Constitution and democracy are not synonymous. If democracy is just about conducting elections once in five years, then we do not require a Constitution at all. Unfortunately, elected people all over the world, not just in India, believe that electoral victory confers legitimacy for everything that the elected government does, Jasti Chelameswar, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, said on Saturday.
He was addressing a gathering at the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) here after releasing a book, Constitutional Concerns: Writings on Law and Life, authored by Supreme Court lawyer Kaleeswaram Raj. N. Ram, Director, The Hindu Publishing Group, received the first copy and subsequently chaired the first session of a colloquium addressed by former High Court judges K. Chandru and K. Kannan.
In his keynote address on ‘The Constitution and Democracy’, Justice Chelameswar cited the capital punishment imposed on Greek philosopher Socrates on the charge of spreading wrong ideas and said the punishment was not imposed by one or two judges but by the entire citizenry of Athens. “If democracy means only numbers and participation of people, the trial and punishment of Socrates must be the most democratic act,” he said. Stating that mere numbers were not sufficient and those numbers should be necessarily guided by some better standards of ethical or rational principles through which people could govern themselves, he said, “It is this requirement which necessitates the existence of the Constitution.” It was to check the tendency of misusing electoral majority that the system of constitutional governance was invented by the genius of mankind, he added.
