismissed government can be restored. In State of West Bengal v Union of India (1963) it had held that the States are not sovereign, and Kesavananda Bharati (1973) listed federalism among the basic features.

Assessment

India is federal in structure and unitary in spirit, and the design was deliberate. The framers had just experienced Partition, faced the integration of over five hundred princely states, and confronted linguistic diversity and secessionist pressure, so they built a federation strong enough not to break. Ambedkar put it exactly: the Constitution can be both unitary and federal according to the requirements of time and circumstances.

3. It produced limited and constitutional government. Separation of powers, the rule of law, judicial review, an independent judiciary and a written constitution are all liberal devices for preventing the concentration of power.
4. It grounded authority in consent, which makes government accountable and removable, and is the intellectual source of representative democracy and universal adult franchise.
5. It secured equality before the law and abolished privilege by birth, replacing status with contract and hereditary rank with careers open to talent.
6. It promotes tolerance and pluralism. Liberalism grew out of the wars of religion, and its practical proposal, that people who disagree profoundly can live under one law without either having to win, remains the only workable answer for a diverse society.
7. It is flexible and self-correcting. When its classical form failed, liberalism reformed itself: negative liberalism became positive liberalism after T.H. Green, producing factory legislation, public education and the welfare state. A doctrine that can absorb its own critique outlasts one that cannot.

In the Indian Constitution

Part III is negative-liberal: Article 14 (equality before the law), Article 19 (the six freedoms), Article 21 (life and personal liberty), Articles 25 to 28 (freedom of religion, with no established church). To these are added judicial review, separation of powers, federalism, an independent judiciary, and universal adult franchise under Article 326. Part IV adds a positive-liberal and socialist programme.

5. A state in which men possess natural rights to life, liberty and property, prior to the state and not its gift.
6. A state in which property arises from labour. A man owns his own person, so when he mixes his labour with what nature provides he makes it his own, subject to two provisos: that he leave "enough and as good" for others, and that nothing be allowed to spoil.
7. A state in which every man executes the law of nature himself, judging and punishing breaches of it.

Why men leave it: the inconveniences

The state of nature is tolerable but insecure, because it lacks three things:

1. An established, settled, known law, received by common consent as the standard of right and wrong.
2. A known and indifferent judge, since in the state of nature every man is judge in his own cause and self-love makes men partial.
3. A power to back and support the sentence and give it due execution.

The right of resistance. If the government breaks the trust, by attacking life, liberty or property, ruling arbitrarily, or dissolving the legislature, power reverts to the people, who may resist and set up a new government. Locke calls this an appeal to Heaven, and insists it is not a recipe for constant rebellion, since people are slow to move and will endure much before they act.

Criticism

1. The state of nature and the contract are historically fictitious.
2. Tacit consent inferred from mere residence is not consent. Hume objected that a poor man can no more leave his country than a sleeping passenger can leave a ship.
3. Locke's state of nature is internally inconsistent: if men are reasonable and the law of nature is known, it is unclear why the inconveniences are grave enough to require a state.
4. His theory of property justified unequal accumulation and suited the propertied class of his day, which is Macpherson's charge of "possessive individualism".
5. It is unclear who decides that the trust has been broken, leaving the right of resistance without a procedure.

Stage 1: the narrow reading, A.K. Gopalan v State of Madras (1950). The Supreme Court held that "procedure established by law" required only that some procedure be laid down by a valid law, and that the court could not test whether the procedure was fair. Articles 19, 21 and 22 were treated as separate and self-contained. The words had been chosen deliberately in preference to the American "due process of law", on Justice Frankfurter's advice, precisely to exclude judicial review of reasonableness.

Stage 2: the turning point, Maneka Gandhi v Union of India (1978). The Court held that the procedure must be "right, just and fair", and not arbitrary, fanciful or oppressive; that Articles 14, 19 and 21 are not watertight compartments but form a single scheme, so a law depriving a person of liberty must also satisfy Article 14's requirement of non-arbitrariness and Article 19's requirement of reasonableness. Due process thereby entered Indian law by interpretation rather than by amendment.

Stage 3: expansion of the content of "life". Following Maneka, and building on Francis Coralie Mullin v Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi (1981), where the Court held that "life" means more than mere animal existence and includes the right to live with human dignity, the Court has read into Article 21:

9. Right to die with dignity, including passive euthanasia and the living will: Common Cause v Union of India (2018).
10. Decisional autonomy in intimate matters: Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India (2018) and Joseph Shine v Union of India (2018).

The technique used. Two devices did most of the work: reading the Directive Principles in Part IV into Article 21 as guides to interpretation, and relaxing locus standi to allow public interest litigation, so that any public-spirited person could move the court for those unable to do so themselves.

The problem he set himself. Rousseau opens with "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains", and states his object as finding a form of association in which "each, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before". That is the problem of reconciling freedom with authority, and the general will is his solution.

What the General Will is. It is the will of the community as a whole directed at the common good, as distinct from the private wills of its members. Rousseau distinguishes it sharply from the will of all (volonté de tous), which is the mere sum of private wills, each aiming at its own interest. The general will is what remains when the pluses and minuses of private interest cancel out.

Why it is sovereign:

1. The contract transfers everything to the whole community. Each individual gives himself "wholly and equally" to all, so that "each, giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody", and what emerges is a corporate body with a will of its own.
2. Sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, and therefore belongs permanently to the people as a body, never to a monarch or a government. A government is only an agent or minister of the sovereign, and can be dismissed.

(ii) The essence of the Divine Right theory, and the obligation it advocates

The essence of the divine right theory is that the king derives his authority directly from God, not from the people. He is God's deputy on earth, and his title is therefore outside and above the human community that he rules.

Its propositions are that monarchy is divinely ordained; that kingship is hereditary, passing by divine appointment; that the king is above human law and cannot be judged, deposed or punished by his subjects; that he is answerable to God alone; and that resistance is a sin, not merely a crime.

Its exponents were Sir Robert Filmer in Patriarcha, King James I in The True Law of Free Monarchies, and Bishop Bossuet in France.

(ii) What is withering away of the state as given by Karl Marx?

(i) The basis of class division, and the two classes in each period

The basis is the relation to the means of production, and nothing else. Marx defines a class by a single question: does the group own the means of production (land, factories, mines, machinery, capital), or does it own only its own labour power?

Class is therefore not determined by income, status, education, occupation, religion or lifestyle. A well-paid engineer who works for wages belongs to the working class; a struggling shopkeeper who owns his stock does not. This is what distinguishes Marx's concept of class from the ordinary sociological one, and stating it precisely is where the marks are.

(ii) The withering away of the state

The doctrine. For Marx the state is not neutral: it is the instrument by which the economically dominant class holds down the rest, "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie". It consists essentially of coercive machinery, the army, the police, the courts and the prisons, and it exists because society is divided into classes.

It follows that the state is not permanent. Once the proletarian revolution abolishes private ownership of the means of production and classes disappear, there is no class left to be held down, and the coercive apparatus becomes unnecessary. It is therefore not abolished by decree but withers away of its own accord, from disuse.

The stages:

1. Revolution: the proletariat seizes state power.
2. The dictatorship of the proletariat: a transitional stage in which the state, now in the hands of the majority, is used to expropriate the former owning class and to reorganise production. The state is at its strongest here.

3. The doctrine assumes that all conflict is class conflict. Conflicts of religion, region, language, ethnicity and simple criminality would persist in a classless society and would still require adjudication and enforcement.
4. A complex modern economy needs administration, regulation and coordination, and it is not clear how "the administration of things" differs in practice from a state.

3. Participating between elections, not only at them: attending the Gram Sabha under Article 243A, taking part in social audits of MGNREGA works, responding to public consultations, and using the Right to Information Act, 2005.
4. Joining and working in associations: political parties, trade unions, professional bodies and voluntary organisations. Tocqueville called associations the schools of democracy, because people learn to organise, deliberate and compromise by doing it in small settings.
5. Exercising the right to peaceful dissent and protest under Article 19(1)(a) and (b), and accepting the corresponding duty to keep it peaceful and lawful.
6. Practising tolerance and respect for the opponent. Democracy is majority rule with minority rights, and it depends on the losing side accepting the result and the winning side not pressing its advantage to the limit. Ambedkar called this constitutional morality, and warned that it is not a natural sentiment and has to be cultivated.
7. Performing civic duties: paying taxes honestly, obeying the law, serving on juries or as polling personnel where required, and observing the Fundamental Duties in Article 51A.

1. Linguistic and cultural identity. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956, following the Fazl Ali Commission and the agitation in Andhra, made language the basis of State boundaries and therefore of political identity. Resistance to the imposition of a national language, of which the anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu is the classic instance, gave regional identity a political vehicle and produced the DMK.
2. Uneven development and regional economic grievance. Regions that believe they receive less than their fair share of central investment, of central taxes or of employment develop a sense of relative deprivation, which drives demands for autonomy, for a larger devolution and, at the extreme, for separate statehood.

Other reasons available: the decline of Congress dominance after 1967 and 1989, which opened political space; caste mobilisation after the Mandal Commission; charismatic regional leadership, including from cinema in the southern States; federalism itself, since State governments hold real power worth winning; and splits in national parties.

For full marks, cover: the fact of its length with figures, then eight to ten factors each with a concrete illustration, then a short assessment of whether the length is a merit or a defect.

The fact

The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution of any sovereign country in the world. As adopted on 26 November 1949 it contained a Preamble, 395 Articles in 22 Parts and 8 Schedules. After more than a hundred amendments it now contains around 470 Articles in 25 Parts and 12 Schedules. By comparison, the Constitution of the United States has seven Articles and twenty-seven amendments.

The factors responsible

4. The detailed distribution of powers. The Seventh Schedule enumerates three lists, the Union List with 97 entries, the State List with 66 and the Concurrent List with 47, in place of the single short list found in most federal constitutions.
5. Elaborate Fundamental Rights, with their exceptions. Part III does not simply declare rights; it states each right, then the permissible restrictions and the exceptions, then the remedies. Articles 19(2) to 19(6) alone occupy more space than the guarantee they qualify, and Articles 31A, 31B and 31C add further layers.
6. The Directive Principles and the Fundamental Duties. Part IV, borrowed from the Irish Constitution, sets out the aims of the state at length, and Part IV-A, added by the 42nd Amendment, 1976, adds eleven duties. Neither is found in most constitutions at all.
7. Provisions for the administrative services and for constitutional bodies. Detailed provisions govern the Public Service Commissions (Articles 315 to 323), the Comptroller and Auditor General (Articles 148 to 151), the Election Commission (Article 324), the Finance Commission (Article 280), the All-India Services (Article 312) and the official languages (Articles 343 to 351).

12. Special transitional and temporary provisions for the integration of the princely states and for the immediate post-independence period.
13. Frequent amendment. More than a hundred amendments have added new Parts, Part IX for panchayats, Part IX-A for municipalities, Part IX-B for cooperative societies, and new Schedules, the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth.

Assessment

Is the length a defect? The standard criticism is that the Constitution is "a lawyer's paradise", that it is inaccessible to the ordinary citizen, and that it contains matters of detail which belong in ordinary statutes and which must now be amended by the special procedure of Article 368.

For full marks, cover: Bentham and his project, the principle of utility, the two sovereign masters, the felicific calculus, the four sanctions, his rejection of natural rights, his political conclusions, criticisms; then his theory of punishment in detail, the cases where punishment is unmeet, his rules of proportion, and his influence including India.

Part 1: Bentham on utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham (1748 to 1832) was an English philosopher and legal reformer, the founder of utilitarianism, and the intellectual leader of the Philosophical Radicals. His principal work is An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).

His project was to put morals and legislation on a scientific footing. Dissatisfied with the common law, which he called "dog law", and with appeals to natural rights, custom or moral sense, all of which he regarded as disguised expressions of personal opinion, he sought a single measurable standard by which every law and institution could be judged.

5. Egalitarian counting. "Each is to count for one, and nobody for more than one." No person's happiness weighs more because of birth or rank.

6. The four sanctions, that is the sources of pain and pleasure that operate on conduct: the physical, the political (law), the moral or popular (public opinion) and the religious. The legislator's task is to arrange the political sanction so that the interest of the individual coincides with the interest of the community, which Bentham called the artificial identification of interests.

7. Rejection of natural rights. Natural rights are "nonsense upon stilts"; natural and imprescriptible rights are "rhetorical nonsense". Rights are the creation of law, and law is justified by utility alone.

8. Individualism. The community is "a fictitious body" composed of individuals; its interest is nothing more than the sum of the interests of its members.

9. His political conclusions. Equal counting leads to democracy: universal suffrage, annual parliaments and the secret ballot. In economics he was broadly laissez faire, but in law and administration he was a vigorous interventionist and reformer, demanding codification in place of the common law.

2. Its purpose is prevention, not vengeance. Punishment looks forward. Its ends, in order of importance, are: to prevent all offences where possible; failing that, to prevent the worst offence; to induce the offender to do no more mischief than necessary; and to prevent mischief at the least cost in suffering.

3. Deterrence is the principal mode. Since man calculates between pain and pleasure, punishment must add enough pain to outweigh the profit expected from the crime, so that crime never pays. Bentham distinguishes general prevention, by example, which he called the chief end, from particular prevention, operating on the offender.

4. The four cases in which punishment ought not to be inflicted, which is his most quoted list and should always be reproduced:

1. Groundless: where there is no mischief to prevent, as where the act harms nobody or the party consented.
2. Inefficacious: where it cannot act to prevent the mischief, as with infancy, insanity, unavoidable ignorance of the law, or a ex post facto law, since a person cannot be deterred from an act by a penalty enacted afterwards.

8. The Panopticon. Bentham designed a model prison in which a single inspector could observe all prisoners without being seen, on the principle that the certainty of being observed would produce good conduct more cheaply than punishment. The design was never built in his lifetime in England, and it has become the standard image in modern discussions of surveillance.

Criticisms of his theory of punishment: it uses the offender as a means to the good of others, which is Kant's objection, and in principle could justify punishing an innocent man believed guilty if the example served; it assumes a rational calculator, so it fails against crimes of passion and against hardened offenders; it neglects reformation and the social causes of crime; and its central empirical assumption is doubtful, since certainty of detection deters far better than severity of sentence, a point Beccaria had already made and which Bentham partly accepted.

For full marks, cover: Marx's theory of the state, why he denies obligation to the capitalist state, what obligation he does recognise, the position after the revolution, and criticism; then a full comparison of Marxism and Gandhism with their agreements, and a conclusion on what India took from each.

Part 1: The Marxian theory of political obligation

The starting point is Marx's theory of the state. For Marx the state is not neutral and is not an umpire above society. It arose with the division of society into classes, and it exists to maintain that division: "the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie". Its essential content is coercive machinery, the army, the police, the courts and the prisons.

From that follows his position on obligation, and it is a negative one.

5. The state is to be overthrown, not reformed. Revolution transfers the means of production to the community; a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat suppresses the former ruling class; and when classes disappear the state, having no class to coerce, withers away.
6. After the revolution, in the transitional stage, obligation is owed to the workers' state, because it now represents the majority and is being used to abolish the conditions that produced exploitation. In the final communist stage the question lapses, since there is no state to obey.

Points of agreement, which the strongest answers include: both condemn exploitation and unearned wealth; both want economic equality and the dignity of labour; both are anti-imperialist; both attack the existing social order as unjust; and both look forward, remarkably, to a stateless society, Marx by the withering away of the state and Gandhi by enlightened anarchy.

Conclusion

The two agree on the diagnosis that the existing order exploits the many for the few, and disagree on almost everything else. The disagreement is at bottom about the cause. Marx locates exploitation in a structure, the ownership of the means of production, and concludes that changing hearts is futile while the structure stands. Gandhi locates it in greed, a defect of character, and concludes that changing the structure while leaving the character untouched merely hands the same greed a better machine. Each critique lands: no propertied class has ever voluntarily surrendered its property, which is the objection to trusteeship; and every revolution made in the name of the masses has produced a new ruling class, which is the objection to revolution.

For full marks, cover: Mill and the context of On Liberty, the statement and content of the harm principle, its exceptions, his three arguments for liberty of thought and discussion, criticisms; then the influence on the Indian Constitution through Article 19 and Article 21 with the case law, and where India departs from Mill.

Mill and the context

John Stuart Mill (1806 to 1873) published On Liberty in 1859. Its subject is "civil or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual". His central anxiety is not the tyranny of a king, which he thought the constitutional struggles had settled, but the tyranny of the majority, exercised through law and, more insidiously, through social pressure and public opinion, which "leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself".

5. Omissions can be harms. A person may be made answerable for failing to do certain things, such as giving evidence in court or bearing a fair share of the common defence.
6. The exceptions. The principle applies to those "in the maturity of their faculties", so not to children; and Mill excluded societies he regarded as "backward", a qualification now generally rejected as a product of his time and of his employment with the East India Company.

The defence of liberty of thought and discussion

Chapter II of On Liberty makes a separate argument, and it is the part with the most direct constitutional influence. Silencing an opinion is "robbing the human race", because:

1. The suppressed opinion may be true, and to deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
2. Even if false, it may contain a portion of truth, and since received opinion is rarely the whole truth, the collision is the only way the remainder is supplied.
3. Even if the received opinion is wholly true, unless it is "vigorously and earnestly contested" it will be held as a dead dogma, a prejudice rather than a living truth, and its meaning will be lost.

1. Article 19(1)(a), freedom of speech and expression, is the constitutional form of Mill's defence of free discussion. Crucially, Article 19(2) permits restrictions only on defined, harm-based grounds: the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offence. Listing the permitted grounds is Mill's principle written as a schedule, since a restriction resting on any other ground fails however good the reason appears.
2. The "reasonable restrictions" requirement. Restrictions must be reasonable and proportionate, and reasonableness is for the court to decide, not the legislature, which institutionalises the presumption in favour of liberty.
3. The speech cases apply the principle with precision. In S. Rangarajan v P. Jagjivan Ram (1989) the Court held that the connection between expression and public order must be like "a spark in a powder keg". In Shreya Singhal v Union of India (2015) it struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, distinguishing discussion and advocacy, which are protected, from incitement, which alone may be restricted, and rejecting "annoyance" and "inconvenience" as grounds. That is the harm principle operating as doctrine.

Where India departs from Mill

Article 19(2) permits restrictions in the interests of "decency or morality" and of "friendly relations with foreign States", which are wider than harm to others. Article 25 subjects religious freedom to public order, morality and health. Indian law also retains a good deal of paternalist legislation, including compulsory helmet and seat belt rules and prohibition in some States, the last expressly contemplated by Article 47. Mill is therefore an influence on the Constitution, not a template for it.