The Cases That India Forgot

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Can a state legislature imprison a critic and summon a high court judge to appear before it?

Are religion-based personal laws above fundamental rights?

Why did the Punjab Police organize a band to celebrate the defeat of the state in a case of sexual harassment?

In this book, constitutional expert Chintan Chandrachud takes us behind the scenes and tells us the stories of ten extraordinary and dramatic legal cases from the 1950s to the present day that have all but faded from public memory. Chandrachud paints an unexpected picture of the Indian judiciary - the courts are not always on the right side of history or justice, and they don't always have the last word on the matters before them. This entertaining book is an incisive look into the functioning of Indian institutions.

A few years ago, I began writing op-eds for newspapers with a view to engaging with those outside my profession. One of the early comments that I received was that my writing was still somewhat 'legalistic' and difficult to access for those with little or no training in law. This turned out to be a wider complaint against lawyers and legal scholars - that their writing was often hard to read and difficult to understand. The vast majority of writing by lawyers (including commentary which is directed towards the general public) is remarkably inaccessible, although this is gradually changing with time. Addressing this complaint was the primary impetus behind the book.

The Supreme Court and high courts are at the epicentre of public life in India. Almost every political, economic, religious and historical question is (rightly or wrongly) formulated as a legal or constitutional question and arises for judicial decision. Some of the cases that the Supreme Court and high courts decide are etched in public memory because of their social significance or political impact. The Mandal Commission case set the benchmark for determining who the beneficiaries of reservation could be, while the Kesavananda case imposed limitations on Parliament's authority to amend the Constitution. Entire volumes are dedicated to these cases, which have been analysed and dissected threadbare.

For each of these landmark cases, however, there is a catalogue of cases that is not in the general public consciousness or at any rate, no longer in the public consciousness if it once was. Each chapter of this book focuses on one of these 'forgotten' cases - cases that are not in the public memory, but should be. The cases are divided into four overarching themes - politics, gender, religion and national security. The cast of characters in these chapters cuts across class, caste and community from the Brahmin students of Madras seeking admissions to college to the local politician in Gorakhpur who unabashedly criticized his MLA, and from the powerful Adivasi woman who was the victim of a heinous crime to the Delhi professor who took a state government to court for establishing an armed civilian movement.