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Stuff judges say: Cow-as-national-animal-judge waxes bizarrely mythically about peacock ‘chastity’

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Rajasthan high court judge Justice Mahesh Chandra Sharma based his recent order that the cow be made the national animal, primarily on the ground that religious sentiments are associated with the cow, and because the peacock was India’s national bird due to its chastity, according to CNN-News 18’s interview with him.">

Picture via WhatsApp, creator unknown

Justice Sharma, who wrote the 145-page judgment asking the legislature to consider naming the cow as a national animal on his last working day as a judge, told the news channel that the judgment was a calling of his soul:

I have cited all these holy books to show how important cow is in our ancient literature. I have even quoted the Gita. This verdict is a call of the soul and even though it is not binding on all the other states except Rajasthan, I hope other states follow this verdict

He gave this judgement in the Hingonia Gaushala case against the poor upkeep of a cowshed which the judge had personally visited, he told the channel.

The judgment has gone viral over social media, not just for the judge’s suggestion about the cow, but now for his statements that he made about the “chastity” of the peacock, which is scientifically known to mate through the alignment of the sexual organs of the male and the female peacock.

Justice Sharma presented the mythological version of the peacock’s biology, saying that female peahens are impregnated not through copulation but through drinking the male peacock’s tears.

Also wading into PeacockGate (?) was retired Supreme Court judge AK Ganguly (who had been accused but never cleared of sexual harassment by an intern), who according to News18’s tweet said (thanks @Rudespot for alerting us to that):

Peacock being a Brahmachari is not scientifically correct: Justice AK Ganguly, Former SC Judge on #BhramachariPeacock https://t.co/6s2UnryBex

— News18 (@CNNnews18) Thu, 01 Jun 2017, 13:24

Judicial articulation

Justice Sharma is not the only one from the judiciary to have attracted incredulity from the media for his comments within or outside a judgment, as former Supreme Court Jjustice Markandey Katju regularly treads this path and recently even attracted an order of contempt of court.

Other judges who made headlines for their orders recently were the Supreme Court’s Dipak Misra who added an order opening with a 192-word sentence to his list of orders going viral over social media for bits such as channelling Lord Ganesha, among others, and the Bombay high court’s justice Gautam Patel for his innovative way of disposing of a plea for imposing costs following his earlier viral smackdown of a young lawyer.

In 2013, following the Madras high court’s famously misinterpreted “sex equals marriage” judgement, we talked about the disparity between judicial intentions and judgment articulation.

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