The Renaissance Man of the Bench

Justly renowned for his many landmark judgments as a judge of the Supreme
Court, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, contributed significantly to national debates on
public policy, during the after he demitted office. To reach an audience of
concerned citizens, Justice Iyer turned to The Hindu, to air his views on a broad
spectrum of issues from the Mullaperiyar dam to the mosquito menace; from
prohibition to privacy concerns.

Articles on non legal issues

From 1988 when Justice Krishna Iyer's first article appeared on the
opinion page, till mid 2013, the paper carried over 60 of his signed pieces,
on non legal matters. A reading of Justice Iyer's contributions to The
Hindu over 25 years mirrors a liberal, humane response to the issues of the
time. What astonishes a reader today is his prescience and grasp of issues
like privacy, long before ubiquitous communication media like the
Internet, were born.

In the first of a two-part article in 1990 titled “Privacy of

Communication,” he writes: “Information without communication is social
suffocation and when the State itself practices interception or detention of
thought or truth in transit and legitimizes the violation of postal privacy by
law, a free society ceases to exist. We must resist to the last, such a sinister
prospect.”

Justice Iyer in this article is writing about the interception by the state of
postal articles, but everything he says could have well been written a
response to some of the overreaching provisions of the Information
Technology Act of 2000 and its amendments, which caused concern in
sections of Indian civil society.
Later in 1990, in a piece titled “Uncensored media - basic human right,”
his target is Doordarshan: “A Government where flattery, subservience
and claques have better chance than free criticism and independent
proposals, such a system which seeks to manufacture minds by
manipulating views and news has in its genetic code, a fascist seed....
Even today it is common for the viewers of Doordarshan to observe on
the screen, the camera focused on Ministers... as if the Doordarshan
cosmos exists only when enlivened by ministerial presence,” he wrote.

The question “Who is a Hindu” troubled administrators as well as lay

citizens in Kerala in mid 1990, when the High Court pronounced on the
qualifications required to run the Devaswom Board. Justice Krishna Iyer
reacted wryly: “This judicial rescue of the Hindu gods housed in shaking
shrines from menacing infidels may give psychic solace to the souls of
those whose consternation about imminent disaster to Hindu gods
through a government of crimson guardians may be gravely real... But to
elevate external worship as the unavoidable essence of 'High Court
Hinduism' is mayhem on the soul of our culture.”

Justice Iyer dealt with the media in a 1995 piece which once more,
displayed a grasp over issues that continue to provoke debate. He said: “If
the basics of a just world economic order are absent, a just world
communication order is an illusion... That is why the non-aligned
countries...have treated it as an imperative of the world communication
order that there should be an independent communication network for the
Third World without being crushed by informational domination of the
materially advanced countries.”
 As a lifelong resident of Kochi, Kerala, Justice Iyer often used local
problems to make a larger point. The mosquito menace in the coastal city
saw him in full literary flow against the winged threat: “Who then, are the
enemies of people's sound sleep and freedom from insectile forays?
Among them, the most terrorist and treacherous, singing and stinging ...are
the hawkish mosquitoes, those two-winged flies which, with their
proboscises, puncture the skin with insatiable frequency and inject or
transmit, and otherwise act as malignant intermediate purveyors of
malaria., filaria. dengue, and other deadly fevers.”

Another hassle of urban life that Justice Iyer addressed, was what he called the
“VIP Security Syndrome” in two articles in 1998: “Indeed, the very concept of a
Very Important Person is anathema to a socialist democracy since the invidious,
colonial protocol, which sanctioned higher classes and condemned the masses,
lost its rationale the day the tryst with destiny was made....To regard the
Maharajas and mini-Maharajas, party leaders and political midgets as well as
officers 'drest in a little brief authority' pro tem as particularly entitled to peculiar
treatment runs counter to the non-negotiable value of equality before the law.

Justice Iyer practised what he preached. He said: “Way back in 1957, when I was
Home Minister in Kerala. I declined to have police jeeps accompanying me or
guntoting uniformed men frighteningly announcing my presence.. Even during the
quasi-violent Operation Overthrow organised with all its fury in Kerala (1959) did
not force me to be ringed by the men in khaki. Not that I was brave but that I
know it was regal rubbish.”

The commercialisation of education was a theme to which Justice Iyer returns

at regular intervals. In 2006 he wrote: “Illiteracy is our nation’s bete noire.
Not a single soul should exist sans primary education.. Is it not atrocious that
Rs.20,000 is charged for admission to even lower kindergarten (LKG) by
private managements, with lawless licence? To call this self-financing is
monstrous inexactitude perversely dignified.”
Justice Krishna Iyer seemed at times to be tilting quixotically at windmills,
but later events have proved that his instinct was right. In 2010 he wrote on
the evils of drinking: “Kerala is perhaps the 'most drunken State' in India,
with its per capita consumption of liquor rising by the year...Terrible crimes
are committed by drunkards. The jocose first sip, the bellicose second sip, the
lachrymose third sip… And with the final gulp you become comatose and lie
down somewhere, often not knowing where...”

Prolific writer

Was no subject beyond the grasp of this Renaissance Man of the Bench?
As he slid smoothly into his mid 90s, it seemed not. Who but Krishna Iyer
could pen a piece on Christmas Eve saluting Jesus as a glorious pro-poor
rebel? He asks: “Was not the kingdom of God that Jesus held up, but the
forerunner to socialism, social justice, secularism and democracy? He was
a raging egalitarian, an invisible socialist, and an economic democrat.”

Justice Krishna Iyer's writings appeared occasionally in other print media.

But The Hindu was the platform of choice for him. Many readers hugely
enjoyed his “words of learned length and thundering sound,” even if they
needed to regularly dive for a dictionary. The Hindu left Krishna Iyer's
strong, sincerely felt views, largely untouched. For this, we, the readers,
can only be grateful, for they touched us, moved us and made us think.