Anyone who has ever walked into an Indian courtroom knows this uneasy truth: the words law, order, and justice do not mean the same thing. They are thrown together as if interchangeable, but in practice they are strangers forced to share a bench.
If Indian courts were truly justice-giving,
cases would not crawl across decades, suffocating under technicalities,
adjournments, and appeals. A judge would weigh reality as it is, not as
codified in procedural limbos, and deliver a verdict that feels holistic,
human, and final. But such a judge, in India, would go mad! Justice is
impossible in this system, so judges confine themselves to the narrower task of
law – a safer, more bureaucratic, less human project.
Law is not justice. Law
is not even order. Law is codified philosophy. It is aspirational, telling us
what should be, without bothering to ask “how?” Law is the poetry of command,
detached from the actual mess of enforcement. Its function is not to be true or
practical, but to be repeatable.
Law was not designed for
justice. If it were designed for justice, then the world would have found
justice in fifty thousand years of human history. But injustice continues. Even
the person reading these words right now has faced some kind of grave injustice
in their own lives. So we can be sure that law does not serve the purpose of
justice, nor was it designed to do so.
Order is a different
beast. A violent riot may break the law, but even its mere existence disturbs
order. A police firing on rioters may be lawful, but it still violates order.
Restraint in retaliation may cause legal or illegal outcomes, but it maintains
order. Courts and police ultimately serve order, because order is what keeps
society tolerable. Justice has nothing to do with it.
Here lies the greatest
confusion: the courts of India routinely proclaim that they are guardians of
law. They do not and should not claim to be administrators of justice – even
though their judges are called “Justices” and the institution itself is
poetically named the Nyaypalika – literally, the dispenser of justice.
But this is a fraud of language. The reality is less grand: the courts uphold
law, and sometimes they help preserve order. Justice is not their concern, nor
could it be. At best, justice may be an unintended by-product. English strips
away the illusion – a “court” is just an arena of argument. The Hindi word
promises a moral universe; the English word promises only a stage. And we
continue to expect justice from institutions that were never designed to
provide it.
Recent remarks by a member of
the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council have exposed other facets of
this linguistic fraud. Calling the judiciary as the biggest
hurdle in the path to a developed nation, he pointed out that inside a courtroom,
judges are addressed as “My Lords” and a request is inevitably termed as a
“prayer”, effectively elevating judges to a God-like status. This
institutionalization of devotion to a procedural body has been a dangerous game
that has been played for far too long.
The result is tragicomic.
Citizens enter a courtroom seeking justice. What they receive is law – delayed,
distorted, and sometimes denied. The court does not concern itself with truth,
only with procedure. Reality does not matter; compliance does. The courtroom is
a theatre where the illusion of justice is maintained, because the myth is more
stabilizing than the truth.
Justice itself is not
the natural order of the universe; it is an artificial human invention. The
lion does not apologize to the deer. The predator does not negotiate with the
prey. Nature knows no justice. Only humans invented it, and having invented it,
we fail to uphold it. Why persist in the lie? Better to accept the world as it
is – Random. Brutal. Unfair.
What courts actually provide is
not justice but a controlled illusion of justice – a spectacle of procedures,
robes, and rituals that convinces society the game is fair. Without this
illusion, order might collapse. Perhaps that is why we cling to the fraud of
language; why the Nyaypalika must continue to pretend it dispenses
justice, while in truth it only recites law.
The Assault: The
Government has taken notice, and is not sitting quietly. The 130th
Constitutional Amendment proposed the removal of a Prime Minister or
Chief Minister after 30 days of arrest without a trial. This signals a brutal
truth – the country no longer needs courts to stand in its way. Due-process is expendable.
Trial is optional. Accusation is conviction. Even though the government lacks
the numbers to pass such a bill in the parliament, it has sparked a debate: is the
judiciary dispensable?
In the same vein, recent
amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Prevention of Money
Laundering Act allow for restitution
of personal property without conviction, i.e. the government can
sell-off an accused’s property without while the trial is still pending. The
court’s verdict is no longer the final instrument.
The President of India has in a
recent public statement called for exams
for appointment of judges rather than the conventional way of collegium
recommendations, similar to how bureaucrats are selected. She has overlooked
the fact that in this country, the bureaucracy is notoriously infamous for
being the first line of corruption. In another speech, the retired Chief
Justice Ramana has noted that the faith of the public
in the judiciary is eroding.
The Government seems to be
creating space for a debate on whether the judiciary is really a necessity for
the county, or must such a flawed judiciary be dispensed with altogether? Right
now, the only argument in favor of the judiciary seems to be “what is the
alternative?” Ironically, this is the same
argument used to support a self-proclaimed non-biological
divine minister by the same government in absence of a legitimate opposition.
This government has also been notorious for delegitimizing institutions such as
investigating
agencies and the election
commission. The judiciary may be the last thorn in its path.
The Proposal: Let us be
honest. Let us abandon delusion. Let the courts no longer be called Nyaypalikas.
They are Kaanoonpalikas – keepers of law. Let the judges shed their presumptuous
title of “Justice.” They are Law Aspirants. This would at least cure us of the
false hope that walking into a courtroom means walking into justice.
If we could dare to rename our
courts, our judges, and our expectations, perhaps we could finally stop
confusing law with justice, order with fairness, and illusions with truth.
Until then, the great deception continues – theatrics of justice without
justice, performed daily in the name of law.
