Editorial LAW ANIMATED WORLD, Martyrs Memorial Special issue, 15-31 March 2008

A world law fortnightly published from Hyderabad, India.
Editor: I. Mallikarjuna Sharma
ADVISORS: Dr. Lakshmi Sahgal (INA Colonel), V.R. Krishna Iyer (Former Judge, SC), B.P. Jeevan Reddy (Former Judge, SC), P.A. Choudary (Former Judge, APHC), Surendra Mohan (Ex-MP), Prof. R.V.R. Chandrasekhara Rao (Politics), Umesh Chandra (Senior Advocate, Lucknow), Ravi Kiran Jain (Senior Advocate, Allahabad), Colin Gonsalves (Senior Advocate, Delhi), K. Subba Rao (Senior Advocate, Bangalore), K.G. Kannabiran (Senior Advocate & National President, PUCL), Ms. Chandan Ramamurthi (Advocate, Delhi).
Volume 4: Part 1 15-31 March 2008 No. 5-6
C O N T E N T S
1. Justice: Socio-politico-economical 3
2. LAW NEWS: History, Fiction and Queens, by Jaishree Misra 4
3. Lakshmi Bai: Rani of Jhansi by I. Mallikarjuna Sharma 5-8
4. Bhagat Singh and the GhadarMovement by Harish K. Puri 9-17
5. People’s Access to JudicialProcess, V.R. Krishna Iyer 18-19
6. On Freedom of Religion… in India, Dr. Asma Jahangir 20-22
7. Justice H.R. Khanna, KGK 23-24
8. Fallouts of ‘Secularism’ under Indian Constitution, RK Jain 25-26
9. Stoll v. Switzerland [ECHR] 27-66
10. Medellin v. Texas [US-SC] 67-106
11. Divine Retreat Centre v. State of Kerala (IND-SC) 107-124
12. NHRC v. State of Gujarat and others (IND-SC) 124-128
13. M/s Parakh Foods Ltd. v. State of A.P. … (IND-SC) 129-130
14. For Abolition of Death Penalty, Srikanth Hariharan 131-134
15. October Revolution and the Democratic Idea by RVR 135-146
16. Advertisements 2, 147
17. Poems, Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ 148
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Justice: Socio-Politico-Economical
is a lofty ideal ‘we, the people of India’ set to achieve on gaining independence wading through floods of ‘blood and tears’ and by the supreme sacrifices of innumerable martyrs and freedom fighters. We proclaimed our country as a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic and also committed ourselves to secure liberty, equality and fraternity – all this for the general welfare and prosperity of the country as also of entire humanity. As such it would be apt for us to, from time to time, do some review of our progress towards the achievement of the objectives and some introspection about the failures occurring and mistakes made in this regard. We could not achieve enough progress in forging fraternity among the diverse peoples inhabiting this country. Communal, linguistic and regional chauvinisms abound and are even sanctified in the name of ethnic and cultural identities. At one extreme we find advocates of a steamroller centralization, admired as the only alternative to the present fissiparous tendencies, doing serious damage to whatever federal structure and spirit embodied in our Constitution and in turn giving further fillip to these very deleterious trends. At the other end are various divisive and parochial tendencies – ravings of the Shiv Sainiks, rantings of Kannadiga and Tamil chauvinists, insurgencies in the North-East and the ever-burning pyre (Ravanasura kaashtha) of Jammu and Kashmir, etc. – challenging the very existence of fraternity in our country. This again is telling on our ability to achieve sufficient justice in social, economic and political spheres. So-called high economic growth and the fast running Liberalization-Privatization-Globalization processes of recent years have not really helped the people to any significant extent but are resulting in further immiserisation – always relative, but at times absolute even – of the masses. The crying need is to build up a vast infrastructure of basic public facilities accessible freely or at low cost to the common man by pumping huge public investments and relegate the competitive mechanisms to any further improvements in the socio-economic systems. Basic necessities assured, people would be largely content and, hopefully, tend to be rational and progressive in thinking about their further needs. We are lagging very much in this respect, compared to even avowedly capitalist systems, and once we improve such basic necessities and also develop sufficient fraternity, certainly our ideal will not remain a mere mirage §§§