Society that accepts unverified claims and fears questions is vulnerable to authoritarianism: Justice Bhuyan

Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan said a society that accepts claims without evidence, fears questions and treats tradition as beyond question becomes vulnerable to misinformation, defenceless in the face of authoritarianism and fails to reform unjust practices.

Justice Bhuyan said building a scientific temper enshrined in Article 51A of the Constitution should not be confined to laboratories but extend to the capacity of youths and students to think rationally as members of a civil and political society.

“All that you need is the capacity to think rationally; what you say or think must be based on reason. It [scientific temper] is an attitude of inquiry and openness to examination. It cannot happen overnight. The germination has to take place in the university,” Justice Bhuyan said in his address at the University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya on Saturday (October 31, 2026).

The speech resonates after the nation saw widespread dissatisfaction among Gen Z over NEET 2026 paper leaks, student unrest in universities and a wave of agitations across premier institutions from IIT Bombay to multiple National Law Schools followed by a demand to restore student union elections at Jamia Millia Islamia.

The judge said society should demand empirical evidence when public discourse relies on emotional resonance and unverified assertions. Students must acquire the habit of inquiry to see through misinformation.

“To inquire is to avoid accepting the very first explanation that comes our way; it tells us to look for reasons; and it trains the mind to search a little deeper than what appears at the surface. This is nothing else but the development of a scientific temper. This will protect the mind from prejudice and empower it to make independent thinking and choice possible,” Justice Bhuyan said.

The judge pointed out how society is willingly or unwillingly getting drawn into a “false narrative; the binary of ‘us’ and ‘they’”. He termed this a destructive tendency.

Justice Bhuyan said the narrative must shift from ‘us’ and ‘they’ to the ‘we’ of the Preamble to the Constitution of India, which starts with the expression ‘We, the People of India’.

“This Constitutional concept of ‘we’ enables diversity to coexist with unity. Its genius lies in the fact that it does not seek to efface the differences; rather, it seeks to restore unity without demanding uniformity. It does not require that our individual identities should get subsumed in the larger whole,” Justice Bhuyan said.

Published - October 31, 2026 04:16 pm IST