Referring to an incident, Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuiyan said that often social practices are different from constitutional values. He told that his daughter’s Muslim friend could not get a house on rent in Delhi because of her religion.
Justice Ujjal Bhuiyan said these things while speaking at a seminar organized by Telangana Judges Association and Telangana State Judicial Academy in Hyderabad on the topic of constitutional ethics and role of district judiciary.
Justice Ujjal Bhuiyan told that his daughter’s Muslim friend was looking for a house to live in Delhi, but the landlady refused to give the house on rent after coming to know about her religious identity.
Justice Bhuiyan said, ‘She went to a woman running a hostel for working women in South Delhi. The landlady asked him his name. When she told her name, the landlady inquired further and asked for her surname, and when she told that, her Muslim identity was revealed. On this the landlady clearly told him that there is no vacant room in the hostel and he should find some other place.
Justice Ujjal Bhuiyan also mentioned another incident related to the mid-day meal scheme in Odisha. He said that some parents objected to feeding this food to their children because the people preparing the food were from the Dalit community.
Justice Bhuiyan said that these incidents are just examples. These are just the tip of the iceberg and reveal the depth of social cleavages. He said that in fact, it shows us a mirror of how far we are from the norms of constitutional morality even after 75 years of our republic.
Explaining what he meant by constitutional morality, Justice Bhuiyan said that it provides the standards to which both public institutions and citizens are expected to adhere. Justice Bhuiyan said that constitutional morality is the norm which the Constitution expects all of us to follow. The constitutional objective is fraternity and brotherhood.
