CJI DY Chandrachud defends Sabarimala judgment, says untouchability not tethered to caste alone

Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Thursday defended his judgment in the Sabarimala temple case in which he said that barring of menstruating women to the hill shrine in Kerala amounted to untouchability barred under Article 17 of the Indian Constitution.

The CJI opined that the framers of the Indian Constitution had deliberately not limited the meaning of untouchability under Article 17 to any one social evil.

"The context of this provision (Article 17) was the stratified society we found ourselves in. Reading through the Constituent Assembly debates, I concluded that the framers deliberately left untouchability untethered to caste; that Article 17 provided a guarantee against notions of impurity and pollution-and caste was but one manifestation," he said.

The CJI was delivering the MK Nambyar Memorial Lecture today in New Delhi on the topic - Foresighted Mr. MK Nambyar - Constitutional Journeys Beyond Original Intent.

Nambyar is the father of Senior Advocate and former Attorney General KK Venugopal.

The event began with an introductory address by KK Venugopal followed by remarks by Senior Advocate CS Vaidyanathan. Venugopal's son, Senior Advocate Krishnan Venugopal delivered the closing remarks.

The CJI in his speech opposed a narrow, originalist interpretation of the Constitution.

"Originalism wrongly presumes that the intent of the framers can be precisely ascertained. It presumes that history speaks in one voice and this voice is capable of consistent interpretation by different readers. Answering these questions may not necessarily require us to tether ourselves to the elusive original intent of the framers. Should a Constitutional Court freeze the content of constitutional guarantees and provisions to what the ‘Founders’ perceived," he asked.

He said that the Constitutional doctrine must evolve with changes in the society.

"As society evolves, so must constitutional doctrine. The institutions which the Constitution has created must adapt flexibly to meet the challenges in a rapidly growing knowledge economy."

The Constitution was never meant to be a set of iron-clad rules governing the social and legal relations, he underscored.

"It was never their intention to lock the provisions of our Constitution in place, for eternity. This would have militated against the necessary flexibility, which is the key for constitutional longevity," he stated.

The Constitution of a country is more than the mere text, the CJI added.

"It is the foundation of this democratic culture and not the culmination of it. It merely stems from the framers’ intent, but as Mr Nambyar showed us, it blossoms in the lived realities of its constituents in their specific social contexts."

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