The Impact of Swami Vivekananda on Constitutional Interpretation by the Supreme Court of India .

The impact of Swami Vivekananda on the political process and the ideology of the country has been profound , some of the definitive socio-political cases of the Supreme Court of India quotes Swami Vivekananda quite profusely.

The Court has used Vivekananda to interpret the Right to Equality and reservation for the Scheduled Castes in Akhil Bharatiya Soshit Karamchari Sangh (Rly.) v. Union of India,[1] by Justice Krishna Iyer.[2] . The Court has also quoted Vivekananda to justify the reservation given to Schedule Castes in State of Karnataka v. Appa Balu Ingale [3] as well as to justify the reservation policy of Other Backward Castes ( OBCs) in the most famous Indra Sawhney v. Union of India[4] ( also known as the Reservation Case ) .

The Court has used it for the purpose of interpreting the define what Education is under the Right to Education in P.A.Inamdar v. State of Maharashtra[5].

The Court has also delved into Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy in great detail and depth to interpret the question of Article 30 , that is the ambit of who is a minority religion and therefore who is entitled to get protection of Article 30 as a religious minority under the Constitution in Brahmachari Siddheshwar Sai v. State of West Bengal [6] The Supreme Courts observations on Swami Vivekananda and his philosophy and vision can itself be the basis for another article , but it should suffice to say that the Court very aptly rejected the application of the Rama Krishna Mission being the Mission founded by Swami Vivekananda himself to claim minority religious status by saying that they were an integral part of the Hindu world view . The Supreme Court infact has relied on Swami Vivekananda to define what is religion in Narayan Dikshitulu v. State of A.P.[7] Interestingly the Court in Shastri Yagnapurudasji v.Muldas Punardas Vaishya [8], concluded that after the teachings of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda , “ Hindu religion flowered into it’s most attractive , progressive and dynamic form”

The Court has used his philosophy to enunciate the need of the Courts to be sensitive to injustice in Balbir Kaur v. Steel Authority of India[9] and on the rights and duties of teachers in Avinash Nagra v. Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti[10] as indeed the nature and meaning , responsibility of being a citizen of India and the duties of those in government in Schedule Castes and Scheduled Tribes Officers Welfare Council v. State of U.P.[11]

The Court has relied on Swami Vivekananda to define Socialism in the Constitution and the Welfare State and it’s inspiration in Murlidhar Dayandeo Kesekar v.Vishwanath Pandu Barde[12] and Dharwad Dist. Literate Daily Wages Employees Association v. State of Karnataka.[13]

A quote from Vivekananda was also the first line in the famous judgment of Justice Verma in Ismael Faruqui v. Union of India [14]( also known as the Babri Masjid Judgement) , when the Court refused to entertain the reference of the Union of India as to the Bill relating to the Acquisition of Certain Areas in Ayodhya . Infact the quote about Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi being great Hindus while their teachings and life being example of great tolerance made out famously in S.R.Bommai v. Union of India[15] , so as define the conception of Secularism in India , being not antithetical to religion but of tolerance , is now an oft quoted almost legal principle by the Court .

The Court has even relied on him in the famous Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India[16] to establish the right of freedom of movement being an integral part of the right to life , and to interpret freedom of expression in State of U.P. v. Lalai Singh Yadav [17].

The presence of Swami Vivekananda in the interpretation of the Constitution is surprisingly large for a person who died in the year 1902 , nearly 45 years before India achieved it’s independence , and nearly 48 years before the Constitution was brought into effect and India became a Republic.

---

[1] (1981) 1 SCC 246

[2]In paragraph 78 and 79 , Justice Iyer says : “Let us be sure of the social facts. Mark Twain cynically remarked once: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” By that token, let us scan the status of the SCs & STs, the result of reservations in habilitating them into State services and the depressment impact on efficiency by supersession of meritorious seniors. It is a fact of our social history and a blot on our cultural heritage that 135 million men and women, described as SCs & STs, have been suffering as “suppressed classes”, denied human dignity and languishing as de facto bonded labour. They still are, in several places, “worse than the serf and the slave” and “their social standard is lower than the social standard of ordinary human beings” (Ambedkar). Tortured, violated and even murdered the saga of the SCs & STs is not only one of economic exploitation but of social ostracisation. Referring to the sorrows of the suppressed shudras (what I prefer to call the panchama proletariat) Swami Vivekananda demanded shudra Raj and refuted the incapabilities of the groaning untouchables:

“Aye, Brahmins, if the Brahmin has more aptitude for learning on the ground of heredity than the Pariah, spend no more money on the Brahmin’s education but spend all on the Pariah. Give to the weak, for there all the gift is needed.... Our poor people, these downtrodden masses of India, therefore, require to hear and to know what they really are. Aye, let every man and woman and child, without respect of caste or birth, weakness and strength, hear and learn that behind the strong and the weak, behind the high and the low, behind everyone, there is that Infinite Soul, assuring that infinite possibility and the infinite capacity of all to become great and good. Let us proclaim to every soul: ‘Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached’. Arise, awake!626”

To make democracy functional and the republic real the social and economic personality of these backwardmost sections had to be restored. From this angle, the ancient injustice on the shudras among the shudras has to be liquidated by effective equalising measures. Power, material power, is the key to socio-economic salvation and the State being the nidus of power, the framers of the Constitution have made provision for representation of these weaker sections both in the legislature and the executive.”

[3] 1995 Supp (4) SCC 469 para 19

[4] 1992 Supp (3) SCC 217 para 14 , 17

[5] 2005 (6) SCC 537 ; para 88

[6] 1995 (4) SCC 646

[7] 1996 (9) SCC 548 ; para 28 , 39 : It is essential to note what the Supreme Court said in paragraph 39 : “

Swami Vivekananda in his lecture on “Religion and Science” incorporated in The Complete Works (Vol. VI, 6th Edn.) had stated at p. 81 thus:

“Experience is the only source of knowledge. In the world, religion is the only science where there is no surety, because it is not taught as a science of experience. This should not be. There is always, however, a small group of men who teach religion from experience. They are called mystics, and these mystics in every religion speak the same tongue and teach the same truth. This is the real science of religion. As mathematics in every part of the world does not differ, so the mystics do not differ. They are all similarly constituted and similarly situated. Their experience is the same; and this becomes law.”

In Vol. II, 9th Edn. at p. 432, Swamiji said that:

“There are two worlds: the microcosm and the macrocosm, the internal and the external. We get truth from both these by means of experience. The truth gathered from internal experience is psychology, metaphysics and religion; from external experience, the physical sciences. Now a perfect truth should be in harmony with experience in both these worlds. The microcosm must bear testimony to the macrocosm and the macrocosm to the microcosm; physical truth must have its counterpart in the internal world, and internal world must have its verification outside;”

Swami Vivekananda in his The Complete Works, Vol. 1, 11th Edn. at p. 366 said that:

“The foundations have all been undermined; and the modern man, whatever he may say in public, knows in the privacy of his heart that he can no more ‘believe’, believing because it is written in certain books, believing because people like him to believe, the modern man knows it to be impossible for him. There are, of course, a number of people who seem to acquiesce in the so-called popular faith but we also know for certain that they do not think. Their idea of belief may be better translated as ‘non-thinking carelessness’. This fight cannot last much longer without breaking to pieces all the buildings of religion.

* * *

Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science justified itself? Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of religion? In my opinion this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigation, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen. All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation. Not only will it be made scientific — as scientific, at least, as any of the conclusions of physics or chemistry — but will have greater strength, because physics or chemistry has not internal mandate to vouch for its truth, which religion has.”

Swami Vivekananda in his The Complete Works, Vol. VI, 6th Edn. at p. 81 said that:

“Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world just as chemistry and the other natural sciences deal with the truth of the physical world. The book one must read to learn chemistry is the book of (external) nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart. The sage is often ignorant of physical science because he reads the wrong book — the book within; and the scientist is too often ignorant of religion because he, too, reads the wrong book—the book without.”

Again in his The Complete Works, (Vol. V, 8th Edn.) pp. 192-93, he says that:

“The basis of all systems, social or political, rests upon the goodness of men. No nation is greater or good because Parliament enacts this or that, but because its men are great and good. ... Religion goes to the root of the matter. If it is right, all is right. ... One must admit that law, government, politics are phases not final in any way. There is a goal beyond them where law is not needed.... All great masters teach the same thing. Christ saw that the basis is not law, that morality and purity are the only strength.””

[8] AIR 1966 SC 1119.; para 37

[9] 2000 (6) SCC 493 ; para 8

[10] 1997 (2) SCC 534 ; para 10

[11] 1997 (1) SCC 701 ; paras 14 -18.

[12] 1995 Supp (2) SCC 549 ; para 3

[13] 1990 (2) SCC 396

[14] 1994 (6) SCC 360 ; para 1.

[15] 1994 (3) SCC 1 ; para 182.

[16] 1978 (1) SCC 248 ; para 72

[17] 1976 (40 SCC 213 ; para 16