Speech of Justice M N Venkatachalaiah

It's a festive occasion... Justice Gopala Gowda has spoken so eloquently and forcefully. After his torrential address I think all that I can do is to say that had I... had I had the privilege of sitting in, sitting with him in the bench I would have said I entirely and respectfully agree! [applause] He feels passionately about things that he... believes in I'd look at this photograph of Mr. Shankar and that is typical; some of the photographs are so telling... In fact this great portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh of Ottawa he said I don't photograph the physical person - I capture his soul and spirit! and... this photograph which I see is the typical cynical Mr. Shankar in court! [laughter] Whenever he thinks that the judge is wrong, he wouldn't say so, but he'd look at him the same way! and I have been a victim of that glare... Ladies and gentlemen, this is a beautiful occassion when a lawyer who has struggled hard - his life is not a very pleasant one - particularly today when the dignity of the courtroom has broken down. I remember some sixty years ago in the small time courts which we used to frequent a litigant would be called ... the case would be called the name would be practice would be announced by the court cryer and he was so irreverential and there's one one judge who was then the second Munsiff where all rural litigation was conducted in Bangalore. He chastised his court cryer and said when he shouted "Thimmaiah" he said don't say that say "Thimmaiahnavaru"! and as long as he was the presiding judge in that court nobody was addressed in a light-hearted way by the court cryer. That was Mr. Papa Reddy whose daughter is here in court today Mr. Srinivas Reddy's wife. My memory goes back to almost sixty years when you could see the courtroom the dignity of the courtroom has broken down. Both lawyers and judges are responsible for it. The exchange is not an enlightened one. These changes almost border on mutual recrimination That's why Chief Justice Gopala Gowda has said... that let us leave behind these small things and build up a great institution. People cynically said lawyers are at least one hundred years behind the needs of the time. The courts are at least two hundred years behind the needs of time and the lawyers and judges three hundred! It conveys a very uncomfortable feeling that we have not been able to build a good system for example in the United States (Of course we can't copy everything from the United States), but one of the things is, that there's a determination to build a rights-based society not a compensation-based society when our people over-emphasize the power of mediation I think within myself there are some cases which do not have a ... an adjudicative disposition and they are the ones which are properly the ones receptive to mediation, but violations of rights have to be critically evaluated and decision must be on the basis of rights. In the United States for a thousand population three hundred and thirty eight new actions are brought before courts and tribunals and various other adjudicative bodies! In Singapore it is eighty nine! Why is this different in the United States? The education level and the income level is as good or perhaps on par with the, with what obtains in Singapore education level and per capita income But why is this difference? The difference is because United States is an open society, and Singapore is a closed society. In Singapore if you make a political speech without the script being approved by the authorities there's a mandatory fine in the first instance of a thousand dollars If you repeat that mistake then imprisonment for one year is mandatory. That's why the famous "Lee thesis" as Lee Kuan Yew who built the modern Singapore, he propounded that if you want democracy, forget development! want development - forget democracy! and that is the famous Lee thesis in economics and uh... as a counter statement Louis Brandeis great judge of the Americal supreme court has said Either you have democracy or concentration of wealth in a few hands You can't have both. this is the American, even in the liberal American system a judge propounded this view this we are passing through perhaps the most critical bend in Indian history... what justice what we could gather from the theme of what chief justice Gopala Gowda said is that either you have democracy or concentration of wealth in a few hands you can't have both! this statement steps up a.. a kind of a feeling with us that where are we in this world today this next decade is going to be the most stunning decade in human history long time ago two thousand five hundred years ago there was a philosopher in in Ionia he said if you study subjects insularly as physics, mathematics, law, philosophy, psychology ... as watertight disciplines you build knowledge but you never build ability. Science is knowledge, technology is ability; technology can be built only if there is a covergence of various fields of knowledge particularly today what is called material science and unless you bring build a convergence and I always say today a hand-held mobile phone is the metaphor for this convergence is going to be the metaphor for the developments that we will see, the most stunning developments somebody said the twentieth century was the century of America the twenty-first will be the century of China and India It's nobody's century - it's the century of new science, new biology new medicine and new physiology every one of our ideas including the thought of the inevitability of death and taxes as they say all these ideas will be turned on their head in the course of the next ten years. and society has to change the whole edifices on the basis of science, scientific education as justice Gopala Gowda has said we don't have mutual respect today that is the principle of fraternity that the constitution built in spirit of concordance and the relationship between man and man and this is perhaps one of the most difficult times that we are living through and uh... somebody said man's inclination towards justice makes democracy possible but his disinclination towards justice makes it necessary and today there is no Indian civil society, the great society Mahatma Gandhi thought of Our society is shattered scattered fractured and consists of groups in perpetual conflict with each other and there's no civil society, and that's the problem of any... any constructive movement. The legal profession is perhaps the most beautiful profession somehow, somewhere, somewhen, sometime, we have dropped some values and when once these fundamental values are dropped it's very difficult to pick them up Sharat Chandra Bose is a very, very great lawyer he died when he was hardly sixty P B Mukherji the Chief Jutice of the Calcutta High Court happened to be one of his juniors He was a very bright man and in his young lawyer days Sharat Chandra Babu Sharat Babu was told that the lawyer had become very demanding and commercial immediately he sat in his car went to his office asked him to sit next to him he drove straight to the Ganga and on the banks of the Ganga he stood up, took out gold coins one after another from his pocket and threw it into the river and said, "Mother, don't make me slave.. of commercialism let me be a professional and bless this young lawyer not to succumb to agnosticism or worship doubt and that is, he P B Mukherji in his own autobiography refers to this incident. The continuing legal education is in the chambers of the senior the best institution of training was the chambers of the senior, actually till nineteen-seventy legal education was wholly unintellectual and a man with an agricultural degree would go through a conversion course for one year and become a solicitor and it... it was in nineteen seventy if I remember, Britain set up a committee called the Armlot committee it gave a report about the necessity of of integrating the academic and the professional wings of the legal profession and how students, law students should be exposed to the techniques of court work and a coordinating committee was constituted It's a beautiful writing and the first in nineteen seventy four Lord Cross of Chelsea wrote about legal education in UK for the first president of the coordination committee he said I've never had myself he said in the summer of nineteen seventy two when the Lord Chancellor asked me to preside over this committee I told myself that I had no formal legal education I had... I was a I became a lawyer long before the Armbroad committee came up and uh... and he he said the only qualification that perhaps the Lord Chancellor saw in me was that I could go to the subject without any pre-conceived notions as a good judge this was the... and, and remarkable things happened thereafter. It was professionalised. For the first time in Eighty-four India thought of a... a professional legal training The National Law School came up in nineteen ninety three I thought that there's need for a an integrated uh... legal academy national judicial academy and I had to fight a battle with the bureaucracy, because it involved a hundred crores of rupees Thank God, I must thank the then Prime Minister Mr. Narasimha Rao who cooperated When I sent an estimate for eighty-eight crores he talked to me and said your don't know the bureaucracy If you say eighty-eight crores they will bury this project Please start with eight crores; we wil come up to eighty eight crores in course of time! and his... his wisdom then I said I can't change my letter. He said "Don't worry about that letter, it will be with me but you write initially you require only eight crores." and of course I, I sent. slowly it was built up It's a beautiful academy. The campus is one of the best in the world, there's no other campus anywhere in the world where we can have this kind of infrastructure and perhaps that is one of the under-utilised facilities like all lawyer libraries are the supreme court has one of the finest law libraries in Asia and is perhaps the most under-utilised library this is where possibly we have to think of many things unless you build up a powerful education base for this country this uh... the present dispensation is an exciting opportunity for this country to expiate and uh... and uh... expiate its sins of neglecting the poor sections of society and this is the one opportunity, for them to cleanse themselves of that guilt. And you must... but government's are insensitive They think that they can always flex muscles and impose this on people it's more an effort of coordination as far as law education is concerned this finishing school that uh... Mr Shankar had thought about is a beautiful idea lawyers require a lot of polishing and what I see in courts is a tremendous lack of a sense of humour in court and... most of the tensions in court could be dissolved by a little gentle sprinkling of a sense of humour in court which can resolve and I find people flaring up debate between a lawyer and judge is more about how much one knew how much more one knew over the other than what is the needs of justice of the case this kind of debate in court is uh... is a very provocative situation I've seen, in fact justice Verma used to say whenever he became a little angry in court he confessed that I would press his hands unseen by the lawyers and then that's a signal for him to cool down! I think that on this occassion we we are honouring Mr Shankar on the completion of fifty years To survive in the bar for fifty years is a very difficult thing The bar is a very tricky place Success is not achieved success is not necessarily achieved by merit. There are many other ways in which professional success is achieved. and this is what in one of the beautiful lectures of the Tagore law series Rash Behari Ghosh who wrote that monumental text on the law of securities in India in the last paragraph he says this a lawyer's academic gains are not wholly thrown away Don't worry about success in the bar Success is achieved by many means other than, perhaps the intellectual equipment of the lawyer. but a higher girdle of honour awaits a lawyer who reads and who is intellectual otherwise he quoted Shakespeare and said you are a poor player who struts his hour on the stage and is heard no more many lawyers may make money but they don't make an impression on the culture of the bar and uh... we have seen seen great lawyers in our times and um... I had perhaps the privilege of listening to some of our most eminent lawyers The most eminent was uh... Mr. A K Sen he was uh... whatever might be his political affiliations and his other reputations he was in court perhaps the most masterly craftsman in the act of... of... of persuading the court many many lawyers..., I was privileged to sit in the House of Lords at the invitation of the Lord Chancellor There also the lawyers, the senior lawyers as here take their own time to come junior lawyer said the senior is busy in some other court he will come I thought this disease also is all over the world! and the junior lawyer was... he he asked that kind of postponement - passing-over as we call it as a matter of right The judge was annoyed he said we decline to grant you an adjournment you go on with the case. He said I am not a Silk! it doesn't matter he said then he said I have not brought my helmet I've not brought my helmet! he said this is something which all the young lawyers when they start their career must be initiated in the culture of human dignity and human rights Wherever I have had occasion to deal with it I used to tell them: please show them three beautiful films. one was To kill a Mockingbird goes with seeing Gregory Peck Gregory Peck acting there as a lawyer It is one of the most moving situations. The other is when a teacher of science of evolution he taught Darwinism and evolution and he was prosecuted for blasphemy for propagating tenets of Darwinism which went against the tenets of Christianity and that's the famous monkey trial and that was a... that's the one case which cut the umbilical cord between religion and law in eighteen forty two the american supreme court declared "We are a Christian country" Christianity is a part of the common law again forty years later they found that common law christianity was a part of common law That umbilical cord between religion and law was cut, and cut finally, in that monkey trial case That's the Scopes trial and a beautiful film is made on it It's called the inheriting... Inherit the Wind Film is called Inherit the Wind It's a beautiful film that shows how the chief prosecutor himself was hauled up as a witness in support of the Christian faith and how who was cross-examined had to be got out of the court in a stretcher! that's the power of cross-examination. We don't see that kind of thing anymore here and uh... uh... junior lawyers must understand that's the most powerful tool in the common law tradition. in the adversarial system the judge is simply an umpire we're supposed to respond to a call "Hows That!" Out or not out. He can't get into the dust of the ring. But there the way the man was cross-examined is something of a marvel then came the new film - La Amistad I think recently two years ago the film came into the theaters in banglore that is the story of how the american feudal immigrants kidnapped african slaves for slave labor in their in their industry in their cotton fields and how the captured indentured labour revolted and killed the captain they were tried and ordered to be hanged then the appellate court came and said they propounded one of the most beautiful beautiful axioms in law and that is if a man's freedom is taken away illegally it is it is his right to regain it even if it be that he inflicts death on his captor. and after thirteen years he comes back to his home town His wife and children have gone away the whole thing was barren The film is a beautiful film which tells us what... It holds a mirror to our society and tells us really what we are what kind of humanity that we possess inside ladies and gentlemen today this is an occassion for... This is a festive mood in fact uh... Shankar I've known him I think he started his practice in nineteen sixty two not Fifty-two as Mr. Venkata Krishna said... sixty two I see Mineteen fifty one was the year I entered the bar and... is... and the first thing my father cautioned me is change the soles of your shoes Let them not make a knock on the floor in the court! Today... if you tell a junior he will perhaps take out the shoe itself! [laughter] and the the kind of uh... courtroom dignity has collapsed If you don't restore the courtroom dignity There's a great responsibility for the judges to maintain it. Lawyers are engaged by clients because they think he is the best man in the world and the court can't cut him down and say You are an ignorant person! he most more often than not the battle is not the justice of the case, it is who knows more and who is more ignorant or less ignorant Chastising a lawyer in court for lack of preparation is the first sign of collapse of the court dignity I have seen Justice Chagla uh... who was ... the pink of polish in court even even if the most atrocious proposition was uttered before him he'd just tap his fingers... he always used to do that at the bench and he'd say "Must you say that?" and the worst that was considered that could come out of him by way of criticism of a lawyer was these words "Must you say that?" and the lawyer would know that the judge is not happy with it! It is an... It is something of a... What a magnificent..., out of thousands of judgments he rendered, he reserved only two judgments for this thing... Even that Bombay Education Society case was a rendered extempore judgment in court... That was the brilliant man I'd the great privilege of assisting him in some cases in the Supreme Court. In those days he had... his health had failed, He was a little asthmatic, and his pipe would never light up and he'd always be fighting with it, to have it lit up! and uh... it wouldn't work and uh... one night we were sitting up to 11 o'clock in the night and uh... suddenly he remembered that he didn't have his supper... Then my client who was a very reesourceful man He immediately telephoned a restaurant in Delhi and they said give us fifteen minutes time for us to receive Chagla The hotelier was so excited! He got all the members of his family family there to receive uh... and Chagla was greatly embarrassed and uh... it was a beautiful thing I think one of our young lawyers has written a book on... some of the great lawyers of the past Jurists, lawyers and judges... he has referred to this incident and he refers to uh... me as being with him and uh... it was such a moving thing and Chagla was simply... look at the graciousness of the man! I had the great privilege last year to inaugurate the Chagla chair of constitutional Law in the Bombay University His son Iqbal invited me We were there in a beautiful function and then you had B. K. Mukherjea I rate him as the perhaps the greatest judge of India Bijan Kumar. and his court he never raised his voice above a whisper and the lawyers would wait for every word that dropped from him! and, the great picture of dignity and he's something of a very great experience and there was Justice Shah who knew everything every footnote case in the Mulla civil procedure code he would know and that is how great judges... I think Mr. Shankar uh... would have made a good judge but uh... he is a more prosperous lawyer! He didn't have to be condemned to the share of poverty that judges are condemned to! it's a payback time for him and his colleagues and the judges have been so gracious and kind to him, good to him and i think he has now come up with this uh... uh... with this idea of an academy and I know the best academy is the chambers of the senior. I know Setalvad every Friday evening would have a conference with his juniors in the lawn of his bungalow as the attorney general and good food was served. he was very meticulous about it the way it was served, the crockery the juniors were treated as kings and then that one occasion a case in which he had appeared He'd appeared for the Maharani of Patiala in a case and those days when the seniors argued the day fee was a thousand forty rupees and he... he received that money from the from the lawyer or advocate on record and the case came up after lunch within fifteen minutes the case was over! and one of his evening, Friday evening conferences the Maharani Saheba sent her secretary with a plate covered by a an embroidered cloth and he thought some sweets had been sent and wanted wanted to be distributed to them the juniors and the clerks and the office staff when he opened it he found a plateful of sovereigns! He became furious and he told the secretary of the Rani Saheba Please tell your Rani Saheba the Attorney General of India doesn't accept Baksheesh! Take it away! But there are cases in which lawyers even accept a bottle of whiskey! [laughter] That stern discipline Senior counsel never met clients A silk... That's why in England a silk and a judge can have a drink together not with a solicitor! If a judge is found sharing hospitality with a solicitor It's a misconduct! but when he even shares a drink with a silk they think that he has no personal interest in any litigation These are matters which are very important today. In any Australian university if you go there you'll find the chancellor or professor or both are all fellows of the royal society There are a hundred and sixty-eight fellows of the royal society in, in Australia that's the benchmark of their scientific excellence We are two hundred and fifty times Australia's population We have just ten of them! and, ladies and gentlemen, please don't be deluded by the kind of economic growth that we, we boast of the whole of the FDI, the foreign direct investment and the FII the Financial institutional investors uh... They are all contributing to the Indian capital of about fifteen percent the rest of Indian financial capital is made up of what is called domestic savings or the household savings It's the the housewife, the homemaker that builds up the economy of this country The household savings are phenomenal and the remittances from our masons, fitters, drivers, plumbers workers who work in outside countries, particularly in the United Arab Emirates their remittances is far higher than our exports in... software industry software exports are about fifty-two to fifty-five billion but the remittances from these workers to India is sixty billion this year! the financial year ended 31st it's sixty billion! There is a beautiful story said about one Cornwell who criss-crossed the whole of America speaking about the prosperity of India India he said the poor own much more than twice the American circulating currency They own nine point three trillion Nine point three trillion dollars worth of assets but those assets of the poor have not become turned into capital and he told this story of an Indian merchant who had been promised a great wealth a great treasure if he only searched for it by an astrologer This man went all over the world in search of the promised treasure and came back tired exhausted and old. he needed a drink of water then he looked into his well which had silted up he took an axe and dug into it Lo and behold! he discovered the Golconda diamond mines. This is the the allegory of the story that in your backyard, there's so much of wealth, so much of potential and it can create so much of wealth for the country this is where we... we have to understand the situation in this country today and we must also understand judges and lawyers that this is a very critical period of Indian history this bend of Indian history can be very tricky United Nations said when they prescribed thirty three percent of women's representation in the parliament in the apex lawmaking bodies they said this thirty percent is a magic number this is the critical mass as they say When the nuclear interaction attains critical mass there's a chain reaction and this is a social critical mass and they say if thirty percent of India's, any country's population for that matter lose faith in the justice of their society there is a negative social critical mass which unleashes unleashes a chain reaction of cynicism that cynicism is a power of destruction and not of reconstruction the restoration of this balance is essentially in the hands of the Judiciary and if it is in the hands of the judiciary, it is only a metaphor that it is in the hands of the lawyers of the country they have a great responsibility to usher in an egalitarian and a just society. Today eighty-seven percent of national income goes into the hands of fifteen percent of India's population the bottom twenty percent has one-and-a-half percent of India's national income An unequal society lives under a constant threat of an impending disaster and this is the warning that justice, Chief justice Gopala Gowda administered in his very very sweet words It was too... this is the task cut out for the lawyers I understand As Brandeis once said A lawyer who doesn't know economics and sociology is apt to be a public enemy and if you don't have a background of social and economic conditions in which you work, perhaps the profession can be a disastrous instrument in degrading the nation in the comity of nations. I am most grateful to you for this invitation. Shankar is a special person He's grown two blades of grass where one grew, and deserves the better of mankind. Thank you very much. I wish him all the best.