Justice Krishna Iyer was a unique phenomenon, and a great personality. He started as a lawyer and concluded his mission as a true Viswamanavan. He “wandered in many worlds” as said in the autobiography.
He demonstrated the ethical glory and endless possibilities of a lawman. He was a jurist par excellence. He travelled the roads which others could not.
As an advocate who started in Thalassery, he could illustrate the finer parts of the profession. It was more than fair advocacy. He was not only winning in the profession, but rather winning over the profession.
Profession for him was a social mission. It was a public duty. He chose the poor tenants as his clients in lieu of rich landlords.
He was born as an elite, but stood for the downtrodden in the feudal landscape of erstwhile Kerala. My senior, advocate Govindan Nambiar, was one of the most favourite juniors to Krishna Iyer when Iyer practised in Thalassery.
Advocacy, for Krishna Iyer, was an ethical mission. It was the professional manifestation of his personal commitment to the voiceless mass. It is more than a professional passion.
It is humanism unparalled. Daniel Goleman tells about various facets of intelligence. Justice Krishna Iyer had a multifaceted intelligence.
He was socially, legally and spiritually creative. He had an extraordinary vocabulary on and off the bench. For him, adjudication was a creative process.
At the same time, even in verdicts with versatile language, Justice Iyer demonstrated high quality judicial discipline.
He followed the mandates of law without transgressing the boundaries of law. Justice Iyer once said that interpretive jurisprudence requires imaginative application of law. He also demonstrated it.
It is erroneous to approach “Iyer verdicts” as mere literary pieces. They are all sophisticated forms of philosophy in the guise of adjudication. They verified the past, explored the present and predicted the future. Some judgments had even prophetic value.
The country designed the waste management rules only after 1999. But Justice Iyer delivered the landmark judgment in Rathlam Municipality in 1980 before our parliamentarians could even think about the subject.
When judges normally follow legislation in India, the legislatures followed Krishna Iyer. Reforms in police and prison are illustrative instances.
Through his judgment, Justice Iyer spoke for the man in solitary confinement (Sunil Batra – 1979), for the prisoner awaiting gallows (Rajendra -1979) and the women victimised by personal laws (K. P. Khader – 1970). He spoke for citizens of all nations.
He believed that human rights are universal. Also he pleaded for animal rights by treating them as ‘animal citizens.’ He thought about “justice and beyond.” In the area of gender justice he stood for ‘women unbound. He advocated for vegetarianism and environmental conservation.
There is a need to initiate and develop a Krishna Iyer School in all walks of public life. As Dr. Ambedkar said, constitutional morality in India is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated.
Justice Iyer did it for the whole country. No other judge or politician in India could ever explore the enormous possibility of Indian Constitution as done by Justice Iyer.
Dr. Ambedkar and team designed it and Justice Iyer fulfilled it. He belongs to the future.
(The writer is a lawyer practising in the SC and Kerala High Court)
