Justice Kannan's Legal speak

We use conjunctions between words and/or phrases to denote opposites or of things belonging to the same   genre. Day and Night ,hot and cold, Good and bad are examples of   expressions when an antonym follows the fist word. Fair and lovely, pith and substance, accord and satisfaction are some of the expressions where the first word and the word that follows it mean the same but it is still used that way to lay emphasis on the quality of the first word. Dharma and the Rule of law do not conform to either of the two examples only because the first word 'dharma' literally subsumes the adjunctive 'rule of law'. In such a situation, we normally do not use the conjunction 'and'. Summer is hot; winter is cold; Summer is so much else apart from being hot, the same way that winter is so much else apart from denoting cold. We are going to see how Dharma transcends the rule of law and if our striving for dharma is earnest, if we must make dharma a way of life, the...

Concept of minorities relatively new In a country that believed in the precept of the whole world as a family, there was no place for differential treatment of the peoples that populated the world to be distinguished on the basis of race or religion. It is also the   country that offered refuge to countless persecuted communities, including the Jews and Zoroastrians as also the religious groups who came to India on the avowed objective of proselytisation but met with no resistance and instead given lands and other financial grants to build places of worship having distinct rituals and gods; indeed, even if the new churches and mosques were constructed after demolishing their own temples, beyond a few murmurs, there was no organised resistance or retaliations. Of course, we are no unique but there are other examples also, such as, the fascinating account of a communication at the turn of the century to the UN Sub Commission   on the prevention of disc...