Arrest and Bail

The recent advent of the Special Intensive Review (SIR) by the Election Commission of India has opened a new question for consideration: can an imprisoned person be allowed to vote?

Under Article 326 of the Constitution of India, every adult citizen of India who is not disqualified on the ground of non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt or illegal practice, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter at any election.

The Constitution does not bar an imprisoned person from voting. However, the Constitution does mention that crime, corruption, and illegality shall disqualify a person’s right to vote. In effect, the Constitution assumes that imprisonment can only come from crime, corruption, and illegality, allegations that are proven in a court of law and then sentenced from imprisonment. As we shall soon see, the assumption does not hold in India.

But before going there, let us have a look at the much quoted section 62(5) of the Representation of People Act, 1951 (RPA). The RPA states that no person shall vote at any election if he is confined in a prison under a sentence of imprisonment, or is in the lawful custody of the police; provided that this shall not apply to a person subjected to preventive detention.

Section 62(5) of the RPA rests on an outdated assumption that all imprisonment without conviction must be preventive detention. Ordinarily, a person imprisoned should be “under a sentence”. The unstated assumption of the law is that imprisonment is ordinarily levied on a convict. This assumption fails woefully in India.

As per the 2023 report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, 74% of the Indian prison population is undertrial, i.e. prisoners who have not been convicted but are awaiting trial or bail. This is nearly 4 lakh citizens. These are not convicts. They are citizens whom the State has failed to prove guilty; yet continues to imprison. The overall conviction rate is 54%. This means that nearly 2 lakh citizens are imprisoned at present who will eventually be acquitted. India imprisons citizens not for what they have done, but for what they might do. The Supreme Court judges have repeatedly called for reforms in imprisonment and bail provisions of the law in view of this gross injustice.

The Government has not been a silent spectator. But Governmental action should not be mistaken for reform; it is simply noise. In 2024, in an attempt to remove the British colonial hangover, India saw a major shift in its criminal laws.  The Indian Penal Code (IPC) was replaced by the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was changed to Bhartiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS). Interestingly, the CrPC 1973 was not even a colonial legislature. In what can only be termed as a typical fashion of the Government, new names were imprinted on old legislations.

Under section 187 of the BNSS (167 of CrPC), a magistrate can order for a police custody of maximum 15 days and a judicial custody of 60 / 90 days, depending on the severity of the crime. During this time, the investigating authority needs to complete the investigation and file a chargesheet before the court for the trial to take place. The accused is placed under custody for the purpose of investigation, and so that he may not tamper with the witness and / or evidence during the investigation. If the chargesheet is not filed during the 60 / 90 day period, the accused gets “default bail” u/s 187(3) of the BNSS (167(2) of the CrPC).

Once the chargesheet is filed, the case moves from the pre-trial stage to the trial stage. The investigation is complete, but the court needs to ensure the presence of the accused during trial. For this, the courts can continue to keep the accused in judicial custody u/s 346 of the BNSS (309 of the CrPC).

Section 346 of the BNSS allows the court to remand the accused for a period not exceeding 15 days at a time until the trial is over. This 15-day period is repeated each time the court issues a remand order. In practice, the accused remains imprisoned for months or years while being remanded “every 15 days”. The court applies no mind for any fresh reasoning for extending the imprisonment of the accused by simply copy-pasting the previous order.

Remand is not conviction, but the outcome of both is imprisonment. Hence, the state does not need to convict a person to punish him. The state can simply extend remand indefinitely. Remand exists because the State assumes that liberty creates a risk of misconduct. But in practice, this assumption becomes a substitute for proving guilt. Instead of protecting society through evidence, the State protects itself through custody.

This is not a mandate by the constitution, but a risk-averse practice continued from the British colonial traditions. Under the British rule, liberty was secondary to control. Unfortunately, this tradition has continued in independent India. The police take advantage of this practice and oppose bail reflexively, treating custody as leverage on the accused.

The 15-day time-limit was set to ensure liberty, but the courts have converted it into rolling imprisonment. The burden flips to the accused – liberty must be earned, while imprisonment is presumed. The presumption of innocence survives only in theory. In custody courts, the presumption is reversed. The investigating agencies and the courts need not even find a reasonable ground to continue the imprisonment of an accused. In effect, this violates the Right to Life and Liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

Any law student or graduate will tell you that “bail is rule and jail is exception” and “delay of justice is denial of justice” are some of the first teachings at law school. We have heard that Indians have a right to life and liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. Yet, in practice, such words are only that… words. In practice, 4 lakh Indian citizens linger on waiting for bail or trials. Often the accused does not even have a family or friend prosperous enough to furnish the bail bond amount.

The biggest prison sentence in India is not awarded by conviction, it is awarded by delay. The solution is simple –

• No “automatic” renewal of remand
• Judges must give reasons for denying liberty of a person while the trial is pending
• Automatic bail hearings where the investigating agency needs to justify the need for continued remand
• Disciplinary consequences for copy-paste remand orders

But it will take a generation of judges to build new habits. Every remand order is a day of someone’s life. If courts cannot justify that day, they have no right to take it. Liberty is not a privilege granted after acquittal; it is a right that may be curtailed only after conviction. Until our courts act on this principle rather than merely reciting it, the Constitution will remain an idea, not an experience.

Changing the names of laws rather than actually changing laws renders the Indian sovereignty as a meaningless change of words, while the Indian mindset continues to remain under the colonial rule. The British once used imprisonment without trial to control a population. Independent India has no reason or excuse to inherit that legacy.

The question before India is simple: will we continue to imprison first and justify later, or will we finally build a justice system where liberty is the norm and custody requires proof?

Silent Corner

I watch from afar,

where shadows sit heavy on the edge of the room.

Habits grow like ivy – unquestioned,

entitled vines curling around what once was simple.

I say nothing.

Silence is safer than storms.

 

When I speak,

my voice feels foreign to the air

the weight of subtle things,

too delicate to carry on casual tongues,

too sharp to rest easy in the heart of another.

 

So I brood.

A quiet ritual of sorting grief

in a world that mistakes stillness for surrender.

When asked what’s wrong,

I reach for words that vanish mid-thought,

and the distance grows again.

 

Old wounds echo

not in pain, but in the memory of misused trust.

To be known was once a danger,

a vulnerability bent into a weapon.

So now,

I build walls from the inside out.

 

Connections knock gently

I hesitate to open.

Not for lack of longing,

but for fear of finding

another hollow space where presence should be.

 

And so I shrink

into moments that ask little of me

a shared laugh on a flight,

a quiet meal,

the pulse of new streets beneath worn shoes.

These are my offerings to joy small,

but mine.

 

I do not reach far anymore.

I have learned the art of stillness,

not as peace,

but as protection.

And in that stillness,

I survive.

 

Vishal Gupta

3^rd May, 2025

Samvaad

The Hindi word for conversation is samvaad. It is a beautiful word. The word samvaad is composed of two parts - sam meaning same or equal, and vaad. The origin of the word vaad is interesting. In the colloquial sense, vaad simply means voice or noise or loudness. Therefore samvaad literally means the same level of loudness. This means in Hindi, a conversation cannot happen unless all parties are equally loud, or rather, have the equal voice. This simple word sows the seeds of democracy and dialogue in the spirit of the language itself. This is also the root of many shouting matches that we see as a natural part of being an argumentative Indian.

 

But let's dig a little deeper. The word vaad shares its root with the word vedna which means an expression of pain. Both these words in-turn share root with the word vadini which means the one who expresses. In Hinduism, the Goddess Saraswati, the Gooddess of wisdom and art, is often called veena-vadini, i.e. the one who expresses herself with the music of the veena instrument. The purest meaning of the word vaad is expression. And not just simple expression, an expression that carries wisdom and beauty. Samvaad means dialogue, where all parties are equal, informed, and the expression is tasteful. Unless these conditions are met, samvaad cannot be said to have occurred.

 

Samvaad also requires sam, i.e. agreement of base axioms. Without a foundation, there can be no dialogue. For samvaad, there needs to be a common standing ground. A broad consensus. The ability to acknowledge that even if there is a difference of opinion, there is no difference of intent. Without that base point of meeting, it is not just a difference of opinion, but a difference of ideology. A difference of opinion can be reconciled, negotiated, and compromised-with in pursuit of common objectives. However, a difference of ideology cannot be reconciled because the objectives pursued are different. In such a scenario, samvaad is not achieved. What is reached is matbhed. There is no reconciliation in matbhed.

 

Even in English, the word "conversation" carries a similar depth. The word "conversation" itself has the same roots as the word "convert". Conversation comes from the Latin words con meaning together and versare meaning turn. The idea of a conversation requires the ability to exchange and entertain ideas with an openness to change one's own. If there is only imposition of one's own ideas, it is not a "conversation" but a narration.

 

In both traditions, Indian and Western, the idea of conversation points to more than words exchanged. It is about equality, reciprocity, and the willingness to meet one another in the shared space of understanding. To have a samvaad is not just to speak; it is to listen, to allow expression to find balance, and to keep alive the spirit of democracy.

The Harbour Line – Motion vs. Meditation

I stepped off the train in Ajmer before dawn, the platform still cool and quiet under a pale wash of sodium lights. There were no speakers to announce anyone’s arrival, no shuffling tide of sleeves checking for tickets—just a few men leaning against columns, wrapped in shawls, silently smoking beedis. I exhaled and realized I hadn’t even noticed my own heartbeat slowing. In Mumbai, you’re always running—sometimes literally, chasing the last train or the next opportunity—but here, in Ajmer, time seemed to have taken a leisurely detour.

Mumbai is defined by motion, by the relentless pursuit of naukri, jhopri, chhokri: a job that might pull you from half-way across the country, a slum‑quarter you’ll learn to navigate, and the dream of sending your children out of that cramped kholi into a life you never had. Every corner is a deal, every handshake a calculation. Efficiency isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the tide that sweeps you forward. The crazy stupid things you do—catching three trains in two hours to save fifty rupees of fare, sleeping on office couches, skipping meals to meet deadlines—become badges of honor, proof that you can thrive in a city that demands your all.

Ajmer doesn’t work that way. As I wandered through its winding lanes toward the Dargah Sharif, vendors swept the steps with brooms, not hurrying, but with a quiet deliberateness born of routine. In Mumbai, the bartender at a five‑star lounge barely registers your presence if you stay past your fourth drink; here, in Ajmer, a chaiwalla asked about my hometown, my work, my travels, as if the conversation mattered more than the sale.

But there’s a blunt edge to that simplicity. Ajmer can be rude in ways Mumbai isn’t: a shopkeeper refusing to quote a price until you promise to buy, a rickshaw driver hauling you to the wrong mosque because he “doesn’t like outsiders,” a glance that smolders with impatience when you speak in Hindi tinged with a Mumbai twang. In a city that moves slowly, there’s less impetus to absorb new customs or accommodate difference. Mumbai’s cacophony forces you to confront diversity—language, religion, class, ambition—because you literally bump up against it on crowded platforms and in ever‑packed trains. Ajmer may offer serenity, but it can feel insular, as if its welcome mat is permanently rolled up.

In Mumbai, business isn’t just driving force—it’s the oxygen. Every conversation circles back to profit margins, market strategies, or side hustles. The city hums with the calculus of commerce: real estate auctions, IPO chatter, the latest disinvestment news. That intensity makes things happen: new startups sprout, skyscrapers rise, fortunes are made (and lost) within a quarter. Yet the same force that powers Mumbai’s engine also sucks its soul dry. Rare is the moment when you’re not lurking on your phone, scanning stock tickers or email threads, fearing that pause will cost you your edge.

By contrast, Ajmer’s heartbeat is leisurely—more in tune with the call to prayer than a balance sheet. People operate on proverb time: “Kal kare so aaj kar, aaj kare so ab”, but somehow everyone interprets it as “do it when you feel like it.” Deadlines blur and trivial emergencies vanish. There’s room for detours: a sudden detour to the Ana Sagar Lake, a spontaneous sit‑down in a courtyard under a neem tree, a shared paratha with strangers who become friends over a single cup of chai.

And yet both cities come with their sets of perks and perils—and more often than not, the problems are the price you pay for the benefits. Ajmer’s unrushed pace gifts you peace, but it also stunts big‑picture opportunities. Medical specialists are scarce; a simple surgery can require weeks of waiting. Rickshaw speeds crawl, and job options outside the khakhi‑shirt brigade feel limited. If you crave progress, you might find Ajmer’s simplicity suffocating.

In Mumbai, progress arrives on schedule, but at the cost of sanity. You learn to socialize through WhatsApp groups; family dinners become conference‑calls squeezed between board meetings. Girlfriends become side projects you hope to launch once the IPO hits. You trade work‑life balance for work‑survive balance. The daily crush of bodies in local trains becomes a metaphor for life itself: everyone fighting for a foothold, jockeying for space, determined not to be left behind.

Yet you can’t isolate a city’s perks from its problems any more than you can expect a person to sharpen one dimension of their personality without dulling another. The friend who’s the life of every party might also miss appointments; the drone‑like colleague who never socializes may never miss a deadline. Mumbai’s ruthless efficiency coexists with unforgiving loneliness; Ajmer’s warm rhythms mask undercurrents of parochialism.

When I boarded the train back to Mumbai, clutching a cup of chai from a street stall—sweet enough to mask the city’s bitterness—I felt both worlds within me. In Ajmer, I’d found a momentary refuge: a reminder that life need not be an unending sprint. In Mumbai, I’d leave behind the luxury of slow mornings, but regain the thrill of possibility.

Perhaps that’s the paradox of urban life. You can’t have the best of both worlds—at least not without cost. If Mumbai is a ceaseless marathon pushing you toward every horizon, Ajmer is a calm shoreline inviting you to rest. Both require trade‑offs: a pulse‑quickening race that fuels dreams but feeds stress, or a gentle breeze that soothes the soul but stifles ambition.

In the end, I carried a sliver of Ajmer’s stillness back to the roar of Mumbai’s tracks. And every time I pause in a frantic morning, I remember those slow‑sipped chai cups under neem trees. Both cities made me richer—Ajmer for teaching me the art of being present, Mumbai for showing me how far a dream can take you when you refuse to stop. Perhaps the real lesson is that no city, like no person, can be perfect. We must learn to live with the things that make us who we are, knowing that our strengths and our flaws are forever entwined.

Infinity is Zero

In the beginning, there was nothing. And the universe was at peace. Then, in a tiny little planet, the first speck of life dared to rise.

It was a microscopic tit-bit, floating in a volcanic ocean that itself floated inside a universal void. It was the first time the universe created something different from itself. The first time “self” stood apart from the infinite. Until then, there had only been an endless oneness – a vastness with no boundary, and no need for a definition. But with that first trembling speck, a boundary was drawn – organic from inorganic, self from other, life from death. And with that line began the greatest journey of all – the journey away from the universe, or back to itself?

The Rise of the Self

As life evolved, it perfected the art of separation. The smallest microscopic life had the beginnings of “senses”, but no real free will.

Trees arose, rooted deeply into the earth, connected to each other through hidden mycelial webs – but still a part of the universe, each other, and the soil. It was impossible to tell where the roots ended and the soil began.

Animals tore away from the soil. They became mobile, hungry, and alert, their sense of ego sharpened. The need to preserve the “self” grew, even if it meant killing another. Senses directed action. There was independent thought, and independent life. Loneliness arose for the first time.

And then came humans, the greatest masters of separation. We did not just eat or move – we named, owned, enslaved, created, passed on, immortalized. We built layers and layers of meaning, identity, and culture. The “self” swelled into something monumental, at time even monstrous.

What began as a single boundary between organism and universe became a fortress of ego. Life was separated from the universe, and learnt to exist in isolation.

Entropy

The same story played out at the cosmic scale. The universe began with unity. In the singularity of the Big Bang, there was no space, no time, no matter. A pure point of nothingness, and everything. Then expansion came, and with it, structure. Galaxies, stars, planets, and eventually life. Order emerged – but so did disorder. Entropy, the measure of chaos, became the law of the cosmos.

But entropy has only one conclusion: return.

After the last stars burn out, when the last black hole radiates disintegrates into the last photon, the universe will dissolve into a flat, silent void. No gradients, no forces, no distinctions. No space, no time. Just like the moment before the Big Bang. The beginning and the end are mirrors. Entropy, in its final maturity, is not chaos but peace. The heat death of the universe is nothing less than liberation into nothingness – moksha.

The Greatest Sin

Religion confirms. In the Garden of Eden, when all was innocent, humanity’s fall comes through knowledge. Eating the fruit of knowledge separated man from God, and the self from the universe. Awareness was exile. From that moment, humanity had to labor through suffering, history, and civilization in order to earn the way back. The arc of the Bible is not one of progress, but of return – from paradise, through alienation, back to paradise.

Eastern traditions echo the same rhythm. Buddhism sees ignorance not as a lack of knowledge, but as clinging to it. Enlightenment is not accumulation but cessation. The Upanishads insist: you are not this body, nor this mind, nor even the knowledge you think you hold. “Neti, neti” – not this, not this – until all that remains is the silent whole – the atma.

Christianity calls it God, Buddhism calls it nirvana, Vedanta calls it Brahman, Physics calls it the void – all point to the same: the loss of self, the loss of knowledge, the return to the universe.

Mathematics

Mathematics, too, encodes this riddle. Zero and infinity are opposites, yet they reflect each other. Divide by zero, and the result is infinity. Push infinity down into infinitesimals, and you arrive at zero. The circle closes.

Calculus thrives on this paradox: the infinite steps that converge into nothingness, the infinitesimal fragments that sum to infinity. In both directions, the human mind meets a wall. Beyond that wall, there is silence.

Gödel’s incompleteness theorem whispers the same truth: a system can never explain itself fully. Knowledge can never complete itself. The supreme knowledge is the recognition of its own impossibility – which is to say, the supreme knowledge is surrender.

Language

If knowledge is exile, then language is its first weapon. To name is to divide: this from that, me from you, sacred from profane. Language lifted humanity out of the ocean of being and gave us history, philosophy, and law. But it also tore us away.

And yet, in its deepest wisdom, language knows its limits. The Upanishads fall into silence at the highest truths. Zen teachers use paradox and nonsense to unhook the mind from words. The Tao Te Ching begins: “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” At the summit, language bows out.

Technology – our latest flowering of language and logic – carries the same irony. Algorithms divide us into ever-narrower selves, yet they also weave us into one global consciousness. The cloud is a strange prototype of the cosmic mind. We are building the machinery of separation, only to find that it mirrors the unity we lost.

Psychology

Individually, the story repeats. The infant begins without separation – no sense of self, just raw immersion. Slowly, the ego develops, boundaries harden. The child learns to say “I,” and exile begins. The adult becomes a fortress of memory, desire, identity. But through meditation, through surrender, the layers can be peeled away. Enlightenment is not discovery but return – a child’s innocence regained, but now conscious.

Even in modern science, psychedelics and neuroscience show us that the sense of self is not permanent. It can dissolve. People feel most “alive” when they loose a sense of self – in art, in work, in love. And when it does, people report the same thing sages have always said: oneness, unity, peace.

The Paradox

Here is the paradox. To return to nothing, we must strive. To dissolve knowledge, we must use knowledge. To lose the self, the self must make the effort. Scriptures, philosophies, even this essay, are ladders. They are meant to be climbed, only to be discarded.

Zen calls this the finger pointing at the moon. Useful, but not the moon itself. The Bhagavad Gita calls it nishkama karma – action without clinging to the fruit. One must build the self in order to let it go.

The entire story of life, of civilization, of the universe, is one great detour – a spiralling journey away from the whole, so that the reunion may be conscious. Without separation, no return. Without exile, no homecoming. Without knowledge, no surrender of knowledge.

The End is the Beginning

The first speck of life arose as a division. The last breath of the universe will dissolve that division. The alpha and the omega, the aadi and the anadi, are one and the same.

Everything we call history, knowledge, civilization, progress, is nothing but the journey back to nothing. The trees knew it by remaining still. The animals forgot it in their hunger. Humanity complicated it into philosophies and scriptures. But in the end, all paths lead back to the same ocean.

When the last black hole sighs into emptiness, when the last thought ceases, when the last name falls away, the circle will be complete. Nothing will remain. And the universe will be at peace again.