While listening to the year-end interview of the Chief Justice of India Dhananjay Y. Chandrachud, I was reminded of a lesson learned long ago: being eloquent does not mean that you are an honest speaker.

Oratory is an art and one can be an expert in it, but is the orator speaking the truth or speaking honestly? That’s why I often warn my students about the dangers of being a ‘debater’. There is no education on the ethics of speech in debating in our schools. A speaker is taught to be able to argue for and against an issue with equal eloquence. Which side you are on, is not important.

But the side is important. Clever speakers choose sides or gather arguments for a given side. They cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility of what they say by claiming that the stand was not theirs, their job was only to gather arguments to prove it right. We know that they have chosen their side. The debater gets away by calling it an inevitability of his profession. He often does not take responsibility for what he says, which is his action.

We saw CJI Chandrachud answering difficult questions with ease. There were questions related to the judgement, he was part of, to build a Ram Temple on the land of the demolished Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. A critical question was why the judge who wrote the decision chose to not put his authorship on the order, as is the custom. In response to this, the Chief Justice said that it was a unanimous decision of the entire bench, hence the bench decided not to give the name of the person who wrote it. It was the decision of the court, hence no need for the name of the person who voices the bench. But his explanation does not hold because this is not and has not been the tradition of the court.

EXCLUSIVE | VIDEO: “Supreme Court judgement on Ram Janmabhoomi was the judgement of the court, not any individual. So the author of the judgement was not named. It was a case of long conflict and diverse viewpoints,” Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud tells @PTI_News on… pic.twitter.com/35820C1DOp

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 1, 2024

One reason for the author not giving his name may be modesty. Second, simple cowardice. We know from previous examples that you cannot often accuse justices of humility. The satisfaction of settling such a vexed matter of historical importance in a just way can be imagined. What could be the reason for restraining the temptation of being known as the author of such a monumental judgement? Or did our judges know what they were doing was justifying and rewarding an unjust act and did not want to take credit for that? At the very least, it tells us that there is still some shame left in our elite!

Is this because the decision,........

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