Documented and Documentary Society

Nothing is authentic unless it is written down. No institution can thrive at the cost of ignoring the record keeping process. Human beings have become sea of data, a plaything for manipulation by media, a case study to discern the pattern and regularity. Education has taken shape of degree, marksheet, and certificates. Quantity is reigning its sovereignty over every possible virtue. Data speaks truth what can't be fathomed by subject. Data reveals what is hidden and hides what might be obvious. But who cares about human's touch when files of document are enough to draw a character. I once visited my alma mater for character certificate. My teacher asked me what is the purpose of my visit to law school. I replied, "Character lene aaya hoon". He responded humorously, "Character Chhod ke gaye the kya?" I had no answer then to respond his query. I learnt the lesson that certificatory sovereignty has alienated humans from their own roots. Max Weber's castigated remarks on "iron cage of rationality" and Michel Foucault's concept of "dynamic normalization", constitute a historicized society, documented and being documented. Any feeling escaped from such symbolization is unauthentically marginalized and otherized. In quest of permanence, a father symbol, humans are loosing the touch of reality, which is in flux. Change can't be captured in a frame of words. It can be felt if mind is receptive enough to experience it.

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Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

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...

The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the ...

Violence of Law and Ethics of Care

The worldliness of world is constituted by care (Martin Heidegger). Only in our concernfull dealing with the things around, the existence of being may be understood. In our everydayness of care and concern the world appears to our consciousness. Care is the language, a nomos of our existence, yet it is hardly perceptible in a world of law, which was rightly defined by Hans Kelsen and Max Weber as “legitimate use of violence”. The monopoly of political state over the violent nature of law makes it the most elevated institutions in relation to various social orders co-existing with the political state. Politics, once conceived as “an art of possibilities” by Harold Laski, is now becoming merely a language of allegations, counter-allegations, trickery and manipulation, in one statement, it symbolizes the archetypical character of violence whose expression is apparent in the existence of law. Violence has become our mode of existence in a sense that it speaks through us when the humanity f...

BEING AND BECOMING

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