Some ‘poetic justice’ literally

Performing a statutory or constitutional job is one thing, but adding poetry to it is another. With their frequent use of poetry and prose while delivering judgements, Supreme Court judges have often demonstrated that their reading is not restricted to weighty law texts but to all kind of Indian and Western literature too.

Recently, justice B Sudershan Reddy started one verdict quoting Rabindranath Tagore’s Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high/ Where knowledge is free, Where the world has not broken up into fragments / By narrow domestic walls / Where the mind is led forward by thee / Into ever-widening thought and action/ Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

He was worked up at the denial of admission to medical students in the Armed Forces Medical Colleges. At the outset, the judge set the tone for its conclusion: he quashed the policy.

Another vibrant judge Markandey Katju, who shares the bench with justice Gyan Sudha Misra, does not leave an opportunity to cite his favourite Urdu poets and the characters in the English literature.

Last week, he delivered “poetic justice” to a group of Mumbai policemen, who had been granted bail by a sessions court even though they faced a grave charge of acting as ‘hired killers’.

Katju cancelled their bail, quoting the Bible while he read out his verdict. He said, “If the salt has lost its flavour, wherewith shall it be salted?” Or, for that matter another quote saying, “Who will guard the Praetorian guards?”

When he suggested death sentence for those convicted in the so-called ‘honour killing’ cases, he remembered Mirza Ghalib citing a couplet which means this horrendous killings must end now, or unforeseen tragedies are in store for me to see’.

Judges showed tremendous concern for Aruna Shaunbagh who has been bed-ridden in a Mumbai hospital for over three decades. Marte hain aarzoo mein marne ki, Maut aati hai par nahin aati. Roughly translated, it means we live with a hope to die, which however still eludes us.

It was again an appeal by the justice Katju bench to Pakistan that triggered events that released an Indian citizen, Gopal Das, from a Pakistani prison after decades. At that time, the judge remembered Portia’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice.”

This appeal worked. Pakistan freed Gopal Das.