Has internationalist Lady Justice’s makeover made her a North Indian upper-caste auntie?

Akshat Jain examines the symbolism, politics and legal ramifications of the rushed replacement of the statue of Lady Justice in the Judges' Library in the Supreme Court of India with a new Nyaya ki Devi.

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WHY was the outgoing Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr D.Y. Chandrachud in a tearing hurry to change the symbol of justice in India before his retirement? What important addition to his legacy did he want to make?

The new statue, christened Nyaya ki Devi, and authorised and presented to the world by CJI Chandrachud himself, has replaced the old statue of Lady Justice in the Judges' Library in the Supreme Court of India.

Speaking to the Times of India, the creator of the statue, Vinod Goswami, said, "While we initially thought of making the statue in bronze, owing to the paucity of time, it was created with fibreglass."

Why was there a lack of time? Why could he not have taken a few more weeks, months, or years to make this statue in bronze? Post-British India had lived with the old statue for over 75 years, they could have continued to do so.

The only event of note that could have led to the urgency is the end of CJI Chandrachud's tenure on November 10, 2024.

Post-colonial decolonisation

'Decolonisation' of Indian laws has become a favoured part of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party government's rubric. As per their narrative, India was not decolonised in 1947 when the British left the subcontinent. Rather, it continues to be colonised in the mind.

Therefore, this narrative holds, efforts need to be made to decolonise India. Laws made during the British era for India need to be replaced with 'Indigenous' laws. This is the logic that purportedly informed the introduction of three new criminal laws earlier this year.

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However, as critics have pointed out, the changes the new self-proclaimed decolonisation project has brought concerning the three criminal laws are mostly cosmetic, by changing their English language names— Indian Penal Code, 1860; Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872— to heavily Sanskritised Hindi names— Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) respectively.

In fact, many critics have pointed out that the only substantial changes brought about through these laws take India closer to being a 'police' State— quite contrary to the rhetoric of decolonisation that is being promoted.

Many petitions have been filed against various provisions of the new criminal laws in courts across India. Although it is improper for any sitting judge, let alone a CJI, to express their opinion publicly on a matter they might have to hear in court, CJI Chandrachud has vocally supported the criminal laws.

Moreover, whether it be his felicitation ceremony, organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), the second annual lecture series to mark the first sitting of the Supreme Court on January 28, 1950, or his address at the 75th Year Celebrations of the Supreme Court of India, the CJI has been quite outspoken about the more substantial 'need' for India's judicial system to 'shed its colonial legacy'.

Does this desire to free India from a 'colonial mindset' inform the urgency to consecrate the new Nyaya ki Devi?

In this context, media outlets such as The Hindustan Times have reported that "the commission of a new statue by Justice Chandrachud is being seen as an attempt to leave behind India's colonial legacy as the country steps into a new era with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita".

The Symbolic Order

A piece of stone becomes an idol not through some physical transformation but purely because people see it as such. Symbols are made by the meaning we derive from them.

For example, a bride will wear white in Christian countries but white is the colour of mourning for many communities in India, so much so that widows are not allowed to wear anything but white. The same colour symbolises different things for different people.

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Secondly, symbols are rooted in the historical experience of a culture. They develop over time to represent a certain meaning. For instance, the cross symbolised shame and punishment before the Christians changed its meaning into something sacred and worthy of worship.

In his book Justice Blindfolded: The Historical Course of an Image, Adriano Prosperi, professor of modern history at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, tells us that the Egyptians were the first to depict justice as a female figure, embodied by the goddess Ma'at, who used scales to weigh those in her presence.

Greek and Roman traditions later adopted these scales, though they each assigned different values to what influenced the balance.

In Jewish thought, this concept was tied to divine judgment, deciding innocence or guilt. Justice was often portrayed holding both scales and a sword, and the blindfold was initially introduced as satire during the Renaissance.

During the Enlightenment period, however, the blindfold was reinterpreted as representing fairness and impartiality, suggesting that justice was blind to social rank and judged all people equally.

It should be clear that Lady Justice, as she was found in the Judges' Library, did not originate in any one place or time but was a gradual coming together of the principles of various cultures over a long period. 

She was not so much a colonial legacy as a legacy of the aspirations for justice and the rule of law of different cultures all over the world.

The new Indian order

So, we have to ask, what does the change in the statue symbolise for the Indian collective today?

There are two parts to this question, first what has been discarded with the old statue of Lady Justice and, second, what has been introduced with the new Nyaya ki Devi.

Also read: Even Ganapati cannot fix the breach of people's trust in the judiciary

First of all, why is the symbol of justice a woman? The traditional Hindu gods of justice are Chitragupta and Yama. There is no female goddess in the Hindu pantheon who represents justice. Sculptor Goswami says that the statue is an attempt to give an Indian touch and to highlight the system of Chitragupta where our lekha jokha (sum of actions) is maintained. Why not a Nyaya ka Devta then?

Does not this pandering to the feminist cause undermine the 'decolonisation' and 'Indianisation' of the symbol of justice?

Secondly, the devi herself, being a puppet in the hands of the men who handled her— CJI Chandrachud, Sculptor Goswami and others— has been subjected to several changes.

The blindfold has been removed because, as a source told NDTV, CJI Chandrachud believes "that India should move from the British legacy and that the law is never blind, it sees everyone equally". Both these assertions are puzzling. Blindfolds have nothing to do with the British or their legacy, historically and culturally. As a matter of fact, some of the more famous cultural references to blindfolds are subcontinental, for example, Gandhari.

Two, as explained above, the blindfold over Lady Justice's eyes was a symbol of impartiality and equality before the law. The British, the Romans, the Greeks, the Jews and the Egyptians, no one ever put those blindfolds to represent the 'blindness' of the law.

Thus, CJI Chandrachud's assertion that the new Nyaya ki Devi with eyes open symbolises that "law sees everyone equally", which is an improvement over the "impartiality and equality before law" of the old Lady Justice is akin to saying that Section 152 of the new BNS (Act endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India) is an improvement over Section 124A (sedition) of the IPC.

As experts have explained, merely because the word sedition has been deleted does not mean Section 152 is better, it is actually worse. Semantics cannot replace substance.

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When the law was blind, we already had allegations of bias in the judiciary. So much so that a five-judge Supreme Court Bench headed by the CJI had to exhort fellow judges, "[E]ach individual has a certain degree of accumulated predispositions based on our experiences of life… At the same time, it is important that every judge should be aware of their own predispositions. The heart and soul of judging is the need to be impartial and fair."

This exhortation was needed precisely because judgments were not blind to social realities. Judges came to the court with their predispositions and biases. A different Bench could give an entirely different judgment on the same matter. For example, in recent years, we have seen how difficult it is to get bail from a Bench on which Justice Bela Trivedi sits.

The blindfold represented an ideal of justice rather than facts on the ground. It was widely known that the judiciary was dominated by upper-caste males and that justice favoured the rich and powerful, but the ideal was that it should not.

With the removal of the blindfold, the only change seems to be that even that ideal has been discarded as a colonial legacy. Judicial processes, that were earlier biased clandestinely, can now be biased transparently.

Another change made to move away from the British legacy is to drape the devi in a saree instead of a robe. Again, it is hard to understand what the robe has to do with the British or their legacy.

Robes have been worn in the subcontinent for thousands of years, by the Priest-King figure found at Mohenjo-daro, during the Mauryan period, and in the paintings at Ajanta.

In fact, it is the blouse that the new Nyaya ki Devi is wearing under her saree that has been called a British legacy by scholars. History tells us that when the British arrived in India, women in the subcontinent used to wear sarees over their bare breasts. In fact, in many communities in India, women still do not wear a blouse under their saree.

Also read: Lawless laws: The criminal law amendments and 'decolonisation' as an anti-feminist goal

The sword in the hand of the devi has been replaced by a copy of the Indian Constitution. Speaking on this decision, a senior official from the CJI's office explained, "The sword is a symbol of violence, but courts deliver justice according to constitutional laws. The new statue aims to reflect this principle."

If the sword was a mere symbol of violence, would countries around the world and their modern courts of justice continue to brandish it? This is even a departure from the traditional Indian (Hindu) legacy in which Chitragupta is portrayed with a pen and a sword.

The pen represents the power of the justice system to take cognisance, the sword represents its power to make decisions and to punish. What does the Constitution of India represent? Is it not itself a British legacy, as we are often reminded?

Another change— the mukut or crown on the devi's head— is a universal symbol of royalty. It is worn by monarchs, like the British kings and queens that ruled India. Why would a republic seeking decolonisation reinstate the crown on the head of its symbol of justice? The new kings of India— the Adanis and Ambanis of the world— must be tittering in their royal palaces.

Not only is the new Nyaya ki Devi royalty, but she is fair-skinned royalty. As Sam Pitroda would have put it, she looks like "people of the North", and not people of the South or the East.

Her facial features further cement this proposition. Her face is long and her eyes are almond-shaped. While Dravidians have wider faces, East Indians have monolid eyes. Her hair is thick, fine and straight, also typically associated with people in North India.

Nose shapes have been used to characterise people in the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years. The term 'anās' or 'noseless' in the Rig Veda is subject to debate, with interpretations varying between it referring to Dravidians or to forest-dwelling pre-Dravidian groups. The new Nyaya ki Devi has a sharp, prominent nose— a pucca Aryan. She is wearing a bindi, and it is anybody's guess which communities and cultures that excludes.

Also read: What does 'Indianisation' and 'reform' mean in the context of the three new criminal law Bills?

To make my point clearer, the new Nyaya ki Devi reminds us more of the late Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj— a North Indian (Punjabi, to be specific) Brahmin— than it does of the current President of the Republic Droupadi Murmu, who happens to be an Adivasi.

We can thus surmise that according to the CJI, and for all the media outlets and personalities applauding his decision, an authentic, decolonised India takes the form of an upper-caste Hindu from North India.

What is 'authentic' Indian?

If the devi as currently imagined represents a ruling minority of India, the question naturally arises, how could she be made more representative of India?

It is famously and proudly asserted that the territory that became India is a coming together of diverse cultures. Popular proverbs like "kos kos par badle paani, chaar kos par vaani" attest to the immense diversity of the people of the subcontinent.

Naturally, if the devi is made to look like or given the attire typical of any one region, religion or caste and said to represent authentic Indianness, others will feel left out of the imagination of an authentic Indian. And therein lies the rub.

If she is modelled after a Dalit from Kerala, a Muslim from Bengal will feel left out. If she is modelled after a Bhil from Rajasthan, a Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh will feel left out. Picking any one type is discrimination against the other types.

In this scenario, we have two options. The first option is that we take features from all types of people across India and combine them to make one composite representative.

We can model her hair after a Jat in Haryana, her eyes after a Kuki in Manipur, her skin colour after a Pulaya in Kerala, her facial structure after a Brahmin in Rajasthan, her nose after a Gond in Madhya Pradesh, her headdress after a Muslim in Karnataka, her dress after a Christian in West Bengal, her hands after a Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, etc.

Also read: Gods above the Constitution: A new era for India's judiciary?

Such an amalgam would satisfy no one and even look grotesque. This leaves us with the other option.

Since there is no single 'Indian' body and attire type, the solution that the earlier version of Lady Justice had adopted was to use a stock image that did not represent any region from India and looked equally foreign to all. No Indian could object to the body type representing a world image.

Discerning readers will know that these issues were discussed threadbare during the formative years of the republic, which is why English is the most commonly used official language in India and Dr B.R. Ambedkar wore the suit.

The foundational ideas of the Indian Republic represent the most progressive ideas of the entire world at that time because that was the only way to avoid devolution into the regression of Manu or the chaos of homogenising a subcontinent-level diversity. These ideas were embodied by and in Lady Justice.

Will the new Nyaya ki Devi, sans the blindfold, be a faithful bhakt of Yugpurush Narendra Modi, who has given us the mantra that "aag laganey waaley unkay kapdoun sey he pehchaaney jayengay" (those who indulge in violence can be recognised by their clothes alone)?

Will our saree blouse-clad, bindi and mukut wearing, nakhchadi (nosy) North Indian savarna auntie now recognise people from their clothes and dispense justice accordingly?