Editorial, 'Apex Ordeal and Ayodhya Verdict' in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 30 September 2010 issue

APEX ORDEAL AND AYODHYA VERDICT

are the two most impressive and sensational socio-legal developments of most recent days which shook and are yet shaking the nation to its very core. The former especially is unprecedented - rarest of rare event in the annals of our judiciary with no less than eight among the last sixteen Chief Justices of India accused to be ‘definitely corrupt’ by a person of no less eminence than a former Union Law Minister and legal luminary Shanti Bhushan, who adds another two as cases of doubtful integrity. Going by his prima facie accusations, more than 60% of our highest judges seem to be corrupt and if so what could be the fate and state of lower judiciary in the country can be anybody’s guess. Truly, as Justice Krishna Iyer cautions, this issue needs be openly and quite seriously discussed, debated, assessed from several angles and remedied once for all lest the very stakes and honor of our country, already quite low, should fall to lowest possible depths among the international community. It is here that the need for establishment of a viable and effective national judicial commission becomes all the more pressing. And now to come to the latter, we may heave a sigh of relief that the much dreaded scenario of intense communal flare-up following the divided verdict did not come about and largely both communities remained peaceful perhaps because the judgments pointed to a sort of partition of the disputed site between the two communities though no sort of any historic justice was done to the good old Babri Mosque so shockingly smashed before our own eyes in 1992 December ensuing in widespread communal riots first and Islamic fundamentalist and later Hindu chauvinist terrorism next as its undesirable consequences. However, the justification and later validation of the stealthy placing of idols in the central hall of the Babri Masjid and on that reason allotting that part to Hindus may not be correct and not at all desirable since it amounts to condoning and validating criminal trespass, deliberate injury to the other community and wanton destruction of an existing place of worship. Of course, the way of appeal to the Supreme Court is still open and hope necessary correctives will be worked out there but we feel this delicate issue be, and indeed can only be, settled out-of-court on the basis of a historic friendly accord between the now-rival communities §§§

Editorial, 'Apex Ordeal and Ayodhya Verdict' in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 30 September 2010 issue

Editorial, 'Apex Ordeal and Ayodhya Verdict' in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 30 September 2010 issue

APEX ORDEAL AND AYODHYA VERDICT

Editorial, 'FARCE OF OUR RESERVATIONS' in LAW ANIMATED WORLD,15 September 2010 issue

FARCE OF OUR RESERVATIONS

system in its ugliest forms is coming to the open day by day. It was a colonial legacy sought to be shaped into a socio-economic uplift measure by our constitution makers but, regrettably, they learnt little from our history of subjugation that generated the national movement. It started with Minto’s machinations to drive a sharp wedge between Hindus and Muslims to consolidate the British Empire, and was extended to various communities from time to time to further the same object as also cater to various groups’ aspirations. The entire concept of scheduling certain castes and tribes was a British invention, dating from the Government of India Act 1935, from which a large portion of our Constitution is copied, almost verbatim. Given the requisite will and zeal, this system could have been done away with immediately after independence, but unfortunately it was given some small space that now has spread to enormous proportions, endangering the very democratic setup. Of course, it did benefit certain downtrodden communities to some extent, but more than that it had exacerbated the animosities between communities and is ultimately leading to the destruction of the very ideal of classless social democratic society. First it was interpreted that this sort of positive discrimination for affirmative action would be limited to really needy sections, classes socially and educationally backward; later one step more taken in interpreting it to encompass a backward caste in its entirety and, lo, the hornet’s nest of caste-based reservations was raked up, resulting in awkward caste ‘wars’ upsetting the polity. The Mandal Commission first, and then Sachar and Ranganath Misra Commissions thereafter, extend this system to further irrationalities and the latter particularly pave the way for religion-based reservations which have already once spelt doom to our country. Above all this, now spring demands for region-based reservations/quotas which discriminate people by their very birth in this or that place, and there too not satisfied with one generation antiquity even. We can only rue with Jug Suraiya writing in the Times of India blog: “Reservations have become like the fabled genie … let out of the bottle, and continued to grow and grow. Who is going to put the genie back? That’s the question facing not just the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court but all of us as well.” §§§