New Delhi: A holistic constitutionally governed society must be willing to look beyond the binary of public and private spaces to battle discrimination in terms of gender, caste, class and disability, Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud said on Sunday, emphasising that the constitutional promise of equal protection of law will fail if the law looks the other way in the name of the sanctity of the household, or the sanctity of marriage, in cases of rights violations.

According to the CJI, who was delivering the inaugural “Justice ES Venkataramiah Centennial Memorial Lecture” organised by the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) at Bengaluru, laws ought to act as powerful tools in opening our public spaces as well as curbing private discrimination while addressing power imbalances regardless of their locations.

“The legal landscape must evolve, weaving a tapestry that accommodates differences, eradicate biased and ensures substantive equality,” he said.

Justice Venkataramiah served as the CJI for six months in 1989. His daughter, justice BV Nagarathna, is presently a judge in the Supreme Court and is poised to take over as India’s first woman CJI in 2027. On Sunday, justice Nagarathna delivered the welcome address for the incumbent CJI, justice Chandrachud.

Justice Chandrachud was speaking on the topic of ‘Constitutional imperatives of the State navigating discrimination in public and private spaces,’ as he raised concerns over the idea of complete insulation of laws, in particular those protecting rights to equality and privacy, in private spaces – inside a household.

“If the hierarchies persist in a private space and the law looks the other way in the name of the sanctity of the household, or the sanctity of marriage, we will be failing the promise of equal protection of law and qualifying it with a caveat, based on the location of the wrongdoing. This will be a diluted understanding of what privacy entails,” said the CJI.

Highlighting that hierarchies and prejudices travel beyond the public-private binaries, the judge underscored the reality that although households provide a private sanctuary to the inhabitants, it may not be simply an equitable space for many.

“The basis of the public-private divide and the perception that courts and laws apply differently to both spaces is inaccurate. The aged notion that ‘what men do is public, what women do is private’ has no application in societies governed by Constitutions,” he asserted.

The CJI pointed out that our laws and policies choose to treat people based on the physical location of their actions even as this dichotomy between what is private and what is public has formed the basis of the feminist and economic critiques of our laws and policies for several years.

“For freedom of expression to truly exist, it must exist in both these spaces. It cannot exist in one and not in the other…There is, therefore, a need to look beyond this binary and search for the grievances that underlie both these spheres,” he added.

The household, which is understood as a private space, said the CJI, is a site of economic activity by a homemaker who is not remunerated for it while in public spaces, women are consigned to “distinctively feminine, service-oriented and often sexualized occupations”.

“Thus, both sites involve rights and their infringement. However, if the law chooses that it will interfere only in the latter, perhaps because of its visibility, the law would be unjust. The framers of our Constitution did not envisage such a geographical application of the law. There is increased percolation between these two locations whose oppressive biases and prejudices have transcended the boundary between the public and the private. Therefore, fixating on the public- private rather than identifying both of their common problems furthers stereotypes about gender, ableism, and many such identities. These stereotypes create a self-perpetuating loop of ‘who belongs where’ and entrench the unjust outcomes of both,” said justice Chandrachud.

As the division between the two spaces evaporates, the judge said, it becomes imperative to assess the preparedness of the judiciary to secure the rights of the people in this new realm, which is neither wholly public nor wholly private.

“Our laws and procedures must expand beyond this binary and identify the oppression and the oppressed, wherever they may be. When a private home is a site of employment for a house-help- does the law protect their economic and personal rights as much as it does the rights of a corporate office employee? The purpose of the law would have to be extended to safeguard the interests of the conventional and unconventional participants of both these,” he underlined.