Satyajit Ray, probably India’s greatest film auteur — the maker of the Apu trilogy, and other path breaking films like Charulata — might still make it on a panel to appoint India’s senior-most judges.
The only hitch is that Ray died in 1992, the year his Oscar for lifetime achievement was presented to him in hospital.
On June 11, Mukul Rohatgi, the government’s top lawyer, told the Supreme Court that Ray should be one appointing jurist.
The eminent persons may or may not be jurists...These eminent persons could be someone like Satyajit Ray, could be the Indian equivalent of Bill Gates… They will give inputs on the social perspective, family background of the judge and social realities…Can Satyajit Ray strengthen or dilute the process? Is the concept so unconscionable? It may be uncomfortable...but it will introduce diversity.
—Rohatgi was reported telling the Supreme Court in media.
At least one judge on the panel retorted, “Let Ray rest in peace.”
Star Wars-Like Battle
The Supreme Court is witnessing a Star Wars-like battle between the government, which wants to replace the old collegium system of appointing top judges with something called the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC).
The Narendra Modi regime made NJAC into law earlier this year, but has been besieged by petitions that challenge this decision.
In the NJAC, six people will select our top judges. The Chief Justice of India, two colleagues, the law minister and two ‘eminent persons’ to be appointed by the government and the leader of the Opposition.
Most anti-NJAC arguments point out that it will dilute, if not abuse, the separation of powers between the government and courts. This could lead to a judiciary that’s a poodle of the government of the day.
But let all that pass.
Eminently Ray?
Let’s focus on Rohatgi’s endorsement of Satyajit Ray as one of the ‘eminent persons’ selecting judges. Disclaimer: I am a great admirer of Ray — his films, novels, short stories, and his skill as an illustrator. Ray also taught himself to read and score music.
As a child visiting his Calcutta home, I saw the early-generation Roland electronic piano with which he composed the music for many of his movies.
Nevertheless, Satyajit was no lawyer. But if Rohatgi’s formula is accepted, we’ll need to conduct regular séances to get Ray’s inputs on judicial appointments, 23 years after his passing.
However if we’re to follow the séance procedure to elect judges, there could be better candidates than Satyajit Ray. Rohatgi, take heed.
Many Séance-Candidates
There’s no better candidate than Raja Rammohun Roy, born in Bengal, 1772, died in Bristol, 1833. In those 61 years, he founded the Brahmo Samaj, a movement that sought to reform orthodox Hinduism.
But he did more than that: a polymath, who read and wrote in multiple languages, including Farsi, Arabic, English, Sanskrit and of course, Bangla, he travelled across India and absorbed Buddhist principles.
He also mastered the law of the time. That gave him leverage to attack the brutal practice of sati, the burning of widows alive on the pyres of their dead husbands. By 1829, he convinced William Bentinck, the governor general, to pass a law that criminalised sati.
To select tomorrow’s judges through séances, Roy is India’s primary candidate.
And why ignore Bhimrao Ambedkar, the Dalit with western degrees and smart suits, who fathered the Constitution with great tact?
Actually, my personal favourite for the séance-candidate to select judges is Sukumar Ray, Satyajit’s father, among the greatest satirists and writers of absurd verse in the world. He died, age, 35, in 1923 a mere 92 years ago. But so what? If Ray fils can be a candidate, Ray père is a better one. Here’s why.
In Abol Tabol, his first book of nonsense verse published 1923, he wrote a poem called Ekushey Ain, literally “Justice Type 21.”
In Shivthakur’s own country,
The Law is sophistry!
If you happen to slip and fall,
The cops will make you crawl.
A judge will come down like a tonne
And fine you rupees twenty one.
— Sukumar Ray, Abol Tabol
Forgive the quality of my translation. But my vote is for Sukumar, not Satyajit as the NJAC séance-candidate.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist.)
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