How Will I Be Remembered?

Recently, our Chief Justice (CJI) wondered aloud: Having served his country, how will he be remembered?

This is a fair question, especially as he soon demits his onerous constitutional office. There is always in the human mind that little doubt which persists in crevices yet not explored.

Now, as we grow older, we grow more philosophical. And if one is a believer in the divine, age does give you a theological orientation. God is, if nothing else, a tremendous source of solace at the best of times.

Justice Chandrachud has recently, while speaking at his native village, spilled the beans. The Almighty has helped him in reaching a judicial conclusion in the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi matter, a case that has been eluding a judicial conclusion for quite some time.

Now, then this asking God to intervene is something all school students have done, especially when an exam has come knocking for which one is not entirely sure. Or when one is in search of a job. The more urgent the search, the more fervent the prayer. God as omnipotent must, we assume, have with him or her the solution that mere mortals do not. For God is everything that humans are not.

Immortal as opposed to mortal, just as opposed to unjust, all-knowing as against our tiny puny limited selves. And he/she is always ready to listen, to guide the believer out of the doldrums, the repository of the unlimited. Tagore said it – seemar majhe aseem tumi – within the limited you are limitless. And not forgetting that God is forgiving. The Almighty is says the Holy Quran, merciful and compassionate.

So, what is this brouhaha all about? Why can’t the CJI ask for divine advice? And, lest we forget, he was constitutionally exercising his right to have and profess faith. Even a cursory reading of Article 25 of the Indian Constitution says that all persons are equally entitled to…profess, practice and propagate religion.

The problem is always with humans and not with the gods. Indians have started asking which god he prayed to before writing the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi judgement. And how do we know what the Divine had said? For, in many cases that have been noted in the past, divine messages have not been interpreted correctly even by the most ardent of followers.

The meek shall inherit this Earth and we are two thousand years and counting after Jesus gave this message and we are nowhere near that ideal. These things are not trifles. They are stuff that makes the sceptic ask and muddy the clear divine waters.

Humans are not always listening to the Divine, and /or we do not know what the Divine is saying. All messages from the Divine to the mortal are personal. Even if that mortal is the CJI. This is why humans stressed the written words as well as reason and had reasons written down. Not that it helped. If you look at the Ten Commandments and the history, thereafter, not even being etched in stone helped. That is why, even as we go through with Article 25 you cannot use that as subservient to divination.

Another track may be tried out. If God is omnipotent and rewards the just and punishes the evil, then she/he has not done a very clean job. All this bloodshed in God’s name, all this genocide in the Holy Land, the riots in our own India down to the rape and murder of this innocent doctor in my hometown Kolkata, all this surely needs to be accounted for.

Or are we to presume that the Divine has left it to us mortals to do his work? In that case, the CJI, then a member of the Bench that delivered the Babri judgment, did conclude that felling the old mosque was an act of criminality. But no judicial order on the breach of law was made. The criminals were allowed to go free of their burden of bringing down a house of worship.

This is why we must make our divine messages public. For God may have said as Victor Hugo told us in Les Misérables …” there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.”

Now, if that has been the message, then the criminals must go scot-free. God is waiting for them and justice will be done. This raises yet another question – what happens to our courts then? Are they to simply notify God – please note, that we are sending these people for final judgment and leaving it to you for the sentencing?

This would be a Lord-to-Lord conversation, which leaves the sceptic cold but then given the times we are in we may go along with it with the caveat as I said above, that the good lord has not done a great job, at least on terra firma. What he does in his Heaven, is not known for the ways of the Lord are mysterious. This is why humans thought of reason – reason was supposed to be non-mysterious, transparent and you arrive at the same conclusion if you know how to go about it.

But let us assume that God gave his advice and made the judicial decision virtuous. For we can only remember people of virtue in this world. With so many doing so much in so many ways, and vying for our attention daily, remembrance must be an honour. We collectively remember that which is virtuous, for being virtuous is difficult. It is always in short supply and ever more in demand.

Let us then remember our CJI for being a pious person. A man who showed us, if proof is needed, that he was worshipping with none other than the Prime Minister by his side. Pictures will not lie. The images are part of our history, and all that the historian must do is pick up these pieces and string them together to answer the question that his Lordship asked.

Piety then it must be, and the gods are always looking out for virtues like that. In that case, our answer is clear but for a small niggle. Philosophers have this unerring capacity to raise questions, which is one of the reasons why we have asked our universities to concentrate on teaching technology since they do not ask troubling questions on virtue and piety. Given a few more years we will manage to be completely technologized and forget the quibbles, but till that time comes, let us have a peep into our collective past.

Socrates says Plato had a dialogue with Euthyphro, in which he asked him to define piety. This incident is in the backdrop of a court case, in which Euthyphro is seeking to prosecute his father for homicide. Piety is doing as I am doing, said Euthyphro, prosecuting someone guilty of murder, sacrilege and similar crimes. The impious says Euthyphro must not go unpunished. But Socrates is not satisfied with an example. He insists that Euthyphro explain the general idea which makes pious things pious and impious things impious. To which Euthyphro says confidently that piety is that which is dear to the gods and impiety is that which is not dear to them.

The arguments are a philosopher's delight, but we have no space to write about them except to say that after a great deal of debate and discussion, Socrates asks Euthyphro – ‘I wish to understand whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods?’

This is Euthyphro’s dilemma and is ours as well. Is that judgment good because it was a judgment of the highest court or is it good because it has warmed the cockles of a particular set of people? We shall never know and all else is speculation, which is a pity, for had this been cleared by our CJI we would certainly have remembered Justice D Y Chandrachud for clearing our collective ignorance. Till that time let us remember him for asking God to give him reason in resolving the most fractious case that bedevilled Indians for reason is that which the gods love the most.

Surajit C Mukhopadhyay is Dean of Social Sciences at Sister Nivedita University. The views here are the writer’s own.

Cover Photograph: Pieter Claesz, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, 1628. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.