J
udge-bashing is a favourite pastime of many misguided citizens. The attack often goes well beyond legal issues and aims below the belt. In a recent instance from the Gujarat High Court, one advocate asked for the transfer of a case only because the judge before whom the matter was listed belonged to a particular caste and the subject matter of the writ was the alleged casteism of a lower court judge. The petitioner’s counsel was brazen enough to say that the high court judge’s name suggested he belonged to a particular caste his client was fighting, and therefore, the judge had no business to hear the matter. Can there be anything more crude and offensive? We have many such worthies fond of taunting the judiciary at every opportunity. Not that all the honourable men and women adorning the bench are faultless. They have their own biases, follies, foibles. But then, is the society we are part of perfect? Don’t we all have our own peccadilloes and prejudices? Scandalising a judge is fraught with undesirable consequences, especially at a time when we are struggling to get the best of our lawyers on the bench. We should remember that the judiciary is the last bastion of our troubled democracy, and it is tottering, if one is to go by what has been happening in our legislatures, where some law-makers have shown themselves as not more than easily purchasable commodities.