CJ's appeal to stick to prevention is better than cure adage

Appealing to lawyers,

litigants and people visiting the campus of the Madras High Court, its Chief Justice said they should reaffirm belief in the old adage that prevention is better than cure in order to rise up to the medical emergency caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

The Chief Justice of the Madras High Court A P Sahi, in his letter, said, Asserting that prevention is the diagnosis of the hour and the remedy is to avoid congestion and maintain distance, we have to realise we can now care for ourselves and for others by maintaining a distance howsoever paradoxical it might appear to us."

"The virtue of a disciplined life is at times very hard to inculcate. For example, the art of resisting temptations. The most difficult and trying discipline is how to resist temptations," he said.

 

Elaborating on it, he said such temptations are basic to human life, and that is, their desire to associate.

In his four-page communication titled 'A Thought and A Sincere Request", he said this freedom of association is a hard won freedom and any curtailment counters temptation to associate and socialise.

But there is a higher value in life that was enunciated by French philosopher and mathematician Descartes who said the philosophy of life lies in understanding what to sustain and what to abstain from, he said.

"This is moreso when we and the entire world are uncertain about the dynamic situation that has erupted with an unprecedented threat extended to human life with no positive medical remedy yet," he said.

"We have become vulnerable and we are now largely dependent on the considerate behaviour towards each other," he said.

Noting that to give up something and surrender what is most precious in life is ultimate liberation of the mind and to some it is salvation, Justice Sahi said social distancing may appear to be onerous but the severity of the situation demands stringency.

"It is not to quit life or stop living. It is to secure your life as well as that of others. You have to prove worthy of the situation as what can be corrected is really in your hand," the Chief Justice said.

"We all have to stand together as this duty and responsibility is not only governmental but it is also social and more particularly individual," he added.