Justice Verma Committee comprising Retired Justice J.S. Verma, Retired
Justice Leila Seth and Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium, was
constituted on December 23, 2012, to look into the possible amendments
in the criminal laws related to sexual violence against women. Full report is available
Here.
More than 650 pages, 80,000 E-mails and just 29 DAYS!!! Here in this post, I reproduce some of the Great Quotes quoted in Justice Verma's report.
Amartya
Sen:
- “…There
is no automatic guarantee of success by the mere existence of democratic
institutions…The success of democracy is not merely a matter of having the most
perfect institutional structure that we can think of. It depends inescapably on
our actual behaviour patterns and the working of political and social
interactions. There is no chance of resting the matter in the ‘safe’ hands of
purely institutional virtuosity. The working of democratic institutions, like
all other institutions, depends on the activities of human agents in utilizing
opportunities for reasonable realization…”
- “The
idea of ‘capability’ (i.e. the opportunity to achieve valuable combinations of
human functionings — what a person is able to do or be) can be very helpful in
understanding the opportunity aspect of freedom and human rights. Indeed, even
though the concept of opportunity is often invoked, it does require
considerable elaboration, and capability can help in this elucidation. For
example, seeing opportunity in terms of capability allows us to distinguish
appropriately between (i) whether a person is actually able to do things she
would value doing, and (ii) whether she possesses the means or instruments or
permissions to pursue what she would like to do (her actual ability
to do that pursuing may depend on many contingent circumstances).”
Aristotle:
“The
greatest of all means…for ensuring the stability of Constitutions—but which is
nowadays generally neglected—is the education of citizens in the spirit of the
Constitution…”
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar:
“I feel that the
constitution is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the
country together both in peacetime and in wartime. Indeed, if I may say so, if
things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had
a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.”
Dr
Rajendra Prasad:
“…Whatever
the Constitution may or may not provide, the welfare of the country will depend
upon the way in which the country is administered. That will depend upon the
men who administer it. If the people who are elected, are capable and men of
character and integrity, they would be able to make the best even of a
defective Constitution. If they are lacking in these, the Constitution cannot
help the country. After all, a Constitution like a machine is a lifeless thing.
It acquires life because of the men who control it and operate it, and India
needs today nothing more than a set of honest men who will have the interest of
the country before them…
It
requires men of strong character, men of vision, men who will not sacrifice the
interests of the country, at large for the sake of smaller groups and areas and
who will rise over the prejudices which are born of these differences. We can
only hope that the country will throw up such men in abundance…”
Edgar Bauer:
- “While
the two-sex scheme posits a hierarchical structure in which the female sex is subordinated
to its complementary opposite, the Galenic one-sex model establishes a bi-polar
hierarchy, which results from the way individuals actualize in their bodies the
unique sexual nature of maleness .”
- “On
this account, "fe-males" are only imperfect instantiations of the
single existing sex and they must therefore be subordinated to
"males" as the superior realization of mankind's sexual nature.
Although the one-sex model became a determinant factor in Renaissance
anatomical studies and its traces are observable even in Sigmund Freud's theory
of a unique male libido, it never challenged seriously the pervasive influence
of sexual binarism, whose ideological prestige was supported by biblical
revelation and allegedly observable factuality.”
- “For
its modern advocates, the third sexual mode was an indispensable accretion to
binary sexuality designed to closure the possibilities of what is conceivable
as "sex". Later on, the third sex was conceived as an emblematic
sexual variety that, besides superseding binomial sexuality, initiates a sexual
series, which excludes the idea of its own final completion… While the proposal
of a "suppletive" third sex sought to overcome the limitations of the
sexual binomium by adding a collective category that included all previously
rejected or ignored sexual alternatives, the postulation of a
"serial" third sex reflected the insight that no final sexual
category can do justice to the inexhaustible variability of human sexuality.”
Justice
Mukhreija:
- “…..As
we have said already, the executive government are bound to conform not only to
the law of the land but also to the provisions of the Constitution. The Indian Constitution
is a written Constitution and even the Legislature cannot override the
fundamental rights guaranteed by it to the citizens. Consequently, even if the
acts of the executive are deemed to be sanctioned by the legislature, yet they
can declared to be void and inoperative if they infringe any of the fundamental
rights of the petitioners guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution…..”
- “The
limits within which the Executive Government can function under the Indian
Constitution can be ascertained without much difficulty by reference to the
form of the executive which our Constitution has set up. Our Constitution
though federal in its structure, is modelled in the British Parliamentary
System where the executive is deemed to have the primary responsibility for the
formulation of the governmental policy and its transmission into law though the
condition precedent to the exercise of this responsibility is its retaining the
confidence of the legislative branch of the State. The executive function
comprises both the determination of the policy as well as carrying it into
execution. This evidently includes the initiation of legislation, the
maintenance of order, the promotion of social and economic welfare, the
direction of foreign policy, in fact the carrying on of supervision of the
general administration of the State…..”
Lord
Woolf:
“The
evolution can be incremental in a way which would be difficult if we had a
written Constitution. But flexibility comes at a price. We have never had the
protection that a written Constitution can provide for institutions that have a
fundamental role to play in society. One of those institutions is a legal
system that is effective, efficient and independent. A democratic society
pledged that the rule of law would be deeply flawed without such a legal
system…..”
“There is hardly an
institution performing functions of a public nature which has not been the
subject of change. The changes have had an impact on the way in which our
Constitution operates…..”
Mahatma
Gandhi:
“Woman
is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right
to participate in the minutest details in the activities of man, and she has an
equal right of freedom and liberty with him. She is entitled to a supreme place
in her own sphere of activity as man is in his. This ought to be the natural
condition of things and not as a result only of learning to read and write. By
sheer force of a vicious custom, even the most ignorant and worthless men have
been enjoying a superiority over woman which they do not deserve and ought not
to have. Many of our movements stop half way because of the condition of our
women.”
Marian
Anderson:
“[Prejudice] it’s
like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your
fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.”
Mqbul-ul-Huq:
“As
we approach the 21st century, we hear the quiet
steps of a rising revolution for gender equality. The basic parameters of such
a revolution have already changed. Women have greatly expanded their
capabilities over the last few decades through a liberal
investment in their education. At the same time, women are acquiring much
greater control over their lives through dramatic improvements in reproductive
health. They stand ready and prepared to assume greater economic and political
responsibilities. And technological advances and democratic processes are on
their side in this struggle. Progress in technology is already overcoming the
handicaps women suffer in holding jobs in the market, since jobs in the future
industrial societies will be based not on muscular strength but on skills and
discipline. And the democratic transition that is sweeping the globe will make
sure that women exercise more political power as they begin to realize the real
value of the majority votes that
they control. It is quite clear that the 21st century
will be a century of much greater gender equality than the world has ever seen
before.”
Nancy
Fraser:
“Alternative
remedies of homophobia and heterosexism are currently associated with gay
identity politics, which aims to revalue gay and lesbian identity.
Transformative remedies, in contrast, are associated with queer politics, which
would deconstruct the homo- hetero dichotomy…so as to de- stabilize all fixed
sexual identities. The point is not to dissolve all sexual differences in a
single, universal human identity; it is, rather, to sustain a sexual field of
multiple, debinarized, fluid ever -shifting differences”
Pierre Rosanvallon:
“Our
history is directed towards a rationalist conception of democracy. In France,
democracy is not based upon the confrontation of interests, it is not based
upon the negotiation of demands and needs. It wants to establish itself upon an
objective image of the general interest. And this general interest is not
determined by confrontation; it is understood by reason”
Pratap
Bhanu Mehta:
“The
disenchantment with the state often expresses itself in the thought that those
who wield state power are not accountable.”
Shiela
Barse:
“Thus
the meaning of law and the empowerment which law gives and the clothing of man
with such Constitutional rights is only to make sure that whether it be State
or whether it be man, and after all the State contains men, that with Pausanius,
King of Sparta, a man feels confidently that “laws should have an authority
over men, not men over laws” in order to see that a human right is also
accompanied by an enforcement modus effectualis, it is necessary to give it in
the first instance the prime importance which it deserves and which is merited
to it in law, after all law itself recognises the high dimensions and
dyophysite existence of rights, the one absolute impregnable and the other
subject to social regulation by valid statute law.”
Moral of the Story: A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.
