Judicial Interpretation as Power: The Crisis of Judicial Imagination in Indian Constitutional Law: A Mimamsa Perspective

This paper contends that constitutional and statutory interpretation in India is not merely a technical exercise of resolving textual ambiguity, but a constitutive site where legal authority, social hierarchy, and developmental priorities are reproduced. Modern techniques of interpretation, textual, purposive, and value-based, are embedded in an implicit judicial imagination that privileges neutrality, abstraction, and progress, often at the expense of the relational harms and structural inequalities embedded in legal disputes. The paper argues that the limits of these techniques are not merely doctrinal, but epistemic and moral, based on patriarchal assumptions and a development-centric understanding of constitutional governance. To shed light on these limitations, the article uses the principles of Mimamsa hermeneutics as a critical tool of interpretation in place of a normative alternative to modern constitutional reasoning. By highlighting the importance of interpretive modesty, contextual holism, and obligation-driven reasoning, Mimamsa provides a model of interpretation that interrogates the authority of the interpreter and the scope of judicial discretion. In this engagement, the article shows that the crisis of interpretation in Indian constitutional law is less about methodological differences and more about the unbridled growth of the power of interpretation itself. The article finally contends that for constitutional adjudication to be more than just a site of doctrinal innovation, there must be a shift towards interpretive modesty, epistemic diversity, and moral responsibility.