NEW DELHI: Obiter dicta are incidental remarks judges make in the courtroom that have no direct bearing on the case they are hearing. However, while they may be just loud thinking, they do give insights into the normative framework within which a judge hears and rules on a case before him or her.
Frequently, they are an opportunity for the judge to sound lofty, but that’s a privilege allowed to the higher judiciary. It’s a disappointment, however, when obiter dicta are more befitting of a less learned citizen, whose pronouncements are relevant only to his circle, unlike a judge’s observations, whose every word has import for society at large.
Last Friday, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant was reported to have vented his frustration at youngsters entering the profession of law with fake degrees: “There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment...Some of them become media, some of them become social media, some of them become RTI activists…and they start attacking everyone."
He reportedly went on to say, “There are… parasites of society who attack the system…”
Implicit in those quoted remarks is a depiction of vast categories of people — unemployed youth, media personnel, RTI activists — as vermin, and the work they do as an “attack on the system.” Conceding the point that the case at hand was simple enough — unqualified lawyers claiming the status of senior counsel — they indicate a hostility towards activists who think they are doing their duty to society by asking questions of it, and towards unemployed youth — and by extension, other welfare recipients — unfortunate enough to need the assistance of the system.
The CJI’s clarification the next day tried to correct this impression. It said the remarks were not directed at the youth of the country, “but at individuals who had entered professions such as law and media using fake and bogus degrees”. However, besides praising himself that “the Indian youth have great regard and respect for me”, the CJI continued to apply the descriptor “parasite” to “persons who have sneaked into the media, social media, and other noble professions (with false credentials).”
The law of “misquoted remarks” is that perceptions live longer than clarifications. To the youth of the country, these will go down as wounding remarks, made just the week when the NEET-UG question paper was leaked to anyone who would pay Rs 15 lakh. To young lawyers and media practitioners who take up activism as a calling, they will go down as selective scrutiny of their degrees while higher functionaries have gotten away with worse. The trouble with “misquoted remarks” is also that blurtings are spontaneous, while clarifications are second thoughts. The first will be taken for latent tendencies and the latter can be mistaken for prevarication.
Unfortunately, over the past few years, several judges have invited adverse criticism upon themselves through hasty courtroom remarks. Regressive remarks on peacock tears and such arcana were ridiculed even within the brotherhood. One off-hand remark to a petitioner to "go and ask your deity itself" led to an unprecedented incident in the Supreme Court. In the Bombay High Court, there was a furore over a judge’s oral remark that groping of a minor girl over her clothes does not constitute "sexual assault" because there was no direct "skin-to-skin" contact. The people see the judiciary as their last bastion and expect every word to be weighed.