A jurist to remember

What will be missed most is judge V.R. Krishna Iyer’s clarity of thinking and his high-mindedness in taking up the cause of the poor and the downtrodden in a colourful life as a practising Communist, minister in Kerala Cabinets, Supreme Court judge and a humanist who never gave up rights activism till his death. The judge is no more in our midst, but in his lifetime he showed remarkable grit in pursuing what was right, the quality of his work shining in the judgments he wrote in the flowery style of his times.  

The jurist summed up his own life in revealing he had dedicated his capacities not to making money but to wiping the tears of others. The pursuit of this goal with such single-minded devotion is rare, especially in the venal times in which we live. And yet he did just that, taking up causes like demanding reprieve for those on death row in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination conspiracy because he did not believe in capital punishment.

He supported an effective Appointments Commission rather than the collegium for the appointment of judges and a Performance Commission to tackle the peculiar Indian problem of pending cases, which he attributed to a pathological syndrome. He was for a transformation to the modern age, suggesting that he loved the American system more because of the efficiency of its delivery system, if not  infallibility, which none achieve anyway. He may have inadvertently been describing himself when he said, “One capable judge with sound social philosophy is a better instrument of justice.”