People are saying that the confidence in judiciary is shaken. Some retired judges, few acclaimed jurists, and social media narratives are in deep dismay of recent happenings. But this is not an original proposition, which I have heard for the first time. From the very beginning, in the history of every institution, socio-politic or religious one, some people glorify the institutions and some become its critique. Every order, in that sense, produces a mass of followers with a few heretics. But most of these observations, which are being made without questioning the very moral and intellectual developments of humans, the agent, and their capabilities to govern the institutions. No institution can be sacrosanct enough to be elevated like God, and without having some good and able administrators to govern it, its condition would turn into monument. You cannot expect an institution to be loyal towards human's needs without having those good people of higher morals, ethics, and sentiments. The love of power and insatiability are not a recent emerged phenomenon in a society like India, which loves power more than anything else. Ask any person, his or her goal in life, and the answer would not be starling. It'll be an answer which most of the Indian parents love to inculcate in young minds since childhood. Every society which glorifies power over service cannot ensure and endure integrity of its institutions. Once upon a time European civilization, particularly the great Britain, was in awe with power and authority. For they established an entrenched bureaucracy, official laws and legal institutions, and trampled with human's freedoms and ingenuity. On the other hand, Russian bloc of Communist regime established totalitarianism and collective servility. Their approach was simple; to worship means over ends, authority over freedom, institution over people. What did they achieve through this approach? Except hysterical development of power struggle and mass weaponization of Earth and Space. American civilization, in the same very direction, went further to adopt that old British mind and method and suffered from the sin of slavery. Thanks to the people like Abraham Lincoln and Dr. King, they got rid of institutional conservatism, which was subsequently reproduced in early 1950 and onwards, when American civilization started to treat their institutions as sacrosanct enough to criticize and reform it. Nobody can forget McCarthy era. Political thinker like John Rawls justified "transcendental institutionalism" through his magnum opus, The Theory of Justice. Today, U.S. is suffering from the paralysing effects that "nothing new is there to pursue. All the great possibilities have already been inquired and adopted" (Unger, 1976). "The younger generation is treating itself merely as a caretaker of old monuments" (Unger, 1976). We, in India, can find inspiration in Gandhi, who gave preference of people over institution. Not for the sake that institutions are not necessary. But because institutions ought to be treated as means instead of ends. The end is nothing but human's excellence in all the fields of life. Our focus must not be to elevate judiciary like a transcendental mysticism, but an institution made by humans, as much fallible as we are. To hope more than necessary is illusion. To suspect more than necessary is a symptom of naïve cynicism. Be a society of good people, institutions shall serve like nowhere before. Don't be caught in partisan argument like this party v. that party. Every political party in India, who have been in the government or running the government has mistreated our institutions for the instrumental gain. Reason being, we are constructing a wrong path. A path to elevate grand mansions without having any respect for its dwellers.
Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...
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