The beauty of India lies in the dissenting voices against momentous decisions of the State. The protests against Yakub Memon’s hanging by public figures, particularly judges, and the media’s persistent questioning of the execution are the latest shining examples of democratic discord, highlighting the freedom of speech and expression enshrined in the Constitution.

Fearless exercise of free speech invariably rattled the government, the ruling party and its rabid supporters but it bodes well for the republic because it acts as a safety valve when faith in governance or law takes a knock and all seems lost.

I’m not commending frivolous outbursts by the publicity-hungry. Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju has just been censured by Parliament for branding independence heroes Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose agent for Britain and Japan agent respectively. But such outlandish remarks are pointless.

I don’t give a damn to those who spite venom like those of Giriraj Singh, who said: “All those who oppose Narendra Modi should go to Pakistan,” or Yogi Adityanath (“Leave India if you don’t want to do surya namaskar”) or Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s (“Those who want to eat beef should go to Pakistan”). Many of Azam Khan’s remarks are equally despicable because they don’t serve any public interest.

But I salute Indian Express for its July 31 banner headline: ‘And they hanged Yakub Memon.’ The headline will resonate for years to come. The message was that the newspaper disapproved of the hanging. The headline brilliantly summed up how Indians were divided over the execution. The best tribute to the brilliant headline was a badly shaken reader’s query whether Express was a Pakistani newspaper covering an execution in India. Initially, Asaduddin Owaisi, Abu Asim Azmi and Salman Khan too up cudgels on behalf of Yakub which led Firstpost Editor R. Jagannathan to remark that it would be a real tragedy if only Muslims spoke up for the death-row convict.

As if on cue, Supreme Court’s Justice Kurian Joseph stayed Yakub’s death warrant, publicly disagreeing with Justice A. R. Dave who was in favor of the hanging. Justice Joseph’s objection to the hanging and his differences with Justice Dave resulted in the creation of a three-judge bench which gave the go-ahead to the execution virtually sealing Yakub’s fate.

The petition to President Pranab Mukherjee by eminent persons had signatures of eight retired judges of the Supreme Court or High Courts, a dozen members of Parliament cutting across party lines, ex-governors, barristers, academicians, activists, actors and filmmakers. Out of nearly 300 signatories, barely 25 happened to be Muslims, demonstrating that the opposition was principled, and not on religious grounds. Earlier, the president was a holy cow above criticism. But Yakub’s hanging has fortunately changed all that. Questions about the president’s role in what Sashi Tharoor calls a state-sponsored killing are now being publicly asked. The Hindu newspaper’s questions to the President Mukherjee are:

1. Has the president ever before decided clemency petitions eight hours before the execution? Did the president give the Union home minister a personal hearing on a clemency plea?

2. Was the disclosure by B. Raman ever considered by the president before rejection of the mercy plea?

3. Was the condemned man’s plea that he is schizophrenic considered by the president while deciding the mercy petition? It goes against the principles of natural justice to hang a sick man.

4. Memon spent 21 years in jail. Did the president consider whether he was a reformed person? Under the theory of punishment, a reformed person should not be executed. Retribution should not be the sole reason to send a person to the gallows.

5. Has a person who has spent 21 years of his life behind bars without a single parole, a “zero person,” been executed before in the history of this country? Was Memon worth hanging?

These are some of the unanswered questions left hanging; questions that unlike Yakub will not die. The series of questions circulating in legal and human rights forums are deeply disturbing, and some may even call them divisive, but they reveal the strength of India’s constitutional foundations.