Mrinal Pande 
We are living in an age dominated by men and women who embody a certain smug complacency – autocrats adept at manipulating electoral victories, opaque bankers and corporations, owners of media houses, the so-called influencers. People who can not feel that they have a personal identity unless they have made up their minds about everything. And as they begin to pontificate about the rule of law and principles of public administration, we realise that the time-tested ideals of truth and justice have never been interpreted more coarsely in self-interest before.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
A new, six-foot statue of Lady Justice was installed in the judges’ library of the Supreme Court recently, replacing the old one dating back to the colonial period. According to sources, the reinterpretation and subsequent transformation of India’s Lady justice was as per the suggestion from Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud. He felt that India should move forward and leave the legacy of obsolete colonial laws behind including the iconography of Lady Justice.
The original concept of Lady Justice emerged from the Roman goddess of divine justice, Justicia. The scales she holds come from icons of Maat, ancient Egyptian Goddess of truth and justice. The sword was inspired by images of Themis, the Greek goddess who holds a sword in one hand and the scales of justice in another. The blindfold over her eyes symbolised impartiality and the ability to deliver justice based on the truth, untainted by fear or favour.
India’s Lady Justice, it was felt, needed a makeover. It was decided she must no longer have a blindfold over her eyes and ‘look Indian’ after the recent renaming of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita. It was also suggested by the CJI that the new statue of a peace-loving Lady Justice should shed the traditional sword which has now been replaced with the Constitution. Thus attired, holding a book and the scales of law in her hands, Lady Justice would truly embody the Indian concept of balanced and non-retributive justice. Instead of a Greek toga, Lady Justice, without blindfolded eyes, stands dressed in an Indian saree. The statue is further embellished, rather puzzlingly, with a rather large quantity of jewellery, topped with a conical crown like those worn by goddesses in Raja Ravi Varma paintings.
The new Lady Justice was both hailed and criticised on social media platforms. ‘She should be wearing a watch’ pointed out a user, on X. It would, he felt, symbolise the urgent need to keep the inordinate delays in our justice delivery system to a minimum. Such debates are usually long and loud but ultimately peter out. What one hopes will remain constant, however, is the urgency to appreciate the human being at the heart of the system awaiting justice. We cannot have more incidents like the release of those accused of Gauri Lankesh’s murder before they served their sentence, the death of a paralysed Father Stan Swami in prison or G.N. Saibaba’s demise soon after spending a gruelling decade in prison, which the Mumbai high court described as a “miscarriage of justice”.
When questions are raised about people being denied bail even before charges against them have been filed, official denial is the first and often the only response of the system today. The system is quick to dismiss most petitions on behalf of the incarcerated, citing the ‘questionable’ intent of the litigant. When questioned closely, the messenger may be shot at. In such a scenario, it is good to see a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court uphold (by a 4 to 1 majority) the unique process India had enshrined in Section 6A of The Citizenship Act of 1955. This Act grants citizenship to migrants who entered Assam until March 1971. The verdict is important not only for Assam, but also for other border states, including the northeastern states and Uttarakhand, where vote-bank politics often exploits emotive issues and manipulates demographic and migratory trends. This verdict will also have ramifications on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed hurriedly in Parliament in 2019. The learned judges have also opined that Section 6A does not allow unabated migration but actually offers a more pragmatic approach of a controlled and regulated form of migration. Thus, denying that the Section erodes the rights of the indigenous people of Assam.
It is good that the new Lady Justice holds the Constitution instead of the sword and looks at the world of justice with eyes wide open. But the crucial element in the process will still be the mindset of those that deliver the final judgments.
Given that the supreme deity of Law and Justice is female, regardless of any changes, another issue of great importance needs to be highlighted today: marital rape. Men who sexually harass wives against their will in the privacy of the bedrooms can go on defending themselves in courts saying that, as husbands, it is their right justified by scriptures or level a counter-allegation that it is actually the woman who has been harassing them and is crying rape out of malice. As long as the system remains convinced –through mansplaining in courts of law – that from a socially “reasonable” (read: men’s) point of view, marriage is an indissoluble sacrament. Our system thus stoutly refuses to recognise marital rape as understood internationally. If pressed, men, defending the superiority of their marital rights over a wife’s consent, will slyly resort to the presently popular anti-colonial logic. They keep saying western concepts of marital rights can not be applied in the Indian context due to various cultural factors. If they are, it is asserted, the Indian family as we know it will be irreparably damaged.
What must be remembered is that whether in a bedroom or in a sports federation or some cave in a Dera, a rape remains a rape. And by that logic, what married men want from their wives may not always automatically be what the wives want from their husbands.
Why must the judicial system go on treating a wife merely as family property when a crime is committed against her?
In the long run, it would be self-defeating for a party that likes to win elections, to keep its eyes closed to serious complaints about danger to their life and well being, from 50% of its electorate. The general elections have shown that even women, initially lured by schemes like Beti Padhao and Pyari Behna, may not remain faithful forever.
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.