Describing the office of the Chief Justice of India as the country’s most powerful yet vulnerable institution, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Chairperson Justice V. Ramasubramanian on Monday said the office is subjected to an unrelenting “agnipariksha” every day, and indeed, every minute.
Addressing the NHRC’s 33rd Foundation Day celebrations on October 12, where Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was the Chief Guest, Justice Ramasubramanian described the CJI’s office as “the single most important, the most powerful, the most vibrant and at the same time, the most vulnerable office in the country.”
“It is an office which is put to the test of fire (agni pariksha), every day, nay every minute, not necessarily by sacred souls at all times,” he remarked, highlighting the constant scrutiny and formidable challenges associated with the constitutional office. He also expressed appreciation for CJI Surya Kant’s decision to attend the event despite the considerable demands on his time.
Recalling the establishment of the NHRC on October 12, 1993, the Chairperson said the Commission had, over the past 33 years, made a commendable contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights in the country, often without seeking publicity or public recognition.
Quoting Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, he observed: “Honour and shame from no condition rise, act well your part, there all the honour lies.” The quotation, he suggested, captured the spirit in which institutions must discharge their responsibilities, irrespective of the attention or acclaim they receive.
Justice Ramasubramanian acknowledged that the world had become a substantially better place to live in compared with a century ago. However, he cautioned that the challenges confronting humanity had grown increasingly complex, requiring human rights institutions to adapt their approaches and rethink their methods of functioning.
Referring to an article in The Correspondent magazine titled The Great Paradox of Our Time: Everything Is Both Better and Worse Than Ever Before, he pointed to significant improvements in human welfare. Global life expectancy, he noted, had more than doubled to approximately 72 years, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty had declined from nearly eight in ten to fewer than one in ten, and under-five child mortality had fallen from around 50 per cent in 1800 to less than four per cent.
Yet, he cautioned, this remarkable progress had come with considerable environmental costs. Drawing attention to the consequences of industrialisation, he noted that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1750, humanity had extracted and burned hundreds of millions of years’ worth of stored energy, releasing more than two trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Turning to the evolving nature of human rights violations, the NHRC Chairperson said the traditional understanding of rights as a two-dimensional relationship between the citizen and the State was no longer adequate. The digital revolution had fundamentally altered the landscape, with non-State actors increasingly exercising influence over individuals and their rights.
“In the digital world, our opinions can be manipulated, our thought processes can be influenced and our activities, both physical and mental, can be monitored,” he said, drawing attention to the growing risks posed by technological advancements and the expanding reach of digital platforms.
He also referred to Neuralink’s announcement in January 2026 concerning a chip implanted in a human brain, warning of a future in which the boundaries between human beings and machines could become increasingly blurred.
“The day is not far off when man will become a machine which may be more mechanical than the machine and machine may become human without being humanistic,” he observed, underscoring the ethical and human rights questions that could arise from rapid advances in technology.
Against this backdrop, Justice Ramasubramanian called upon human rights institutions to prepare for emerging challenges by renewing their commitments, reassessing established practices and strengthening their institutional effectiveness.
He urged those present to pledge to “reinvent ourselves to face new challenges, reaffirm our commitment… and re-engineer our personalities to improve our delivery system.”
Highlighting the growing incidence of public discontent across the world, he cited figures from the Carnegie Endowment’s Global Protest Tracker as of September 9, 2026, according to which 107 anti-government protests had erupted across 57 countries during the preceding 12 months. He noted that a majority of these protests had taken place in countries classified as free.
His remarks placed the protection of human rights within the wider context of institutional accountability, technological disruption, environmental sustainability and changing patterns of public dissent, emphasising the need for human rights bodies to remain responsive to the realities of an increasingly complex world.
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