Orissa HC Chief Justice S Muralidhar: We Must Allow Different Ideologies To Coexist And Contribute To The Development Of Constitutional Law

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• “You can imagine the contribution which leftist lawyers, lawyers with leftist leanings, made towards the development of constitutional law”, remarked Orissa High Court Chief Justice S Muralidhar.
• He pleaded with the legal researchers who are listening in that this is an issue for research. The contribution of leftist lawyers, particularly those who shared leftist ideals, to the evolution of constitutional law has received little attention.
• We must anticipate the arrival of other ideas. We should not exclude any philosophy simply because it is one with which we disagree.
• He argued that "we must enable them to coexist and contribute significantly to the evolution of constitutional law."
• Chief Justice S Muralidhar was speaking at an event commemorating Late Viswanath Pasayat's 109th birth anniversary.
• "On the eve of freedom, Mr. Gopalan was in jail," Justice Muralidhar said of A. K. Gopalan, one of Kerala's most prominent Communist leaders.
• In his book 'Wages of Impunity,' senior Marxist lawyer K. G. Kannabiran claims that A. K. Gopalan attempted to march with the Indian flag in the jail and was again jailed.
• "Who can deny his great contribution to the evolution of constitutional law?" Justice Muralidhar said, referring to Supreme Court Justice P. B. Sawant, who was a member of the Communist Party of India.
• "If you look at the Constituent Assembly debates, Dr B. R. Ambedkar is constantly responding to criticism whether our Constitution is not becoming a socialist Constitution, a communist Constitution. In fact, the whole chapter of DPSPs has socialism directly written into it. If you follow Dr Ambedkar's response to the debate, you will find that he admits that the DPSPs largely embody a socialist ideology, a socialist philosophy. It is this struggle of ideologies, the struggle of philosophies of economic doctorates that we see in the Constitution today, and how different judges at different points of time pick up these provisions to expostulate various fundamental rights. It is a fascinating subject to study",reflected Justice Muralidhar.

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