New Delhi: People’s confidence for the protection of liberties rests in the judiciary, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud asserted on Saturday even as he rued how “adequate morality” of dominant groups creep into lawmaking to perpetuate biases against weaker and vulnerable sections of the society.
Delivering the Ashok Desai Memorial Lecture in Mumbai, the CJI defined “adequate morality” as the morality of men, the upper castes, and able-bodied persons. Desai was a former Attorney General and a senior advocate who passed away in 2020.
Justice Chandrachud was speaking on the topic, “Law and Morality: The Bounds and Reaches”, when he highlighted the need to adopt the progressive values enshrined in the Constitution and enforcement of constitutional morality to counter the impulses of adequate morality or public morality.
“Even after the framing of the Constitution, the law has been imposing ‘adequate morality’, that is, the morality of the dominant community. In our parliamentary system of democracy, laws are passed by the vote of majority. Therefore, the discourse around public morality often finds its way into the law enacted by the majority,” he said.
The CJI’s statements come at a time when several states, including Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, have come up with stringent laws against religious conversions for marriages — often described as “love jihad” legislation. These laws have been criticised by several groups and experts, and also challenged before the constitutional courts on the grounds of being an outcome of an authoritarian politics emanating from majoritarianism and religious bias.
On Saturday, lamenting that differential moral concerns or biases often creep into law, the CJI flagged that such biases reflect categorical preference for and against certain people within our community.
Justice Chandrachud illustrated his statement by citing ban on books, plays and restrictions on dance bars in Maharashtra’s establishments that were not three stars or above.
