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.

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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

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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.

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

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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 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.

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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 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

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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.

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

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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 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

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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 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

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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.”

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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

9
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?

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

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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—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

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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 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.

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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 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.

13
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:

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.

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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

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England. His concept of justice is sublime in part and ambiguous at the
core. I quote him:

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

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