A Man Who Walked The Road Less Travelled

The life and occasions of Justice Krishna Iyer is, in itself, a pageant that coronates probably the most becoming of any reminiscence. He was the Peoples’ Emperor of Hearts and infrequently the ultimate refuge for a lot of who had exhausted all treatments. He was considered the magical panacea for all ills of the society; and the arrogance and perception in him, of those that got here looking for his assist was absolute. I’ve at all times felt that Justice Iyer was conscious of this; and that a minimum of at occasions, he was overwhelmed by such large expectations. He lives on within the hearts of the multitudes of women and men, who he touched along with his kindness and empathy. He’s undoubtedly the tallest jurist who walked this a part of the world; and no quantity of hyperbole would justify his further atypical and prodigious contributions to each aspect of human life and endeavour.

Born in 1914 to an equally illustrious father and a tall lawyer himself — Sri.V.V.Rama Iyer, in a small hamlet in Palakkad, Justice Iyer’s full identify — as Justice Balakrishnan Nair talked about — is Vaidyanathapuram Rama Iyer Krishna Iyer. He accomplished his authorized research from Madras and started his commendable authorized apply within the yr 1938, becoming a member of his father’s chambers.

Pushed by idealism and socialistic goals, he started to interact himself in farmer’s struggles; and, as he himself wrote “Gently I grew to become a public determine of types with out get together affiliation”. In 1948, Justice Krishna Iyer was wrongly accused of conniving with alleged fissiparous parts and arrested. Historical past exhibits that the Authorities of Madras couldn’t justify his arrest and that he was exonerated, however solely after having to spend a couple of month in jail. As it’s generally stated, each occasion in life has some objective, ordained by future behind it. As George Gadbois Jr. Noticed: “Justice Iyer’s first hand expertise of jail circumstances and the inhuman remedy of prisoners started his life time ardour for jail reforms and the remedy of prisoners as human beings”.

Justice Iyer was thereafter elected to the Madras Legislative Meeting as an unbiased, supported by the Communist Social gathering. In 1957, after the re-organisation of the States, he was elected to the Kerala State Legislative Meeting, which led to the formation of the primary ever communist led Authorities in India. Justice Iyer was entrusted with main portfolios like inland navigation, energy, prisons, social welfare, agriculture, and so on., which stand testimony to the belief that the then Chief Minister – Sri.E.M.S.Namboodiripad had on him as an mental and a humanist. In 1959 this Authorities was dismissed; and between that yr and 1968, Justice Iyer flirted with electoral politics whilst he resumed his apply on the Bar. Within the yr 1966, my father joined him as a junior in his chambers and he recounted how busy Justice Iyer was, as a lawyer in nice demand, each by the elite and the widespread alike.

Justice Iyer’s political leanings fortuitously by no means disqualified him from being thought of for appointment as a Decide of this Court docket; and he was sworn in as one, on twelfth July, 1968.

Justice Iyer’s progressive imaginative and prescient and pragmatic capabilities have been fittingly recognised when he was appointed as a Member of the Regulation Fee in September 1971; and thereafter as a Decide of the Hon’ble Supreme Court docket on seventeenth July, 1973.

Throughout his legendary stint within the Supreme Court docket until November 1980, Justice Iyer democratised judicial treatments and gave parturition to the ideas of Public Curiosity Litigation and epistolary jurisdiction. He imparted a literary contact to his judgments, ignoring the standard sample – a lot of them pure poetry in motion, as was additionally talked about by Justice Balakrishnan Nair. He exemplified devotion to human rights, utilizing Worldwide Covenants and weaving them into the Indian jurisprudence by hermeneutic humanism. His imaginative and prescient was recognised world over and Lord Leslie George Scarman, the nice English Decide, wrote to Justice Iyer that he was moved by his passionate judgments in Ediga Annamma v. State of Andhra Pradesh and Rajendra Prasad v. Uttar Pradesh. In a non-public dialog, Justice Iyer, a few years later, informed me that these two selections, the place he put aside dying sentences, gave his soul large amount of solace.

I had as soon as requested Justice Iyer what his guiding ideas in his function as Decide have been. In his inimitable type, he stated it have been 4 and described them thus: The primary lesson he stated, elementary to life and regulation, is humility with out hubris and humanist listening to with out “excessive bench” angle; the second – which he stated touched his judicial coronary heart – was the compassionate treasury of the preamble to the Structure, significantly the phrases in its exordium “we, the individuals of India”; the third, was to listen to both facet pretty since braveness and independence obliged him to offer even “the satan its due”; and eventually, Justice Iyer informed me that his life has taught him that good justice is a mirage and that in pursuit of this phantasm, we ought to not jeopardise that justice which is inside our grasp.

Justice Iyer’s zeal and devotion to human rights, his rectitude and uprightness in points referring to probably the most marginalized; his devoutness to the constitutional imperatives and values — which he described variously as immutable, sacrosanct and stylish — have made him an empyrean phenomemen on the authorized and societal firmament, by no means seen earlier and should by no means ever be after him.

Creator is a Decide, Excessive Court docket of Kerala. Views Are Private.