Fraternity must be India’s foremost goal, says former Supreme Court judge

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Former Supreme Court judge Lavu Nageswara Rao addressing the Alumni Meet of the Acharya Nagarjuna University School of Law on Saturday. | Photo Credit: T. Vijay Kumar

Fraternity must be India’s foremost goal as equality and liberty, the core founding principles of the Constitution, cannot survive without it, former Supreme Court judge Lavu Nageswara Rao has said.

“We boast of being one of the largest democracies in the world, our fundamental rights and the dignity of human life, but we are suffering even after eight decades of Independence because of the debilitating effects of religion, caste and various divisive forces,” he said.

Participating as the chief guest at the Alumni Meet of the Acharya Nagarjuna University (ANU) School of Law on Saturday, Justice Nageswara Rao said caste continued to divide society and that he had not seen any improvement in this regard since Independence. What people got in 1947 was only “political independence” and not “social independence”, he said.

He said communities were being divided along caste lines for electoral gains and appointments were still being made with caste as a major consideration. The country could not progress as long as divisive forces succeeded in furthering their objectives, he said.

Justice Nageswara Rao cited the violent clashes between the Kuki and Meitei communities in Manipur over land and honour killings in different parts of the country as examples of the deep divisions among people and groups with different identities.

“India cannot move forward if these things continue to happen,” he said, adding that he wanted to leave an imprint on the minds of future lawyers in the hope that they would contribute to bringing about the desired change. Society would make real progress only when people embraced samatha and fraternity, which were not empty slogans, he said.

Justice Nageswara Rao said there were around 1,700 law colleges and 20 lakh lawyers in India, making competition both within and outside the courts intense for young lawyers and counselled them never to stop learning. Knowledge alone would stand them in good stead, he said, urging them to be ethical and truthful in discharging their professional duties.

Former Andhra Pradesh High Court judge Gannamaneni Ramakrishna Prasad stressed the need to train young advocates through case studies rather than subjecting them to obsolete methods of teaching, so as to bring out the best in them.

ANU Vice-Chancellor K. Gangadhar Rao, ICFAI University (Mizoram) Chancellor Y.R. Haragopal Reddy, Bar Council of India Vice-Chairman S. Prabakaran and Tamil Nadu Bar Council member G. Mohan Krishnan also spoke.

Later, Mr. Gangadhar Rao announced the appointment of Justice Nageswara Rao as Distinguished Emeritus Professor of ANU, drawing a huge round of applause.

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