Editorial: CJI’s soul-searching, Saibaba’s meaning

Finally, when retirement approaches, it’s the norm for India’s public servants to ask some Socratic questions. Often, the posers are expressed as loud thinking addressed to one’s own self. Sometimes they are stage whispers to the nation at large, half inviting an assurance that one has indeed played a good innings.

Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud is approaching retirement on November 9, after a tenure of two years, the longest enjoyed by a Chief Justice in 14 years. Last week, he chose to perform his twilight-hour soliloquy in front of a faraway audience, at the convocation ceremony of the JSW Law School in Bhutan.

“As my tenure comes to an end, my mind is heavily preoccupied with fears and anxieties about the future and the past. I find myself pondering: Did I achieve everything I set out to do? How will history judge my tenure? Could I have done things differently? What legacy will I leave for future generations of judges and legal professionals?” the CJI asked.

Questions of such import to justice are best answered by those who have tasted it. Therefore, they are better addressed to Umar Khalid, who has been in jail without trial for more than four years, or Bilkis Bano, who saw her rapists set free on India’s Independence Day. Or, better still, since these are rhetorical questions anyway, they could be posed to the ghosts of Prof GN Saibaba or Father Stan Swamy. Presumably, spirits should be able to answer spiritual queries.

Prof Saibaba died on Saturday from health complications brought upon him by 10 years of unjust incarceration under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), a law that allows the state to use the judicial process itself as punishment while the courts watch in acquiescence. His acquittal back in March this year might be cited as a fig leaf for justice, but who can forget that six months earlier a bench of justices MR Shah and Bela Trivedi expressly convened on a Saturday to give an unprecedented stay on his first acquittal by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court?

Wheelchair-bound from a childhood affliction of polio and 90 per cent disabled, Prof Saibaba was denied medical bail or house arrest even as his vital organs progressively became compromised during detention. Despite paralysis of the left side of his body, he was not taken to hospital for months on end. Despite alarming symptoms, prison doctors kept giving him only painkillers.

Prof Saibaba’s cruel treatment in prison begs the question why India’s justice system adopts an attitude of vengeance against dissidents while coddling rank criminals. Prof Saibaba has spoken movingly about being denied parole to visit his ailing mother who once carried him to school every day, or to pay his last respects to her after she passed. Or take the case of Father Stan, who was denied a straw to drink water! Why such cruelty from an institution that is so capable of showing such tenderness, such as to the likes of Guru Ram Rahim and that poor rich boy of Pune who was asked to write an essay after his car ran over a couple on a motorcycle?

Mere facts cannot answer the questions the CJI is asking. Meanings always dawn upon you in the silence of solitude. Justice Chandrachud will have plenty of time to do his soul-searching a few weeks from now.