Tags:
Journalism of Courage
In 1967 our Supreme Court, in the celebrated case of Satwant Singh Sawhny, ruled that the right to travel abroad and return to one’s country is a fundamental right implicit in the concept of personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution. The court pointed out that a person may like to go abroad to see the world, to study abroad, to undergo medical treatment that is not available in our country, to collaborate in scientific research, to develop his mental horizon in different fields. The court recognised that realistically, without an Indian passport, no person residing in India can travel outside India. At that time there was no law regarding grant, refusal or revocation of a passport. The matter was exclusively in the realm of executive discretion. The court rejected the Government’s contention that the discretionary power of the state is a political or a diplomatic one. The court held that refusal of a passport which prejudicially affects a person in the absence of any statutory enactment would be contrary to the Rule of Law and Article 14 of the Constitution and per se unconstitutional.
Thereafter the Passports Act 1967 was enacted. It sets out specific grounds for refusal, revocation and impounding of a passport. A person’s passport cannot be detained or impounded without a valid statutory order under the Passport Act 1967 or any other applicable law. The practice of seizing passports of persons in the absence of any statutory order, detaining them at the airport and thus preventing them from leaving the country is patently unconstitutional.
In the UK, refusal by the Secretary of State of a passport was defended by the government as exercise of prerogative power and therefore not subject to judicial review. This contention was rejected by the Court of Appeal in England in October 1988. Lord Justice Taylor in his concurring judgment held that the court has power to review the withdrawal or refusal to grant or renew a passport and ‘‘the powers of the court cannot be ousted merely by invoking the word ‘prerogative’…Grant or refusal of a passport is a matter of administrative decision, affecting the rights of individuals and their freedom of travel. It raises issues which are just as justiciable as, for example, the issues arising in immigration cases…The ready issue of a passport is a normal expectation of every citizen, unless there is good reason for making him an exception’’. This decision rendered prior to the enactment of the UK Human Rights Act 2002 was a remarkable advance in English administrative law.
Intuitive Recognition And Jazz: Obscenity, despite valiant judicial efforts, has defied any satisfactory definition. Justice Stewart of the US Supreme Court confessed that he could not define obscenity but recognised it when he saw it. Likewise poetry cannot be straitjacketed in a water-tight formulation. Emerson reminds us that ‘‘All great poetry is dipped into the dyes of the heart.’’ A E Housman said he could recognise poetry because ‘‘it made his throat tighten and his eyes water’’.
Fond as I am of jazz it is difficult for me to precisely define it. I can segregate jazz from other forms of music which masquerade as jazz and which is bereft of improvisation—the essence of jazz. The poet Philip Larkin has his own criterion. ‘‘I can recognise jazz because it makes me tap my foot, grunt affirmative exhortations, or even get up and caper round the room. If it doesn’t do this, then however musically interesting or spiritually adventurous or racially praiseworthy it is, it isn’t jazz.’’ For me the unfailing test is when the sounds I hear strike an instant chord in my heart, make me get up and take imaginary hot solos on the instrument which at the moment is enthralling me, accompanied by shouts of appreciation. The instrument which excites me generally happens to be the tenor sax, of course, after the clarinet with which I flirted for a while during my college days when Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were my icons.
