Hyderabad, Feb 25: Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Saturday said that every educational institution must stop caste-based segregation and discrimination of the students from Dalit and Adivasi communities.
Mentioning some of the incidents, CJI said that incidents of suicides of students from marginalized communities are becoming common.
“Allotment of hostels based on entrance marks which leads to caste-based segregation, putting out a public list of marks along with social categories, asking for the marks of Dalit and Adivasi students publicly to humiliate them, making a mockery of their English and physical appearance, stigmatising them as inefficient, not acting on incidents of abuses and bullying, not providing a support system, or reducing or stopping their fellowships, normalising stereotypes through jokes are some of the basic things which every educational institution must stop,” said CJI Chandrachud.
“In other words, practicing empathy requires institutional changes,” CJI stresses.
CJI said that promoting empathy must be the first step that educational institutions ought to take and Nurturing empathy can end the culture of eliteness and exclusion.
The CJI was addressing the 19th Annual Convocation of the National Academy of Legal Studies and the Research University of Law, Hyderabad (NALSAR).
“In our journey of 75 years since independence, we have been focusing on creating ‘Institutions of Eminence’,” he said.
“But more than that, we need “Institutions of Empathy” – a term I read in a news article. Some of you may be wondering why the Chief Justice is speaking on this issue. Well, because I think the issue of discrimination is directly linked with the lack of empathy in institutions,” he added.
He further said that judges cannot shy away from social realities and instances of judicial dialogues are common across the globe.
He also mentioned about the “Black Lives Matter” movement that emerged in the United States after the murder of George Floyd, and pointed out that “All nine judges on the Washington Supreme Court -the highest court in the state of Washington in the United States -released a joint statement addressed to the judiciary and legal community on the “degradation and devaluation of black lives” in the United States.”
CJI said that in similar ways, judges in India have a crucial role in making dialogue with society, inside and outside the courtrooms – to push for social change.
“As Chief Justice, apart from my core judicial work and administrative duties, my effort is also to throw light on structural issues affecting our society,” he said.
CJI stresses on the increasing use of technology to increase access to justice and to take it as an opportunity to make the judicial system an epitome of transparency.
CJI emphasised diversity and inclusion and said he has approved in principle a proposal sent by the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes to have 36 law graduates from the Scheduled Tribe community, come and work at the Supreme Court as Fellows and get first-hand experience of the working of the Supreme Court of India. These students whom we mentor today shall become successful lawyers and judges of the future.
“We can now see a number of youtube channels producing videos on legal concepts in a simplified form. The number of views on these videos indicates the level of curiosity which our citizens have towards legal discourse, and it is our job to make our citizens aware about the law. Therefore, I think technology can allow us to take legal education to a mass level so that law does not remain a field or profession of the elites,” he said.
CJI said teaching or study resources can be made available online publicly to students, even if that student is not enrolled in law school. This can encourage quality learning everywhere, he added. (ANI)
