Lawyer Prashant Bhushan has threaded together a century of years, between 1920 and 2020, to point to the threats periodically posed to our freedoms. He has shown that the best way for people to counter these threats is to disobey unjust laws and willingly suffer the consequences of their disobedience. These ideas, indeed, constitute the nub of Bhushan's refusal to apologise for the contempt that he was convicted for by the Supreme Court.

Bhushan justified his refusal by invoking the principles Mahatma Gandhi had cited in his submission in a contempt case of 1920. Thus was 1920 linked to 2020. Thus we have been also warned that India is drifting into the darkness from which it had emerged at the stroke of the midnight hour on August 14-15, 1947.