Former Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud was among the list of speakers on the first day of the recently concluded seventh Dehradun Literature Festival in Doon International School. The CJI, who came out with his first book Why the Constitution Matters: Selected Speeches, in September, was the chief guest at the inaugural day of the festival, and addressed the audience on why the Constitution must be seen as a living document rather than a distant text, the everyday relevance of constitutional morality, and the role of citizens in safeguarding democratic values.
t2 sat down for a brief post-panel chat with Chandrachud to find out more.
The need for children to engage with the Constitution beyond the classroom...
One of the questions I was asked after the talk was, "How do you understand the Constitution beyond the dry bones of a civics class?" I mean, I also learnt civics in school, where you essentially learn about structures of governance, fundamental rights and fundamental duties. But you never really understand the real-life stories behind these ideas, particularly given how these subjects are taught in most schools. I don’t blame the schools; they have so much to teach, so there is an overload of information. But I would rather the Constitution be taught not merely from the perspective of the dry law behind it. Because it is more than that. The Constitution is a story dealing with human injustice, and it has been a bulwark in bringing about social transformation. So we must encourage youngsters to ask important questions about it. What is the real impact that values like the right to life and personal liberty have had? Or what is the value of freedom of speech and expression? What are the problems with interpreting the Constitution? What are the problems in society today?
If we have to truly engage younger people, we have to make a very substantial break from how the Constitution is taught in school structures. It shouldn’t be taught just as a civics course, but as a moving, breathing instrument that affects each one of us in anything we do — even a letter a child writes to a parent, or one adolescent writes to another. Why are their thoughts so privileged or private? It is because of the Constitution.
So we need to bring the Constitution alive and make young people understand how it affects their lives. And we must also tell them what their duties are in ensuring that the vision of the Constitution is realised. We cannot look at the Constitution as an external force that will fix every wrong; it doesn’t work like that.
Civil society is equally involved in realising constitutional values. The Constitution may provide the right to a clean environment, but we cannot expect it to give us that automatically. We have to work for it. We must ensure in our personal lives that we do not burn crackers during Diwali, or litter the streets with plastic packaging, and that we create coalitions so that those in power respond to citizens’ concerns.
The Constitution is as much about duties as it is about rights. Those rights cannot be realised without citizens performing their duties. Yes, the Constitution gives us the right to free speech, but we cannot use that to perpetuate hate speech. And how do we recognise when we are being hateful? By understanding our duty to be tolerant, accepting, and not hateful towards others. So it is not just a rights document, it is a duties document as well. Young people need to understand that.
Bringing the Constitution to the doorstep of every Indian...
At one level, you have to reach out to lay educated people — those with basic levels of education — and then go across the spectrum, so from very elementary to much higher levels. And the way to build confidence is for courts to simplify the Constitution. You can simplify the Constitution by not speaking of it only in legal terms. The key is to make people understand it, which would, in a way, also simplify the work of the court. That begins with the very language that courts use — the text itself of court judgments. These judgments should be simple to understand.
Sometimes, of course, you need long judgments because the case is very complex. I have been guilty of writing long judgments myself because the issues were argued at such a complex level. It's important to simplify, but one must still address every nuance.
But I think it is important for courts to have an institutional mechanism that explains judgments in simple terms once they are delivered. I tried to do this during my term by providing summaries on the website of all important constitutional judgments since Independence. The idea was to tell people, in simple language, what these judgments mean, rather than making them read a 100-page or even a 15-page judgment. The aim was to make the language as accessible as possible, and to put out short notes explaining what a judgment has meant once it is delivered.
So, unless the courts communicate their work in terms people can understand, the Constitution cannot function as the document it was meant to be for every citizen. And for that to happen is of vital importance.