BEFORE THE THRONE OF VIKRAMADITYA

By Moin Qazi

An award winning poet, Moin Qazi holds a doctorate and is an independent researcher and

consultant who has spent three decades in microfinance with State Bank of India, India’s

largest bank, where he was involved in microfinance as a grassroots manager and as head of

its microfinance operations in Maharashtra. He belongs to the first batch of managers of

commercial banks who were associated with the launch of India’s microfinance programme.

He writes regularly on development finance and environmental issues. He was a Visiting

Fellow at the University of Manchester specializing in microfinance.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Indian legal system is quite well known for its Dickensian delays. Despite repeated

proclamations from the throne of government and the lofty pedestals of courts for

dispensation of inexpensive and timely justice, justice continues to be dearer with

interminable delays. There is no aspect of our social or national life that remains untouched

by this malaise. In fact the development sector has also got mired in the legal processes.

Bank managers working in villages would tell you how an inefficient legal system has made

their job a virtual drudgery. Few people outside the world of banking can imagine the ways

bankers get rattled by the moves of legal eagles. Unless all sections of administration -

financial, legal, political and economic are fully geared to move in tandem with each other,

development programmes for the poor will continue to move in a long winding way.

The laws are quite often so woolly and so poorly enforced that legality really means having

the right lawyer who can interpret the law according to the needs of the client. The courts

seem to be more influenced by the legalese and the arcane wizardry of lawyers. The finery

of law makes even common rules a matter of debate and encourages a display of wits in the

art of interpretation. There is no finality and justice has become the handmaid of law. Even

simple rules get invested with amazing and bewildering connotations.

1

India’s criminal justice system has a truly pathetic record in penalizing the corrupt. It begins

to grind so slowly that the ends of justice cannot be met .In cases where prompt and

expedient action. Not all the codes nor courts can make the people’s freedoms and

constitutional guarantees of personal liberty a credible reality unless the police know the

law, stand by legality, probity and ethic, refuse to abuse or misuse their power .They must

realise that they are the people’s agents of justice, not authoritarian operators of any

political party or tin pot tyrants using uniformed violence in disregard of human rights.

The police system at the village level is too ineffective to provide security. Many would tend

to agree with the often made comment of villagers about police: “these tormentors

whether living or dying, it makes no difference to them. When alive, they suck our blood

and when dead, they bake their bread on our funeral pyres.” The arcane laws and the brute

power that police enjoys, make it very difficult for people on the ground to work with total

freedom.

My personal experiences with lawyers have been quite unpleasant. I found every attempt at

simplifying procedures and systems being jeopardized by bankers by using their

interpretative skills to create unnecessary hurdles, on many occasions they were not

interested in the welfare of the clients but concerned more with winning debating points. As

a banker I found in lawyers the single most powerful threat in the honest and sincere

discharge of my duties .We had a tricky issue with an application from the son of a lawyer.

When he received our regret letter he brought his father to our office, it appeared he had

just come out of the Judges chamber after a serious pleading because he didn’t even bother

to remove his gleaming black gown or probably he wanted to impress us. “Why are you

insisting on so many documents, he will give you an affidavit swearing that all the particulars

are true; can’t it suffice?.” The lawyer spoke in an authoritative tone. I insisted we needed

the documents. “Do you know that swearing of a false affidavit is a serious offense and is

punishable with an imprisonment”. I smiled and offered him a chair. I very coolly explained

to him that I too came from a lawyer’s family and I was aware the way we Indians had

diluted the sanctity of affidavits. I also told him that it was the ingeniousness of the lawyers

that was breeding litigation. I asked him in all sincerity whether he had any reservation of

the oft cited comment that litigation was the fastest growing industry. I said that if affidavits

were treated with true sanctity, much of the bottlenecks in processes and systems would

2

not arise. I agreed with him that like the wheel which is the greatest invention of science

and technology, affidavit was the greatest invention of law. If affidavits could be true and

honest there would be no need for lawyers, Judges and courts. Law has to be an ally not an

adversary. Litigation in India is mired in legalese, technicalities and laboured

procedures .There is only glib talk of legal reforms. There was an era of Judicial activism

when even a postcard was being entertained a s a writ petition. otherwise we have cases

not coming up for hearing for decades .

One of the toughest tasks of a village bank manager is monitoring loans sanctioned to

farmers. A single officer has to take care of almost 500 borrowers. It is physically

impossible for him to meet each one of them personally. The only recourse therefore is to

keep writing letters and sending notices reminding the borrowers whenever the loan

installment becomes overdue. It may be difficult to assess whether the borrowers come

back with the installment out of genuine good intentions or out of the fear of the bank

letter. Maybe it could be a combination of both of them. Those clients who consult lawyers

may be apt to delay their repayments because there will always be some legal point to whip

the banker into granting some concessions to the borrower. Lawyers thrive on promises

and farmers seem to show greater faith in them than in their bankers.

I have always found in my career as a bank executive that most people have a psychological

aversion to paying back bank loans. If they can find a way they will try to avoid repayment.

The rigmarole of hearings and adjournments.

I just give one example of how a bank official has to waste his precious time obtaining a

particular document from a borrower to ensure that the bank, his employer, doesn’t lose its

claim. We have the statute of limitation which stipulates that in case of default the claim

made must be invoked in a prescribed time limit, which is normally three years. The

documents need to be renewed before the expiry of this period. Or else, the bank loses the

right to enforce its claim. In legal parlance, it is barred by the statute of limitation. Thus at

the close of the expiry of this period, borrowers start performing vanishing tricks. Most

borrowers tend to avoid signing these documents so that the bank loses its legal right to

enforce its claim. For a bank manager, it is one of the most humiliating experiences, literally

3

chasing these borrowers. The banker has to condescend and literally beg of the borrowers

to get these documents signed or thumb printed . The villagers play clever hide and seek

with the manager and even after spending an entire day scouring the village, the manager

may have to return empty handed. The whole process costs the banks a great deal in terms

of precious man-hours and personal agony for the official. It is as if you if you are working

as sleuths or as part of an intelligence system.

I am sorry to record that even well established businesses make so much fuss about signing

these documents and would like to extract maximum concessions. It becomes a bargaining

tool for them. The basic spirit behind the statute is that there should be a reasonable period

during which the bank should take action against the borrower. This sword cannot be

allowed to perennially hang on the head of the borrowers. Bankers do not normally want to

immediately file lawsuits against an erring borrower, especially in case of smaller loans.

Since lawsuits are both time consuming and involve both time, manpower resources and

expenditure, banks try to use the routine methods for recovery of dues. But the documents

have to be kept in order so that the auditors do not give negative ratings that can affect the

career of the manager. Several court proceedings turn into such protracted odysseys that it

is not unusual for litigation to long survive the litigants themselves. The worst case is when

the farmers, particularly the agricultural labourers, migrate to other villages. The manager

has to do a lot of intelligence work trying to sniff and locate borrowers. In fact, this problem

is more complex at smaller bank branches where there is usually a single officer and there

are hundreds of small loans. Since the farmers are on the fields the entire day engaged in

farming operations the manager has to visit the village in morning or after sundown. If the

borrower is smart enough to give him a slip he has to act as a sleuth on a relentless trail of

the borrower.

Contrary to popular urban notions of villagers being ignorant and innocent simpletons, most

villagers are very smart and cunning. One reason could be that they have come to associate

cruelties and frauds with signing of documents. There are plenty of cases of villagers having

been tempted into signing documents and have found themselves duped. They don’t want

to trust anybody, least of all the politicians.

4

I found from my own personal experience that when the villagers need a loan they will

make endless trips to the bank, sitting meekly in office halls beseeching the manager with

obsequious supplications. Once the loan is released, the borrower starts behaving like a wily

debtor who can bring you down on your knees.

The sort of innocence and plain heartedness we talk about in the context of villagers still

holds true for villages that are quite remote from townships where they remain insulated

from the influence of the urban culture that is breeding a philosophy of self centeredness. In

recent years, tens of thousands of villagers across the country have sold their fields to

industrialists and developers building malls, suburbs and factories for the new India. The

farmers became rich overnight, and the prosperity has reshaped villages that are now crowded

with satellite dishes, expensive cars and grand homes. Land acquisition for expanding cities

and industry is one of the most bitterly contentious issues in India, rife with corruption and

violent protests. Yet in some areas it has created pockets of overnight wealth. Much of this

conspicuous consumption is bad financial planning by farmers who have little education or

experience with the seductive heat of cold cash. But the new wealth has ruptured the age-

old relationship that the farmers had with the soil. It has led to a string of crimes - murder,

theft, assault - and troubles from property disputes to depression. Like lottery winners

battered by their windfall, families that worked together for generations have been cleaved

apart.

The chasm between India's flourishing cities and bleak rural hinterland is narrowing. Spread

across 650,000 villages, with an average population of 1,100, rural villagers were long

imagined by city dwellers as primitive, impoverished and irrelevant, something to drive past

on the way to something else.

That is no longer the case. A new prosperity is sprouting in rural India, with tens of millions

entering the pressure-cooker-and-television-owning class and tens of thousands becoming

sippers of Scotch, owners of premium tractors and drivers of multiple sedans.

India's 700 million villagers now account for the majority of consumer spending in the

country, more than $100 billion a year. Millions step into consumerism each year,

graduating from the economics of necessity to the economics of gratification, buying

5

themselves motorcycles, televisions, transistor radios and pressure cookers. whose naive

institutions and ancient values are rapidly' being dissolved by the corrosive effects of the

cities.

There is a new breed of villagers emerging, smarter than their urban friends .These

borrowers may refuse to sign a document saying that they would like to consult their friends

or lawyers. The village has its own informal consultants. An old litigant who has made even a

few appearances in a witness box and followed up his own court cases acquires a fair degree

of professional acumen to guide others. Proceedings in lower courts are so rule bound and

stereotyped that a few visits to the court can give lot of insight into the labyrinths of justice

and a fair grasp of the nuances of law.

When there is no certainty that the borrower would be in the village. He may be on the field

or may have gone to the local bazaar. Even if he is at home the chances of meeting him

depends on where his dwelling is located. If it is in the deeper terrain, there is every

possibility that a word must have travelled to him of the manager’s visit. Waiting for you at

the doorstep when the manager reaches his house the wife or his children would feign total

ignorance ,wearing a sad mournful smile on their faces , “Sir, he has just gone to the city

doctor as he is having fever for last ten days.” Or it could be: “Sir, he is not at home; we will

convey your message and tell him to visit you”. How frustrating it can be for the manager

when the man happens to be just one of the countless borrowers who have to be contacted

to get the document signed. Each village bank has about five hundred borrowers and the

manager is the only official at the branch. It is difficult to remember village routes, the local

geography and finally the borrowers’ faces. Managers keep changing every three years. And

remember almost all villagers have a common dress code .a white shirt, white dhoti and a

solar topi that masks the villager’s face to a point where you may need somebody’s help to

correctly recollect his face.

I had a taste of villagers amazing ability to manipulate emotions during one such visit. My

staff had not been able to locate a particular borrower who was always giving a slip

whenever the staff visited the village. I decided to make an attempt and reached

Charrurkhati which was connected with the main road by a two kilometer patch of muddy

road which had weathered away .I met a villager who was probably on his way to the main

road where he could get a bus for the township. I enquired with him about a particular

6

borrower’s whereabouts. At first he feigned ignorance and started fumbling to give a proper

reply. He suddenly summoned courage and then assertively asked “What’s the matter”, as

he became alert to my question. I told him that the borrower had not paid even a single

rupee and the loan documents were going to lapse in another three days or else the bank

would have to write off the loan. He fixed me with a keen stare; his face suddenly

transformed into an aggressive look, and then launched a long windy monologue.”Managers

deserve such ordeals. They made us make so many trips to the bank before they agreed to

give a loan.” he began a litany of complaints. “Officials in the local government steal the

funds sent from the government for the building of roads (leaving him with a two-hour hike

to the nearest dirt track), the provision of water (the closest well is an hour’s walk away),

and for the construction of clinics (the nearest hospital is in, four hours away). And then

there was drought.”It took me a while to recover from a sudden increase in decibels. I felt

hurt I was being lumped with the stereotypical managers who had not taken the posting of

their own free will and spent much of their time in frustration, harassing farmers for the

plight they were in. I tried to calm him, saying that the villagers could expect a better

treatment from me. I had recently taken over as a new managers and I promised him I

would be gentler than my predecessors. That’s the way every new manager makes vague

promises to ingratiate himself to the wily villagers.mmy gesture of courtesy softened the

intensity of his rage but didn’t provide any solace to me. I was already losing my patience as

the evening was wearying. I asked him if he could really help me out in locating the

borrower or else I would proceed ahead. He then asked me if the matter was really serious

given that the manager had to himself come all the way to the village .Yes, I said; it was

really serious and in case I was unable to locate the borrower I could probably lose my

job .I wanted to intensify the gravity of the matter . I implored him to help me and I

promised him I would help him if he desired to avail a loan or any facility from the bank. The

man appeared unruffled, but soon tried to commiserate with me in my distress. He said he

really understood the problem but there was no point trying to locate the borrower. “It will

be highly futile. You should write off the loan both in your mind and your account books. We

have ourselves not been able to establish any contact with him nor are we sure about the

place where he is presently staying.”

7

Should make one last attempt. We will at least have the satisfaction of having tried. No, I

think it is worthless .the sparse clouds were hovering but there was no possibility of any rain

but the clever villager tried to unnerve me. I think you better return, or else you will get

caught in the storm It is expected to rain heavily. I thanked him and proceeded ahead to see

if somebody else could help me. A weary farmer who appeared to be an old war horse, the

type you see in villages which have successfully faced droughts, was sitting on a culvert.

Without cracking a smile He asked me what was the matter that I was chatting so long, he

asked me by referring to the farmer’s name. I was desperately tried to locate. Is he the same

man .I was left fumbling for words as I reversed my mobike to get hold of this deceitful man

who had the gall to play tricks with a bank manager. I apologized for disturbing him and

promised him I would meet him the next week. I wanted to get hold of the clever peasant

who had the gall to take me for a ride, he had very cleverly slipped away into a bylane. In a

quick reflex action I turned back my motorcycle to catch up with the borrower. He had

already disappeared into the huge cloud of darkness as I drove back my motorcycle in a

pensive, gloomy mood and with just enough emotional energy to control my mobike.

I could see my ideals evaporating into illusions. For most people it may have been just

another incident of the villager’s guile and smartness. But for me it was an emotional

trauma that still continues to keep preying on my mind. I felt so ashamed that I did not have

the courage to get back to the village to locate him. i was in great rage and felt I must teach

him a tough lesson and if necessary I should even bribe the police to fix this scoundrel. At

times like this a development worker feels really convinced that the villagers deserve the

roughing they get from the moneylender. I still remember I was so emotionally worked up

that I was almost losing control on the wheel. It was again a charming rural landscape that

softened my tempers albeit temporarily. The russet sky turned gray as shades of twilight

spread across the plain. A new moon looking like a finely peered fingernail appeared beside

the evening star. My mind slowly slipped into its natural rhythms and I drove home

emotionally drained but spiritually renewed.

Criminal justice is the cutting edge of the rule of law and its functional lancet is the police

force — cadres and leaders alike. They are the “salt” of law and order; but biblically put, if

the salt have lost its savour where with shall it be salted?

8

The government will need to enhance the legal system and – because public sentiment

often runs against banks loan recovery efforts – muster the political will to bolster contract

enforcement. At first glance, stronger enforcement would appear to work against

disadvantaged consumers, but it would actually improve their access to credit. Banks avoid

these consumers in part because they find it difficult to collect debts from them.

Alternatives to formal legal recourse, such as arbitration. Could provide a much-needed

incentive for banks to serve this segment. They could take the form of an ombudsperson or

they could even build on the existing Lok Adalat people’s courts or the Nyaya Panchayat

Any achieving banker will soon find himself being taken out of a comfortable field and thrust

into an unfamiliar one. He must be constantly open to challenges. A banker must master

and micromanage details. You must learn the ropes yourself before you can guide others. A

banker knows the surface of many disciplines but depths of none

I had wasted so much of my precious time. No, I thought to myself these three hours taught

me much about real society that I may not have learnt from so many times in my library and

years of classroom lessons. It is the experience made me sit up and put the wisdom distilled

from years of learning upside down.

My encounter in the witness box left my ideals evaporating. A quick shuffling of lawyers

clutching statements As I took place in the dock the lawyer, pulling on his robes, hurried into

the court .he saw me and raised his thumb The lawyer defending the defaulter proceeded

to grill me in near-perfect theatrical slang with a cannon fire of questions, “Did the borrower

sign in your presence”; Were the contents of the documents explained to him” “Can you

produce any witnesses in support of your argument”. I just couldn’t figure why so much of

vehemence and pressure was being injected into the court drama. At stake was a loan of

Rs.25, 000 and the lawyers were battling as if the country’s sovereignty was at stake. My

lawyer couldn’t respond suitably. His usual refrain would be: “Your Lordship, this is a leading

question.” It appeared his strategy was to wear out the defending lawyer or elicit some

favorable response from the Magistrate who kept on overruling the objections. My lawyer

also tried to inject some hysteria in the courtroom in order to impress me. He would keep

banging the table while making his point. This is not surprising. The law deals with the same

sort of questions as politics. Lawyerly skills—marshalling evidence, command of procedure

9

—transfer well to the political stage. So, sadly, does an obsession with process and a

tendency to see things in partisan terms—us or them, guilty or not guilty—albeit in a spirit

of loyalty to a system to which all defer, the battleground of the court is of a piece with the

adversarial, yet rule-bound, spirit of politics

I tried to reason out with the Magistrate that if I had known that each loan could generate a

thriving cottage industry of litigation, I would have moderated my enthusiasm and sense of

commitment. I was animated with a passion for helping the poor and now I found that I had

got trapped in a multiple helix in chasing this vain chimera. The Magistrate seemed to have

been offended by my remark. He felt he was sitting on Vikramaditya’s throne and lesser

mortals like me could not dare use his court for moral philosophizing. In front of me sat the

philosopher king, the flag bearer of the cloistered virtue that justice is, holding the court in

its majestic grandeur and here was a supplicant who had the temerity to dispense his own

version of wisdom. Yes, I had tried to make an encroachment on his turf, to chip in at his

authority. He was very possessive of his own small kingdom in which he exercised unbridled

authority. The magistrate appeared quite patronizing, dispensing justice the way a modern

saint dispenses benedictions. For him everyone who entered the witness box was someone

who was arraigned before his stern tribune of justice. “We know the law better”, he

boomed. Earlier in the day a colleague of mine was hauled up in a similar fashion. It was a

field day for the magistrate slamming people from the banking fraternity, to the undisguised

delight of the chattering lawyers. I shuddered whether he would frame me for lowering the

dignity and prestige of the court. Looming in front of me was the Lofty majesty of law in

whose shadow stood a puny creature with a supplication for justice.

It was in the 4th Century B.C. when the wise Greek philosopher Socrates said that there are

four qualities required in a Judge – “to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider

soberly and to decide impartially”. To me it appeared that the magistrate had disdain for

philosopher kings and was more at ease with his modern concept of a judge.

It is strange that repayment ethics, which have been deeply ingrained in Indian culture, have

been made foul-words by politicians. The sanctity of repayment, no matter how deceitfully

the debt was contrived and how cruel the costs, has been drilled into the Indian

consciousness since the time of Manu Smruti. Manu listed eighteen main categories of law

10

for the king to decide on. Of those, wrote Manu, “the first is non-payment of debts”. Manu

held: “By whatever means a creditor may be able to obtain possession of his property, even

by those means may he force the debtor and make him pay”. Manu’s code is divided into

twelve chapters, and in eighth chapter there are stated ruled on eighteen subjects of law,

which include both civil and criminal law. Sir William Jones, who came to India in 1774 as

one of the first judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature of Bengal, learnt Sanskrit and

undertook an authoritative translation of the Manusmriti. In the preface of the translated

work (published in 1794), this is what he wrote:

The style of it [of the Manusmriti] has a certain austere majesty that sounds like the language of legislation and

exhorts a respectful awe; the sentiments of independence on all being but God, and the harsh admonitions

even to kings are truly noble.

What about disputes and debt recovery? Manu specified the punishments to be given in

case of disputes arising about loan repayment and listed 18 types of disputes. When a

creditor sued the debtor for recovery of money, it was the duty of the king to ensure that

the creditor got back his money. Manu permitted the king to employ all means, fair or foul,

to recover the dues, for example, torturous punishment like killing the debtor's wife,

children and cattle or obstructing his movements. Manu held the view that a defaulter could

not absolve himself of his debt burden even by death. Chanakya said that sons should pay

with interest the debt of a deceased person or co-debtors or sureties. Was a spouse, i.e.,

husband or wife responsible to pay for the debts incurred? Yes and no. Wife was exempted

from debt burden of her husband if she had not given her assent to his borrowings.

However, for the debt incurred by a wife, her husband was liable for repayment. Perhaps,

this was the background in which one of the committees on rural indebtedness concluded

that "the Indian farmer is born in debt, lives in debt and dies in debt". I do not want to make

out a case for money lender. We cannot have outlandish justifications for stratospheric

interest rates. But loans offered by banks for small loans in India are quite affordable. Added

to this is the government subsidy. If it is not a capital subsidy, it will certainly be an interest

subsidy. Collectors are taught to handle abuse by telling debtors:

The legal system in India is inextricably linked with the English language: Both were

originally imported from abroad. Originally an English transplant with Anglo-Saxon roots,

the legal system in India has grown over the years, nourished in Indian soil. What was

11

intended to be an English oak has turned into a large, sprawling Indian banyan tree, whose

dangling trellises are themselves as big as independent plants. The government will need to

enhance the legal system and – because public sentiment often runs against banks loan

recovery efforts – muster the political will to bolster contract enforcement. At first glance,

stronger enforcement would appear to work against disadvantaged consumers, but it would

actually improve their access to credit. Banks avoid these consumers in part because they

find it difficult to collect debts from them.

Alternatives to formal legal recourse, such as arbitration, could provide a much-needed

incentive for banks to serve this segment. They could take the form of an ombudsperson or

they could even build on the existing Lok Adalat people’s courts or the Nyaya Panchayat.

Abraham Lincoln always exhorted: “Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbours to

compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real

loser — in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peace-maker the lawyer has a superior

opportunity of being a good man.”

The proper role of a judge according to Lord Denning:

My root belief is that the proper role of a judge is to do justice between the parties before him. If

there is any rule of law which impairs the doing of justice, then it is the province of the judge to do all

he legitimately can to avoid that rule- or even to change it – so as to do justice in the instant case

before him. He need not wait for the legislature to intervene: because that can never be of any help in

the instant case. I would emphasise, however, the word ‘legitimately’: the judge is himself subject to

the law and must abide by it.

This truth was observed and well stated by Sir Henry Maine nearly a hundred years ago:

Social necessities and social opinion are always more or less in advance of law. We may come indefinitely near

to the closing of the gap between them, but it has a perpetual tendency to reopen. Law is stable; these

societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depend s on the degree

of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed.

Gandhi writes in his Autobiography:

12

I realized that the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties driven asunder. The lesson was so

indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer

was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing, thereby —

not even money, certainly not my soul.

A good lawyer is someone who tempers zeal with human kindness who seeks truth and not

victims, who serves the laws and not factional purposes

I was brought up with a feeling of reverential respect for the courts of justice .for many of us

the word ‘justice’ still conjures up images of a goddess whose symbols were a throne that

tempests could not shake, a pulse that passion could not stir, eyes that were blind to any

feeling of favour or ill will, and the sword that fell on all offenders with equal certainty and

with impartial strength. In many temples of justice the stern features

‘Free India has to find its conscience in our rugged realities and no more in alien legal

thought. It would be tragic if the law were so petrified as to be unable to respond to the

unending challenge of evolutionary or revolutionary changes in society.”

We are paying a price for the lack of adequate understanding of economic principles within

the legal system. There is no point in blaming the judges. Besides, Indian laws in this behalf

have not kept pace with changes in technology or international business practices. His last

throw of the dice was an experiment with Bt cotton — it proved less than the miracle it was

made out to be.

Nehru, in his Autobiography, articulated his legal dilemma:

“Even more important are the economic changes that are rapidly taking place the world

over. We must realize that the nineteenth century system has passed away, and has no

application to present-day needs. The lawyer’s view, so prevalent in India, of proceeding

from precedent to precedent is of little use when there are no precedents. We cannot put a

bullock-cart on rails and call it a railway-train. It has to give way and be scrapped as

obsolescent material.”

This “seeming” justice casts doubts on actual justice. So great a judge as Lord Denning was

allegedly jaundiced in his vision of coloured jury in England. His concept of justice is sublime

in part and ambiguous at the core. I quote him:

13

Thence I ask the question, What is Justice? That question has been asked by many men far wiser than

you or me and no one has yet found a satisfactory answer. All I would suggest is that justice is not

something you can see. It is not temporal but eternal. How does man know what is justice? It is not

the product of his intellect but of his spirit. The nearest we can get to defining justice is to say that it is

what the right-minded members of the community — those who have the right spirit within them —

believe to be fair.

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the bonded labourer, the pavement dweller, the

damsel in distress, the sweated worker, the starving child, the dalit, the tribal and the socio-economic

pariah shall have a vested interest in the Republic, only if the Constitution has a vested interest in

their survival, their human worth and personhood.

— Judging the Judges

14