Very many citizens would feel reassured to learn that the chief justice of India is a religious man in his private life. As a Maharashtrian, it is only natural that his family should observe all rites associated with Lord Ganesh, again, in the privacy of his home.
There can be no conflict between a legal luminary’s professional conduct and thought processes on the one hand, and his personal religious beliefs and practices on the other. Every religion per se lends spirituality, humility and an ethical value system. It would be natural to assume that more often than not, a religious person as a judge will be level-headed in their judicial performance, notwithstanding periodic bouts of pomposity and megalomania.
Religious piety alone should be a sufficient bulwark against brutalisation of the soul. We should grant every benefit of the doubt to the CJI.
Yet it is a measure of our fraught times that a fierce debate has erupted after it became known that Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in a Ganesh puja at the chief justice’s official residence.
Social media platforms were abuzz with all sorts of dark hints about this unusual milaap. Speculation multiplied by the hour, and questions were being asked as to whether the chief justice had invited the prime minister or if Modi just gatecrashed the puja at 7, Krishna Menon Marg.
Either way, it was deemed, at best, a somewhat unusual and unprecedented coming together, under a Ganesh pandal, of two constitutional functionaries; at worst, the puja was seen as a collapse of the institutional distance that a chief justice and a prime minister ought to maintain.
Of course, there is no absolute prohibition against the head of the judiciary and the head of the executive being under the same roof. For instance, the chief justice regularly attends the president’s reception for visiting heads of state, along with the prime minister, cabinet ministers and others.
The unease has entirely to do on account of Modi having given “puja” a bad name on January 22 earlier this year. Cynically and insincerely, he had converted a religious ceremony at Ayodhya into a grand political affair. Rather than satisfying a spiritual quest, it became a pure-and-simple Modi show, un-pious, crass and crude, in violation of the poet’s injunction against “Ram ka naam badnam na karo” in the 1971 movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna.
The PM-CJI show under the Ganesh pandal recalled, for some, the uncomfortable fact that CJI Chandrachud was also one of the signatories of the Babri Masjid-Ayodhya judgment that paved the way for the January 22 spectacle.
It is an altogether different matter that only four months later, the voters saw through the prime minister’s cynical use of the Hindu religion and its symbols.
What has perhaps given a bad aroma to the prime minister’s visit to the chief justice’s residence is that Modi – wearing a Maharashtrian topi, presumably with an eye to the assembly elections there – converted it into an “event”. It must be assumed that the chief justice did not bargain for the prime minister to go public with a private call. That is perhaps a testimony to the chief justice’s political innocence; every district leader across the land knows that Modi is a political animal who would not be averse to exploiting even the most private moments for personal and political advantage.
Again, the enormously reassuring silver lining is that the electorate is no longer taken in by the prime minister’s shenanigans.
The prime minister’s spear-carriers should feel elated that their man is still deemed capable of suborning the integrity and autonomy of constitutional functionaries. What a reputation for a prime minister to acquire that his mere presence is deemed contagious and hence to be spurned! Only those who hope for crumbs of patronage are happy to get themselves photographed with him.
Again, it is reassuring that the incumbent chief justice of India has enough of learning, pedigree, experience and self-assurance for any purist to doubt that he would get contaminated by the prime minister’s presence at his Ganesh puja.
Admittedly, many purists are entitled to a certain disquiet at the PM-at-CJI “event” because too many senior judges in the recent past have brought shame and dishonour to the higher judiciary with their shabby compromises. A handful of dirty black robes were enough to tilt that critical equilibrium that is central to the republic’s constitutional health.
The purists are not wrong in fearing the PM-CJI Ganpati bonhomie will be misunderstood by the rest of the judicial hierarchy because not every district judge has the intellectual bandwidth or judicial temperament to see the “event” in perspective.
For Modi, this signalling is important because every district judge knows that the objective conditions that enabled the Modi regime’s dominance stand changed and that the country’s institutional equations stand re-arranged in favour of the citizens and liberty. Ageing and faltering emperors do not intimidate the realm.
It is sad that our constitutional order has become overloaded with so many fragilities and disharmonies that we no longer expect our institutions to discharge their dharma. Mostly, this disheartening state of affairs can be attributed to the shabby calculations of shabbier politicians. Yet it will be a matter of national disgrace if we believe that we are totally devoid of a few honourable men and women capable of saying and doing the right thing. And the chief justice is an honourable man.
It can be safely asserted that had Chief Justice Chandrachud anticipated all the hullabaloo, he would have decided against playing host to Prime Minister Modi. And perhaps it will be reasonable to assume that in his remaining few weeks as Chief Justice of India, he will prove all doubting Thomases wrong and assure the nation that he remains a vigilant custodian of the republic and its constitutional values and virtues. Amen.
Harish Khare is a former editor-in-chief of The Tribune.
