In the backdrop of the Mumbai terror attacks, Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan has called for a “holistic” solution to fight terrorism rather than pitting one nation against the other. Applauding the CJI, who made public his views on terrorism at an international conference of jurists organised here recently, Pakistani journalist and news editor of The Friday Times Ejaz Haider acknowledged in an article that when governments on both sides, under pressure, have hit the nationalist button, “one man stands out unscathed by this madness. the honourable Justice K G Balakrishnan, CJI”.Referring to the speech delivered by the CJI on December 13, the article Haider’s applauded his views. “As an eminent jurist, Justice Balakrishnan understands well the significance of situating the problem at the cross-section of law and force. This is his motif,” the article said.In his address, the CJI had defined terrorism as “the use of violent methods in place of the ordinary tools of civic engagement and political participation”. He had said, “It has become an increasingly recurrent strategy for insurgent movements as well as identity-based groups” to resort to violent methods. Clarifying in the article that the CJI should not be seen “soft on terrorism”, Haider wrote, “What he is trying to do is to disabuse most of us of the simplistic categories that inform our approaches both to the use of law and force, and more crucially, of the legal exceptions we create to presumably make the use of force more effective in the face of a threat.”Justice Balakrishnan had asked nations to refrain from moving away from the working of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which, according to him, “has become customary state practice — akin to creating a space devoid of law”. Within the domestic law, he said that adherence to the constitutional principle of ‘substantive due process’ was an essential part of collective response to terrorism. The CJI’s had said, “As part of the legal community, we must uphold the right to fair trial for all individuals, irrespective of how heinous their crimes may be. If we accept a dilution of this right, it will count as a moral loss against those who preach hatred and violence.” This, too, was well appreciated in the article.
