Chief Justice Gavai's "Brutal Truths Of Caste" Speech at Oxford University

"Many decades ago, millions of citizens of India were called 'untouchables.' They were told they were impure. They were told that they did not belong. They were told that they could not speak for themselves. But here we are today-where a person belonging to those very people is speaking openly, as the holder of the highest office in the judiciary of the country." 

Chief Justice of India BR Gavai opened his speech at Oxford University with these lines.

CJI Gavai, while speaking at Oxford University, made reference to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's seminal work "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

"To that, I offer my own reflection: Yes, the subaltern can speak-and they have been speaking all along. The question is no longer whether they can speak, but whether society is truly listening," Chief Justice Gavai said. 

Praising the Constitution, he said, "This is what the Constitution of India did. It told the people of India that they belong, that they can speak for themselves, and that they have an equal place in every sphere of society and power."

"At the Oxford Union today, I stand before you to say: for India's most vulnerable citizens, the Constitution is not merely a legal charter or a political framework. It is a feeling, a lifeline, a quiet revolution etched in ink. In my own journey, from a municipal school to the Office of the Chief Justice of India, it has been a guiding force," he added. 

He further said that "the Constitution is a social document-one that does not avert its gaze from the brutal truths of caste, poverty, exclusion, and injustice. It does not pretend that all are equal in a land scarred by deep inequality. Instead, it dares to intervene, to rewrite the script, to recalibrate power, and to restore dignity."

Chief Justice Gavai said that the Constitution carries within it the heartbeat of those who were never meant to be heard, and the vision of a country where equality is not just promised, but pursued. It compels the State not only to protect rights but to actively uplift, to affirm, to repair.

"It is, in its deepest essence, a moral declaration that the lives of the oppressed are not accidents of fate, but souls entitled to justice, worthy of representation, opportunity, and voice," he said. 

Chief Justice Gavai explained that during the framing of India's Constitution, a remarkable and often overlooked truth emerged: many of the nation's most vulnerable social groups were not merely subjects of constitutional concerns but active participants in its making.

"From Dalits and Adivasis to women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and even those once unjustly branded as 'criminal tribes,' their presence in the Constituent Assembly, and in the broader constitutional imagination, was a collective demand for justice. These groups had endured centuries of oppression, exclusion, and silence. Their call was for recognition, dignity, and protection in the new India. They sought not charity, but a rightful space in the fabric of a free and constitutional democracy. To be seen in the Constitution was to be seen by the nation. To be included in its text was to be included in its future," he said.

Praising Dr BR Ambedkar's contribution to the Constitution, he said: "In an unequal society, he believed, democracy cannot survive unless power is also divided among communities, not just among institutions. Representation, therefore, was a mechanism of redistributing power, not only between the legislature, executive, and judiciary, but among social groups that had been denied a share for centuries."

Chief Justice Gavai further said that it is for this reason that Dr Ambedkar stated in his last address to the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949: "We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognises liberty, equality, and fraternity as the principles of life."