Saturday, January 29, 2011

Supreme Court Bench's Exhortations That Reminded Me of a புறநானூறு song

A few days ago, the Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju had exhorted lawyers to advice litigants about mediation and negotiation as pathways to resolving disputes instead of protracted litigation. He even cited Mahatma Gandhi's musings from his autobiography "My Experiments with Truth". While the learned Judge's hortatory obiter is laudable and definitely worthy of consideration, I am ambivalent on this sensitive topic. Nonetheless, I was strongly reminded of the Sangam Poem in புறநானூறு and will blog about it tomorrow.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Adding Fuel to the Fire

Saw this: http://bit.ly/gb7xU8 and began to ruminate a Thirukkural (திருக்குறள்.) India's Judicial backlog of over 30-Million cases is an eyesore within and outside Indian legal-circles. When new laws are framed without proper safeguards to protect innocents, more fuel is added to the inferno of legal pileups. Even Thiruvalluvar had in his Kural stated, "குணம் நாடி, குற்றமும் நாடி.." whereby he underscored the need to investigate benevolent and malevolent acts to prescribe the cure. When laws are framed to overlook the "offense", more offenses are perpetrated. And perjuring before a court of law with false accusations is the supreme offense. Until India handles this malaise as is in the Western Democracies, more innocents will be punished, more cases will pileup, more people will be alienated with never-ending case time-line. Justice will hardly be served. Vigilante-Justice (கட்டப் பஞ்சாயத்து) will take over. It already has. Look at the rising criminal statistics in India.