Retired Supreme Court Justice Rohinton Nariman (pictured) has repeated his call for abolition of sedition laws. Speaking at the inauguration of the D. M. Harish School of Law in Bombay on January 14, 2022, Nariman stated that while those exercising free speech were being booked under the stringent sedition law, those making hate speeches are not being dealt with by the authorities, reported The Indian Express (IE) of January 19. "It is time to completely do away with sedition laws and allow free 
speech so long as it does not exhort somebody to violence,” he said. "You have persons giving hate speech actually calling for genocide for an entire group, and we find great reluctance from the authorities to book these people… We also unfortunately have higher echelons of the ruling party not only being silent (on) hate speech but also almost endorsing it.”
In October 2021, Nariman had spoken about the necessity for the Supreme Court to strike down Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code and the offensive portions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967 (see "Out with ‘draconian laws,’” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, November 7-20, 2021). Section 124 A criminalizes sedition while the UAPA Act has been indiscriminately invoked by Indian governments in the name of anti-terrorism, including recently against journalists as well as activists like Kobad Ghandy and the late Fr Stan Swamy.
"Eternal vigilance is necessary, not only for liberty but also for liberty enforced by the courts which is the rule of law of the country,” Nariman was quoted by the legal website barandbench.com.
Nariman "slammed Prime Minister Modi for the ‘Aurangzeb-Shivaji Binary’ without naming him,” stated the news website thewire.in. "We heard the other day from the very head of the ruling party a juxtaposition of a Mughal emperor known for being a bigot, namely, Aurangzeb as against Shivaji who was known to be a secular leader,” the Justice said.
"If fraternity is a cardinal value in our Constitution, and you want to engage persons in brotherhood, I would have thought that you should have chosen a Mughal Emperor such as Babur or his grandson Akbar. Akbar was famous for being perhaps one of the most secular rulers that any nation has ever known at any point in time and he took after his grandfather, Babur.” Nariman’s speech was reported by thewire.in.
The retired judge read out a letter written by Babur to his son Humayun one year before he died, telling his son how to rule the country. Babur wrote, "Oh my son! The realm of Hindustan is full of diverse creeds. Praise be to God … that He has granted unto thee the empire of it. It is but proper that you, with heart cleansed of all religious bigotry, should dispense justice according to the tenets of each community. And in particular refrain from the sacrifice of cow, for that way lies the conquest of the hearts of the people of Hindustan.” Nariman’s speech is available on YouTube. thewire.in has carried a 10-page transcript of Nariman’s speech in its article.
The Justice’s term of office at the apex court ended in August 2021. Among his key civil rights verdicts is the 2015 landmark decision Shreya Singhal vs Union of India, in which the Court struck down Section 66A of Information Technology Act, holding that the provision was arbitrary and unconstitutional. The provision had been routinely used to book individuals for comments made on social media.