Welcome to Hard Talk. I'm Stephen Saka, and today I'm in Delhi to talk to the man who was until last November, India's top judge, with a public profile so high, some called him a celebrity judge, the rock star of the legal profession.

Danan J. Chandra Chudh spent two years presiding over the Supreme Court as Chief Justice,

and the six years before that, sitting on the Supreme Court bench.

He was fulfilling a family tradition.

His father had been chief justice decades before him.

The younger Chandrat Chud's Supreme Court career coincided with the rise to power of Narendra Modi

and the Hindu nationalist BJP. Chief Justice Chandra Chud was a moderniser. He opened up

proceedings of the court to be live-streamed online, and on social issues he was seen as a progressive.

But his critics in liberal circles have accused him of failing to and on social issues he was seen as a progressive.

But his critics in liberal circles have accused him of failing to stand up to the authoritarian tendencies of India's Hindu nationalist prime minister, Mr Modi.

So was he a chief justice who truly defended the court's independence from political interference.

Well, he joins me now.

Justice Dananjay Chandarachud, welcome to Hart.

Thank you.

Let me begin by asking you what you concluded when you said, as you left the Supreme Court last year, you said, I found myself pondering.

Did I achieve everything I set out to do?

What is your own answer to that question?

A lot of answers would await posterity, I guess.

But speaking for myself, I had laid out a plan for the time that I would be Chief Justice. The first was, of course,

in terms of the judgments which I would deliver, because a Chief Justice is first and foremost a judge.

And then second, you're also the administrative head of the Indian judiciary. So I first and foremost

wanted to, in my judgments, realize the full transformative potential of the Constitution,

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