Every Activist Judge In India Is A Linear Descendant Of Jaiprakash Narayan: Prof. Upendra Baxi [Video]

NALSAR Lecture Series on Constitutionalism hosted its seventh speaker, Professor Upendra Baxi, who is also an Adjunct Professor at NALSAR, on the 17th of February, 2017 at the M.K. Nambyar SAARC Law Centre at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. He spoke on the topic ‘Constitutionalism and Identity’. Professor Baxi recollected his previous visits to NALSAR, and termed ‘Justice City’ as his ‘home away from home.’Professor Baxi started with talking about the divergence between virtual and physical spaces, the two planes where identities are constructed. The identities are given unique and peculiar shapes on the online sphere of the internet. He said that we live in an era of finished products. The present generation does not take much pleasure in learning, understanding and working with unfinished fragments of things. He said that while a fragment is something less than the whole, a finished product, on the other hand, is complete. He remarked that what fragments offer is at times, more than what finished products can provide us with. He said that fragments offer a better guidance in the form of clues to understand identities. He lamented that in our obsession with finality, we somehow have lost the art of thinking and writing in fragments.-27KqZKoHe paralleled this conception with the working of a Constitution. He said that a Constitution is never a final document. It is a work in progress, constituted itself by a multitude of fragments. The study of a constitution therefore, must piece together all these fragments and make sense of them.He then alluded to the lyrics of the song Zamane ka dastoor hai ye purana from the Hindi film Lajawab (1951):“Zamane ka dastoor hai ye purana (It is an old custom of the world) Zamane ka dastoor hai ye purana (It is an old custom of the world)Mita kar banana bana kar mitana (To recreate what it annihilates, and to annihilate what it created)Mita kar banana bana kar mitana”(To recreate what it annihilates, and to annihilate what it created)He said that what we study in a Constitution are the elements of annihilation, and elements of development. He noted that the Constitution is but a collection of fragments that must be pieced together through the act of interpretation. The act of interpretation, he said, is as much about creative destruction as it is about creative (or uncreative) construction. He stressed on the need to read the Constitution not just as a text, but as a document of human suffering.Then he came to the song Mera Jeevan Saathi Bichad Gaya from the film Babul (1950):“Khushi ke sath duniya mein, Hazaron gam bhi hote hain (Along with happiness in this world, there are a thousand sorrows)Jahan bajati hain shahanai, Vahan matam bhi hote nain (Where the shehnai (wedding flute) plays, there is also a dirge)”The lyrics loosely translate into the message that happiness and sorrows often coexist in this world, a message that is beautifully captured in the metaphor that places where trumpets are heard, are not unknown to wailings and calamities. In Prof. Baxi’s view then, it is imperative to recognize where we see the shehnais and where we see the maatam in our own Constitution.Prof. Baxi then implored the audience to ask what in the Constitution is the trumpet of power and authority, and where in the Constitution do we find the elements of severe grief and calamity. He told the students that they would not have read the Constitution unless they would have asked this question off the text/fragments. He thus remarked that a Constitution has to be read as a social text, i.e., a text of human and social suffering. He left it to the audience to search for themselves the elements of shehnai and the maatam in the Constitution.Prof. Baxi therefore remarked that we must identify the elements of creation and of destruction in the constitutional text. This enquiry lays the groundwork for us to ponder into the questions of constitutionalism and identity.The lecture then delved into the meaning of ‘constitutionalism’ itself, which Prof. Baxi described as majorly, a story of power, governance and resistance to power. He noted that constitutionalism encapsulates the elements of resistance, liberation, degradation and emancipation; and is a moving horizon. He, as an aside, expressed his discomfiture of viewing the world through ‘isms’ (and therefore a concomitant discomfiture with the term ‘constitutionalism’ itself), since ‘isms’ tend to restrict meanings by implying dogma, doctrines or even a way of life, so to speak. A second problem he found with ‘isms’ was that of periodising history, or “putting history into slots”.Drawing inspiration from the works of Karl Marx, who tirelessly brought out the exploitations widespread in capitalist societies, Prof. Baxi asked the students of law to explore how much does the constitutional text tolerates, supports, and reinforces exploitation in Indian society.He said that he has learnt the idea of thinking about the ‘other’ from Marx and...

Every Activist Judge In India Is A Linear Descendant Of Jaiprakash Narayan: Prof. Upendra Baxi [Video]

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