No Room For Bystanders In A Constitution That Outlawed Untouchability

When the Supreme Court recently held that alleged caste-based abuse inside a private residence would not attract Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989^[1] in the absence of “public view”, the ruling appeared legally straightforward. The Court was interpreting a statutory requirement. It was applying precedent. It was insisting that criminal law cannot proceed where the basic ingredients of an offence are absent.

And yet, beneath the technical reasoning of Gunjan @ Girija Kumari v State (NCT of Delhi)^[2] lies a deeper constitutional discomfort. The judgment forces us to confront an unsettling question about Indian anti-caste jurisprudence today: has constitutional law slowly begun to recognise caste humiliation only when others are watching?

The case itself arose from a property dispute between family members in Delhi. The complainant and two of the accused were real brothers belonging to a Scheduled Caste community. The other accused were their wives. According to the FIR, one of the accused allegedly used caste-based slurs such as “chura”, “chamar”, “harijan” and other derogatory expressions against the complainant and his wife during an altercation involving attempts to break open the lock of a residential house. The complainant further alleged that such humiliation had continued for over a year, especially whenever visitors or friends came to meet him.

The trial court framed charges under Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the SC/ST Act and under Section 506 read with Section 34 of the IPC. The Delhi High Court^[3] refused to interfere, observing that at the stage of framing charges courts are not expected to conduct a mini-trial. But the Supreme Court reversed that position and quashed the proceedings. Examining the FIR, witness statements and the statutory framework, the Court held that the essential ingredient of “public view” was absent. Since the alleged incident occurred inside a residential house and no independent public presence or visibility was established, the prosecution under the SC/ST Act could not survive.

Legally, the reasoning follows precedent.

The Court relied upon Swaran Singh v State,^[4] Hitesh Verma v State of Uttarakhand,^[5] and Karuppudayar v State,^[6] all of which interpret the phrase “within public view” as an indispensable ingredient under Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s) of the Act. In Swaran Singh, the Supreme Court clarified that a “public place” and a “place within public view” are not the same thing. Even a private location may fall within public view if outsiders are capable of witnessing the occurrence. But incidents occurring within enclosed private spaces, without public visibility, would not satisfy the statutory threshold.

The Court in Gunjan therefore did not invent a new doctrine. It applied an existing one. In fact, the judgment repeatedly emphasises that “public view” is not incidental but a “principal requirement” and a “sine qua non” for prosecution under the relevant provisions of the SC/ST Act. According to the Court, humiliation acquires a particular intensity when it occurs in the presence of members of the public.

To that extent, the judgment is doctrinally understandable. Criminal courts cannot ignore statutory language merely because allegations concern socially grave wrongs. False implication, vague accusations and criminalisation of personal disputes are legitimate concerns in any justice system. The Court was also correct in reiterating that criminal proceedings cannot continue where the FIR itself fails to disclose the essential ingredients of the alleged offence.

But constitutional discomfort often begins precisely where legal reasoning appears most technically sound.

On 25 November 1949,^[7] as India stood on the verge of giving itself a Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly that the country was about to enter “a life of contradictions.” Political equality, he cautioned, would coexist with deep social and economic inequality. Democracy could not survive merely through constitutional text if society itself continued to deny dignity to large sections of people.

More than seventy-five years later, that contradiction continues to haunt Indian constitutional law.

Because the real issue raised by Gunjan is not simply whether courts should insist upon statutory ingredients. The deeper issue is what Indian anti-caste jurisprudence increasingly understands caste humiliation to mean.

Over time, judicial interpretation under the SC/ST Act appears to have developed a troubling dependence on visibility. Humiliation becomes legally legible when it is public, witnessed, exposed and capable of satisfying evidentiary comfort. The repeated judicial language of “public gaze”, “public eye” and “public view” is not merely procedural vocabulary. It reveals the framework through which caste humiliation is increasingly being understood.

The law appears most comfortable recognising caste when caste humiliation performs itself publicly.

But caste has never survived only through spectacle.

Untouchability was not sustained merely through dramatic public acts visible to society at large. It survived through everyday arrangements so ordinary that they became socially invisible: refusal to share utensils, denial of tenancy, segregated social interaction, humiliating language inside homes, exclusion within workplaces, coded hostility inside classrooms, silence within institutions, and the constant awareness of one's caste location even within supposedly private spaces.

Modern caste often survives most effectively where law struggles most to see it.

A Dalit student isolated within a university department, an employee humiliated privately inside an office chamber, a tenant quietly rejected after revealing a surname, or a family threatened during a property dispute in language carefully shielded from outsiders are not spectacular acts of untouchability. They are intimate, controlled and deniable forms of caste power. Precisely because they are intimate, they frequently evade the evidentiary expectations of law.

This is what makes the present judicial trend constitutionally significant.

At the very moment caste discrimination increasingly moves into private and institutional spaces, anti-atrocity jurisprudence appears to revolve around procedural visibility: whether the humiliation occurred in public enough circumstances, whether outsiders were present, whether witnesses satisfy the threshold of “public”, whether the allegations are sufficiently specific, and whether the dispute appears personal or civil in nature.

Individually, these concerns may appear legally justified. Collectively, however, they reveal a deeper jurisprudential movement. Anti-caste law is increasingly being filtered through procedural suspicion rather than interpreted through the constitutional realities that produced the legislation itself.

The danger, therefore, is not that courts insist upon safeguards. Constitutional democracies cannot survive without procedural fairness. The danger lies elsewhere: when suspicion itself becomes the dominant interpretive lens through which anti-caste legislation is approached, constitutional protection slowly begins to transform into constitutional scepticism.

This is not an argument against the statutory language of Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s). The phrase “within public view” undeniably exists within the legislation, and courts are bound to interpret the law as enacted. But the judgment simultaneously exposes the limitations of a legal framework that still associates caste humiliation primarily with public performance of humiliation, even though caste itself has evolved into quieter, structural and less visible forms.

Article 17 abolished untouchability absolutely. It did not abolish only public untouchability. It did not prohibit caste humiliation only when spectators were present. The constitutional imagination underlying Article 17 was far more radical. It recognised caste not merely as individual prejudice, but as a structure of humiliation embedded within social life itself.

That is why Ambedkar's warning remains relevant today. Political democracy may constitutionally declare equality, but social democracy cannot emerge merely through formal abolition. The law may prohibit untouchability in text while still struggling to recognise how caste actually operates in lived reality.

The National Crime Records Bureau's annual data reflects the scale of this unresolved contradiction. Thousands of cases relating to crimes against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes continue to be registered every year. Yet the deeper story lies not merely in the number of offences recorded, but in the institutional realities surrounding them: delayed investigation, evidentiary failures, acquittals, pendency and procedural attrition continue to shape anti-atrocity litigation across the country.

The constitutional consequence is subtle but serious. The law risks recognising caste humiliation only when it appears in forms that are easily visible to legal proof.

But caste rarely survives in comfortable forms.

It survives quietly, structurally and often privately, precisely where constitutional law struggles most to see it.

The Supreme Court's judgment in Gunjan may therefore be legally correct within the present statutory framework. But it also reveals the inadequacy of that framework in responding to the realities of contemporary caste power. The challenge before Indian constitutional law today is not simply whether statutory ingredients are technically satisfied. The deeper challenge is whether constitutional interpretation can continue to recognise caste oppression even when it no longer appears in the visible forms law historically expected.

Because caste has changed.

And unless constitutional interpretation evolves alongside that reality, India risks preserving the language of anti-caste constitutionalism while steadily narrowing its social imagination.

A Constitution that abolished untouchability cannot afford a jurisprudence that recognises humiliation only when others are watching.

Author is an Advocate and constitutional law researcher.

Views Are Personal.

Footnotes:

1. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, ss 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s). ↑

2. Gunjan @ Girija Kumari v State (NCT of Delhi) [2026] INSC 468. ↑

3. Gunjan @ Girija Kumari v State NCT of Delhi CRL REV P 114/2023 (Delhi High Court, 22 August 2024). ↑

4. Swaran Singh v State through Standing Counsel (2008) 8 SCC 435. ↑

5. Hitesh Verma v State of Uttarakhand (2020) 10 SCC 710. ↑

6. Karuppudayar v State rep by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Lalgudi Trichy 2025 SCC OnLine SC 215. ↑

7. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, 'Speech in the Constituent Assembly on the Adoption of the Constitution' (25 November 1949). ↑