Good bye Justice Chandrachud | Radhakanta Barik

Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud served as the 50th Chief Justice of India from 9 November 2022 to 10 November 2024. This Harvard-returned jurist’s tenure began quietly, without any extraordinary accolades; however, his exit ended sadly with a media cartoon calling him the ‘Let it Be’ CJI. It wasn’t exactly the kind of legacy he likes to leave behind, having publicly championed women’s rights and the ‘right to privacy’ by overturning a Supreme Court judgement that curtailed this right.

D Y Chandrachud’s father, Y V Chandrachud was in a five-judge SC panel that decreed, in a controversial 1976 verdict in the ADM Jabalpur versus Shivakant Shukla judgement that ‘a person’s right to not be unlawfully detained can be suspended in the interest of the State’. Justice H R Khanna was the only dissenting judge. In a 2017 ruling, D Y called this a ‘seriously flawed’ order and observed, ‘Privacy is a constitutionally protected right which emerges primarily from the guarantee of life and personal liberty in Article 21 of the Constitution’. His two years has brought both flawed and reasonable verdicts, depending on which side of the meridian you stand on – the okay to the Ayodhya Ram Mandir land, Abrogation of Article 370, Decriminalisation of Gay Sex, ordering publication of electoral bond donations and several other prickly matters.

AFTER GIVING A positive judgement on the minority institution status for the Aligarh Muslim University, D Y Chandrachud handed over power to Sanjeev Khanna, India’s new Chief Justice. He kept his cool and gave this pro-minority judgement on his last working day. Immediately before that, he knowingly courted controversy by inviting Prime Minister Narendra Modi home for a Ganesh Puja. D Y is sharp and he can quote poetry and recite mantras and interpret the Indian Constitution eloquently. He is politically astute too; knows which side his bread is buttered. He has strongly emphasised that the ‘highest court needs to be the vanguard of individual liberty’. Although he started earnestly, he went out like an exhausted candle wick, leaving many cases against political activists unresolved and pending and without hearings.

He, with four other judges, gave the Ram Mandir judgement which is not legally quite sound. The Ram Mandir judgement has kept India boiling in the turmoil of communal politics. His legal mind collapsed while giving this judgement, he very well knew that this Ram Mandir was a part of the BJP manifesto for2019. He let the team allow Hindus to control some important temples on controversial sites. His judgement on Art 370 was also a part of Hindutva agenda.

The Allahabad High Court judgement on Ram Mandir made three portions of the disputed land: One for Hindus, another for Muslims and third for the babas. This judgement has been overruled by the Supreme Court, which has made the final verdict controversial by deferring to a community deity. This is troubling, as the issue of Ram Mandir could have been settled like in Turkey, where a disputed place got declared as a national monument.

The SC verdict observed that archaeological evidence from the Archaeological Survey of India shows that the Babri Masjid was constructed on a ‘structure’, whose architecture was distinctly indigenous and non-Islamic. The ruins of an ancient religious structure under an existing building do not always indicate that it was demolished by unfriendly powers, the Supreme Court held in its 1,045-page judgement in the Ayodhya case The court observed that all four of the Janamsakhis (biographies of the first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak) state unambiguously and in detail that Guru Nanak made pilgrimage to Ayodhya and offered prayers in the Ram temple in 1510–11 CE (pre-Babur) . The court also mentioned that a group of Nihang Sikhs performed puja in the ‘mosque’ in 1857.

This sort of judgements would not have been given by Justice Krishna Iyer or his father, Y V Chandrachud as they had a ‘constitutional philosophy’ which revolved around secularism and socialism. D Y Chandrachud’s verdicts were clearly against the liberal and progressive thinkings of Justice Krishna Iyer and Justice P N Bhagwati who interpreted the constitutional provisions for poorer sections of society, the marginal sections of society like Dalits, women and tribal and for minority communities like the Muslims for affirmative actions. These judges were known opponents of those who spoke in favour of free trade and selling of public properties to powerful industrialists.

Chandrachud criticised Justice V R Krishna Iyer, camouflaging his criticism in flowery English, in a recent judgement on the Right to Property. The majority opinion (in a 9-judge bench) authored by Chandrachud said, Iyer had postulated ‘a rigid economic theory’ that promoted increased state control over private resources as the sole foundation for constitutional governance. Krishna Iyer was a man of principle and stood for peace and prosperity of people of the world and India. It is interesting to note that some of the judges on the bench criticised their fellow brothers and sisters and voiced their defense of Justice Krishna Iyer.

Justice Chandrachud is free to invoke and go on pilgrimage to the shrines of any of the thirty-three million gods in India in his personal capacity. However, invoking gods in the Ram temple judgement is not in the spirit of Hinduism. If he so chooses an intellectual power like him can bow to any incarnation of god. Mahatma Gandhi invoked God, particularly Ram and chanted Ram-nam a thousand times a day, but for him, work was worship, and he continued to work till his last breath for communal harmony and peace. Common people in India view god in a detached manner and Ram is no different from Krishna or anyone else. The Ram temple verdict gave the Naredra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party the courage to brag that the party would win 400 parliament seats in the 2024 national elections. It is a case in point that despite Chandrachud’s hard work, despite a clearly biased verdict and a grand temple, the BJP lost the Ayodhya seat.

[edited by Papri Sri Raman]