Justice Swaminathan, a lamp-lighting order and a fiery row

In recent weeks, justice GR Swaminathan’s name has been everywhere, surfacing more often in parliamentary rhetoric than in law reports.

- Ayesha Arvind

His December 1 order permitting the lighting of a lamp atop the Thiruparakundram hill in Madurai triggered a volatile chain of events.

The Tamil Nadu government defied the order, inviting contempt proceedings. Opposition MPs announced an impeachment motion. A division bench of the Madras High Court later upheld justice Swaminathan’s ruling and declared that the hilltop, the ancient stone pillar (Deepathoon or lamp pillar), the temple, and the surrounding lands belonged to the temple, and that any contrary claim would amount to trespass.

The argument was that a lamp had been lit atop the hill, on a pillar, till it was moved, decades ago, ostensibly to not offend the sensibilities of worshippers at an adjoining dargah. The controversy had historical and archaeological facets — but the judgement changed all that.

Justice Swaminathan himself became the story.

An ideological outlier, or a judge bound by text?

This was not justice Swaminathan's first brush with public outrage, nor the first time he was cast as an ideological outlier or a judicial provocateur. But a closer look at his career reveals something less controversial. Judges who have worked with him describe justice Swaminathan, 57, as acutely aware of his ideological position, yet one who insists on “anchoring his decisions within constitutional limits,” even when that complicates how he is read and reported.

A decade before the Madurai hilltop became a flashpoint, Justice Swaminathan, then a lawyer, found himself in the middle of another controversy.

In January 2015, the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan was summoned to “peace talks” by the district administration in Tiruchengode, his hometown. Hindu organisations were protesting Murugan’s 2010 novel Madhorubagan. The administration's solution was mediation.