M.S.S.Pandian writing on the Supreme Court’s objections to the ‘Central Educational Institution (Reservation and Admission) Act, 2006, which provides for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in institutions of higher learning’ , says:

Given this pre-history of 27 per cent, the on-going tussle between the judiciary and the legislature does not seem to be one of the judiciary merely trying to contain the arbitrariness of the legislature. Instead, it seems to be a tussle between two institutions that are critically important for any functioning democracy, to assert which has the right to be arbitrary.

Responding to Pandian’s views, Chttibabu Padavala comments:

M.S.S. Pandian’s brief and beautiful comment is, as usual, insightful and sensible on many counts. However, I think both his description of the problem and prescription it implies are fundamentally faulty.
Firstly, his gesture of equating the struggle between Judiciary and Legislative is problematic. One is on the side of those oppressed peoples and the other is for maintaining inequalities in an unapologetic manner. This is not a simple clash of claims to arbitrary power. Such an equation is not an analytically useful comparison, however elegantly such false symmetry is presented. [...] It was not a ‘pre-history’, Dalit-Bahujans and progressives rightly see the Judiciary’s handling of the issues related to reservations in jobs and education as continuous with the Laws of Manu.

The point being missed, I think, is the original arbitrariness in defining the Indian nation: a debate over the arbitrariness of any arm of the state that governs this arbitrarily defined nation would be perceived as acquiescing in that arbitrariness.