An outstanding book on legal issues affecting the man on the street and required reading for lawyers, students of law, sociologists and the ordinary man.
Leila Seth was the first woman to top the Bar examinations in London, the first woman judge of the Delhi High Court, and the first woman to become Chief Justice of a state High Court. She was appointed as a judge in 1978 and retired as Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh in 1992. In 1995 she was appointed as a one-member commission to examine the death in custody of Rajan Pillai and to suggest improvements in medical facilities for prisoners.
Talking of Justice
Leila Seth
Publisher: Aleph
Pages: 214; Price: Rs 500 |
She was a member of the 15th Law Commission of India and one of the three members of the 2012 committee (known as the Justice Verma Committee, which was constituted in the aftermath of the rape in Delhi of the young woman known as “Nirbhaya”. She is the author of two previous books, her autobiography, On Balance, and We, the Children of India, which explains the principles of the Indian Constitution to its younger citizens.
In the book under review Leila Seth discusses important legal problems such as violence against women; the girl child; Uniform Civil Code; women’s rights; prisoners rights; gender sensitization of the judiciary and judicial administration. Several of the essays in this book deal with some aspects of discrimination against the girl child and against women. She deals with rights of children, especially the link between education and child labour and the rights of prisoners and the effectiveness of prisons. Leila Seth shares her insights on some of the most substantive and contentious matters facing the nation today.
She pays rich tribute to Justice V.R.Krishna Iyer and Justice Bhagawati for championing judicial activism to make justice a reality for the man in the street. She provides a succinct analyses of three landmark cases — the Shah Bano, Roop Kanwar and the Bhanwari cases which eventually led to the Vishakha guidelines.
Most of these essays began as talks and lectures delivered by the Judge. One essay, “You’re Criminal If Gay”, appeared first soon after a two-judge Supreme Court bench reversed an earlier court decision to decriminalize homosexuality. The author’s son, the eminent novelist Vikram Seth is “Gay” and is treated as “a criminal, an un-apprehended felon”.
Another essay “Rape: Inside The Justice Verma Committee”, is a first-person account of the tumultuous days of December 2012. Appointed after the gang rape and subsequent death of a young paramedical student in December 2012 that led to national outrage and spontaneous street protests, the three-member commission included Seth, former chief justice of India J.S. Verma and former solicitor general Gopal Subramanium. It was given 30 days to recommend amendments to the existing sexual assault laws. The task was mammoth; it was an intense and hectic time for the Commission.
The 631-page report was presented in just 29 days – in such a short time but its recommendations went far beyond the law. It wanted police reforms. It recommended changes in education, particularly the imperative need for better sex education. It wanted changes in The Representation of the People Act that would make candidates charged with rape ineligible to contest elections. “Our brief was limited to the law,” says Seth. “But we went for the wider scope because we knew that unless our approach was holistic, it would not be enough.”
But when the law was finally passed, Parliament baulked. Many of the Commission’s significant recommendations — on marital rape and rape by men in the Armed Forces, and on making rape gender neutral, for instance — were left out. Over 18 months have passed since the report and there is a new law but the number of reported rape and sexual assault cases is mounting. Injustice to women is quite prevalent and horribly even from elected representatives themselves
The real challenge lies in ensuring new mindsets. “The changed law provides an immediate remedy. But changing mindsets is a slower process. And that change doesn’t come fast,” she says. “Nothing can change unless we first start talking. The problem is when you sweep things under the carpet,” says the author. An outstanding book on legal issues affecting the man on the street and required reading for lawyers, students of law, sociologists and the ordinary man.
P.P. Ramachandran
