Nigeria, June 22 -- Swami Kesavananda Bharati was a senior Hindu monk who became an unlikely icon of constitutional law and provocateur for judicial independence. Better known by the honorific, "His Holiness", Kesavananda was by 1970 the senior pontiff of a Hindu Monastery in Edneer, Kasaragod District of Kerala State in south-western India.

The Kerala Land Reforms (Amendment) Act of 1969, which came into force at the beginning of January 1970, empowered the state government to restrict the management of lands belonging to Kesavananda's monastery.

For His Holiness, this was not a matter for prayer or fasting. In February 1970, he sued. Arguments began on 31 October 1972, ending on 23 March 1973 before a full panel of 13 Justices of the ...