Many faces...

During the 1990s and the 2000s, Smith emerged as one of the world’s most successful leading men with roles in films such as Independence Day and Bad Boys. His box office streak of delivering eight consecutive films to have grossed more than $100 million in the US remains unmatched.

The lessons he learned along the way? “Fail early, fail often, fail forward,” he quoted a popular saying. “You fail your way to the top… I have been lucky enough to embrace failure,” Smith said about his success story. The two-time Oscar nominee said this is possibly his 10th trip to India. “(I have) loved it here for a lot of years. The contrast was always so beautiful to me that at any street corner, you could cross a thousand years.”

Towards the end of the session, the Hollywood actor tried Bhangra, the Punjabi dance, by imitating the hand and shoulder gestures displayed Farhan Akhtar, the moderator of the session When asked if he had any plans for making his Bollywood debut, Smith said: “I am doing a show called the Bucket List... One of the things on the Bucket List was that I wanted to be dancing in a Bollywood sequence... I would love to do some work with Aishwarya (Rai Bachchan).”

He also paid tribute to legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, whose biopic – Ali – Smith starred in.

“Playing Ali was the most formative time in my career. It changed me forever. Anytime you go that far into a character, a piece just stays with you. Nothing for Ali was ever above people and love. In our lives we put money and our products above people. Ali taught us that if you care for people you will have everything.”

Smith has played the lead role in two other biopics, including The Pursuit of Happyness. “It is such a beautiful thing to have an opportunity as an actor to wear the skin of someone you admire so much,” he said.

The court’s verdict on the entry of women of all ages into Sabarimala came in for special criticism from Jaitley who said the court has been selective in targeting one practice.

“If you want to take a progressive step under article 14 and 21, it will apply uniformly against all religions. It cannot happen that you select a practice and apply it because that will have many social consequences in a pluralistic society like India,” Jaitley said. For instance, it could mean polygamy, oral divorce, or other religions where women are not allowed entry into places of worship are no longer allowed, the minister added.

“If you want to be progressive and bold, you can’t be selectively so,” Jaitley said. “If you are willing to proclaim you must be willing to strike -- not only willing to strike at one target but willing to uniformly strike.”

Jailtely attacked the 1952 Bombay high court judgment of Narasu Appa, which he described as one of the worst judgments ever delivered in India. He explained that this judgment holds that all laws and tenets, including personal and religious ones, must be tested on the touchstone of fundamental rights. According to Jaitley, the views expressed by MC Chagla and PB Gajendragadkar, whom he described as two legendary judges, held that this touchstone should not apply to religious practices and personal laws. “We have to make up our mind,” he said.

Jaitley said the right opportunity to clarify this issue and overrule that judgement was in the Triple Talaq case where the court, in August last year, said the practice of instant divorce was illegal, but “the reasoning was that the practice was based on arbitrariness and hence we quash it”. The court sidestepped “the issue whether the personal laws and religious practices must also abide by the constitutional guarantees.” One of the judges flagged this, he added, but said “we leave this open for a future case.”

In the Sabarimala judgment as well , one of the leading judgment alluded to this and seemed to make an argument for overruling the 1952 judgement but stopped short of doing so. The judgment said “we leave it open for a future case”, Jaitley said.

Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju wrote in a Twitter post: “There are thousands of temples, mosques, and gurdwaras in India, many with their own rituals and practices. There are some temples which do not permit entry to women, and some to men. Should courts now start interfering in all these?”