Recent events have placed the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in a glare it never sought. For nearly two centuries, the RNLI has existed for one simple and unshakeable reason: to save lives at sea. Its volunteers are ordinary people — fishermen, teachers, mechanics, shopkeepers — who drop everything when the pager sounds, often in the middle of the night, to launch lifeboats into dangerous waters. They do not ask who the person in the water is, where they came from, or why they are there. They ask only whether someone needs help. In the past months, however, that noble purpose…

The recent remarks by author and scientist Anand Ranganathan, which have ignited a firestorm of debate across news channels and social media, are not merely another political volley in the endless culture wars. They strike at the very heart of a constitutional conundrum: the collision between protective legislation and individual liberty. Ranganathan’s central thesis, as encapsulated in his critique of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, is that the law—originally conceived as a sacred shield for the historically oppressed—has, in countless instances, been warped into a vicious sword. He does not argue for the repeal…