“Justice Krishnaswami Chandru is a phenomenon.” – Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was endowed with a sense of being outraged. For someone steeped in the learning and practice of law, the capacity to feel outraged does something very distinct, it becomes a scalding weapon in the otherwise cold arsenal of reason, logic, codes, procedures, precedents, and dicta. Ambedkar placed his legal training as cold ore is in the furnace of a smeltery, to produce the fiery ingots of a renascent vision, which then became the Constitution of India.

How can one keep the provisions of that text and the laws that have crowded around it from turning cold again?

The pages of this slender volume speak of how in India, the land of Ambedkar, the Buddha, Gandhi, Mahavira, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, and Thiruvalluvar, so much happens in human relationships that must cause outrage but does not. But the pages do so with a distinct message of hope.

Outrage and hope? Is that not something of a contradiction? Not so, if we study the achievements of Dr Ambedkar and of his thought-partner, Justice Chandru. The law in India is not a code as much as it is a philosophy of redressal, remedy, and reparation. And, at its best, redemption.

JUSTICE K. CHANDRU
JUSTICE K. CHANDRU is an advocate and former judge of Madras High Court. He disposed of 96,000 cases during his tenure as a Judge. A 1993 case that Chandru argued as a lawyer is the subject of the hit Tamil film Jai Bhim (2021, dir. T.J. Gnanavel), in which his character is played by the actor Suriya. He writes in Tamil and English, and his previous book was the bestselling Listen to My Case!: When Women Approach the Courts of Tamil Nadu (LeftWord, 2021).