Preventive Detention and the Dangers of Volcanic, Ever-Proximate, Ideologies

“81. As mentioned in para 37 of this judgment, while addressing his arguments on the ideology nourished and nurtured by the detenue, the learned Advocate General submitted that such ideology cannot be confined or limited to time to qualify it to be called stale or fresh or proximate, unless, of course, the person concerned declares and establishes by conduct and expression that he has shunned the ideology (emphasis supplied in original).

82. In light of the above legally rightful and sound argument taken by the learned Advocate General, we leave it to the detenue to decide whether he would wish to take advantage of the stand of the learned Advocate General and make a representation to the concerned authorities to abide by it. … (emphasis mine)”

[Extract from Mian Abdool Qayoom v. Union Territory of J&K & Ors., 

LPA No.28/2020, decided on 28.05.2020]

This exchange is not part of the judgment of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court dismissing Mian Abdool Qayoom’s appeal against a Single Judge order that had rejected his challenge to order condemning him to preventive detention under the Public Safety Act. Instead, it is part of the order dismissing an application seeking Qayoom’s temporary release from Tihar Jail due to Covid-19. The High Court unequivocally supported requiring an oath of loyalty as a condition for releasing a 76-year-old diabetic detenu who is surviving on one kidney during a pandemic placing him under high risk.

A preventive detention order against political dissidents is not new for India, and certainly not new for Jammu and Kashmir. It is telling that one of the last judgments of the Federal Court, passed six days before the Constitution came into force, was one which upheld the preventive detention of Machindar Shivaji Mahar, mainly because he was a member of the Communist Party which advocated for armed revolution. Then, as now, judges held that actively supporting violent ideologies can make it likely that the person will act in a manner prejudicial to public order.

The cynic would argue, then, that we never left the place which the Jammu & Kashmir High Court shows us in Qayoom’s appeal. The cynic is mistaken because, in between, we gave to ourselves a Constitution, which ensured that persons like Machindar Shivaji had a fairer process governing preventive detentions than what might have been granted under the erstwhile laws (processes which now apply to the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir). On top of this, the Indian Supreme Court has tried to enhance the fairness of these procedures over the last seventy years.

Even if the record of the Supreme Court on preventive detention is largely regrettable on the whole, there are times when one gets a glimpse of what justice looks like in a system where executive discretion is strongly tested by vigilant courts on the anvil of fundamental rights. It was one such moment in 1979 which saw the Supreme Court quash the detention orders of Mohd. Yousuf [(1979) 4 SCC 370], passed by the then State Government of J&K. A detention order passed against this “Die Hard Naxalite” was methodically taken apart by the Bench and shown for what it was: an executive act based on vague and irrelevant grounds that could not deprive any person of her constitutionally reified right to personal liberty.

Mian Abdool Qayoom’s continued detention by virtue of the J&K High Court judgment, I would argue, is antithetical to the kind of justice shown in Mohd. Yousuf where a court adopted a critical lens to executive determination without substituting its own judgment. Here, illegal grounds in Qayoom’s detention order are justified as being “clumsy”, and the Court jumps in to fill the gaps despite proclaiming an inability to step into the shoes of the district magistrate authorising detention.

This is nowhere more apparent than the remarkable excursus about the relevance of ideology while considering preventive detention. The High Court goes much beyond a simple argument of allowing police to consider a prior record to justify the need for urgent preventive actions. It also goes beyond Machindar Shivaji and permits reference to activities of one’s political party as a basis to consider risks to public order. Instead, it suggests the authorities have legitimate grounds to detain persons for years without trial, based on their “ideology”.

“48. Having considered the matter, we may say that an ideology of the nature reflected in the FIRs and alleged against the detenue herein is like a live volcano. The ideology has always an inclination, a natural tendency to behave in a particular way; It is often associated with an intense, natural inclination and preference of the person to behave in the way his ideology drives him to achieve his latent and expressed objectives and when he happens to head or leading a group, as the allegations contained in the FIRs suggest, his single point agenda remains that his ideology is imbued in all those whom he leads. … Generally, when a criminal act takes place, its impact may be felt within a small circle or its repercussions may be of bigger consequence, but with the passage of time the impact and the consequences generally subside or vanish. When it comes to propensity of an ideology of the nature reflected in the FIRs supported by the intelligence reports we have gone through, we are convinced that it subserves the latent motive to thrive on public disorder. In that context, we feel that most of the judgments of the Apex Court do not fit the facts and the given situation.

Therefore, we are left with no option but to say that an ideology that has the effect and potential of nurturing a tendency of disturbance in public order, such as is reflected in the FIRs registered against the detenue in the instant case, and of which the detaining authority is reasonably satisfied, can be said to be different from a criminal act or acts done sometime in the past and, therefore, would always continue to be proximate in their impact and consequence and, therefore, would not attract the judgments cited at the Bar on the point. … Furthermore, we are also of the view that such an ideology alleged against a person, if mentioned in the earlier grounds of detention, because of its nature of subsistence and propensity, would not lose its proximity and, therefore, can be taken into account and used for detaining such person subsequently if the detaining authority is satisfied that such an ideology of the person has the potential to goad or instigate disturbance in public order, in a susceptible given situation, like the one it was at the relevant point of time. … (emphasis mine)”

Let us take a moment to understand the significance of this rhetoric. Preventive detention powers are conferred upon executive officers to prevent certain kinds of danger by detaining a person without trial. While courts cannot review the officers' subjective satisfaction of the facts requiring detention, there are some judicial checks in place. To ensure that this discretionary power is not beholden to an officer’s arbitrary prejudices and remains justiciable, the law requires that each detention order be backed by reasonable, relevant, and germane grounds which explain why detention was urgently necessary, which must be expressed clearly to enable a detenu to make an effective representation against the orders.

Requiring clear, germane, and proximate reasons meant that executive officers had to cite some instances of illegal / suspicious conduct as overt manifestations of any ideology which they considered prejudicial to public order in order to flesh out an inherently vague notion. What the J&K High Court has done is taken this close connexion between objective real-world anchors for a subjective concept like ideology, and treated it to serious social distancing. Into the resulting gap fell judicial review of preventive detention. Ideology now becomes a blank cheque to be encashed by the executive whenever the circumstances suggest that its “volcano-like” qualities can prove detrimental to the public order, no matter that the most recent overt display of this purported ideology dates back several years. By no longer requiring the executive officer's subjective satisfaction to have a proximate real-world anchor, judicial review is nearly reduced to its pre-1970s avatar of only checking if procedures are complied with.

The J&K High Court has, seemingly unwittingly, shown us a system that runs on punishing thoughts and beliefs. Only, here, we have no punishment with a trial and courts, but prevention, with the executive serving as judge, jury, and executioner. The only conduct “legally rightful” and sufficiently redemptive to erase the marks of a dissident ideology is an oath of loyalty, and its perpetual performance, subject to the satisfaction of the same authorities.

This time, too, shall pass.