Of the 6 billion people on earth, about 3 billion live in poverty. This is what is stated by Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations. We have an earth ravaged by conflicts and regional confrontation. The threat of nuclear, biological or chemical wars can turn into a reality at any time. There is a vast divide between the haves and the have-nots of the earth, the developed nations and the poor ones. There is a need for a new social order and hence the need for a world parliament which would take the initiative for banning the use of nuclear and other weapons and to bring about peace.

The founding fathers incorporated into the Constitution the aspirations of the people of the country to consolidate peace and security in the world and for paving the way for the establishment of a just social order. International law itself is a quintessence of the desire of the peoples of the world to live in peace and harmony. In 1949 Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the U.S. Congress and said that the objectives of the foreign policies of the new nation would be preservation of the world peace and enlargement of human freedom. Thereafter he evolved the principle ofPanchsheel, the five principles of harmonious co-existence of nations for establishing lasting peace on earth. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan declared once "The world has got together as a body: it is groping for a soul".

It was but natural that when the Constitution was framed, these desires and aspirations of the people would find concrete shape in the provisions of the Constitution. This desire, therefore, is the premises of Article 51 of the Constitution. The Article finds a place in Part IV dealing with the Directive Principles of State Policy. These principles are not enforceable in the courts, but are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country. Article 51 provided for the State endeavouring to promote international peace and security, for maintaining just and honourable relations between nations, for fostering respect for international law, treaty obligations in the dealings of organized people with one another and to encourage settlement of international disputes by way of arbitration.

The greatest advantage in incorporating the need to foster respect for international law and treaty obligations was that it provided legitimacy to the courts in seeking to advance the rights of the people by applying international covenants and treaties which had been ratified by India but which had not been incorporated into municipal laws. The enormous power and vigour of Article 51 is seen when one examines the judgments of the Supreme Court of India which extended the scope of various rights by interpreting them on the basis of the international conventions to which India was a signatory.

The first step was taken when in Kesavananda Bharati the Supreme Court of India held that "this Court must interpret the language of the Constitution, if not intractable, which is after all a municipal law, in the light of the United

Nations Charter and the solemn declaration subscribed to by India." It was Lord Denning who stated that it is the duty of courts to construe legislation so as to be in conformity with International Law and not conflict with it. As a matter of fact in People’s Union of Civil Liberties v. Union of India (1) SCC 301), the Court held:

"International law today is not confined to regulating the relations between States. 
Its scope continues to extend. Today matters of social concern, such as health, 
education and economics part from human rights fall within the ambit of 
International Regulations. International law is more than ever 
aimed at individuals."

The doors were therefore thrown wide open for international law to play a part in the development of human rights and personal liberties in this country. The Civil Procedure Code authorized the detention in prison of a judgment debtor who was found to be penniless and therefore unable to satisfy the decree. The Supreme Court invoked Article 11 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which declared:

"No one shall be imprisoned merely on the ground of inability to fulfil a contractual obligation".

The Court read Article 11 of the International Covenant into Article 21 of the Constitution and held that the International Covenant was not inconsistent with any part of the municipal law as a result of which it would be inhuman to imprison a penniless judgment debtor for his inability to pay the amount decreed against him.

The next step was to use Article 9(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966, which said "anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation".

In Nilabati Behera vs State of Orissa (AIR 1993 SC 1960), the Supreme Court invoked Article 9(5) of the Covenant for holding that compensation could be awarded in a proceeding under Article 32 of the Constitution or under Article 226 of the Constitution, where fundamental rights stood violated. There were remedies in public law and not in torts. It also held that the sovereign immunity could not be raised in defence by the State for the purpose of resisting the claim for the damages. The judgment has far-reaching consequence and even though delivered 8 years back, it is rather surprising that Nilabati Behera is not being used more frequently for the purpose of claiming damages not merely from the State but also from police officers or members of the executive responsible for deprivation of fundamental rights. The law of Torts has not developed in this country, where the State gets away scot free either because people do not know their rights or because they believe that the wait of a decade or two before they can get a final verdict and the expenditure of time and money is a self-defeating exercise. Perhaps, it is the same reluctance which is responsible for citizens suffering deprivations of personal liberty at the hands of the executive without invoking the Nalabati Behera remedy for compensation or damages in public law proceedings.

Article 17 of the same very Convention was invoked in PUCL Vs Union of India, AIR 1997 Vol. I SCC 301. Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stated:

"No one shall be subject to arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family, human correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation".

The Court in a public interest petition relied upon this Article to hold that tapping of telephones by the CBI was a serious invasion of the individual’s privacy and went a step further to declare " it is almost accepted proposition of law that the rules of customary international law which are not contrary to the municipal law shall be deemed to be incorporated in the domestic law".

But the most powerful among these judgments was Vishaka Vs State of Rajasthan. AIR 1997 SC 3011 where the working women rights against sexual harassment in the work place was the subject matter of debate. A class action was brought by certain social-activists and NGOs for bringing about gender-equality, to prevent sexual harassment of working women in all work places and through the judicial process to fill the vacuum in the existing legislation. The Court invoked the fundamental right to gender equality and also the right to life and liberty enshrined in the Article 21 of the Constitution to declare:

"The International Conventions and norms are significant for the purpose of interpretation of the guarantee of gender equality, right to work with human dignity in Articles 14, 15, 19(l)(g) and 21 of the Constitution and the safeguards against sexual harassment implicit therein. Any International Convention not inconsistent with the fundamental rights and in harmony with its spirit must be read into these provisions to enlarge the meaning and content thereof, to promote the object of the constitutional guarantee. This is implicit from Article 51(c) and the enabling power of the Parliament to enact laws for implementing the International Conventions and norms by virtue of Article 253 read with Entry 14 of the Union List in Seventh Schedule of the Constitution"

The Supreme Court thereafter set out a series of guidelines for preventing sexual harassment of women in work place and also the procedure to be followed in dealing with such complaints.

The last of these cases is Githa Hariharan Vs Reserve Bank of India, 1999 2 SCC 228, where the constitutionality of Section 6A of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956 was under challenge. The provision relegated the mother to an inferior position in regard to the guardianship of the minor child and this was on the ground of sex alone. The Supreme Court held that " the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. 1979(CEDAW) and the Beijing Declaration, which directs all State parties to take appropriate measures to prevent discrimination of all forms against women is quite clear. India is a signatory to CEDAW having accepted and ratified it in June, 1993. The interpretation that we have placed on Section 6(a) ofHMG Act gives effect to the principles contained in these instruments. The domestic courts are under an obligation to give due regard to International Convention and Norms for construing domestic laws when there is no inconsistency between them."

All these would indicate the pre-eminent position that Article 51 of the Constitution enjoys as a matter of fact, in the lives of the people of this country fostering respect for international laws and treaty obligations with one another. This has resulted in international law being injected into the interpretation of domestic law and municipal law with the Constitution being classified as municipal law for this purpose. As a result, through a very pro-active judiciary which has not hesitated to utilize the provisions of Article 51 for extending vast rights and expanding the existing rights for the benefit of the people of this country, India has given effect to International Conventions which it has ratified, though no municipal law has been enacted to implement these Treaties. It is true, of course, that judicial activism in this field cuts into the prerogative of the Parliament to make laws and to the extent to which Article 51 should be implemented, by enacting laws for achieving objects of an international convention, is within the realm of Parliament’s legislative competence under the Constitution. But the courts, utilizing international conventions for interpreting the different provisions of the Constitution, and implementing them dehors such provisions could be criticized as encroaching upon the power given to Parliament under Article 253 of the Constitution.

In S.R. Bommai Vs Union of India, (1994) 3 SCC I, the Court rejected any such approach and said for the present, it would suffice to state that the provisions of the covenant, which elucidate and go to effectuate the fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution, can certainly be relied upon by Courts as facets of those fundamental rights and hence, enforceable as such.

It would therefore appear that using Article 51 as a tool in its hands, the Supreme Court has been able to inject into Part III of the Constitution the vast number of rights flowing from the United Nations Charter, from the various conventions ratified by India and in particular the International Conventions on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 1979.

World jurists have not been uniform in the praise of Directive Principles of State Policy, including Article 51 of the Constitution. They are carried away by the preamble, as it were, to these Directive Principles contained in Article 37 which, as already pointed out, declares that these Directive Principles are not enforceable by any court, but are nevertheless fundamental to the governance of the country. It is the duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws.

Article 51 as well as the other Articles of the Directive Principles were therefore considered by well-known writers to be of no potency and that they were only mere platitudes. They did not reckon with the pro-activism of the Indian judiciary.

Prof. Weir, in his thesis "India’s New Constitution Analysed" said -

"As these principles cannot be enforced in any court, they amount to a little more than a manifesto of aims and aspirations".

Sir Ivor Jennings, in an article in the Hindu published in 1948, about the Directive Principles said :-

"They can be used for the purpose of political and private criticism but they confer no legal rights and create no legal remedy ...... it all reads like, and is, a political manifesto."

History has proved that they were abysmally wrong.

The Indian Supreme Court was’ prepared to inject Directive Principles, wherever the State failed in its duty in implementing them, into its concept of the right of life and liberty enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. They declared that, based on the conventions, they would read life into the Fundamental Rights in Part III of the Constitution. They married these rights to make them fall in line with the international conventions. Finally, in Unnikrishnan’s case the Directive Principle, which was otherwise not enforceable, which advises the State to give free primary education up to the age of 14, was elevated by judicial declaration to the status of a fundamental right. But what is remarkable is the metamorphosis which Article 21 underwent at the hands of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India. Article 21 merely said that no person shall be deprived of his right to life or liberty, other than by the procedure established by law. The Supreme Court declared, in a series of judgements, that the right to life was not a right to a mere animal existence but a right to live with human dignity, with all the faculties of the person intact and with a roof over one’s head and the right to a livelihood. It will, therefore, be seen that notwithstanding the pessimism of eminent foreign writers, the Supreme Court of India has utilized Article 51(c), which merely required the State lo foster respect for international law and treaty obligations, for the purpose of protecting human rights and bringing about a social order which did away with inequality and extended justice to the extent of the powers of the Supreme Court.

It would not be correct to say that this Article was an innovation of the Indian mind, based on the traditions of the Indian people from the time immemorial for peace and amity between communities, people and nations. On the other hand, we have adopted the concept of Directive Principles of State policy from the Irish Constitution, and especially the First three clauses of the said Article. It is the fourth clause which requires the encouragement of settlement of international disputes by arbitration that was engrafted during the debates in the Parliament.

Many constitutions of the world have similar declarations which seek to renounce war as an instrument of national policy and adopts the generally accepted principles of international law as a part of law of nations. The constitutions of Philippines, Nicaragua, Cuba, France, Japan and some other countries have provisions which embrace international law as a weapon for renouncing war and embracing peace.

With so many countries having the same approach towards international law, it was not a far cry before the aspiration of the people for maintaining peace through a World Parliament emerged.

Shri Aurobindo, the great Indian thinker, foresaw a world union. According to him, such a union was an inevitability. His message, when India gained independence, was loud and clear. He said :

"A catastrophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy what is being done, but even then the final result is sure. For, unification is a necessity of nature, an inevitable movement. Its necessity for the nations is also clear, for without it the freedom of small nations may be at any moment in peril and the life even of the large and powerful nations insecure."

India and Indian academics and politicians took an active part in seeking to achieve this dream. The seeds were sown in 1958 when a proposal to call a world constitutional convention was initiated. But, unfortunately the progress has been extremely slow. the first working session of the World Constitutional Convention was held in 1968 in Switzerland. The second Session of the World Constituent Assembly was held in Austria in 1977, the 3’d Session in 1979 in Colombia and in 1981 the World Constitution Parliament Association met at New Delhi. Year after year some progress took place but I am afraid we are far away from the realization of the dream of a world parliament. The third session of the Provisional World Parliament was held in 1987 at Florida and unfortunately, due to the Gulf War, the location of the 4’h Session, which was to be held in Egypt, had to be shifted to Portugal. The 5’1' Session was held at Malta in November 2000. You would, therefore, see that the evolution of the world government through a world parliament seems to be dream, more than a reality. I am proud to say that a number of Indians have taken an active part in promoting and supporting the World Parliament. What is heartening is that the Parliament, when established, proposes the ratification and, step by step, the implementation of world legislation to be enacted. The main heads of legislation will be:-

(i) to outlaw nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and to establish a world disarmament agency,

(ii) for a world economic development organization which will establish a new global system of finance and credit and help begin anew world economic order,

(iii) for ownership, administration and development of the oceans and sea beds of earth,

(iv) for an emergency earth rescue administration to bring carbon dioxide levels under control, save the environment and prevent universal starvation as a result of global climatic catastrophe,

(v) to protect life and nature of planet earth and to create a global Ministry of Environment,

(vi) for provisional district world courts, and

(vii) finally for a world government funding corporation to finance the entire programme.

These are ambitious targets. It is only if there is faith and belief in international law that one can possibly hope that the World Parliament will conic into existence some day. But if it comes into existence, I have no doubt that progress will be made towards achieving an equal distribution of’.vealth worldwide, the protection of developing nations, especially against the ravages arising from the degradation of the environment, the curbing of terrorism worldwide and most importantly the destruction of all nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and total ban on the production and stockpiling of these weapons of mass destruction. What is happening is that one among the proposals which will have a world judiciary, based on 8 federations, having monetary jurisdiction of different kinds of issues, with 5 continental seats. A collegium of world judges to be nominated by counselors to be elected by Parliament, headed by a presiding council of 5 will assign the work to different judges. The sponsors of the World Parliament include 150 from India who are leading intellectuals and 81 NGOs with a total membership of 1.4 million. I have no doubt that India, as the largest democracy in the world, would have a significant role in the development and establishment of the World Parliament and World Government. In addition to these contributions, I have no doubt that the Indian judiciary, which has established itself as an independent and pro-active judiciary, will also be able to contribute to the development of international harmony and a new world order once the World Government, the World Parliament and its instrumentalities are established throughout the world.

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