Law Can't Look Away From Discrimination In Private Spaces : CJI DY Chandrachud

Recently, the Chief Justice of India, D. Y. Chandrachud, while delivering Justice E S Venkataramiah's Centennial Memorial Lecture, spoke about how hierarchies, prejudices, and stigmas travel beyond the public and private spaces. He said: “If the hierarchy persists in the private space and the law looks in the other way in the name of the sanctity of the household, or the sanctity of marriage, we would be failing in the promise of equal protection of the law and qualifying it with a caveat based on the location of wrongdoing. This will be a diluted understanding of what privacy entails.” Additionally, CJI also spoke about how, despite legal victories and societal movements, subtle forms of bias and discrimination exist. In this context, he shed light on the gender pay gap. “This issue is particularly pronounced for Indian women. Especially those belonging to a marginalized community. Despite their significant contributions to various professional spheres, women continue to face disparity in remunerations compared to their male counterparts. This is a stark reminder that achieving through equity requires more than legal provisions. It demands ongoing advocacy and systemic changes to dismantle entrenched biases and ensure equal opportunities for all.” The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) organized the lecture. The lecture's theme was 'Constitutional imperativeness of the state, navigating discrimination in public and private spaces.' To begin with, CJI, also the chancellor of NLSIU, asked whether we have succeeded in creating public and private spaces that are conducive to people across dividing lines. Whether the laws and policies we adopt further the objects of the constitution in both these spaces alike.Taking his cue from this, CJI, among other things, stated that law presumes that civil and criminal courts, which are vested with wide-ranging inherent powers, will exercise those powers to do complete justice. “But what is justice? Is my version and understanding of justice the same as one of yours? Is there only one form of justice? If it is a rigid singular concept, then why do we have overturning judgments? We just overturned one (NN Global) just a few days ago...less than six months after the earlier one was delivered. A persons' sense of justice emerges from their conscience.” Elaborating, he said that a sense of justice evolves when we are ready and willing to open our minds beyond the assumption that society has taught us to hold. It is only when we have an open mind that we are likely to feel the need to deviate from some of these base assumptions to curate our own sense of justice. In this background, CJI went on to state:“We always see this need to deviate, take the form of legal amendments and overruling of previous decisions that were perfectly valid until a point in time. The law, in that sense, responds to a social change as a fundamental assumption underlying it alters over time….One such assumption is the difference between public and private spaces.”“For instance, purely on the grounds of gender, women are often perceived as natural caregivers who must tend to the domestic needs of the family. While the men must undertake the remuneration activities and form the financial access of the household. It is so untrue.” Moving forward with the lecture, CJI talked about how our laws have crystallized this narrative of what is public and what is private. Our laws in policy choose to treat people based on the physical locations of their actions. Substantiating the same, he said: “Indian penal code provides that when two or more persons by way of a brawl, in a public space, disturb the public peace, they are said to commit an offense of affray. We must note that the brawl between two people will be punishable only if its location is a public space and not otherwise. The thrust of the law, therefore, is not only the inherent merit or demerit of brawls but on where it takes place.” He further explained that neither of these spaces exists in neat individual spheres like a Venn diagram. They often overlap. The same hierarchy that pervades the private way seeps into the public and vice versa, making both spaces slightly less equitable. There is, therefore, a need to look beyond this binary of what is public and what is private and search for the grievance that underlie both these spheres, CJI said. For this, he gave certain thought-provoking examples of how certain roles are ascribed to women both in private as well as public spaces. While highlighting the infringement of rights in both spaces, he said that it would be unjust if the law intervened in only public spaces. CJI further said that the purpose of law will have to be extended to safeguard the interest of conventional and unconventional participants of both these situations.“For instance, the household which is understood as a private space is a sight of economic activity by a homemaker who is not remunerated for it. ...

Law Can't Look Away From Discrimination In Private Spaces : CJI DY Chandrachud

Gyanvi Khanna

Tags