Justice Kaul, 51, appointed judge in May 2001, looks beyond limitations of old case laws to strengthen the case of artistic freedom of expression. For this, on both occasions, he chose not to base his verdicts merely on the contours of the law but listened to what great artists and writers had to say on the subject. He gives ample space and weight to opinions of the likes of Pablo Picasso, Mark Twain, Vatsyana’s Kamasutra and even King James I of England.

Mark Twain finds himself at the very top of today’s verdict, with his view that “to cease smoking is the easiest thing I (Twain) ever did. I ought to know because I have done it a thousand times”.

King James is also features in the judgment with his view that smoking is a “custom loathsome to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and the black stinking fumes nearest resemble the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless”.

Picasso is part of the judge’s two verdicts on freedom of artistes to look farther than the “chaste” borders of “ignorant innocents”. “Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, and never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared,” Justice Kaul repeatedly quotes Picasso in his judgments.

In his earlier judgment on the rights due to Husain as an artist, he expresses his insight into what contributes “obscenity” in art. “We do not censor to protect the pervert or to assuage susceptibilities of the over-sensitive,” he observed while illustrating a scene in Schindler’s List. “Rows of naked men and women, shown frontally, being led into the gas chambers of a Nazi concentration camp — not only are they about to die but they have been stripped in their last moments of the basic dignity of human beings,” he said. “Tears are a likely reaction; pity, horror and a fellow feeling of shame are certain, except in the pervert who might be aroused.”