RAM MANOHAR LOHIA speaking in a public meeting in Hyderabad on July 17, 1959, asked the audience as part of his speech, “Who are the judges and police officers, which caste do they belong to, and whom do they support?.”
He noted, “Never assume that judges and magistrates only dispense justice. This is wrong. The one who sits on the judge’s chair is, after all, also a human being. Some things remain stuck in his mind like ‘What is society? ‘What is justice?’, ‘What should the structure be like?’. If there is an upper caste judge then, leave one out of hundred, there will be ninety nine such people [who would say that if]...the land documents are in his name, it is therefore his property, [and] hence, it should be his. Then he will not see anything else. He will understand that ‘[This] is justice, give it to him’. He will not look at things like where they live, whether they have toilet facilities or not, whether they can live like humans or not, because those old things are [still] stuck in his mind. This will continue as long as police station officers, magistrates and judges belong to upper castes only.”
Lohia was not called up for contempt in any court for his public speech. However, just two years before E.V.Ramasami (‘EVR’), popularly called Periyar in Tamil Nadu, known for his fight for social reforms and attack against caste system, was hauled up for contempt by the Madras High Court. In a judgement passed by the Madras HC in a writ petition (W.P.No. 568/1955), the High Court had passed strictures against the District Collector Malaiappan. While speaking in a public meeting, EVR noted that the critical comments made by the Judge Rajagopala Iyengar against the non-Brahmin District Collector was highly unwarranted and asked, ‘Would the judge have made similar comments if the District Collector was a Brahmin Officer?’. In April 1957, in the contempt, EVR made a detailed statement justifying his comments and also stated once again that the judges are not free from caste bias.
