On May 6th, 2024, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, recalled its earlier order permitting the termination of a 14-year-old rape survivor’s pregnancy after her parents expressed a desire to keep the baby due to health concerns. The court stressed the fundamental right to reproductive autonomy and the paramount importance of the pregnant individual’s consent in abortion decisions, particularly when it differs from the guardian’s opinion. It clarified that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act does not allow interference with a pregnant “person’s” personal choice regarding termination. The judgement provided guidelines for medical boards, emphasizing the need to evaluate both physical and emotional well-being and to prioritize fundamental rights over procedural delays. The case involved a 14-year-old girl impregnated after being sexually assaulted, whose request for abortion was initially rejected by the Bombay High Court.

In the 22-page judgement, authored by CJI Chandrachud, the term “pregnant person” or “persons” appears 42 times including once in a footnote on page 12, the bench, also including Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, clarified, “We use the term ‘pregnant person’ and recognise that in addition to cisgender women, pregnancy can also be experienced by some non-binary people and transgender men among other gender identities”.

How woke is CJI Chandrachud – a glance into his past statements/judgements

The statement about “pregnant persons” isn’t the CJI’s first brush with woke language, he has already showcased this in his past judgements. Here are a few:

Same-sex marriage

On 17th October 2023, while the bench unanimously agreed that the right to marry was not a fundamental right, the 5-judge bench comprising the CJI, Justices SK Kaul, SR Bhat, Hima Kohli, and PS Narasimha, in a 3:2 majority, ruled against same-sex couples’ entitlement to form civil unions or to adopt. Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud found himself in the minority position. The court refrained from altering the Special Marriage Act and deferred the issue of marriage equality for queer couples to Parliament’s jurisdiction. CJI Chandrachud said that he stood by his minority stance in supporting civil unions for queer couples as it is “sometimes a vote of conscience and a vote of the Constitution”.

He had also said, “It’s not the question of what your genitals are. It’s far more complex, that’s the point. So even when Special Marriage Act says man and woman, the very notion of a man and a woman is not an absolute based on genitals.”

Decriminalising adultery

Justice D.Y. Chandrachud was a part of the five-member bench, as the Supreme Court struck down a colonial-era law from 1860. This law penalized a man for engaging in sexual relations with a married woman without her husband’s consent. “Physicality is an individual choice,” Chandrachud emphasized. He remarked that the law stemmed from the notion that a woman forfeits her individuality upon marriage, further asserting that “adultery is a relic of the past.”

Justice Chandrachud concurred with the majority opinion, that invalidated Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC). He emphasized, “The notion that a woman is ‘submissive’, or worse still ‘naïve’ has no legitimacy in the discourse of a liberal constitution. It is deeply offensive to equality and destructive of the dignity of the woman. On this stereotype, Section 497 criminalizes only the accused man,” as he delivered his opinion.

Decriminalising homosexuality

In September 2018, in Navtej Singh Johar v Union Of India, a five-judge bench unanimously invalidated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, as Justice Chandrachud noted in his separate concurring opinion that “by penalising sexual conduct between consenting adults, Section 377 restrained the fundamental freedom of Indian citizens belonging to sexual minorities under an antiquated and anachronistic colonial-era law – forcing them to live in hiding, in fear, and as second-class citizens”.

Sabarimala judgement

In the Sabarimala case back in September 2018, the Supreme Court ruled by a 4:1 majority to strike down Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship Act. In his opinion, Justice Chandrachud stated, “A claim for the exclusion of women from religious worship, even if it be founded in religious text, is subordinate to the constitutional values of liberty, dignity, and equality. Exclusionary practices are contrary to constitutional morality”. 

With this statement, he unnecessarily handled centuries-old practice that hurt several Hindu women devotees of Swami Ayyappa.

Praise for Suraj Yengde

CJI Chandrachud seems to be so enamoured by Hinduphobe and “subaltern activist” Suraj Yengde that in 2021, he even quoted from Yengde’s book “Caste Matters”. Chandrachud was addressing the 13th B.R.Ambedkar Memorial Lecture, 2021 on ‘Conceptualising Marginalisation: Agency, Assertion & Personhood’ by the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, Delhi & Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, South Asia. 

The same Suraj Yengde called the asura Mahishasura as his ancestor, and called him a “naga buddhist king”

It is noteworthy that all through the talk, Chandrachud had been using “pronouns”. Here is an example.

For a CJI to be so woke, so careful and tenaciously using proper pronouns, ensuring those woke people who use pronouns and believe in this wokery, it seems to only be a matter of time before the woke agenda perpetuated by the leftists entirely hits Bharat.