Only Way To Protect Constitution Is To Practise It, Otherwise It'll Die : S Muralidhar

Dr. S. Muralidhar, Senior Advocate and former Chief Justice of Orissa High Court, on Friday, said that the only way to protect the Constitution is to practice it and urged law students to turn to it when faced with questions about how to live in a diverse society.He emphasised, “The Constitution was written with the blood and sweat of the lived experience of the framers of the Constitution. The only way to protect it is to practise it, otherwise it will die.”He was delivering a lecture on “Transformative Constitutionalism and the Role of the Judiciary,” organised by the Kochi International Foundation and the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS).He advised students, “Whenever you have doubt on what choices to make, you may have the inclination to go to a philosophical text or to a religious text, but the natural instinct should be to go to the Constitution. It reminds you that India is a variegated society, it has diversity and that's the richness of India and you should learn to respect that.”He cited incidents of caste discrimination even today, including among judges, highlighting that a judge of the Allahabad High Court purified his chamber because it was previously occupied by a Dalit person, despite 75 years of Article 17, which prohibits untouchability. “If it were being enforced seriously, after 75 of the years of the Constitution we would not have people still practicing untouchability, we wouldn't have a ruling party MLA purifying his house because the person who occupied it before him was a Dalit. He needs to be publicly reprimanded by his party from doing this but he did not think twice to do it. There was a judge in Allahabad cleaned his chamber with gangaajal because the previous occupant was Dalit. These are the harsh facts of our lives in India. Dalit men cannot ride a horse on their own wedding day.”Addressing criticism that the Constitution is full of borrowed provisions, Muralidhar said the correct view is that the framers studied various constitutions and adapted what would work for India. He said they also added unique provisions. He emphasised, “We begin the Preamble by giving ourselves a Constitution. Somebody didn't give us those rights. We proclaimed those rights for ourselves.”He said the Constitution recognised the rights people already had and sought to ensure substantive, not just formal, equality. He said the Constitution reflected the aspirations of Indians who wanted an egalitarian society that respected individual dignity. Referring to the Delhi High Court's judgment decriminalising consensual sexual acts of adults under Section 377 of the IPC, he said, “The one thing which appealed to us as judges was this concept of dignity of individuals.”He spoke about liberty, equality, and fraternity as interconnected values. “The whole structure becomes weak if you remove one.” He recalled an incident in Bangalore where rumours led to panic among people from the North East, which, he said, showed how fragile societal arrangements were to protect fraternity. “There are many identities in all of us. The Constitution helps us to unravel those individual identities, and why those identities are so important. Why is it necessary for a Muslim girl from Bangalore to wear hijab and why we need to respect it, why can't members of backward classes or scheduled castes celebrate the festivals or marriages the same way as the dominant class does – these are all questions posed to us directly on the reading of the constitution. It tells us what we should do to make this Constitution work not just for ourselves but all of those others who are weak, under privileged, deprived of opportunities”, he added.Muralidhar said fraternity as understood by Ambedkar meant brotherhood among all Indians. He discussed Article 15, calling it a “transformative provision” that enforces horizontal equality, meaning it is a right enforceable not just against the State but against other individuals too.He spoke of how young interfaith or inter-caste couples come to court not seeking protection from the State but from parents and society. He narrated how different judges approach such petitions. He shared a conversation with a judge from North India who dismissed concerns about honour killings, saying parents wouldn't harm their children. Justice Muralidhar said such attitudes showed subjectivity in habeas corpus petitions and illustrated the barriers to transformation.Muralidhar highlighted discriminatory attitudes among Indians abroad, who are offended when mistaken for Pakistanis, but discriminate against others back in India. He urged law students to practice Article 15 at an individual level and recommended reading the Preamble and Article 15 every morning.He listed several real-world examples that test Article 15—“In rural areas there are areas where Dalits cannot walk. In cities some people do not let out their homes to Muslims. There are many boards which say that this place will not be let out to ...

Only Way To Protect Constitution Is To Practise It, Otherwise It'll Die : S Muralidhar

Amisha Shrivastava

Constitutional morality is believing in the three values of liberty, equality and fraternity, he said.

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