Musings on the Constitutional Czars in the Hall of Fame Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan Venkatachari Lakshminarayanan
Musings on the Constitutional Czars in the Hall of Fame
Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan
Venkatachari Lakshminarayanan
40- – Krishna Iyer
For one, whose adrenaline pumped up, even as you entered the hallowed Chepauk grounds, venue of many a thrilling battle, this was pure gold. Looking forward to an encounter between the spin wizard Lance Gibbs of the Windies, on a minefield of a spinning track, and the true little master Gundappa Vishwanath was a mouth-watering prospect, in the epochal 1974 India-West Indies cricket series. The turf was turning square on the second day. Why? It was turning vertically and horizontally on the morning of the match itself. Gibbs was at his best with a cordon of fielders around the wicket, waiting for a bat-pad nick.
Vishy was holding the bat tight with his top hand, left hand, and lose with his bottom hand and playing Lance from well behind his pad. Technical mastery on view from a born champion and not a trained soldier. He was killing the spin. It was riveting stuff, truly a sight for the Gods. As Gibbs spun one across the wicket, Vishy leaned back, and cut him as late as possible, veritably from the wicket-keeper’s gloves, from outside the leg stump to gorgeously carry the red cherry to the ropes via third man. Unbelievable stuff. Uniquely Vishy, late cutting a master craftsman on a viciously turning surface. Not given to ordinary mortals. Anyone else if so much as dreamed of it, it would have seen curtains.
The huge assembly was ooing and aahing as Vishy was displaying his wares, as if a snake charmer Indian trickster, at his creative best. Vishy was a sorcerer. The same little bat in any one else’s hand was a shield to merely guard the stumps. It was no sword this, as the wicket was playing footsie with Gibbsy. With Vishy, it was all so different. He was in sublime form and his supple wrists were magical that day.
Only, his faculties could deal with the spite and venom with such verve and style. It was simply not possible to even think of emulating him. He was truly ‘original’. Any other batsman, with the same tool, trying what Vishy accomplished that day, scoring 97 n.o. would have looked silly and ‘their experiments in imitation would have been disastrous and one cannot blame Vishy for it’.
Constitutionally Speaking, on Vishy’s mastery on the cricket field? Why? What is there to write about Iyer that has not been written already. It is a tough act. He himself has authored over 100 books on everything under the sun with a legal slant. After all, there is a ‘law’ behind everything on this universe. And Iyer was a master craftsman at wielding the pen. His mastery over the British English is unsurpassed. His flowery response in any and every lis is legendary. Everyone has the Dictionary. There are many who adorn the Bench or those off it, who may be felicitous in expression. But how many can wield the willow, sorry, pen, like Vishy sorry Iyer can. None, it would seem. Many have tried and ‘failed’. Not for want of trying but have been found ‘wanting’. That is all. In Leaves from My Library: An English Anthology Lord Denning had said, “When you are covering as with a garment some weighty or important matter you should sew on one or two purple passages so as to attract the attention of those, who are unfamiliar with it”.
Krishna Iyer did not have to try to embellish his judgments with such ‘purple patches’. His judgments were themselves purple patches. That is why they have stood the test of time. If the Dictionary was deficient, he was ready to coin words which never affected the flow of the river viz. his judgment. They blended into the substance. That was the beauty of the expression of this man, the Judge, a poetic Judge, if ever there was one.
Read what Fali Nariman says of Iyer’s style and substance, “Concepts of justice vary, and some Judges sitting in various Courts in the country, without Justice Krishna Iyer’s acumen and not endowed with his extraordinary faculty for distinguishing right from the wrong, have attempted to emulate him. They have failed. Their experiments in imitation have been disastrous, and the blame is laid at the door of Krishna Iyer. Some have attempted to ape his style and use four-syllable words where even one would do. Such persons have failed to realize that Krishna Iyer always regarded language as a vehicle for ideas, and if the manifold ideas in his fertile brain could not be expressed in known language, he had no hesitation in inventing words, and adapting English words to suit what he believed were Indian conditions. ….Such imagery in inimitable, expected of a Krishna Iyer: intolerable and ludicrous when attempted by someone else.”
Justice Krishna Iyer would always be a Gundappa Vishwanath. An artist. Never a plebian or plodder in Sunil Gavaskar mould. They said that Sir Victor Trumper, the Australian was ever the greater batsman even if Sir Don Bradman had the records. Bradman needed ‘a clean billiards board to perform’ while Trumper could radiate brilliance on even ‘soggy, marshy land against bowlers spewing venom’. That distinguishes the classical from the mundane. Justice delivery system, which Krishna Iyer often labeled a market, is serious business, but Krishna Iyer stood the test with common sense, compassion, elan, poise and poetry. English language was orphaned in Judgments, ever since his retirement. Though thankfully, his writings have been prolific, beyond as well, keeping us in complete thrall. His has been an observing, throbbing mind, keen at public interest, and never holding back on his view and vision. Literature and society have been richer for it.
Born as Vaidyanathapura Rama Krishna Iyer on 15th Nov, 1914 in Vaidyanathapuram near Palakkad, the then State of Madras, he did his schooling locally and then pursued higher education in Annamalai and Madras Universities. He joined the Malabar Bar, then under Madras High Court (Oh, he was our ex colleague, so to say).
“I sprang to lawyerly life with great elan and lucrative practice as a junior in the chambers of my father V. V. Rama Iyer, a leading member of the Tellichery Bar. Young in age, but with propitious opportunities to cross sword with vintage wonders of the Malabar Board beyond: it fell to me to spend my vernal years in versatile professional life”.
In 1952, the first ever elections in independent India, he got elected as independent MLA with communist party props. He became a Law Minister besides holding other portfolios in the 1957 communist Government. He crossed fences, to become a Judge of the High Court of Kerala between 1968-71 and then assumed office with the Law Commission.
Then the purple patch for Indian judiciary began in 1973 when he became a Supreme Court Judge which position he adorned till 1980. Many have gone to the political thicket after judgeship, but he remains uniquely himself in becoming a Judge after having been a Minister. He has always been a original, in every facet of his life. Though he said,” The best chapter of my life was when I wore robes, sat on the Bench and did what I thought was justice, social, economic and political.” (June, 2013 when he was 99 years old), it was not quite so simple for him to have become a Judge.
Incidentally, he became a law lord on the judicial pulpit thanks to some jugglers and magical realism played by Mohan Kumaramangalam, Indira’s Gandhi’s Amit Shah. Iyer was way down on the pathetic ‘seniority list’ (which should have no place for such positions). Kumaramangalam took him to, out of the blue, to Law Commission, Delhi. Lo and behold, he was elevated to the top court as a ‘jurist’ as the ‘seniority list’ was rid of its sting. For once, it was not the back door. We are eternally grateful to the hard core politicians. Don’t tell me pre collegium was all poison. Sorry, we can quote name after name, poet collegium, who were the antithesis of a Krishna Iyer. Honestly, if you deep think, everyone is, right!
“When my metamorphosis from Lawyer to Judge or its probability became known, many of my friends and well wishers were puzzled and some were even scandalized. I was asked Why did you ? Did you really ? I did not give any clear reply. The truth was that the Hameletian dilemma of to-be or not-to-be affected me too and when I gave hesitant consent. Life is a rugged journey. With its sharp and strange turns, it is an adventure where the exciting forenoons are followed by the mellow afternoons”.
He was not oblivious to his linguistic dexterity. But he was quite modest on himself. “I am not a passionate literary talent and have chosen to make these pages my last writings for the nonce. Actually I have written over 100 books on a variety of subjects. A large number of my judgments, all printed in law reports have a gentle literary flavour. That is why Justice Michael Kirby of the Australian High Court commented ‘Krishna Iyer did not write judgments, he wrote poetry’. My independent thinking and unconventional prose have elicited complimentary appreciation. I no longer need any praise.” (June, 2013)
Of course, Sun or Moon never needed praise. But ordinary mortals like you and me cannot miss the dazzling sun or the brightness of the moon and not be in its awe.
Deliberately and consciously, this effort has refrained from entering into the meaty contribution of this centenarian as a Judge. He himself wrote, “During the seven odd years in the Supreme Court I heard the largest number of opinions compared to any other judges. I am told that I made 724 pronouncements. The subject covered every facet of law and public life, political, cultural and social. “Every single tenet of the constitution vis a vis justice as alluded to by the Preamble came under the scanner of this saintly judge. Sunil Batra, Shamsher Singh, Maneka Gandhi to name just a few out of deep deference and reverence. He also sat on the 13 Judges bench assembled ‘secretly by Chief Justice A N Ray to seek and review Kesavanand Bharati but became a huge flop after two days of forensic brilliance from Palkhivala’ as Iyer himself said.
Where to start, which to tread, which to ignore and where to conclude?
Any effort would be a colossal misadventure. Many a colossus having done it, and not been up to it, these midget columnists yields to his limitations. He was so full of life in his judgments that he never held back his communist or socialist leanings. But so evocatively simple in precept and practice. He lives and breathes his philosophy. His judgments were imbued with it and he never hid his allegiance.
Fali Nariman says, “Krishna Iyer was ‘value-loaded’. His social philosophy was more than an interpretative tool. It was the mainspring of almost all his judicial dicta. He founded this new ‘school of jurisprudence’- which had at one time many adherents: fortunately it still has a few- but now, very few!”.
Krishna Iyer’s adherence to his social philosophy is a lifelong association and his judgments were a part of that journey. The larger part was his disdain for commercialization as the be-all and end-all of life. “Money! Money! Money! It is not only here amongst young Lawyers, but that is the case everywhere. You go to a college its money that works. In an examination money works. To get admission in an institution it is again money.
Even in a hospital money gets you better treatment. If you do not have money for your treatment, you are free to go and die. When we framed out Constitution in the Preamble we declared ourselves as a Socialist, Secular, Democratic, Republic. But where is socialism today ? Our philosophy today has little socialism left in it. If we really want socialism then it has to be ‘Man’ more than ‘Money and not ‘Money’ more than ‘Man’.
The problem is that our whole policy is anti-socialist. Today’s society has been ruined by appetite for money-making and values have been eclipsed. Until that is regained the fate of legal education will be the fate of Gandhi”. (In an interview when he was 95 years old.).
Justice Krishna Iyer was ruthless in his expression of corruption in Judiciary. He just could not fathom as to how a Judge could be corrupt. He felt that it was the collegium scheme of things which may have led to its entry. So he was an unabashed opponent of the Collegium. He also felt that the Judiciary and Judges were role models in society and unless they were squeaky clean in perception and practice, the younger lot would be thoroughly misled. Just as he let out clarion calls from the pulpit as a Supreme Court Judge, he was unhesitant to take to the cleaners the collegium system and kept reminding the nation of the need for a National Judicial Commission.
“Once corruption is detected and established, errant Judges should be shown no mercy. The judiciary is the salt of the earth and if the salt loses its savour wherewith shall it be salted. Severe punishment for Judges is a deterrent for the sanitisation of the profession. Judges hold a sublime place in society. If they turn criminal there is no compassion for them.There is no ground, no principle, no jurisprudence authorising the creation of a bizarre or bedlam institution called collegium.
The sooner this institution is drowned five fathoms deep, the sooner the judiciary will be rid of one irrational irrelevance. Even in England, experiments for appointment commissions are going on, but ultimately the judiciary is an institution with a class bias.
Judges are qualitatively becoming illiterate and character wise dubious largely because the collegium has no investigative machinery or obligatory principles for selection.
Consequently, favouritism, nepotism, casteism and other extraneous considerations spoil the selection. In the absence of a performance commission, corruption creeps into the process of judicial functionalism. Aghast, today corruption and mediocrity and favouritism and influence are frequently imputed to Judges.
The collegium has added to the qualitative disgrace of the brethren and calls for liquidation as the adjudicatory mechanism. Perhaps we are reaching a state where Judges, for their corruption, are caught and prosecuted until they consent to quit or choose to sleep in all their conscience behind bars. Swaraj was made of sterner stuff. A National Commission for the appointment of Judges with transparency, similar to the one now in England, is also urgently needed. Glasnost and perestroika are imperatives from which the robes have no escape.”
Thus spoke Krishna Iyer in an article on the Contempt proceedings initiated by the Senior Advocate Shanthi Bushan naming former Chief Justices and Judges of Supreme Court with a tainted slate, and which is hanging fire all these years, with the Supreme Court unwilling to catch the bull by the horns.And in 2022 too!
If only Justices Krishna Iyer and H.R. Khanna were on the bench hearing this matter? But then, if they were still around on the bench, there would have been no scope for such a lis in the first place. That Ladies and Gentlemen would be the highest praise.
The world may marvel at the Judge. But he was a simple man at heart and one who loved his wife Sarada dearly. She was his pillar of strength. When she parted company to meet her maker, he cried.
“Rarest of rare is the marvel of matrimony when two souls in all their finer facets, fuse into one and face the changes and challenges of the world with dynamism.. Not that I am alone, alone among six billion humans on earth, the past slowly ebbs away and I conclude with Lord Byron ‘What is the worst of woes that wait an age ? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow ? To view each loved one blotted from life’s page, and he alone on earth, as I am now”.
Vishy was never alone, even when he batted with the tail enders. There was and is always a huge audience for Champion Stuff and Master Class acts. So Sir, You have never been alone, then, now or ever will be.
( Authors are practising advocates in the Madras High Court)
