Chandrachud urges youth to embrace ideal of fraternity

Former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud emphasizes fraternity and dignity for all individuals in Constitutional Day lecture.

Former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud has urged youngsters to embrace the ideal of fraternity and uphold the dignity of every individual, not as a duty but as a privilege.

He was delivering the Constitutional Day lecture on ‘Fraternity under the Constitution: our quest for an inclusive society’ organised by the Kerala High Court Advocates Association here on Friday. “Fraternity asks one to extend a hand, to understand and uplift those who are different from others and love the nation by loving its people in all their diversity. It also demands one to care for those whom one has not thought of and by looking inwards within, and outwards, beyond the borders and barriers which redefine our existence as a global community,” he said.

The progress of a nation was incomplete until every citizen could live with dignity, without fear and with hope, he said.

“Climate change, carbon emissions, the global rise in temperatures and the depredations of nature are not matters that one can ignore as affecting someone else away from our backyard. They affect everyone and all the communities in India and elsewhere. The coastal and agricultural communities, sources of food, water, air, and survival are at stake,” he said.

“Fraternity is not a word in the preamble of the Constitution, which was borrowed from political movements for freedom in other parts of the world. The Supreme Court said that constitutional morality demanded fraternity, understood essentially as an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellow beings,” he said.

Nitin Jamdar, Chief Justice of Kerala, T.C. Krishna, Deputy Solicitor General-in charge and association leaders Yeshwant Shenoy, V. Anoop Nair and U. Jayakrishnan attended.