Justice Verma worked tirelessly towards a better system
With Justice J.S. Verma gone,for several scribes not just court reporters,but those interested in law and the intersection between law,politics and justice it is as if a long and grand conversation has abruptly ended. The Justice indulged our questions,but he was always much more than an almanack of the judiciary. He never gave you the feeling he had retired 15 years ago. Instead of telling us how it had all gone to seed,as others of his age may have done,he always gave one hope for the system and remained a gold standard by which to judge court actions.
Justice Verma,who was frequently consulted by the government and outsiders as someone who could be relied upon to give good advice,was never considered by the Congress or the BJP to be a judge who would toe their respective lines. His Hawala judgment and the Ayodhya reference and later,the so-called Hindutva judgment,rankled with the Congress,and it opposed his appointment by the NDA as the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission. But after his appointment (his tenure was between 1999-2003),he didnt pull any punches in Gujarat in 2002. He meticulously recorded the events,holding the Narendra Modi government systematically accountable for the violence. Post-Gujarat,Justice Verma was seen by political leaders as exactly who he was,and what they saw scared them. He was a fiercely independent judge,honest and happy to stay that way.
He was never afraid to raise issues of judicial accountability,or hold the many shaagirds he tirelessly mentored to a high standard. He had an impeccable track record,from his days as an advocate and later,judge,in Madhya Pradesh,to his time as a judge in Rajasthan and Delhi. He authored the 1993 judgment considered to be the origin of the much-discussed collegium system of Indian judges appointing themselves. To his credit,he never shirked from taking a critical look at the big ideas of the time. In a series of lectures he gave about five years ago,citing contemporary judgements,he drew a fine line between activism by the court and its overreach and encouraged debate on the subject.
He was a great narrator of stories,about how he was the first to open his court on the day Emergency was imposed or how he wrote the Vishakha judgment on sexual harassment in 1997. Criticised in some quarters for not distinguishing between Hinduism and Hindutva in his memorable line about Hindutva being a way of life,he would just smile enigmatically,and urge us to read the judgment again more closely and see it for what it is.
He recalled,quite evocatively,a non-judicial moment when he addressed an audience marking 20 years of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December last year. He related the story of his father,a railway officer,during Partition,and how he aided a Muslim friend who had decided to stay back: my father relocated his family so as to be able to support his oldest friend,so that he felt secure in his social life.
Now,as Justice Verma himself has relocated,quite suddenly and without a fuss,perhaps it is time to use the story of his life as a beacon in these trying times. He would not have sounded so bleak,but perhaps typed out 10 ways in which to create a better system.
seema.chishti@expressindia.com
