Few things are as predictable in modern India as the state’s knee-jerk reaction to controversy: a call for tighter controls and broader censorship, all under the guise of “morality.” The manufactured outrage machine has found its latest victim. A few crude, unfunny remarks on a show called India’s Got Latent have somehow spiralled into a full-blown national scandal. FIRs have been lodged, and moral panic has been unleashed.
The spectacle has roped in everyone from state chief ministers to the Supreme Court, all frothing at the mouth over a bad joke about watching one’s parents have sex. Allahbadia, the person who made those comments, recognising the absurdity of the situation, issued an apology video. But predictably, the outrage machine is insatiable. FIRs keep piling up. Threats keep surfacing.
There is no mercy for the man whose only crime was being unfunny in a country that thrives on worse. On 17 February, the Supreme Court heard Allahbadia’s plea for interim protection in multiple “obscenity” cases over his remarks. A two-judge bench stayed Allahbadia’s arrest on the condition that he cooperate with the police and appear before the investigating officers when summoned.
However, the court’s repeated references to the shame Allahbadia had supposedly brought upon his parents bordered on moralistic grandstanding. “What embarrassment he has caused to (his) parents!” the judge said, as though the judiciary were positioning itself as the nation’s moral arbiter rather than an impartial interpreter of the law.
This same moral policing was conspicuously absent when an ex-CJI, accused of sexual harassment, presided over his case without judicial rebuke. Morality in India remains a conveniently malleable concept.
Regardless of how distasteful, crude, or even offensive Allahbadia’s remarks may have been, the fundamental question before the court was not one of taste but of law. As his counsel rightly contended, the issue was not whether his language was inappropriate—an assertion few, including his legal representatives, contested—but whether it constituted a criminal offense under Indian law.
Should it even be treated as a crime from any reasonable legal standpoint? When judges attempt to balance popular morality with constitutional freedoms, they risk undermining the very rights they are sworn to uphold. The judiciary’s role is to interpret and enforce the law, not to navigate the fluctuating tides of public outrage.
In a democracy, the greatest threat to fundamental rights is not offensive speech itself, but the arbitrariness with which authorities seek to suppress it. The primary stance of the Supreme Court regarding the case has revolved around its perception of the language used—branding it “perverse” and “dirty.”
Courts do not function in a moral vacuum, but their legal reasoning must not be tainted by personal revulsion. When the court questioned whether individuals are granted a “license to say whatever they want,” it revealed an inherent discomfort with dissociating free speech protections from subjective standards of decency.
More alarming, however, is the broad, unsubstantiated restriction imposed on Allahbadia and his associates, barring them from airing “any show” on YouTube or other audio-visual platforms “until further orders.” It is a legal precedent being set for the state’s ability to unilaterally shut down individuals’ careers without due process or proper justification.
No explanation has been provided as to why this restriction was deemed necessary. One would expect the highest court of the land to articulate the legal rationale behind this and effectively censor their future speech. At no point did the court establish a compelling reason for such an expansive prohibition.
If the court’s actions weren’t already egregious, Allahbadia was also ordered to surrender his passport and is barred from leaving the country without prior approval. This is an extraordinary and deeply troubling escalation—one typically reserved for serious criminal cases, not for an individual who made a crass joke and issued a public apology.
Moreover, the ominous observation that YouTube channels and social media have become “a complete nuisance” and its direct inquiry about whether the government intends to regulate them should set off alarm bells. The court’s intervention has revived discussions on the shelved Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2024, a terribly flawed piece of legislation that, if implemented, would fundamentally alter India’s digital landscape.
Among its most alarming provisions was mandatory prior registration with the government, effectively placing content creators and social media users under the same regulatory framework as traditional broadcasters. This is not just excessive; it is an unambiguous step towards government control over independent voices.
If the Supreme Court’s remarks embolden the government to resurrect the Broadcasting Bill, it effectively grants judicial legitimacy to an agenda of state control over online discourse. The creeping authoritarianism visible in India today is not simply a result of government overreach; it is enabled by a judiciary that seems willing to sacrifice fundamental freedoms at the altar of its sensibilities.
With this Bill, the government gains unchecked power to block content, suspend licenses, etc.. all without independent oversight. Who gets to decide what is “harmful” or “offensive”? A government that has made a habit of silencing dissent? Vague, elastic terms like “public order” and “national security”—phrases that have long served as convenient pretexts for harassment, suppression, and narrative control. We’ve seen this playbook before.
The irony is that Allahabadia, who bent over backward to ingratiate himself with the ruling elite, inviting them for propaganda-filled “interviews” (in the loosest possible sense of the word), now finds himself crushed under the very machinery he helped lubricate. And yet, none of that matters. Because this is not about him.
That does not mean he deserves this fate—no one does. The principle of free speech is not contingent on the worthiness of its defendants. It does not matter how distasteful his comments were; what matters is that the state has once again mobilised itself to crush an individual for the crime of saying something that some people found “offensive.”
The Supreme Court’s role should be to uphold constitutional freedoms, not to chisel away at them with moralistic interventions. A judiciary that sees itself as a guardian of social values rather than as an impartial interpreter of the law is dangerous.
The Supreme Court must resist the urge to become an enforcer of moral codes and instead reaffirm its role as the ultimate protector of fundamental rights. Otherwise, it risks becoming not just a tool of censorship but an active participant in dismantling India’s fragile democratic freedoms.
Today, it’s Allahbadia. Tomorrow, it will be someone else. And the cycle will continue. What are we? Subjects? Or worse, cattle, herded by a political class that is fundamentally undemocratic, ruling over a society that has no understanding of democracy within a system that has only the flimsiest pretense of being democratic?
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