Tag: Constitutional Law

Why India can’t afford Rohingya refugees

By Ranjeev C DubeyInternational Law
George Bush once quipped that India lived in a very dangerous neighbourhood. He failed to add that moral ambiguity was consequently built into its foreign policy. The Rohingya refugee crisis is only the latest example of this inescapable reality. Not that Rohingya ‘crisis’ is new. The Rohingyas are 100 per…

Triple Equality before God

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Judges often confront colliding ideologies with the law standing on one side, religion on the other and human empathy in the middle. In 2014, an 18 year old Muslim eloped with a 15 year old and married her. The girl’s mother filed a case of kidnapping, rape and sexual assault.…

Rivers with legal rights of a human

By Ranjeev C DubeyEnvironment Law
Calendar art depicts Ganga Maiya as a beautiful full bodied lady venerated by millions, yet her devotees violate her guiltlessly. Electoral promises to clean up the Ganga wins votes but nothing then prevents the same voters from misappropriating funds allocated for the job. In this environment of grotesque irony, what…

Invisible Elephant in the Court Room

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
If you live long enough, you come to realize that today’s outrageous is next week’s new normal. Like 18 hour power outages, people can get used to almost anything. Eleven years ago, Praveen Babi, the iconic Bollywood heroine of my generation died leaving much of what she owned to charity.…

Voting For God’s Sake

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Between chacha-bhatija battles within the Samajwadi Party and an election budget allegedly decimated by demonetisation within the BSP, it seems the Gods may well be on the side of Hindutva in the upcoming UP elections. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled on January 5 that candidates can’t ask people to vote…

My Human and other Animal Rights

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Is this just the dawn of acche din or are Indians beginning to have too much of a sense of entitlement? Why do we think we deserve highways like America, public behaviour like Japan or politicians like Scandinavia? Indeed, why is it our birth right to have a house, a…

Why deny an individual’s right to die?

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
India is currently witnessing a great battle seeking to redefine the idea of ‘being Indian’. How we regard life itself is a very good example. Thus, suicide, euthanasia and Santhara — the very heart of any society’s ideological construct — are being debated as never before. Trying to find a…