UGC 2026 guidelines have reignited reservation debates — but the real story is a decades-long pattern of governments overriding balanced Supreme Court rulings under electoral pressure. This incisive monologue unpacks two landmark cases that changed India’s legal architecture.
First: the 1951 Champak Dorairajan case, where the Supreme Court ruled that merit-based educational rights cannot be denied on caste grounds, only for Nehru’s government to immediately amend the Constitution under pressure from Periyar’s political mobilisation. Second: the 2018 Kashinath Mahajan judgment, which added safeguards against misuse of the SC/ST Act — reversed within months by the Modi government after orchestrated street violence whose leadership was never identified. The speaker identifies a recurring playbook: manufacture victimhood, demand stronger laws, weaponise those laws to divide the same community, then harvest the political fallout. The warning is specific — Sanatan society must recognise that both sides of the political aisle have played this game, that UGC 2026 is the latest instance, and that courts alone cannot be trusted to hold the line.

About The Speaker:
Prashant Pandey is currently the Director of the Centre for Hindu Identity Studies (CHIS). He was a journalist for nearly two decades and worked for several national English newspapers. He has also been associated with book publishing and has co-authored two books, one of which is BBC’s True Lies.