Young Justice

As a boy, Karnan was disciplined, would invoke Ambedkar and was strict about the rules

- Lakshmi Subramanian

Dogs and cows roam the narrow road leading to Karnatham village in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu. The hamlet is dotted with thatched huts, half-constructed buildings and thorny shrubs, and is generally devoid of activity. A few lungi-clad men sit chatting under a withered banyan tree, waiting for the government liquor shop to open. Thin, dark women walk by swiftly, with firewood on the heads. This is the village that birthed Justice C.S. Karnan, the judge who judged the judiciary.

When we ask for Justice Karnan’s house, the men and women give us a sly smile, before pointing to a bust of B.R. Ambedkar and the small, muddy lane opposite to it. Near the bust is a grave, of Justice Karnan’s father, Chinnaswamy Swaminathan, who won the president’s award for excellence in teaching. Near the grave is the entrance to a 15-acre farm and a well-built farmhouse.

A half-naked old man with sore eyes sits in a one-room building next to the farmhouse. “This is Karnan’s house. They are five brothers. He is my nephew. They are hardworking. They were raised here, but none of them come here to take care of me,” says the old man, Chinnaswamy Kasilingam. He recalls the old days when his brother Swaminathan and his children would work on the farm together.

Karnan, born on June 12, 1955 as Karunanithi Swaminathan, went to primary school a few hundred metres from his childhood house, which is about 700 metres from the farmhouse. He was among 13 children in the village to go to the government high school in Mangalampet. He would walk three kilometres every day to reach school. “He was the only dalit among the 13 in that batch to have cleared SSLC with first class. He was always good and sincere at studies,” says his brother, S. Arivudainambi, a lawyer at a Virudhachalam court.