The Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai has hailed the Indian Constitution as an unpretentious social document that does not avert its gaze from the brutal truths of caste, poverty, exclusion and injustice in the country.
“It (the Constitution) does not pretend that all are equal in a land scarred by deep inequality. Instead, it dares to intervene, to rewrite the script, to recalibrate power, and to restore dignity,” Chief Justice Gavai said in his recent Oxford Union speech on ‘From Representation to Realisation: Embodying the Constitution’s Promise’.
Justice Gavai, who is the second Dalit Chief Justice of India, credited the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution for his journey from a municipal school to the office of the Chief Justice of India.
“Many decades ago, millions of citizens of India were called ‘untouchables’. They were told they were impure. They were told that they did not belong. They were told that they could not speak for themselves. But here we are today — where a person belonging to those very people is speaking openly, as the holder of the highest office in the judiciary of the country. This is what the Constitution of India did. It told the people of India that they belong, that they can speak for themselves, and that they have an equal place in every sphere of society and power… At the Oxford Union today, I stand before you to say: for India’s most vulnerable citizens, the Constitution is not merely a legal charter or a political framework. It is a feeling, a lifeline, a quiet revolution etched in ink,” the Chief Justice said in his speech on June 10.
The CJI said the oppressed classes in India had never sought charity after centuries of exclusion and silence.
“Their call was for recognition, dignity, and protection in the new India. They sought not charity, but a rightful space in the fabric of a free and constitutional democracy. To be seen in the Constitution was to be seen by the nation. To be included in its text was to be included in its future,” Chief Justice Gavai said.
The CJI said one of the most remarkable and often overlooked truths in the framing of the Indian Constitution was that many of the nation’s most vulnerable social groups were not merely subjects of Constitutional concern, they were active participants in its making.
The Constituent Assembly had been composed of Dalits, Adivasis, women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and even those once unjustly branded as ‘criminal tribes’ to craft a broader Constitutional imagination, and collectively ensure the demands for justice and equality were met, the CJI said.
Published – June 11, 2025 04:30 pm IST
