Allow Cookies!
By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies
While hearing a petition from Periyar Dravida Kazhaham activists seeking to quash the criminal proceedings instituted against them for protesting a hotel named ‘Periyar’, the Madras High Court held that it was legal for hotels or restaurants to name themselves after a caste or community.
Justice GR Swaminathan, while dismissing the petition, recounted that even he had habitually visited ‘Reddiyar mess’ at Pondicherry in his college days and that the protesters were wrong to condemn the hotel owner for naming his hotel after a caste. Such an act would within the ambit of ‘free speech’, and in constitutional parlance would be ‘commercial speech’. The Court also observed that the petitioners had failed to establish their claims that untouchability was practiced at the hotel or that only Brahmins were permitted to enter. However, the Court also observed that there was no prima facie case against the protestors, and quashed the proceedings as there was no actual commission of violence.
86540
103860
630
114
59824