Justice Kannan's Legal speak

What is the face of Police that is familiar to you? Do you see it as the protector against wrong and a punctilious enforcer of law and order? Or, you have been exposed to only an ugly corrupt countenance of the police force and hence would want none of it for resolving your pressing problems with a brazen transgressor of law? The Hindu mythology assigns to Vishnu the role of a cosmic protector, who constantly participates in worldly affairs, ensuring that all is well. Outside the ring of Agamic pantheon of Hinduism, lies the rural tradition of worshipping grama devadai, which is called kaval deivam. Along with Karuppasamy or Muniswaran or Sudalai or the formless Nadukkal, you will find a stony police man also, with a long moustache but having a kind face. Worship is offered to the statue of police in so many villages. From a protector, police has unfortunately become a symbol of oppression and protector of the bully and the villainy rich. The more fearsome he looks the closer to realit...

A popular English daily lists out several strange laws legislated in efforts to maintain law and order in diverse legal regimes across the world. They range from legislation that makes illegal for chicken to lay eggs on Sundays to legislation that require the permission of a husband by a wife to wear dentures. The constant refrain has always been that there are a lot more laws than necessary. A country that is regulated by rule of law is not necessarily a country that has enormous laws. The efficacy of enforcement mechanism alone makes the difference. We have laws to prevent crimes; we have laws to punish practitioners of untouchability; there are laws that protect women and children. All of them have not guaranteed a crime free society. They have not effaced the scourge of untouchability. Our women cannot still walk on the roads in hours of darkness without fear. Our children do not lead lives of frolic. Many of them slave under hard labour and are the breadwinners for their famil...

The world is not any the less equal only because men and women are made differently, - the ways their biological differences make them think, look and behave. These differences themselves have assigned to them dissimilar roles to play in the society. So long as the physical prowess helped men dictate the primacy of their actions, they could claim superiority. But men are challenged in every field, in studies, in professional skills, in the study of science, in expressions through arts and what have you. However, men have always held their own in the arena of sports; women in the pride of bearing children. They never contested each other in these fields alongside but see now, a man has challenged womanhood even in the act of creation. Not just novelty this, but scary! Thomas Beatie was born female, underwent surgery and took hormone treatment to become a male; kept her reproductive organs, got artificially inseminated by a donor sperm, became pregnant and has delivered of a baby on 29th...

Somehow we allow ourselves to be driven in our fancies about what we shall be doing by following the lead actors in the tinsel world of cinema. They have media and money at their command to capture the public eye. Even in a world that has mechanical lifestyles, with acquisition of wealth being the prime motivation, entertainment has been a healthy distraction. The philosophical theories that viewed human beings only as instruments of production and the history of mankind as a history of class struggles take a beating with the growth of entertainment industry that offers a striking proof that beyond hard labor and exploitative traits, the society creates temporary illusions that all is well around us. The hero’s girl is our girl; his wealth is our wealth; his songs are our songs; his happiness is our happiness – all at least for those 3 hours. A popular movie captures the man in 10 avatars. He beat the earlier showing of another man in 9 different roles. There have been double roles, th...