TNNLU student refuses to take down blog critical of Supreme Court

Asserting his right to free expression, A. Rishi Kumar, a final-year student of Tamil Nadu National Law University (TNNLU), has refused to take down a blog post criticising the Supreme Court’s ban on a Class VIII civics textbook and its decision to blacklist its authors for their mention of judicial corruption.

Mr. Kumar also did not bow to initial pressure from the TNNLU to delete the article, titled “The Supreme Court of India has no Spine”, published in his Substack blog on March 14. His stance elicited support and appreciation from his fellow students, and a statement of solidarity from the 2020-2025 alumni batch.

Speaking to The Hindu on Tuesday (March 24, 2026), Mr. Kumar said that he had resumed his classes and no disciplinary action had been taken against him by the university, adding, “I had expected some criticism, but honestly, I don’t expect it to go that far.”

In the article, he wrote, “The Court has decided, in its grand old wisdom, that eighth graders, who are doing algebra and learning refractions, are simply too dumb to handle a basic civics chapter that spends fourteen pages praising the judiciary and two paragraphs acknowledging its flaws.

The student also criticised the apex court’s decision to blacklist the three authors—Michel Danino, Suparna Diwakar, and Alok Prasanna Kumar—and bar them from all work associated with any publicly funded curriculum.

TNNLU registrar S.M. Balakrishnan said that an email had been sent last week to Mr. Kumar as an ‘advisory’ note, because of several threatening phone calls and emails from persons claiming to be lawyers from other States, urging the university to take action against him.

“We are not going to punish Mr. Kumar, as he wrote in his personal capacity, and did not mention TNNLU anywhere in his article. He is standing up for his constitutional values, and we respect that. There is nothing wrong with criticism, and the Supreme Court is not infallible. Mr. Kumar is a good student; we do not want to jeopardise his future with any untoward action as he gets ready to graduate,” he said.