CJI has got this right

Life has become compartmentalised and professionals are afraid to enter a domain for public conversation outside their area of expertise. That’s why it was refreshing to see Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur step out of the crease, to borrow a phrase from cricket, and whack the ball of religion at a book release on Sunday. In these troubled times when the sword of religion is brandished at the drop of a hat in both social and political discourse in this country, and has become the scourge of international life by being linked to extremist violence, the CJI pulled no punches. He didn’t worry that the political establishment may read him wrong given that his term has seen open disagreements between the judiciary and the executive.

Mr Thakur clearly held that a man’s relationship with God — he could have said “person” instead of “man”, to be gender-sensitive — was uniquely his own and no one had any business entering it. The judicial luminary was also forthright in holding that more lives had been lost in religious wars than over differences of political ideology. It’s important to assert this in order to bring down established religious hierarchies a peg or two, and raise the individual to the level where he is seen to have the capacity to communicate with the divine in his own way without having to go through “proper channels”, as it were. What Mr Thakur also omitted to say was that atheists too have as much of a place as believers.