Case for compassion guiding the judiciary

I am often asked the following questions: Having fought for freedom and justice all your life, why are you now building a movement for compassion? Aren’t the ideas of justice and compassion contradictory? Can the strong hand of the judiciary emerge from a place of deep compassion? These are valid questions.
The principle of justice is foundational to a civilised society. It is indispensable. Compassion is the inner manifestation of this connectedness. It is the deepest feeling of connection with the suffering of someone as if it were your own, with the compelling drive to alleviate that suffering. I believe compassion to be the oxygen for the deliverance of justice.
To understand the relationship between compassion and justice, consider this metaphor. When prehistoric man realised that he needed to get to a destination without getting lost or harmed, he created a path through the wilderness. For speed and convenience, he invented the wheel. As time passed, we witnessed the gradual evolution of modes of transport. Cut to the present day. Imagine a powerful and wealthy person who is the benefactor of many centuries of innovation and travels in the most technologically advanced car. Suddenly, the vehicle halts on the highway and the driver realises that the car has run out of fuel. The absence of fuel renders even the most expensive vehicle inoperative.
In this metaphor, the path symbolises the Constitution and laws that pave the way for a just society. The ever-evolving and improving vehicle is akin to justice delivery systems — governance, police and court systems. These systems carry citizens through the laid-out path towards an ideal society. Finally, the function of the fuel is comparable to compassion within the justice delivery system. Compassion will be the energy source even for the strictest of laws and most robust institutions. Just as a car has little use without fuel, the justice delivery system will not achieve true justice without compassion.
We need a vehicle, i.e., justice delivery systems, to institutionalise compassion. At a recent event, justice Sanjiv Khanna shared his beliefs about the critical need for a compassionate judiciary. Many judges echo his vision for justice delivery in India, opening up innumerable avenues for justice that reach the most marginalised in our country.
The absence of compassion within the judiciary and its repercussions are visible in plain sight. A study conducted by our organisation, the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, found that the number of child sexual abuse cases pending trial has increased from about 71,000 in 2017 to about 236,000 at the end of 2023. At the same time, several undertrials who mostly belong to marginalised sections are languishing in jail, often without hearings or even FIRs. These are only examples. The expense and intimidation of the court systems, the corruption and apathy of officers, and the unending delays in justice are all symptomatic of the complete disconnect from the suffering of another, at an individual and structural level.
When a young person enters the judicial services, it is with the drive of compassion to alleviate human suffering. The knowledge and skills she gains equip her to translate this inner compassion into outer justice. Over time, some judges grow to suppress their idealism and compassion and others fortify this compassion through their orders. In my work over the past several decades, I have come across innumerable judges and police officers who have been champions of compassionate action.
In 1982, there was a newspaper story about our organisation’s efforts to end bonded child labour in the country. Having read the story, justice PN Bhagwati, the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court of India at the time, asked me to see him. We shared our experiences with him — the exploitation, suffering and the impunity. He was visibly distraught, and immediately asked me to write him a letter, detailing the situation of bonded labour in the country. This letter went on to become the landmark case of Bandhua Mukti Morcha v Union of India, where justice Bhagwati widened the definition of bonded labour in India and laid down the national response framework.
This was one of the first instances where a simple handwritten letter by a concerned citizen was admitted as a PIL in India, allowing a common person to approach the highest court of the country with any instance of violation of constitutional rights. Cases like these were known, but it was justice Bhagwati’s compassion that drove him to take the extra step to make the highest court of the country accessible to the poorest and marginalised citizens. Can there be a greater form of justice?
Our organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan had been fighting for years to establish that when children go missing, they do not vanish into thin air. There is a crime that has happened. In 2012, the then Chief Justice of India, Altamas Kabir, passed a historic judgment in our case stating that when a child goes missing in India, there has to be a presumption of an offence of either abduction or trafficking.
It is not only the stalwarts of the Indian judiciary who have acted as champions of compassion but also judges of lower courts who perhaps encounter such challenging cases the most. It is only with the collective compassion of lawyers, government officers, public prosecutors, and police officers at every level that compassionate justice can be delivered.
Compassion training must be integrated into the training of judicial and police officers so that they can utilise the tools at their disposal for fair and timely justice delivery without bias or corruption. Their appointments can be conducted based on their compassion quotient, which we are now developing. Their performance must be evaluated against their ability to demonstrate compassion in their orders and interactions.
Justice is not merely about applying laws in a rigid, mechanical manner. It involves a deeper engagement with the human condition, recognising the suffering and hardship experienced by those who seek legal recourse. Compassion in the judiciary does not imply a compromise of legal principles or an erosion of objectivity and exactness. It encourages judges to adhere to the law and also go beyond the letter of the law, to interpret legal provisions in ways that uphold human rights.
Undoubtedly, we need to continuously strengthen our laws and institutions. But ultimately, it is human beings like you and me who execute and deliver justice. And we want those at the steering wheel of power to steer it with compassion and guide it on the path to justice. Compassion will bring the necessary urgency, action, and mutual responsibility to ensure that legal outcomes serve the cause of humanity, fostering a more just and equitable world.
Kailash Satyarthi is a Nobel Peace laureate. The views expressed are personal