AA Edit | Why Pick On Judiciary In School Textbooks?

The outrage the Supreme Court has expressed over the publication of a textbook that lists the shortcomings of the Indian judiciary including allegations of corruption, long pendency of cases and large number of vacancies being left unfilled is justified in that the referenced portion looks only at the darker side of just one eminent pillar of the Indian State but spares all others. The court has now ordered a complete ban of the Class VIII social science textbook which contains a chapter “The role of the judiciary in our society” wherein there is a section that is titled “corruption in the judiciary”.

On its part, the National Council for Education, Research and Training (NCERT), the publishers of the book, have apologised to the court and decided to withdraw the book. The Union education minister has also expressed profound regret over the textbook containing the objectionable part. The court, however, is not satisfied; it believes this to have been a “calculated move to undermine authority and demean the dignity of the judiciary” and, therefore, initiated contempt of court proceedings against the NCERT director and the secretary of the department of school education in the Union government. The anguish of the court is reflected in Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s comment: “They have fired the gunshot. The judiciary is bleeding.”

It may be noted that the court is not dismissive of the whole idea of corruption in the judiciary; instead, as the CJI pointed out, the bench was “deeply hurt that there is no mention of the judiciary’s positive work — protection of civil rights, access to justice, free legal aid and safeguarding fundamental rights”. There was no attempt to present the students with a balanced picture, it said.

It has been almost eight decades that India attained freedom and we have a Constitution for the last 76 years. We have come a long way in improving the system of governance in the country while remaining firmly committed to democracy and its principles. It may be true that we have not been able to introduce all the changes the founding fathers wanted, but every major step that India has made in these decades was aimed at improving the lot of the people. The judiciary has also played its role in it, especially in advancing the rights of ordinary people. No one has a case that all the pillars have played their roles in full: there are acts of omissions and commissions that can be traced to the door of the legislature and the executive. Focusing on the slip-ups of only the judiciary hardly helps.

There will be skeletons in the cupboards of every single institution in the country, and for that matter, every country, but none would see it as prudent to present them before schoolchildren and warp their outlook on life itself. Even if in the interest of truth such a thing is attempted, it must be done in such a way that young minds are encouraged to identify and use those tools to fight corruption. Making the problem statement alone serves no right purpose.

That said, the judiciary will be making a big mistake if it thinks the issue that it is indeed suffering from can simply be wished away. Glaring instances of judges coming under suspicion of wrongdoing are no rare incident, as the discovery of burnt currency notes from the house of a sitting judge of a high court amply shows. There are CJIs on record pointing towards corruption in the judiciary. The people will stand with the apex court in protecting the judiciary’s image as the custodian of their rights, but they will be happier themselves if the judiciary did some soul-searching as well.