On the eve of his retirement, the Chief Justice of India’s hallowed Supreme Court , Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud came out with a shocking ridiculous revelation. At a gathering in his native village Kanhersar, recently in October, he shared a secret with his neighbours. He confessed that while sitting as a judge in the Supreme Court to settle the dispute over the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, he appealed to God for a solution, and God advised him to approve the construction of the Ram temple on the debris of the destroyed mosque, and allocate another site to the Muslims to build their mosque. So, apparently he had been guided by his religious faith while delivering judgments, instead of adhering to the oath of his legal profession by which he swore when he entered it. Did he deserve to occupy a bench in the apex court all these years ? Justice Rekha Sharma, a former Delhi High Court judge, expressed her shock at Chandrachud’s confession, and said : “…he has failed the oath he’s taken and he’s failed the people of India also.” (Re: Interview with Karan Thapar on The Wire, October 26, 2024).
Chandrachud’s retirement should be greeted as a good riddance of a bad rubbish. He descended to the lowest depth of unethical and unprofessional behavior, when he recently entertained Prime Minister at his residence for Ganesh Puja – displaying a shameful spectacle of bonhomie between a ruling politician and the head of the apex court. The latter, by traditional judicial standards, had always been required to maintain a distance from politicians and the ruling party. But Chandrachud had been a cunning judge who was unwilling to rock the boat of the prevailing status quo of camaraderie between the government and the judiciary.
Chandrachud’s record
Meanwhile, let us look at Chandrachud’s record as a judge. On public platforms, all these years, he had waxed eloquent, claiming that he was a judge of the people delivering justice to the disadvantaged. But his public rhetoric never extended to his judicial verdicts. As one observer commented, he should have been a college lecturer ! Adish Aggarwala, President of All India Bar Association, on November 5, 2024, sent a letter to him complaining that he prioritized lecturing at public events, while sidelining pressing concerns within the judiciary. After his public lecturing, once he retreated to his bench in the Supreme Court, Chandrachud resorted to the usual delaying tactics of adjourning cases – to the disadvantage of the poor litigants who had to go through years of the tortuous and expensive path of seeking justice through legal means. Take for instance the case of the JNU student Umar Khalid who was arrested for protesting against the Modi government’s discriminatory laws, and has been languishing in jail from 2020. Every time his plea for bail came up before the Chandrachud-led bench, it adjourned it.
More importantly, when it came down to substantial matters where in certain cases, he had to encounter the Union government, he delivered verdicts in favour of the government – displaying a bias in favour of the ruling powers. The most despicable display of such bias was evident when as a member of a bench which approved of the destruction of the Babri Masjid, he along with his colleagues went a step ahead by allowing the vandals who destroyed it to build a Ram temple on that spot. He now claims that he was inspired by God to give that verdict !
Exactly a year ago, on November, 2023, I sent a letter to Chandrachud at his personal e-mail address, requesting him to explain why the bench that was presided over by him, consistently postponed and reserved judgments on petitions that challenged draconian laws and sought release of prisoners who had protested against them. I asked him why was he so hesitant in confronting the government on these issues. The letter was published under the title: Open Letter to Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud in the website Countercurrents on November 9, 2023.
Needless to say, I did not get any reply. He lacked either the courtesy, or the guts, to engage in an open debate with me.
Chandrachud’s mixed record of positive gestures and negative partisanship
Let us look back at Chandrachud’s career. Born in 1959, he was appointed a judge in the Supreme Court in May, 2016. Three years later, as a member a five-bench apex court, headed by the then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, he participated in delivering the atrocious judgment of November 19, 2019 that paved the way for the construction of a Ram Temple on the debris of Babri Mosque that was destroyed by vandals of the Hindutva brigade in 1992. He now justifies his verdict as being inspired by God !
During his tenure as a judge in the Supreme Court to which he was appointed in May 2016, and later as the Chief Justice of India since November 2022, he came out with a series of judgments which are a mixed bag. Some of his verdicts have had positive consequences for citizens (e.g. right of abortion for unmarried women; right to privacy and dignity of individuals; sanctioning of inter-faith marriages; decriminalization of consensual same-sex relationship).
But he had also been a party to judgments that had violated the Constitutional guarantees to religious minorities like the above-mentioned notorious verdict on the destruction of Babri Masjid. Further, in 2023 he delivered a judgment giving a clean chit to the Modi government by stating that there was “no flaw” in its policy of demonetization that wrought havoc on the common people. Then again, he suppressed the right of independent investigation by citizens by dismissing a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) seeking an non-official inquiry into the case of the death of one of his colleagues, Justice B.H. Loya in 2014 under suspicious circumstances. Why ? He has not come out with any convincing arguments to explain his rejection. One suspects that he wants to hide some evidence that may involve him in the case.
Besides that, Chandrachud has been extremely offensive in his remarks on some of his predecessors who occupied the bench and were head and shoulders above him. In one of his latest judgments on the dispute over whether private resources should be brought under the umbrella of `material resources of the community’, he passed derogatory remarks on his predecessors, Justices Krishna Iyer and O. Chinapppa Reddy, accusing them of being influenced by `socialist and Marxist economic writings’. This is unbecoming of a CJI, who is expected to respect his senior predecessors, instead of attributing extraneous and unverified political motives to them. His colleagues Justices Nagarathna and Justice Dhulia, who shared the same bench with the CJI, expressed their dissent by endorsing Krishna Iyer’s principle. Justice Nagarathna pulled up an arrogant Chandrachud by reminding him about his being ignorant of past judgements by eminent judges which “correctly decided the issues that …do not call for any interference on the merits of the matter…” Justice Dhulia said that the Krishna Iyer Doctrine (the term by which his judgments are known) was based on “strong humanist principles of fairness and equity. It is a doctrine which has illuminated our path in dark times.” (Re: Times of India, November, 2024)
Chandrachud’s disastrous impact on the lower judiciary
D. Y. Chandrachud’s unprofessional and hypocritical behaviour is a symptom of Indian judiciary’s general degeneration. Both by his verdicts and public behavior that mostly favoured the majoritarian Hindu community at the cost of the minorities, he set a model of partisan behavior for his juniors in state high courts and sessions courts.
The impact of his mala fide ways of acting both inside and outside the court, was not confined to New Delhi alone, but percolated down to the lower level of the judges of high courts and session courts. They followed him as a role model, and passed verdicts that suited Chandrachud’s religious and social biases and political partisanship (hoping that the collegium led by him would promote them to the Supreme Court). These judges wanted to keep their boss, the CJI, in good humour, so that under his blessings they could climb up their ladder of upward mobility. Such verdicts threatened the common litigants at these courts who became victims of these biased judgments
Thus, the impact of CJI Chandrachud’s maleficent judgments was not confined only to the apex court level, but trickled down to the state high courts and lower judiciaries. Here the judges followed his model of jurisprudence leaning towards the ruling powers. We can take a few instances of such judicial misdemeanor at the lower level. Under Chandrachud’s benign gaze, some of them have passed verdicts that violate the basic constitutionally guaranteed rights of our citizens. Take for instance this judgment by Justice Subhash Chand of the Jharkhand High Court (as reported by the Times of India, of January 25, 2024), where he dismissed a wife’s request for maintenance allowance by her husband who deserted her, and who wanted to live away from her marital in-laws family. He described it as an “unreasonable demand to live separately,” and quoted Manusmriti saying that the ideal married relationship depended on the wife’s obligation to serve the elderly members of her husband’s family.
Or, let’s have a look at the advice given by a Calcutta High court bench of judges last year saying: “…adolescent girls must control their sexual urges instead of giving into two minutes of pleasure,” without extending that advice to adolescent boys. Thankfully, on December 8, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan pulled up the Calcutta High Court judges warning them that they should not resort to preaching in judicial proceedings. But will this have a chastening impact on these Bengali judges and compel them to shelve their orthodox religious prejudices while passing judgments ? It is no coincidence that one of them, Abhijit Gangopadhyay resigned from the Calcutta High Court and joined the BJP, which rewarded him with a Lok Sabha ticket to contest elections.
Let’s have a look at another judgment passed by Justice G. Ahluwalia of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on May 31, 2024 in response to a petition by Sarika Sen (Hindu) and Safee Khan (Muslim) , both 23 years old, seeking police protection from the former’s parents, who opposed their marriage registered under the Special Marriage Act, and threatened them. Dismissing the plea of the interfaith couple, the judge came up with this astounding statement: “ Even if the marriage is registered under the Special Marriage Act, the marriage would be no more a valid marriage and it would be an irregular marriage.” (Re: Deccan Chronicle. June 1, 2024).
Chandrachud’s obnoxious legacy of justification of Hindu majoritarianism and refusal to challenge an oppressive executive is thus becoming a model for his juniors at the lower courts, who are reinforcing obscurantist beliefs and betraying pro-ruling party partisanship in their judgments. It spells a dark future for litigants.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
