Tuesday, August 25, 2009

dangerous slope: Court for use of Mimansa principles of interpretation

aug 25th, 2009

next step: sharia.

isn't katju anyway a serious mohammedan-rights fundie?

and there was a court in gujarat already which told a mohammedan divorcee that she should go to some kind of mohammedan religious center (or is it prison) as per sharia so that she wouldn't be impelled to think about her new boyfriend. can anyone say "brainwashing"? oh, the new boyfriend happened to be a hindu. natch, the 'secular' court would be worried. what if, gasp, the mohammedans lost one baby factory?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: S. Kalyanaraman

Court for use of Mimansa principles of interpretation

Legal Correspondent

The Hindu Aug 21, 2009

The Supreme Court has called for liberal use of Mimansa Principles of Interpretation (MPI) in interpreting and understanding the statutes and provisions of law.

A Bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice A.K. Ganguly in its order said "MIP which were our traditional principles of interpretation for over 2,500 years, but which are unfortunately ignored in our Courts of law today. It is deeply regrettable that in our Courts of law, lawyers quote Maxwell and Craies but nobody refers to the MPI. Most lawyers would not have even heard of their existence. Today our so-called educated people are largely ignorant about the great intellectual achievements of our ancestors and the intellectual treasury which they have bequeathed us."

The Bench said "the MPI is part of that great intellectual treasury, but it is distressing to note that apart from the reference to these principles in the judgment of Sir John Edge, the then Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court in Beni Prasad vs. Hardai Bibi, a hundred years ago and in some judgments of one of us [M. Katju, J.] there has been almost no utilisation of these principles even in our own country. Most of the Mimansa Principles are rational and scientific and can be utilized in the legal field."

Universal application

The Bench said "the Mimansa Principles were our traditional system of interpretation of legal texts. Although originally they were created for interpreting religious texts [pertaining to the Yagya sacrifice], gradually they came to be utilised for interpreting legal texts and also for interpreting texts on philosophy, grammar, etc. i.e. they became of universal application. Thus, Shankaracharya has used the Mimansa adhikaranas in his bhashya on the Vedanta sutras. There were hundreds of books [all in Sanskrit] written on the subject, though only a few dozens have survived the ravages of time, but even these show how deep our ancestors went into the subject of interpretation." The Bench in the instant case used MPI to interpret Section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act. The Maharashtra government issued a notification under Section 6 of the LAA and the question arose whether it was barred by limitation or not. The present appeal was against a Bombay High Court judgment rejecting a writ petition against the notification.

Appeal allowed

Allowing the appeal, the Bench said "In our opinion, when the language of the Statute is plain and clear then the literal rule of interpretation has to be applied and there is ordinarily no scope for consideration of equity, public interest or seeking the intention of the legislature. It is only when the language of the Statute is not clear or ambiguous or there is some conflict etc. or the plain language leads to some absurdity that one can depart from the literal rule of interpretation. In our opinion, the said Notification was clearly barred by limitation."

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article6518.ece

Mīmāṃsā, a Sanskrit word meaning "investigation" (compare Greek ἱστορία), is the name of anastika ("orthodox") school of Hindu philosophy whose primary enquiry is into the nature ofdharma based on close hermeneutics of the Vedas. Its core tenets are ritualism (orthopraxy), anti-asceticism and anti-mysticism. The central aim of the school is elucidation of the nature ofdharma, understood as a set ritual obligations and prerogatives to be performed properly.

Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimamsa



1 comment:

Deshabhakta said...

this could have been from a positive angle too instead of as a "step towards sharia"...