Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Saturday said that both the country and the world was witnessing polarisation between the right and the left and the centre,
which was marked by the growth of social media, a sense of intolerance among communities, and the short attention span of the young generation.
Delivering the keynote address at the Jamnalal Bajaj Awards 2023, the CJI said that the polarisation observed today was not merely a result of the free markets and technology, but caused by the societies’ inability to recognise the true worth of self-sacrifice for the wider goal.
Stressing on the importance of societies understanding the value of self-sacrifice, especially in pursuit of a better future for those marginalised within the society, he said something more profound was going on.
It was the ability of the societies not to realise the true worth of self-sacrifice at a given time, in pursuit of a wider community goal of enabling those who were the margins of the society to realise a better future for themselves.
He said while law could be a source of immense good, it could also be a source of arbitrariness. He pointed out that the impact of the law depended on who wielded it and the social conditions in which it was applied.
Mentioning the Indian Penal Code (IPC) 1860, he highlighted that it has assumed a more humanistic tradition based on the society in which that law was continually evolving.