Justly renowned for his many landmark judgments as a judge of the Supreme Court, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, contributed significantly to national debates on public policy, during the after he demitted office. To reach an audience of concerned citizens, Justice Iyer turned to The Hindu, to air his views on a broad spectrum of issues from the Mullaperiyar dam to the mosquito menace; from prohibition to privacy concerns.
Articles on non legal issues
From 1988 when Justice Krishna Iyer's first article appeared on the opinion page, till mid 2013, the paper carried over 60 of his signed pieces, on non legal matters. A reading of Justice Iyer's contributions to The Hindu over 25 years mirrors a liberal, humane response to the issues of the time. What astonishes a reader today is his prescience and grasp of issues like privacy, long before ubiquitous communication media like the Internet, were born.
“ Is it not atrocious that Rs.20,000 is charged for admission to even lower kindergarten (LKG) by private managements, with lawless licence? ”
In the first of a two-part article in 1990 titled “Privacy of Communication,” he writes: “Information without communication is social suffocation and when the State itself practices interception or detention of thought or truth in transit and legitimizes the violation of postal privacy by law, a free society ceases to exist. We must resist to the last, such a sinister prospect.”
Justice Iyer in this article is writing about the interception by the state of postal articles, but everything he says could have well been written a response to some of the overreaching provisions of the Information Technology Act of 2000 and its amendments, which caused concern in sections of Indian civil society.
“ I declined to have police jeeps accompanying me or guntoting uniformed men frighteningly announcing my presence… Not that I was brave but that I know it was regal rubbish. ”
Later in 1990, in a piece titled “Uncensored media - basic human right,” his target is Doordarshan: “A Government where flattery, subservience and claques have better chance than free criticism and independent proposals, such a system which seeks to manufacture minds by manipulating views and news has in its genetic code, a fascist seed.... Even today it is common for the viewers of Doordarshan to observe on the screen, the camera focused on Ministers... as if the Doordarshan cosmos exists only when enlivened by ministerial presence,” he wrote.
The question “Who is a Hindu” troubled administrators as well as lay citizens in Kerala in mid 1990, when the High Court pronounced on the qualifications required to run the Devaswom Board. Justice Krishna Iyer reacted wryly: “This judicial rescue of the Hindu gods housed in shaking shrines from menacing infidels may give psychic solace to the souls of those whose consternation about imminent disaster to Hindu gods through a government of crimson guardians may be gravely real... But to elevate external worship as the unavoidable essence of 'High Court Hinduism' is mayhem on the soul of our culture.”
Justice Iyer dealt with the media in a 1995 piece which once more, displayed a grasp over issues that continue to provoke debate. He said: “If the basics of a just world economic order are absent, a just world communication order is an illusion... That is why the non-aligned countries...have treated it as an imperative of the world communication order that there should be an independent communication network for the Third World without being crushed by informational domination of the materially advanced countries.”
As a lifelong resident of Kochi, Kerala, Justice Iyer often used local problems to make a larger point. The mosquito menace in the coastal city saw him in full literary flow against the winged threat: “Who then, are the enemies of people's sound sleep and freedom from insectile forays? Among them, the most terrorist and treacherous, singing and stinging ...are the hawkish mosquitoes, those two-winged flies which, with their proboscises, puncture the skin with insatiable frequency and inject or transmit, and otherwise act as malignant intermediate purveyors of malaria., filaria. dengue, and other deadly fevers.”
“ Kerala is perhaps the 'most drunken State' in India, with its per capita consumption of liquor rising by the year...Terrible crimes are committed by drunkards. ”
Another hassle of urban life that Justice Iyer addressed, was what he called the “VIP Security Syndrome” in two articles in 1998: “Indeed, the very concept of a Very Important Person is anathema to a socialist democracy since the invidious, colonial protocol, which sanctioned higher classes and condemned the masses, lost its rationale the day the tryst with destiny was made....To regard the Maharajas and mini-Maharajas, party leaders and political midgets as well as officers 'drest in a little brief authority' pro tem as particularly entitled to peculiar treatment runs counter to the non-negotiable value of equality before the law.”
Justice Iyer practised what he preached. He said: “Way back in 1957, when I was Home Minister in Kerala. I declined to have police jeeps accompanying me or guntoting uniformed men frighteningly announcing my presence.. Even during the quasi-violent Operation Overthrow organised with all its fury in Kerala (1959) did not force me to be ringed by the men in khaki. Not that I was brave but that I know it was regal rubbish.”
“ Indeed, the very concept of a Very Important Person is anathema to a socialist democracy ”
The commercialisation of education was a theme to which Justice Iyer returns at regular intervals. In 2006 he wrote: “Illiteracy is our nation’s bete noire. Not a single soul should exist sans primary education.. Is it not atrocious that Rs.20,000 is charged for admission to even lower kindergarten (LKG) by private managements, with lawless licence? To call this self-financing is monstrous inexactitude perversely dignified.”
Justice Krishna Iyer seemed at times to be tilting quixotically at windmills, but later events have proved that his instinct was right. In 2010 he wrote on the evils of drinking: “Kerala is perhaps the 'most drunken State' in India, with its per capita consumption of liquor rising by the year...Terrible crimes are committed by drunkards. The jocose first sip, the bellicose second sip, the lachrymose third sip… And with the final gulp you become comatose and lie down somewhere, often not knowing where...”
Prolific writer
Was no subject beyond the grasp of this Renaissance Man of the Bench? As he slid smoothly into his mid 90s, it seemed not. Who but Krishna Iyer could pen a piece on Christmas Eve saluting Jesus as a glorious pro-poor rebel? He asks: “Was not the kingdom of God that Jesus held up, but the forerunner to socialism, social justice, secularism and democracy? He was a raging egalitarian, an invisible socialist, and an economic democrat.”
Justice Krishna Iyer's writings appeared occasionally in other print media. But The Hindu was the platform of choice for him. Many readers hugely enjoyed his “words of learned length and thundering sound,” even if they needed to regularly dive for a dictionary. The Hindu left Krishna Iyer's strong, sincerely felt views, largely untouched. For this, we, the readers, can only be grateful, for they touched us, moved us and made us think.
(Anand Parthasarathy is a former IT Consulting Editor of The Hindu. The article is updated and extracted from a chapter in A surfeit of tributes to India's greatest living judge, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer: A Festschrift, 2014).
