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The Supreme Court’s order in ‘In Re: Social Science Textbook for Grade-8 (Part-2) Published By NCERT and Ancillary Issues’, begins with a reverent invocation of constitutional design – the three pillars, namely, the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary, operating with autonomy while functioning “in concert,” to preserve democracy.

The Constitution does not describe three co-equal pillars. It establishes a parliamentary democracy where the Executive is drawn from and accountable to the Legislature – they are not separate pillars in the American separation-of-powers’ sense. The judiciary is independent, but the framers were deliberate about not creating a fully tripartite system. The autonomy of the three pillars is, in practice, qualified. By positioning the judiciary as a co-guardian of democracy alongside elected branches, the Court implicitly claims that protecting it from criticism serves the constitutional order.

The order’s opening poses as reasoning from first principles, but by asserting it, it intends to establish an emotional register that primes the reader to receive what follows uncritically.

Having set this tone, the order then shifts to its substantive concern. It shares its anxiety about the “pedagogical suitability” of the textbook’s framing of the issue of corruption in judiciary. The implicit argument here is that even if the content of the textbook is factually defensible, the manner and context in which it is presented to students shapes how they form foundational legal attitudes.

The Court is essentially invoking an in loco parentis logic, to restrict what students may learn about it. It conflates difficulty with unsuitability. Uncomfortable institutional truths are arguably more pedagogically valuable in professional education, because legal practitioners will inevitably encounter them in practice.

When the Court is concerned about the chapter’s “impact on the institutional standing of the judiciary as a whole”, its vagueness helps it cover almost any critical content, and protect it from scrutiny.

The order then says the Court is “reluctant to reproduce the full contents” of the chapter, but asserts that........

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