India, June 24 -- There is a misconception that judicial activism in India emerged after the withdrawal of the National Emergency (1975-1977). In the true sense of the phrase, it was inaugurated in the Golaknath case (1967) when the Supreme Court held that Parliament cannot curtail the fundamental rights of the people as enumerated under part 3 of the Constitution. The Court, in Golaknath, demarcated the limits of legislative majority. This was, perhaps, the first direct judicial effort to distinguish constitutional democracy from conventional democracy where legislative majority alone matters. Golaknath was a constitutional assertion over political whims and fancies, which, indirectly, negated idolatry in politics.

Then came the seminal...