10-19-2006, 10:03 AM
<b>Quota & the judiciary </b>
<i> Against the venal political establishment, our battleâs never over.</i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Itâs about politics. Itâs about power. Itâs about using power to retain it at any cost. A politician gets his powers from making laws. This has become a cliché. But a politician now gains power by breaking the law. Or in other words, making an illegal law. A law which is lawless. He or she uses the institutions of law, constitutional institutions, to manufacture a new code of illegalities. The new office of profit law is an illegal law. Can a law be illegal? Yes. When its ends are designed to be illegal.
So let us get a new definition of Indiaâs politicians. They are a closed club of illegals who have mostly crookedly captured constitutional offices and are pervading their illegalities through the statute books. Because they use the legal form to manufacture their illegalities, they call it legal. And we calmly accept it. That prime illegal, Arjun Singh, invokes the Constitution, the sovereignty of Parliament, as does that other illegal, Somnath Chatterjee, at the smallest challenge to their excesses. A pliant media further dresses up the falsehood as truth. Like, for example, the Bannerji commission report on the Godhra carnage. And when the court rules against the illegalities, when the Supreme Court questions the basis of the reservation order, there is shock and silence. But only for a time. Then the juggernaut of evil, the forces of wrong, roll again.
This is a fight that wonât end soon. Our only chance, the only chance for a decent, fair minded citizenry, is to rally behind the Supreme Court. If we are not to be ruled and consumed by corrupt, dishonest and venal politicians, who have taken over constitutional positions, we have to be behind the Supreme Court.
We might yet get justice on quotas. But it is a long battle ahead.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<i> Against the venal political establishment, our battleâs never over.</i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Itâs about politics. Itâs about power. Itâs about using power to retain it at any cost. A politician gets his powers from making laws. This has become a cliché. But a politician now gains power by breaking the law. Or in other words, making an illegal law. A law which is lawless. He or she uses the institutions of law, constitutional institutions, to manufacture a new code of illegalities. The new office of profit law is an illegal law. Can a law be illegal? Yes. When its ends are designed to be illegal.
So let us get a new definition of Indiaâs politicians. They are a closed club of illegals who have mostly crookedly captured constitutional offices and are pervading their illegalities through the statute books. Because they use the legal form to manufacture their illegalities, they call it legal. And we calmly accept it. That prime illegal, Arjun Singh, invokes the Constitution, the sovereignty of Parliament, as does that other illegal, Somnath Chatterjee, at the smallest challenge to their excesses. A pliant media further dresses up the falsehood as truth. Like, for example, the Bannerji commission report on the Godhra carnage. And when the court rules against the illegalities, when the Supreme Court questions the basis of the reservation order, there is shock and silence. But only for a time. Then the juggernaut of evil, the forces of wrong, roll again.
This is a fight that wonât end soon. Our only chance, the only chance for a decent, fair minded citizenry, is to rally behind the Supreme Court. If we are not to be ruled and consumed by corrupt, dishonest and venal politicians, who have taken over constitutional positions, we have to be behind the Supreme Court.
We might yet get justice on quotas. But it is a long battle ahead.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->