Former Supreme Court Justice Rohinton Nariman recently criticised the erasure and distortion of history by the ruling dispensation and suggested that citizens may be able to address the issue to a certain degree by approaching courts.

Justice Nariman said that he was shocked when a book read out to him by a child depicted Mughal emperor Akbar as merely a tyrant and mass murderer. The contributions of the emperor as well as the Mughal dynasty was merely brushed over unlike in history books of the past.

"It's all very well to speak of fraternity, but what happens when on the ground history books for examples are distorted. Today we were just discussing one of our greatest emperors along with Ashoka is Akbar. I was flabbergasted to find in a particular book, and a child read it out to me, to find that Akbar is stated to be a person who is a tyrant and a person who organized mass murders at Chittor where so many women committed jauhar (self immolation). That is pretty much all that was said about him and almost nothing was said about any of the great Mughals. So there is a complete effacement followed by a total distortion," he said.

The former judge suggested that one way the issue can be addressed is for citizens to approach courts. The distortion of history can be seen as a violation of the fundamental duties under Article 51A of the Constitution especially the duty "to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture".

While fundamental duties are not directly enforceable in court, when there is a breach of a fundamental duty, there is a corresponding breach of a correlated right.

"Every duty has a correlative in a right because if it is my duty to behave in a particular manner and I have breached that duty then there is a right in somebody to petition a court and come forward," Justice Nariman explained.

He said that while this principle won't apply to all fundamental duties, it could apply in cases when there a breach of fraternity through a failure to protect India's composite culture.

"Obviously, for fundamental duties in the nature of mere exhortations, like the fundamental duty to remember the noble values of our freedom struggle, you can't come to court and say this man is breaching this duty. But what you can do in cases which breach fraternity, and particularly for the history textbooks which are rewritten this way, you can petition a court and say look, this goes directly contrary to the principle which speaks of harmony, fraternity, and composite culture. You can say that instead of preserving that composite culture, you are attacking it. Therefore, please reverse it," he said.

Justice Nariman added that while courts would not have any expertise to reverse changes in history by itself, it could appoint a panel of experts as each case demands.

"The court would have no expertise to do so itself. It could perhaps order some panel of experts to look into it and restore what our actual history is. This is only a suggestion made by me. But prevention is always better than cure," Justice Nariman said.

Justice Nariman made these remarks while delivering the KM Bashir Memorial Lecture organised by the Press Club of Trivandrum in Kerala on September 1.

In his lecture on the topic 'Fraternity in a secular state: the protection of cultural rights and duties', Justice Nariman focused on secularism as an indespensible condition to fraternity, the common moral thread running through world religions, judicial integrity, and the duty of citizens to uphold constitutional values.

Read more on Justice Nariman's lecture here.