Journal of The Indian Law Institute VOLUME 11 JULY - SEPTEMBER 1969 NUMBER 3 DIRECTIVE PRINCIPLES AND SOCIOLOGY OF INDIAN LAW — A REPLY TO DR. JAGAT NARAIN* Upendra Baxi I MUST BEGIN MY REPLY with a word of appreciation and a word of apology. I welcome Dr. Jagat Narain's spirited defence of his views and equally spirited assault on mine. I appreciate the opportunity he has thus provided me to express my thinking on the legal nature of the directive principles of state policy in the Indian Constitution, an analytical venture I had perforce to forego in "Trre. Lirtlp Done, The Vast Undone. ..." But precisely because the range of ideas touched upon in Dr. Narain's letter is vast, my apologies are due to the readers (and also to the editors) for the present length of reply. Had Narain preferred to formulate issues agitating him clearly and pouUe41y, tire structure of my response would have been different. In the first section of this letter I will identify, and answer where appropriate, some of the personal rather than scholarly criticisms that Narain offers. Having thus disposed of the emotive elements of dialogue, I will attempt to formulate issues of mutual scholarly concern relating to (i) directive principles and (ii) approaches to (what I call) the sociology of Indian law. I Howsoever tempting they may have been, I believe Narain should have resisted critical remarks on my scholarly and personal integrity. Such observations are rarely, if ever, directly relevant (nor indeed conducive) to the fulfilment of scholarly tasks. Narain seems to recognize this elementary axiom of scholarly discourse when he says that "polemical legal journalism" (of which footnote 110 of my article seems to him an archetypal example) cc needs to be discouraged these days." But he himself is better at precept than in practice, and thus invites a return of the compliment undeservedly extended to me in the first place. "Polemical writing" when used as a term of reproach signifies wanton, unjustified, and perhaps unjustifiable criticism. I think Narain provides a better example of this type of polemics than anything in ♦See Dr. Jagat Narain's letter infra at 270. **B.A., LL. M. (Bombay), LL.M. (Berkeley, California); Lecturer in Jurisprudence and International Law, University of Sydney, Australia.