The sophistry and selective courage of retired CJI Justice D.Y. Chandrachud

In a recent interview with journalist Sreenivasan Jain on Newslaundry, former chief justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud stirred up a familiar storm.

Asked about the 2019 Ayodhya verdict, which unanimously awarded the disputed site to the Hindu claimants for the construction of the Ram temple, he described the judgment as “a delicate balance of faith and law”.

He added that “the very erection of the Babri Masjid was the fundamental act of desecration”.

He went further, admitting that the court had to acknowledge the “centrality of belief in Indian society”, a phrase that has since been seized upon by both his critics and supporters.

For many, his statements were less a clarification than a confirmation of what sceptics have long argued: that the Supreme Court’s most consequential verdict in decades rested less on evidence and more on majoritarian sentiment.

Coming from a judge who once celebrated “constitutional morality” as the guiding principle of justice, Chandrachud’s words reopened questions about his judicial legacy — whether he was a reformist voice silenced by compromise, or a cautious arbiter who cloaked deference to power in the language of progressivism.

***

Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud, the son of India’s longest-serving chief justice Y.V. Chandrachud, entered the Supreme Court in 2016 with formidable credentials: a Harvard doctorate, a reputation as a liberal voice and a record of erudition in the Bombay and Allahabad High Courts.

In his early years, he authored landmark opinions that seemed to chart a new course for the court. He declared privacy a fundamental right in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), called Section 497 of the IPC criminalising adultery “an affront to women’s dignity” and delivered a rousing concurring opinion in Navtej Johar v. Union of India (2018), striking down Section 377 to decriminalise homosexuality.

In these cases, Chandrachud appeared to embody the conscience of a liberal constitutional order. He invoked dignity, autonomy and equality as the bedrock of Indian democracy, earning admiration among progressive circles at home and abroad.

His dissent in the Aadhaar case, calling the passage of the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill a “fraud on the Constitution”, seemed to cement his reputation as an independent, fearless judge. This was the Chandrachud many expected to see as chief justice: principled, uncompromising, a counterweight to majoritarian excesses.

The Ayodhya dispute, however, was the first major test of that reputation.

In 2019, the Supreme Court unanimously handed the entire disputed land to the Hindu claimants — while acknowledging that the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was illegal.

The court offered the Sunni Waqf Board five acres of alternate land to build a mosque elsewhere.

The verdict was couched in the language of reconciliation, but its reasoning raised alarm. The Archaeological Survey of India’s inconclusive findings were stretched to accommodate belief. ‘Faith’, the judgement implied, could carry evidentiary weight.

Most strikingly, the judgement bore no single author’s name, a collective anonymity that only added to its aura of political calculation.

When Chandrachud, years later, confessed at a village gathering in Maharashtra that he had “prayed to God for guidance” while struggling with the verdict, critics said the mask had slipped. His recent interview with Jain, framing the decision as a necessary balance of law and faith, has revived this unease.

For a constitutional court, faith is not supposed to be a legal consideration or constraint. For many, this was the moment Chandrachud crossed from judicial reasoning into theological justification.

Selective courage as CJI

Investigative journalist Saurav Das, in his 2024 Caravan cover story, memorably described Chandrachud as a figure of “performative justice” — a jurist whose eloquent speeches about rights were rarely matched by fearless adjudication in politically sensitive cases.

This pattern recurred throughout his tenure as chief justice (2022–2024).

While the court under him struck down the opaque electoral bonds scheme in early 2024, it refused to probe the possible quid pro quo that benefited the ruling party.

While it upheld women’s rights to abortion and expanded the scope of equality in the armed forces, it declined to intervene meaningfully in bail pleas under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, leaving activists like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam incarcerated without trial.

Chandrachud also presided over the bench that upheld the abrogation of Article 370, dismissing concerns of democratic deficit in Jammu and Kashmir by treating the provision as “temporary”.

On the Maharashtra political crisis, he criticised the governor’s role in engineering a defection but declined to restore the Uddhav Thackeray government.

In Delhi, he reaffirmed the elected government’s control over services, only to watch Parliament overturn it days later without judicial pushback.

Each of these cases seemed to confirm a paradox: Chandrachud the rhetorician of liberty and Chandrachud the arbiter of status quo.

A legacy of dissent — or deference?

To his credit, Chandrachud leaves behind some landmark dissents and progressive rulings that will outlast him.

His insistence on autonomy in reproductive rights; his affirmation of minority educational rights in the Aligarh Muslim University case; and his recognition of passive euthanasia expanded the ambit of Article 21.

His judicial silences, however, are equally telling.

The Supreme Court, under him, did not hear challenges to the Citizenship Amendment Act, nor did it urgently address the wave of anti-conversion and hijab laws sweeping several states. And in such politically sensitive matters, delay itself becomes a form of judgement.

Former Supreme Court Bar Association president Dushyant Dave has argued that Chandrachud “spoke eloquently outside the court, but failed to match those words with action inside it”. Justice Madan Lokur, his colleague on the bench, echoed this disappointment.

To critics, Chandrachud’s legacy will be less about the rights he affirmed and more about the risks he avoided. The broader question raised by Chandrachud’s tenure is not simply about one judge’s choices — but about the nature of the Indian judiciary in an era of muscular majoritarian politics.

When Chandrachud joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a Ganesh aarti at his residence — a first for a sitting chief justice — the symbolism was inescapable. At a time when the court was accused of deference to the executive, the spectacle blurred the line between judicial independence and political proximity.

His critics argue that Chandrachud became a mirror to the times: cautious, image-conscious, reluctant to confront state power directly. His admirers insist that he nudged the court forward on social rights while protecting institutional legitimacy in a polarised climate.

Both readings may be true. But his own words betray the unease of that tightrope walk.

In his farewell address in Bhutan, Chandrachud confessed to anxieties about how history would judge him. That anxiety now finds a sharper edge after his comments on Ayodhya.

The question of faith

Ultimately, Chandrachud’s recent remarks crystallise the central dilemma of his career: the tension between constitutional morality and majoritarian faith.

By admitting that faith played a decisive role in the Ayodhya judgement, he has laid bare the compromises of judicial statecraft in India’s most fraught disputes. Whether this was prudence or abdication will be debated for years.

What is clear is that the promise of a fearless liberal chief justice gave way to the reality of a cautious institutionalist — at times progressive, at times pliant, always careful to perform justice but rarely willing to risk power.

In that sense, Chandrachud’s legacy mirrors the words of T.S. Eliot he himself once invoked: ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’

Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai