The law in a modern society has always been linked with the elusive concept of freedom.

Dear Readers,

Donning the robes every morning and attempting to speak for one of us seemed like a task that had the potential to immediately connect one with people , with human issues and experiences ,and the impact on them of a largely accepted social order which has come to be termed , in a fairly general sense as ‘the law’.

It would however be surprising to see how tenuous the connection is between the ‘law’ and, ‘social order’ ‘human’ ‘experiences’ and ‘acceptance’ . The law in a modern society has always been linked with the elusive concept of freedom. Funnily enough, this freedom needs to be most strongly reclaimed in the thinking of, and evolution of the law. Today, we stand in the danger of such freedom being denuded – by legislators who have no link with the people they represent or the ideas that continuously shape the society they live in while they’re busy catching a siesta in Parliament ; by Courts which throw out pages and pages of legalese making them seem more and more like a closed door conference of academics into which one ventured by mistake; the state which will fight the citizen to uphold what the Parliament in its glorious wisdom decides; and by us conscientious citizens who , in all senses , duly let the law gather dust.

Does a sense even exist that the law as a form of control derives its legitimacy from us? That it cannot exist independent of our realities, and if it so does cannot be allowed to affect real lives. By the time this goes to print, the Delhi High Court will have delivered its ruling in the Naz’s case, and decided whether having consensual sex with another person of the same sex is a criminal act. No doubt the highest of arguments would have been advanced to convince the Court that such a provision strikes at what is seen as the basic norm which is the fabric of our existence as a society and nation – the Constitution. But even assuming that one cannot fit such position into the Constitution, however hard one may try (the Constitution is we cannot forget, amongst a lot of other things, also a document which by definition creates limitations), are we to conclude that such position can never achieve sanctity and recognition ? What if majority of the citizens in this country believe that a law as anachronistic as Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code cannot be allowed to continue? Do they still have to fight a legal challenge in Court, twist the Constitution out of shape to be able to give effect to such choice? The irrelevance of our parliamentary democracy perhaps best came out when, the debates having exhausted , the Court battles having been fought, people’s parades having marched, an official suggestion of repealing the provision was quietly raised for the first time as if in response to a seasonal issue running the course of its first season.

All of this brings us back to the bigger questions looming large over our heads. What is the law, and how do we better engage with it? Importantly, we must remember that attempting to create a thriving parliamentary democracy by putting up the right leaders is only the 1st step. Parliament and democracy are after all also creatures of the law, as are the Courts which have often stepped in to hear the citizen’s voice. The space is essentially the citizen’s to reclaim in a state, and the human’s in a society. Irrespective of whether or not they occupy a significant political space.

Join me as a fellow citizen and human being as we endeavour to do this. And sometimes, forget I happen to be lawyer, as I will also attempt to do.