RINGING THAT BELL OF JUSTICE
Anuj Bhuwania’s Courting the People points out the fundamentally protean nature of Public Interest Litigation
So widespread is its appeal that its cinematic rendition too had to face one – a real PIL (Public Interest Litigation) against a reel PIL – for representing the legal profession in poor light. Jolly LLB appealed to viewers as it celebrated the power of PIL in challenging the elitist and exclusionary dimensions of legal procedures. To the average individual, PIL is reminiscent of the bell that hung outside Emperor Jahangir’s palace. Aggrieved subjects could pull it to seek instant justice. However, the question of why the poor didn’t get justice in the first place has remained unanswered.
PIL, which was introduced in the late 1970s, aimed to erase class biases. It was hailed as a move that provided speedy justice. Judges donned their activist avatar, proclaimed solutions, reprimanded officials and enforced orders. But what began in the late 1970s as a judicial revolution was reduced by the mid 1990s to a tool that worked against the interests it had promised to serve. Citing the ruthless ‘slum demolition’ and the controversial ‘sealing drive’ cases in the capital, author Anuj Bhuwania unfolds how a promising judicial tool was appropriated by the court to jump jurisdictional limits in taking control of urban governance through PIL. It did improve matters but at the cost of the larger public good. The cases referred to in Courting the People make it clear that the non-procedural and arbitrary nature of PIL has helped the court initiate a case in public interest on its own, appoint its own lawyer, investigate the issue, and issue orders for implementing its decision. In a majority of cases, victims were neither consulted nor allowed to enter the court room before the court pronounced on their fate. Considering such instances, the author wonders how PIL has been allowed to become a giant machine that turns those who could have been plaintiffs into mute victims. The book does not see PIL entirely in poor light. It argues that with the right kind of judges the right kind of judgement is still possible. Bhuwania’s emphasis is not so much on the unjust outcomes of PIL cases but on the injustice of the judicial process adopted in them. There is little denying that the pathology of PIL infected legal culture more generally in the post Liberalization era as, armed with its radical potential, appellate judges could pursue the political causes they deemed fit.
In the din of emerging PIL culture, the challenging aspect of integrating the three-tiered judicial system into a functioning machinery that can provide justice to the subaltern has largely been sidestepped. The lower judiciary continues to be perceived as purely pathological, whereas the heroic persona is reserved for higher courts that are viewed, thanks to PIL, as the panacea to endemic ills. In the market-driven demand-supply scenario, the culture of PIL with its star judges and celebrity lawyers has acquired a higher political status in the country’s appellate judiciary. Its self-congratulatory nature with its inbuilt justifications will only perpetuate it. This book raises more questions than it sought to address. A somewhat disturbing read, it points out the fundamentally protean nature of PIL which stems from its mimicry of ideas of popular justice. As long as it is believed that the poor can gain justice from benign paternalism of the presiding judge, the idea of Emperor Jahangir’s Zanjir-e-Adl will continue to resonate in appellate courts. Bhuwania’s efforts would be well served if his research is made available in a language that is accessible to a wider readership.