Is it legal for a judge’s verdict to be infused with ‘belief’?

What do we, the common people, understand by the term ‘judiciary’? We understand it as a system that determines the truth of any matter, delivering verdicts in favour of truth and taking action accordingly. Here, strict reasoning reigns supreme; there is no place for flights of fancy. Fabricated statements, false rumours, or fanciful conjectures have no place in a civilised judicial system, which recognises and establishes the authority of truth alone with ruthless impartiality. It is for this reason that people want to trust the judiciary, just as they trust doctors to cure their ailments.

On the other hand, judges are thought to be unquestionably empowered by law. They are considered highly skilled and learned among the practitioners of justice, seasoned by long years of practice, well-versed in the blind spots of legal proceedings. The government may place full faith in their legal knowledge and discernment. In their hands rests the interest of truth, as well as the rights of innocent citizens. They are expected to show the path of truth and justice to all, identify wrongdoers, mete out appropriate punishment, and safeguard the social security of the populace. The highest form of social leadership rests in their hands—the leadership of justice, which no one else can provide.

It goes without saying that, in practice, such trust often falters—whether in courts or clinics. Clever arguments by lawyers or advocates can sometimes divert justice from the truth, just as unintentional or deliberate errors by doctors may cause harm. Biased judges may let criminals escape, and unscrupulous medical practitioners may ruin patients and their families. In both fields, human error is natural; yet when error serves vested interests, the result can be a ‘miscarriage of justice’ in law or medical malpractice in medicine. But leaving doctors aside, let us examine some astonishing judicial incidents. The setting is Jaipur High Court, Rajasthan, India.

These general remarks may seem abstract or airy-fairy to many. Yet, after witnessing a recent pronouncement by an Indian judge, it felt as if the entire country had gone mad—otherwise, how could such words be heard? My lament carries little weight, of course; across the Hooghly in Howrah, a certain Mr Pal long promoted, through repeated writings, that the sun revolves around the earth, and that the earth is square, not round. He even sold books on this theory in trains and buses. How much formal education he had remains uncertain. Science does not rely solely on belief or eyewitness testimony; it rigorously tests every hypothesis. Whether Mr Pal adhered to this standard is unknown. Perhaps it was merely a queer trade, as G. K. Chesterton might describe in his stories.

Meanwhile, in the United States, a faction of creationist Christians claim that the Christian God woke up one morning ten thousand years ago and suddenly created the earth and all life. They unsuccessfully tried to insert this theory into American curricula, and may attempt it again under Trump. In other words, every country has a lunatic fringe that will spout such nonsense. But judges? Symbols of justice? Pillars of the highest court? Surely not.

These words were spoken by Justice Maheshchandra Sharma of the Rajasthan High Court on the day of his retirement. His statements included the following astonishing claims:

1. The cow itself is a complete hospital, providing every possible form of treatment. (Whether he called it a super-specialty hospital is unclear; newspapers such as Anandabazar Patrika and Ganashakti, Kolkata, 1 June 2017, do not mention this.)
2. Drinking cow urine washes away the sins of past lives.
3. Drinking cow’s milk prevents cancer cells from entering the bloodstream.
4. Thirty-three crore Hindu deities reside in cows.
5. During the churning of the ocean in Hindu mythology, cows appeared alongside Goddess Lakshmi.

6. Drinking cow urine delays ageing (a former Indian prime minister reportedly consumed it; the drink was called ‘Shivambu’).
7. Plastering walls with cow dung protects against nuclear radiation. (He cited a ‘Russian scientist’ for this, though forgot to mention the name.)
8. Cow dung kills cholera bacteria.
9. Cow flatulence destroys germs in the air.

And that is not all: cows supposedly inhale oxygen and exhale oxygen, and they are the only mammals with intestines 180 feet long. For these attributes, he claimed cows should be declared India’s national animal—though why not all humans, too, remains unclear.

On the same logic, he justified the peacock as India’s national bird, calling it a ‘celibate’ bird. According to him, a male peacock need not mate with a female to fertilise an egg; it cries and sheds tears before the female, who swallows them, resulting in conception.

Is this irony, or lunacy? Justice Sharma, at least, does not consider it lunacy. He expressed these pronouncements in a 145-page legitimate judgment of a public interest litigation. The case involved over a hundred cows dying last year at a government-run gaushala in Hingonia, Rajasthan. Though the cow is supposedly a complete hospital, it could not protect itself from these deaths—a point the judge did not address. A citizen had filed a public interest suit to improve the gaushala’s conditions; he did not demand all these fantastical claims, which some might see as ‘making a mountain out of a molehill’.

Justice Sharma cited ancient texts to demonstrate his erudition. But our question remains: can such statements be casually expressed in the hallowed halls of justice? A judge, built at great public expense, cannot distinguish between belief and truth, and has no hesitation in fabricating fanciful tales? He acknowledged that these are matters of belief—but is it lawful for a judge’s ruling to be infused with ‘belief’? Will such a judgment be accepted by the court or the government? That is now a million-dollar question (and not of the illicit variety).

The late and revered Nabarun Bhattacharya wrote, in remembrance of a particular period in India, ‘This death-valley is not my country’. At times, one feels this dung-stained blindness is not my country either. Yet, where else to go? The fight against folly must be waged from within, in the people’s interest.

Pabitra Sarkar: linguist, literary scholar, theatre critic, educator, and researcher