Remembering the legacy of a great Justice

A Brief History of Article 13A of the Constitution

by Harshit Anand

Many of us living in the year 2032 live under the false impression that the cow, our national animal, was always this holy, and the ‘spirit of nationalism’, our national spirit, was always this inalienable. We take for granted the struggle of those millions who contributed not only in terms of Facebook comments and videos but also sticks and stones, for the so-called seculars of those times insisted that only sticks and stones would break their bones, and simple name-calling and trolling was not enough. However, like all epoch-making events in the history of our country, exactly 15 years ago, it was the judiciary which came to our rescue- a High Court Judge showed exemplary valour on the last day of his tenure as the sitting judge of the Rajasthan High Court, and embarrassed the likes of V.R. Krishna Iyer and H.R. Khanna with his jurisprudential inquisition. Who knew back then, that a plain yet lucid theory propounded while speaking to reporters outside the Court on a sultry May evening, would pave the way for perhaps the most pious Constitutional Amendment in the history of our Hindoostan!

That day, the Judge, in his own words, listened to ‘the sound of his soul’, which was also the sound of every Indian citizen. It was not easy, for the seculars were asking all sorts of illogical questions- ‘So if the cow is your mother, why do want it to be designated as the national ‘animal’?’, ‘So when the cow becomes the national animal, what happens to the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger?’ What the seculars did not realize was that the issue of according status to our mother was not an issue which required critical reasoning or an analytical approach; it was a matter of heart, emotions, religiosity and respecting the will of the majority. The Judge understood what was the need of the hour- he kept logic at bay and spoke what the government of the day and consequently, the people of India (because of representative democracy, the mandate of the people and all that jazz, you know) wanted to hear. Front and center, Article 13A now occupies an unrivaled space in Indian constitutional law which bridges religion, the citizen, the State and the Court. After all, it was only in 1976 that the word ‘secular’ was introduced in the Constitution; Cow, on the other hand, had been a motherly animal for ages.

As the Sun set over the city of Jaipur on the 31st of May, 2017, the average hinterland Hindu discovered the fire that burned inside him. The pressure was mounted from all sections of the society and countless mothers, or whatever remained of their ribs and meat, were rescued from the progeny of Akhlaq and Pehlu Khan. In the year 2024, the government of the day finally accepted that there is no such thing as the tyranny of the majority; majority is democracy, democracy is majority. By an overwhelming majority in both the Houses and the State legislatures, Article 13A became a part of our Constitution.

Article 13A of the Constitution, a brooding omnipresence when compared to the inferior textual provisions such as Article 25 and Article 26, reads, ‘All laws in force in the territory of India immediately before the commencement of this provision, in so far as they are inconsistent with the rights and privileges of a cow, shall to the extent of such inconsistency, be void.’ By the operation of this Article, every law, every ordinance and every regulation today needs to take into consideration the well-being of a cow. The cow is the ultimate touchstone of all legal performance; everything begins and ends on a cow. The fountainhead for this judicial premise came from the Judge’s detailed and well-researched recommendations and orders of May 31, 2017, in which he ably proved cow dung protects from radiation and consumption of cow urine keeps the brain and heart healthy. But what made all the difference was the analogy which the Judge drew outside the Court- between a peacock’s celibacy and the cow’s purifying urine. The world stood up and took notice of the comparison drawn; there was hardly any intellectual irregularity. The judgment, since then, has been cited on numerous occasions in the Apex Court itself.

15 years later, we need to assess whether we have preserved or squandered the legacy of the Justice. We need more uniformity today, but more than uniformity, what we need is a favorable justice delivery system and exclusive models of development which will help eliminate those who refuse to abide by the Constitution in general, and Article 13A in particular. Have we achieved all our goals? We clearly have not. Our quest for the declaration of an international Gau Mata day has continuously fallen on deaf ears. There is no legislation which compels a citizen to consume a certain amount of cow urine daily. Cow cess is a pipe dream. Together, we need to work relentlessly to achieve these goals, or else Article 13A would eventually become a dead letter in our Hindoostan.

Author’s bio: Harshit Anand is a student of law at Chanakya National Law University