What to Read in Indian Express Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1 : After President Murmu seeks advisory opinion from SC, can court overturn its R N Ravi decision?

Context:

President Droupadi Murmu has invoked the Supreme Court’s advisory jurisdiction on whether timelines could be set for the President and Governors to act on Bills passed by state Assemblies.

The Constitutional provisions

• Under Article 143(1) of the Constitution, the President may refer a “question of law or fact” to the Supreme Court for its opinion.
• The opinion, unlike a ruling, is not binding. The reference was made on May 13 ruling in which it fixed a three-month deadline for the President to clear Bills reserved for her consideration by the Governor.
• That ruling set aside Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi’s decision to withhold assent to 10 pending Bills.

What is the SC’s advisory jurisdiction?

• The Constitution extended the provision in the Government of India Act, 1935 to seek the opinion of the Federal Courton questions of law to questions of fact as well, including certain hypotheticals.
• Article 145(3) requires any such reference to be heard by five judges, after which the SC returns the reference to the President with the majority opinion.
• Under the Constitution, the President acts on the aid and advice of the Cabinet.
• The advisory jurisdiction allows her the means to seek independent advice to act on certain constitutional matters.It is a power that the President has invoked on at least 15 occasions since 1950.

Supreme court and presidential reference

• Article 143(1) states the court “may, after such hearing as it thinks fit, report to the President its opinion thereon”. The word ‘may’ indicates that it is the court’s prerogative to answer the reference. The SC has so far returned at least two references without answering.
• Since advisory jurisdiction is not binding as a precedent, even if the SC had held the law to be unconstitutional in the Article 143 reference, it would still have to decide its validity in the other batch.
• The SC’s opinion would also be futile since the issue was no longer before the President.

Overturning decision

• In its 1991 opinion on the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, the SC said that Article 143 is not a mechanism for the executive to seek review or reversal of established judicial decisions of the Supreme Court.
• The opinion said that when Court in its adjudicatory jurisdiction pronounces its authoritative opinion on a question of law, it cannot be said that there is any doubt about the question of law or the same is res integral so as to require the President to know what the true position of law on the question is.
• The SC also said it could not “countenance a situation” where a question in a reference “may be so construed as to invite our opinion” on a settled decision of the court.
• The government can, however, file for a review of the recent ruling, and can move a curative petition in an attempt to reverse it.

What is the broader context behind the presidential reference?

• The issues in the R N Ravi case essentially arise out of the interplay of powers between the Centre and Opposition-ruled states.
• Governors, who are appointed by the Centre, are seen to be undercutting elected state governments by their refusal to clear Bills passed by the Assembly.
• The SC in its ruling allowed states the right to seek a “writ of mandamus” from the SC against the President.
• This is essentially a right to knock on the doors of courts seeking a directive against the President if she does not decide on the Bills within the prescribed time limit.
• The government used the ruling to argue that the judiciary was undermining Parliament or the people’s mandate.
• Attorney General for India R Venkataramani said the President “was not heard” before the SC passed directives for her office to follow.
• Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar criticised the ruling. He has raised the issue of “Parliamentary supremacy”on several occasions, and called for limited judicial review and greater adherence to the separation of powers.
• That said, such tussles between Parliament and the judiciary are as old as the Constitution itself.

Conclusion

In the first three decades after Independence, courts and the government sparred on the interpretation of the right to property, leading to constitutional amendments and adverse court orders. Eventually, in the landmark 1973 Kesavananda Bharati ruling, the court allowed land reforms, watering down the fundamental right to property, but severely restricted Parliament’s powers to tinker with any other fundamental right.

 

Editorial 2 : Vanishing voices of the mountains: The struggle to preserve Pahari languages

Context

Spoken by millions in the regions of Western Himalayas, Pahari languages remain unrecognised in India’s official language policies.

Phonetically different

• While these languages and dialects, even those in geographic proximity, phonetically differ from each other due to the hardy terrain, linguists have traditionally lumped these vernaculars under the catch-all ‘Pahari’.
• Derived from pahar, meaning ‘mountain’, Pahari refers not to a single language, but to a wide array of tongues spoken across the Himalayan belt.
• Sir George Abraham Grierson, who conducted The Linguistic Survey of India between 1901 and 1928,identified the Pahari languages as a distinct subgroup within the Indo-Aryan family.
• Grierson classified Pahari into three principal divisions: Eastern, Central, and Western, corresponding roughly to the modern Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu & Kashmir, and parts of Nepal and Pakistan.

A linguistic patchwork

• Western Pahari, spoken primarily in Himachal Pradesh and parts of Jammu, includes languages such as Kangri, Mandeali, Chambeali, Gaddi, and Bhalesi.
• Central Pahari covers Garhwali and Kumaoni, the principal languages of Uttarakhand.
• Eastern Pahari is represented almost entirely by Nepali, onceknown as Khas Kura or Gorkhali.
• While these tongues differ in grammar and vocabulary, they are united by their mountain origins and the cultural traditions they carry: folk tales, devotional songs, and seasonal idioms.
• The Pahari languages reveal deep linguistic kinships with neighbouring tongues such as Punjabi, Hindko, and Gojri, suggesting a history of migration from the plains to the peaks, along with interactions with diverse groups such as the Kolis, Dogras, Gujjars, Gurungs, and Tamangs, and Pahari Pathans and Dards in modern-day Pakistan.

Vanishing tongues

• The Linguistic Survey of India – Himachal Pradesh, carried out between 1995 and 2008 by the Office of the Registrar General, documents five major languages and 12 mother tongues, most of which belong to the Western Pahari group — locally referred to as Pahari or Himachali.
• Despite being spoken by nearly 90% of the state’s population, according to a 1996 survey, these languages remain unrecognised in India’s official language policies.
• Pahari dialects such as Kangri, Mandeali, Chambeali, and Sirmauri are often recorded as “Hindi”due to a lack of formal recognition.
• Moreover, there isn’t a single college in Himachal dedicated to the study or preservation of Pahari.
• According to the Census of 2011, Himachal Pradesh has a population of 6.86 million. However, only 18.1% of the population is recorded as bilingual, suggesting that the shift to Hindi has come at the expense of local dialects.
• The LSI identifies Bharmauri (Gaddi), Churahi, Chambeali, Kangri, Keonthali, Kulvi, Mandeali, Pangwali, Sanori, and Sirmauri as mother tongues under the Hindi group, while Bhateali and Bilaspuri fall under Punjabi, with Dogri, Nepali, Kinnauri, Lahauli, and Bhotia included as distinct.
• Studies have found that in most households, younger generations are drifting toward Hindi or English, using Pahari dialects only at home or during cultural events. In schools, the local dialect is nearly invisible.
• Hindi dominates official interaction, education, and digital communication.
• Tibeto-Burman languages show a slightly different trend. Kinnauri, spoken by about 82,000 people in Kinnaur district, and Lahauli, with roughly 89,500 speakers mainly in Lahaul and Kullu, retain stronger community roots.
• Their geographic isolation has helped preserve them, but the adoption of Hindi and English in schools and jobs is growing.
• Meanwhile, Nepali, a language of migration, has nearly 90,000 speakers in the state, particularly in Shimla, Solan, and Kullu.
• The Tankri (or Takri) script, once widely used to write Kangri, Chambeali, Mandeali, and Gaddi, has virtually disappeared.
• Evolving from the Sharada script around the 10th century, Tankri was used across northwestern India for administrative and cultural purposes.
• However, with the rise of Hindi and Devanagari, especially post-Independence, Tankri lost its status.

Smartphones and schools

• Despite community efforts, elder speakers often lament that their children can understand the language but do not speak it.
• The next generation, growing up with smartphones and English-medium education, often cannot understand it at all.
• According to researchers, psycho-sociological pressures within families and schools are central to the decline of the Pahari language in northern Punjab and Kashmir.
• Their findings reveal that middle- and upper-income families increasingly associate the use of indigenous languages with backwardness, discouraging their children from speaking Pahari even at home.

Politics of language and the fight for the 8th Schedule

• Despite decades of advocacy, the Pahari languages have yet to gain recognition under the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, a list that includes officially acknowledged languages.
• Inclusion would grant Pahari dialects benefits such as use in education, administration, and eligibility for representation in literary bodies like the Sahitya Akademi.
• However, not everyone is in favour of Pahari being added to the 8th Schedule.

Conclusion

Caught between the push for constitutional recognition and fears of linguistic fragmentation, the Pahari languages now sit at the heart of a larger national conversation about identity and inclusion.