A Suitable Boy, Page 95

  Baba sighed, then, looking above Rasheed’s head in the direction of the village, said: ‘Well, this affair is bound to get out. That is the problem. There are five of us here. Six. We may all promise not to speak a word, but the word will get spoken somehow. Of course, we understand from our guest, your friend, that you have not involved him in all this, which is good—’

  ‘Maan?’ said Rasheed, disbelievingly. ‘You’ve been talking to Maan?’

  ‘—but there is also the patwari, who will hide or reveal whatever suits his convenience. He is a sly man.’ Baba paused to consider his next words. ‘It will get out, and plenty of people will believe Kachheru put you up to this. We have to set an example. I am afraid you have not made things easier for him.’

  ‘Baba—’ protested Rasheed.

  But his father cut in, his voice thick with rage: ‘You should have thought of all this before. What would have happened to him at worst? We would have rotated him from field to field. He would still have the support of our family, he would still be able to use our cattle and our tools—it is you, it is you who have harmed my old chamar.’

  Rasheed covered his face with his hands. The Bear said:

  ‘Well, nothing has yet been decided finally, of course.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Baba after a pause. Rasheed was sighing deeply, his chest moving up and down.

  Rasheed’s father said: ‘Instead of being censorious about other people’s behaviour, I hope this experience will make you examine your own. We have heard from you no word of apology so far, no admission of wrongdoing. Believe me, if it had not been for your Mamu and the Imam Sahib here, we would not have been so lenient with you. You can still continue to live here whenever you wish. Some land may still be restored to your name in time, depending on whether you show yourself to be worthy of it. But rest assured, if you close the door of trust on this house, the doors of this house will be closed to you. I am not afraid of losing a son. I have lost one already. Now go downstairs. See to your wife and child—children. We have the matter of Kachheru to discuss.’

  Rasheed looked around the circle of faces. He saw sympathy in some, but support in none.

  He got up, said a low ‘Khuda haafiz’, and walked down the stairs into the courtyard. For a while he looked at the pomegranate tree, then he went inside. The baby and Meher were asleep. His wife looked deeply worried. He told her he would not be having supper. In a daze he walked out of the house.

  Maan, when he saw Rasheed emerge, smiled with relief. ‘I heard sounds of people talking, and thought you were never coming down,’ he said. He brought out Saeeda Bai’s letter from the pocket of his kurta.

  For a second, Rasheed thought of unburdening himself to Maan, even of seeking his help. This was the son of the very author of the act that aimed to do justice. But then he turned abruptly away.

  ‘But this—’ said Maan, waving the envelope.

  ‘Later, later,’ said Rasheed dully, and began to walk away from the house in a northerly direction.

  Part Eleven

  11.1

  At the stroke of ten, from behind the dull scarlet velvet hangings to the right of Courtroom Number One of the High Court of Judicature at Brahmpur, the five white-turbaned, red-liveried, gold-braided ushers of the judges emerged. Everyone rose to his feet. The ushers stood behind the tall-backed chairs of their respective judges and, at a nod from the Chief Justice’s usher—who looked even more magnificent than the others owing to the insignia of crossed maces on his chest—pulled them back to give the judges room.

  All eyes in the packed courtroom had followed the ushers as they moved towards the bench in what was almost a procession. Normal cases required a single judge or a bench of two, and cases of great importance and complexity might be assigned to three judges. But five judges implied a case of exceptional moment, and here were the heralds of the five in all their resplendent regalia.

  And now the judges followed in their black gowns, a sad anticlimax to their ushers. They wore no wigs, and a couple of them appeared to shuffle slightly. They entered in order of seniority: the Chief Justice first, followed by the puisne judges whom he had assigned to this case. The Chief, a small, dry man with almost no hair on his head, stood before the central chair; to his right stood the next seniormost judge, a large, stooping man who fidgeted continually with his right hand; to the Chief’s left stood the next seniormost judge of this bench, an Englishman who had served with the judicial service of the ICS and had stayed on after Independence; he was the only Englishman among the nine judges in the High Court at Brahmpur. Finally, at the wings, stood the two juniormost judges.

  The Chief Justice did not look at the crowded courtroom—at the famous litigants, the eminent lawyers, the chattering public and the sceptical but excited journalists. He surveyed the table in front of him and his colleagues—the pads of paper, the lace-covered glasses of water laid out on the green baize. He then glanced cautiously to right and left as if checking the traffic on a busy highway, and began a judicious shuffle forward towards the table. As he did so, the other judges followed suit, and the ushers pushed the heavy chairs in, as it were, under the seat of justice.

  The Nawab Sahib of Baitar was pleasantly impressed by the grandeur of it all. He recalled the only two other occasions when he had been in the High Court. Once he had gone as a litigant, when his own presence had been indispensable. The case—a property matter—had been up before a single judge. The other occasion was when he had decided to see his son practise. He had known that Firoz would be on his feet before a division bench one afternoon. Just before the case had begun to be argued, the Nawab Sahib had entered the uncrowded courtroom without any of his retainers, and had sat down directly behind Firoz, so that he would not be noticed unless Firoz turned completely around. He had not wished to make him nervous by indicating his presence, and, indeed, Firoz had had no inkling that day that his father was sitting behind him. He had argued well and the Nawab Sahib had been satisfied.

  Today, of course, Firoz knew that his father was sitting directly behind him, for it was the constitutional validity of the Zamindari Abolition Act that was under challenge before the bench. If the courts decided for it, it would stand. If not, it would be as if it had never existed.

  Two dozen or so writ petitions were to be considered jointly with the main one; these covered roughly the same ground but had a few points of difference. Some petitions were submitted by religious endowments, some by landlords who had been granted lands directly by crown grants, and some by ex-rulers—like the Raja of Marh—who believed that they would be protected by the treaty provisions of the Constitution, even if the lesser fry were fried. Firoz was one of the counsel for two such subsidiary petitions.

  ‘May it please your Lordships—’

  The Nawab Sahib’s attention—which had wandered somewhat while the Court Reader was reciting the number of the case, the numbers of the main and connected writ petitions, the names of the parties, and the names of counsel appearing in the case—was drawn sharply back to the court. The great G.N. Bannerji was on his feet at the table in the front row that was closest to the aisle. Leaning his long, aged frame against a lectern on the table—upon which were lying both his brief and a small, red cloth-bound notebook—he repeated the opening phrase, then continued with deliberation, glancing up from time to time at the bench, particularly at the Chief Justice:

  ‘May it please your Lordships, I am appearing in this case for all the applicants jointly. Your Lordships, needless to say, will appreciate the gravity of this case. It is probable that no case of similar significance for the people of this state has been fought in this court before, either under the emblem of the Ashoka lion or under the lion and unicorn.’ Here G.N. Bannerji glanced slightly to the left of the bench before continuing. ‘My Lords, the entire way of life of this state is sought to be altered by the executive of this state through legislation that runs in express and implied contradiction to the Constitution of the country. The act that seeks,
in so striking and wholesale a manner, to alter the life of the citizenry of Purva Pradesh is the Purva Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reform Act of 1951, and it is my contention and that of other counsel for the applicants that this legislation, apart from being patently to the detriment of the people, is unconstitutional, and therefore null and void. Null and void.’

  The Advocate-General of Purva Pradesh, the small, plump Mr Shastri, smiled nonchalantly to himself. He had appeared against G.N. Bannerji before. Bannerji liked to repeat significant phrases at the beginning and end of each paragraph of speech. Despite his commanding presence, he had rather a high voice—not unpleasant to listen to, however; more silvery than tinny—and these repetitions were like small shiny nails hammered in twice so that they would imbed themselves properly. This might have been a verbal quirk of his, not something he consciously attempted. But G.N. Bannerji did consciously believe in the value of repetition in general. He would take especial pains to phrase his propositions in three or four different ways which he would then introduce at different points of his argument so that, without insulting the intelligence of the judges, he could be assured that the seeds of his case would take root, even assuming that a few fell upon stony ground. ‘It is all very well,’ he told his juniors—who in this case included his bespectacled son and grandson—‘it is all very well to state something once for our benefit or for the benefit of the other side. We’ve been steeped in this case for weeks. And Shastri and I have been well briefed by others. But for the bench we must follow the prime rule of advocacy: repeat, repeat, and repeat again. It is a great mistake to overestimate the judges’ knowledge of the case even when they have read the affidavits of both sides. And it may even be a mistake to assume they have any detailed knowledge of the law. The Constitution, after all, is barely a year old—and at least one of the judges in this case probably has very little knowledge of what a Constitution is.’

  G.N. Bannerji was referring (fairly politely for him) to the juniormost judge on the full bench trying this case, Mr Justice Maheshwari, who had come up through the district judiciary, and who, as it happened, did not possess great intelligence to counter-balance his lack of constitutional experience. G.N. Bannerji did not suffer fools gladly, and he considered Mr Justice Maheshwari, who, at fifty-five, was fifteen years his junior, to be a fool.

  Firoz (who had been present for the conference of zamindars’ lawyers in G.N. Bannerji’s hotel room when the great lawyer had made this remark) had passed it on to the Nawab Sahib. It had not made the Nawab Sahib more optimistic about the result of the case. He had a sense very similar to that of his friend the Minister of Revenue on the other side: less hope of victory than dread of defeat. So much hung on this case that apprehension was the dominant emotion on both sides. The only ones who seemed to be fairly unconcerned—apart from the Raja of Marh, who could not believe in the violation of his inviolate lands—were the lawyers on both sides.

  ‘Sixthly, my Lords,’ continued G.N. Bannerji, ‘the Zamindari Abolition Act cannot be said to have a public purpose in the strict, or should I say proper, sense of the word. This, my Lords, is a clear requirement of all acts that involve the public taking over of private property according to Article 31 Clause 2 of the Constitution. I shall return to this proposition in due course after I have stated the other grounds under which the impugned act is bad in law.’

  G.N. Bannerji continued, after a pause to sip some water, to state his objections to the law, but without adducing detailed reasons at this stage. He found the Zamindari Act unacceptable because it provided derisory compensation and was therefore ‘a fraud on the Constitution’; because the compensation offered was, moreover, discriminatory between large and small landowners and thus offended against the provisions of Article 14, which provided for ‘the equal protection of the laws’; because it contravened the provisions of Article 19(1) (f) which stated that all citizens had the right ‘to acquire, hold and dispose of property’; because, by leaving to junior officers in the administration vast areas for the exercise of discretion in deciding the order of the actual taking over of estates, the legislature had illegitimately delegated its own powers to another authority; and so on and so forth. Having hovered in a hawk-like circuit over the domain of his case for more than an hour, Mr G.N. Bannerji now plunged down on the various weaknesses of the act, attacking them—repeatedly, of course—one by one.

  11.2

  He had barely begun to do so when the English judge spoke:

  ‘Is there any reason, Mr Bannerji, why you have chosen to deal with the delegation argument first?’

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘Well, you contend that the impugned act contravenes certain specific provisions of the Constitution. Why not tackle those direct grounds first? There is nothing in the Constitution against delegation. I presume the powers of the legislatures are plenary in their own spheres. They can delegate powers to whomever they choose as long as they do not step beyond the four corners of the Constitution.’

  ‘My Lord, if I may argue the case in my own way—’

  Judges retired at sixty, and there was therefore no one on the bench who was not at least ten years G.N. Bannerji’s junior.

  ‘Yes, yes, Mr Bannerji. By all means.’ The judge mopped his forehead. It was appallingly hot in the courtroom.

  ‘It is precisely my contention, precisely my contention, my Lord, that the authority that the legislature of Purva Pradesh has chosen to delegate to the executive is an abdication of its own powers, and contrary both to the clear intention of the Constitution and to our own statute and constitutional law as laid down in a number of cases, most recently Jatindra Nath Gupta’s case. In that case it was decided that a state legislature cannot delegate its legislative functions to any other body or authority, and that case is binding upon us, since it was decided by the Federal Court, the predecessor of the Supreme Court.’

  The Chief Justice now spoke, his head still to one side: ‘Mr Bannerji, was that case not decided by three judges to two?’

  ‘Nevertheless, my Lord, it was decided. It is, after all, certainly possible that a judgement in the same proportions will issue from this bench too—though I am sure that neither I nor my learned friend opposite would hope for such an eventuality.’

  ‘Yes. Go on, Mr Bannerji,’ said the Chief Justice, frowning. It was the last thing he wanted either.

  A little while later, the Chief Justice intervened again.

  ‘But The Queen versus Burah, Mr Bannerji? Or Hodge versus The Queen?’

  ‘I was coming to those cases, my Lord, in my own plodding manner.’

  What might have been a smile passed across the Chief Justice’s face; he was silent.

  Half an hour later G.N. Bannerji was in full flow once more:

  ‘But ours, unlike the British but like the American, is a written Constitution expressly declaring the will of the people. And precisely, my Lords, because the same vesting of the different powers of the state among the legislature, the executive and the judiciary exists in the two Constitutions, it is to the rules that have been laid down by the Supreme Court in the United States of America that we must turn for guidance and interpretation.’

  ‘Must, Mr Bannerji?’ This was the English judge.

  ‘Should, my Lord.’

  ‘You are not implying that these decisions are binding on us? This question cannot admit of two answers.’

  ‘That, as from your question I have no doubt your Lordship perceives, would be a foolhardy contention. But there are certainly two sides to every question. What I meant was that the American precedents and interpretations, though not binding on us in the strict sense, are our only safe guide through what are for us comparatively uncharted waters. And the rule that has been laid down in America forbidding the delegation of power by any of the separate organs of the state should also be the yardstick for us to apply.’

  ‘Well.’ His Lordship sounded unconvinced but susceptible to persuasion.

  ‘The rea
sons, my Lords, that powers not be delegated, have been succinctly stated by Cooley in Constitutional Limitations, Vol. I, page 224.’

  The Chief Justice interrupted.

  ‘Just a minute, Mr Bannerji. We do not have this book with us on the bench, and we would like to follow you on the page. This is one danger of crossing the Atlantic for your arguments.’

  ‘Presumably your Lordship means the Pacific.’

  There was laughter from both the bench and the courtroom.

  ‘Perhaps I mean both. As you have observed, Mr Bannerji, there are two sides to every question.’

  ‘My Lord, I have had carbon copies made of the relevant pages.’

  But the Court Reader promptly produced the book from his table below the rostrum. It was clear that there was only one copy of the volume, however, not five, as there would have been with the Indian and English law reports and authorities.

  The Chief Justice said: ‘Mr Bannerji, speaking for myself, I prefer the feel of a book in my hands. I hope we have the same edition. Page 224. Yes, it appears we do. My colleagues, however, may avail themselves of the carbon copies you have provided.’

  ‘As your Lordships please. Now, my Lords, Cooley addresses the question in the following words:

  Where the sovereign power of the State has located the authority, there it must remain; and by the constitutional agency alone the laws must be made until the Constitution itself is changed.

  The power to whose judgment, wisdom and patriotism this high prerogative has been entrusted cannot relieve itself of the responsibility by choosing other agencies upon which the power shall be devolved, nor can it substitute the judgment, wisdom and patriotism of any other body for those to which alone the people have seen fit to confide this sovereign trust.