Need to Gussy up Judicial System
With almost more than eleven lakhs practising lawyers, India has second largest legal community in the world. Unfortunately, the state of legal affairs is woeful. No doubt the biggest problem facing the judiciary is the volume of pending cases over 4 crores.
Court cases turn into prolonged battles. Justice is merely an afterthought. The commoners are the losers. More cases are filed every day than the sluggish judiciary can handle. Ordinary cases, not linked with high profile persons or of media interest, take years and years to conclude. Till then, the aggrieved party relieves the agony of the wrong done to it and the perpetrators walk free.
The cost of hiring the advocates is hefty. The judicial process too is expensive, so a vast number of people prefer injustice rather than to knock at the door of the temple of justice. We need reforms with an effective rather than an efficient system which pertains to more social equilibrium and free from political spectrum.
The people of our country evidently continue to have credence in our judges and the justice delivery system, but unfortunately, the faith has been shaken by events of the last couple of years and unless we are bailed out from the state of jeopardise through very quick corrective measures, all of us will find ourselves in the concavity. It is high time we revamped the legal profession. Our judicial system must work fast and cost less.
Dr. Majeed Mulla
Pune, Maharashtra
‘Uniformity is the Death-Knell of Nations’
It was revealed in a survey conducted by Anthropological Survey of India that there are around five thousand communities in India. Karnataka alone has 299 communities. Each of these communities has its own laws of marriage, divorce and inheritance. Some of them have customary laws. In our vast country there are varieties of rules and regulations, norms and customs followed.
For example, while in some Hindu families, marriage between cousins is considered incestuous, in others it isn’t. Section 29A, 29B and 29C of the Hindu Succession Act, conferring rights on daughters in joint family property, are applied to the southern states. Hindus have the Mitakshara as well as the Dayabhaga schools of law. A vast population of Hindu tribals is kept out of purview of the Hindu law.
On this Guru Golwalkar Ji, while inaugurating the Deendayal Research Institute in1972, said that a uniform civil code was not necessary for national unity. “For unity”, he said, “we need harmony, not uniformity”. He further observed: “I think uniformity is the death-knell of nations. Nature abhors uniformity. I am all for the protection of various ways of life.” (The Motherland, August 21, 1971).
Mohammad Naushad, Advocate
National Games Village
Bengaluru, Karnataka
No Hindi Imposition
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has said that Tamil Nadu and DMK would do everything under their powers to stop Hindi Imposition as the party has always striven for and would remove the undeserving special status that Hindi enjoyed everywhere in the Union Government like Railways, Postal Dept., Banking and Parliament, etc.
“We pay our taxes, contribute to the progress and believe in our rich heritage and the nation’s diversity.
Our language deserves to be treated equally. We will resist any attempt to replace Tamil with Hindi in our land,” he said.
Dravidar Kazhagam founder E.V. Ramasamy Periyar mobilised the people against the move in 1937 and also in 1948 when another attempt was made to make Hindi an optional subject in schools. Finally in 1965, the DMK organised a massive agitation, locally known as “Mozi Por” (Language War) when the 15-year moratorium given to making Hindi the official language when the Constitution was adopted in 1950, came to an end. It was that agitation that paved the way for DMK power in the 1967 election.
Chowdhry Nisar Ahmed
Noorullah Pet, Ambur (Tamil Nadu)