DSK Legal and the Theatre of Law: A Gandhian Response to Corporate Legalism

Posted on 31st July, 2025 (GMT 09:20 hrs)

Updated on 1st August, 2025 (GMT 13:15 hrs)

ABSTRACT

This letter, penned by Dr. Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay on behalf of Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA) on July 31, 2025, serves as a principled response to a legal notice from DSK Legal, received mere hours before a mandated court appearance in Mumbai, framing it as an act of civic resistance rather than a mere defense. It critiques the systemic issues of democratic erosion, ecological injustice, and digital rights violations in a corporatized India, highlighting the legal machinery’s tendency to favor wealth and power over truth and people, exemplified by the environmental degradation caused by corporate real-estate and pharmaceutical entities in vulnerable regions like Mumbai and rural Digwal. The letter challenges the timing and logistics of the notice, questions the ethical conduct of DSK Legal—including pagination errors, unsolicited promotions, and potential data misuse under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023—and calls for transparency and accountability, while inviting support for Anti-SLAPP legislation to protect public-interest research and whistleblowing. Rooted in Gandhian non-violent resistance, it critiques the alleged crony capitalism and philanthro-capitalism of figures like Mr. Paramavaisnava, urging a reflection on the broader corporate-state nexus and the need for a legal culture that upholds democratic values.

In response to a curiously timed legal notice from DSK Legal, received mere hours before the mandated court appearance, I offer the following letter—not as a reactionary defence, but as a principled act of civic resistance. This is not just a reply to legal intimidation, but a broader reflection on democratic erosion, ecological injustice, and digital rights in a rapidly corporatized India. The letter holds up a mirror to the legal machinery that too often serves wealth over truth, and power over people.

The Letter In Question:

Our Response:

To

DSK Legal,

Advocates and Solicitors,

C-16, Dhanraj Mahal, 3rd Floor,

Chhatrapati Shivaji Marg,

Apollo Bunder, Mumbai 400 001, India

Subject: Response to Letter Dated 25th July 2025 with Observations on Legal Ethics and Digital Rights

Dear DSK Legal Team,

I hope this letter finds you well in these times of accelerating anthropogenic environmental catastrophe. As you are aware, Mumbai remains one of the most ecologically vulnerable urban centres in the world, increasingly exposed to inundation risks and environmental degradation. It is therefore currently impossible (as well as implausible) to erect skyscrapers in such zones by noted corporate real-estate entities⤡while seemingly deceiving the consumers. In such a context, I believe the times call not merely for legal professionals, but for barristers of the Earth—those who will hold environmental extortionists accountable, particularly entities that, under the guise of pharmaceutical enterprise, pollute land, air, and water in small rural communities that have long sustained harmonious relationships with their ecosystems.

Digwal’s Defiance: Resisting Big Pharma VIEW HERE ⤡

La rébellion de Digwal : résister aux géants pharmaceutiques VIEW HERE ⤡

That said, the purpose of this letter is not to deliver a moral lecture on ecological jurisprudence. Rather, it serves as a peaceful continuation of our broader movement of non-violent resistance against the prevailing corporate-statist oligarchy in India. Let me be unequivocal: this resistance is not directed at any one individual, and it is certainly not driven by personal vendetta. Our concern lies with a systemic, structural manifestation of “pre-debt-ory canni-ballistic savage capitalism”—that erodes democratic accountability and dispossesses the vulnerable.

This communication is in response to your letter dated 25.07.2025, which I received via Blue Dart on 28.07.2025 in the early afternoon. Curiously, the letter summons me to appear in court in Mumbai on 28.07.2025 at 3 PM—barely hours after I received it here in Kolkata. I must ask, with all due humour: was I expected to teleport using a time machine? Moreover, why did you opt for the relatively slower Blue Dart service instead of India Post, which typically dispatches letters of this kind within a day? Are you furthering the current political regime’s goal of omnipresent privatization/disinvestment—selling everything to Adani-Ambani?

You also reference “pagination mistakes” in your letter—a point we, as public researchers and citizens, had already flagged via our platform Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA) in our recent article, Justice via Intimidation? A Financially Abused Citizen vs. the Corporate-State Nexus⤡. As a matter of public service and constitutional duty, we brought attention to these lapses in the first place and now await, in good faith, a note of sincere acknowledgment from your office for our unpaid labour in identifying these irregularities. On that note, we also seek clarity on why previous sets of documents you dispatched (received by us on 28.06.2025) contain blank pages, redundancies, and opacity—an unusual degree of seemingly amateurish sloppiness from a law firm of your projected stature.

What surprises me more, however, is your lack of response to many other, far more substantive and pointed critiques published by OBMA over the last five years. These address matters ranging from the crumbling state of Indian democracy to the concentration of wealth and corporate capture of public institutions. Despite our making available over 15+ interlinked digital platforms, you appear to have limited your focus to isolated expressions rather than engaging with our broader holistic work on political economy, environmental justice, and financial corruption—given that our extensive research on the DHFL scam serves only as a prototypical case of crony capitalism.

While we usually raise these questions, we remain committed to the ethical standards of dialogue, transparency, and civil resistance. Unfortunately, your own record in this regard has come under scrutiny. We note with interest that your firm was recently rebuked by the Bar Council of India for circulating unsolicited promotional videos featuring a celebrity figure—an act that oddly echoes your earlier efforts to suppress our democratic dissent across social media platforms. Perhaps a moment of reflection is in order here: what you sow is what you reap. Please note, this is not an accusation but a transparent observation rooted in mutual reflection. Transparency, after all, is vital to preserving any semblance of democratic legal culture.

Now, in relation to your ongoing defamation suit, which appears to have been cancelled in many crucial aspects: we ask—have your claims been articulated in the same legally cautious and non-conclusive manner that we have always adopted? OBMA’s objective is not to make defamatory assertions, but to open questions about the power dynamics of contemporary India, especially the reported use of legal threats to silence dissent.

On that note, I must raise a matter of increasing concern under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act). As the Act affirms under Section 4(2), personal data shall be processed only for lawful purposes and with the consent of the Data Principal, except under specific legitimate uses outlined by law. Furthermore, Section 6(1) clearly states that consent must be free, specific, informed, unconditional, and unambiguous—a principle foundational to any democratic data regime. Any attempt to profile dissenters, surveil whistleblowers, or extract personal information without legal basis would constitute a direct violation of Section 8(1), which obliges the Data Fiduciary to ensure the completeness, accuracy, and non-misleading use of personal data, and of Section 9(1), which mandates deletion of personal data once the purpose has been fulfilled or consent withdrawn.

If there is any evidence that our digital presence is being monitored, manipulated, or subjected to disproportionate scrutiny outside the bounds of these legal provisions, we reserve the right to escalate the matter through appropriate grievance redressal mechanisms under Chapter V of the Act and, if required, bring the issue before the Data Protection Board of India under Section 27(1). While the DPDP Act is still in its infancy and carries the risk—if misapplied—of enabling an Orwellian surveillance regime, its ethical framework is nonetheless profound. It places statutory limits on the misuse of personal data by both state and corporate entities and must be upheld rigorously by those who claim to operate within the framework of constitutional law and democratic accountability.

However, you are, of course, free to sue me at any time—a gesture that will only strengthen my conviction and reinforce the purpose of our struggle in the form of a Gandhian civil disobedience. Your plaintiff, Mr. Paramavaisnava (Esq., CBE), claims to use the name of Gandhiji⤡ to power a form of alleged philanthro-capitalism, in which I seem to witness a corporate co-optation of Gandhian anarchism. Your plaintiff appears to be surviving on the blood money of the lakhs of DHFL FD and NCD Holders, who is also a buyer of unconstitutional Electoral Bonds and a contributor to the ambiguous PM CARES (seems to be a perfect textbook example of crony capitalism, where Orwellian Doublespeak prevails by transforming bribery to political charity!). That said, I must clarify that I have not used any personal data belonging to Mr. Paramavaisnava. All references made have relied solely on publicly available information from newspapers and media houses. If that constitutes grounds for legal action, should those media outlets not also be included in the respondents’ list—just as you have added platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter)? Would that not be a step too far, even by the current standards of stretched legal imagination? I wonder.

In light of the above, may I also invite your team to consider endorsing and signing the following online petition advocating for the enactment of Anti-SLAPP (Strategic lawsuit against public participation) legislation in India—an urgently needed protection for citizens engaged in public-interest research, whistleblowing, and critique of polymorphic corporate-state (the blurring of the four pillars of the state in conjunction with allegedly chosen corporate entities) power-relations. I thank you in anticipation of your support:

Enact Anti-SLAPP Legislation in India to Protect Free Speech and Whistleblowers! VIEW HERE ⤡

Sending humble love, openness, and a call for accountable reciprocity,

Keeping in mind your progeny’s future,

With due regard and principled defiance,
Dr. Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay
(A name you have so frequently misspelled with a patriarchal insertion that remains alien to me—may I ask, then, who exactly is the subject of your legal action? An identity confusion ensues.)
(On behalf of Once in a Blue Moon Academia)
Kolkata
Dated: 31.07.2025