542. Some quite honest, upright, and intelligent people think that the
inefficiency, the corruption, the expense the waste of time and efforts, and the
delay in accomplishing what they regard as much too urgently needed socioeconomic and cultural transformations of backward peoples today, involved
in treading the democratic path, are so great that they would readily sacrifice
at least some of the democratic processes and such safeguards against their
misuse as separation of powers and judicial review are meant to provide.
They would not mind taking the risk of falling into the fire to escape from
what they belive to be a frying pan. Some may even agree with Bernard
Shaw, who liked to look at everything turned upside down in attempts to
understand them, that Democracy, with all its expensive and time-consuming
accompaniments, is even in the most advanced countries only a method of
deluding the mass of the people into believing that they are the rulers whilst
the real power is always enjoyed by the few who must be judged by the
results they produce and not by their professions. Others regard democracy
as the only means of achieving the highest good and the greatest happiness of
the greatest number. They consider its maintenance to be inextricably bound
up with the preservation of the basic individual freedom and a supporting
mechanism or structure of checks and balances, separation of powers and
judicial review. What some believe to be obstacles to any real progress are
looked upon by others as almost sacred institutions essential for the
protection of their lives and liberties, hearths and homes, occupations and
means of livelihood, religious, languages, and cultures. Inevitability of change
is, according to some, the basic and inescapable law of all life, the only
questions to be considered being its pace and direction: how soon or how late
and whether the change is to be for the better or for the worse? ‘‘El Dorado’’,
some believe, lies ahead. Our march towards it, they say, should be orderly
and disciplined. To others all change is anathema as it is generally for the
worse. The Golden Age, some believe lay in the past. Salvation of mankind,
they think lies in a return to the imagined pristine virtues of that past. Some
assert that certain amendments of our Constitution have ‘‘defaced and
defiled’’ it (See: Mr. Palkhivala’s ‘‘Our Constitution’’). Others maintain that
these very amendments have made our Constitution a more potent
instrument of those socio-economic and cultural transformations for which
the Constitution was designed (See: Dr. V.A. Seyid Muhammad’s ‘‘Our
Constitution for Haves or Havenots?’’
543. Judges must, no doubt, be impartial and independent. They cannot,
in a period of intensified socio-economic conflicts, either becometools of any
vested interests, or function, from the bench, as zealous reformers
propagating particular course. Nevertheless, they cannot be expected to have
no notions whatsoever of their own, or to have completely blank minds on
important questions indicated above which though related to law, really fall
outside the realm of law. They cannot dwell in ivory towers or confine their
processes of thinking in some hermetically sealed chambers of purely legal
logic artificially cut off from the needs of life around to which law must
respond. Their differing individual philosophies, outlooks and attitudes on
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