Life in argument
How can a biography do justice to 70 years in court? But its subject seems pleased.
By Shantanu Guha Ray
Ram Jethmalani, 92, Asia’s oldest working lawyer (his nearest competitor, Cesar Bacelona Bagaipo from Cagayan de Oro City of Philippines, is 71), is happy his biography has been written by friend Susan Adelmam, a maverick like himself, and appropriately titled, The Rebel (Shobhaa De Books; Penguin India). Else, it would be difficult to understand Ram the man, and Jethmalani the lawyer.
It is 4.30 on an afternoon at his home close to Teen Murti Bhavan, and India’s highest paid lawyer is in the middle of breathing exercises, after wrapping up arguments in Supreme Court, cancelling three flights (he could have been in Kolkata, else Pune, failing both, in Mumbai) and going through reams of documents.
By his own admission, he says it is difficult to chronicle a life of a little over seven decades at the courts and over 400 important judgments. The boy from Shikarpur in Sind started his career in Karachi when he was 18, with friend, AK Brohi, till Partition, before shifting to Mumbai as a refugee.
“There are hundreds of those judgments. Hundreds. It’s not possible for me to remember all.”
Then suddenly, he remembers December 11 of 1995 when the Supreme Court delivered a sentence that was later called the ‘Hindutva judgment’, remarkable for its judicial balance and clarity of thought. Jethmalani was at its forefront, arguing in the country’s apex courts on behalf of Shiv Sena and BJP candidates who were accused of seeking votes by involving Hindutva as a guiding pole star in the Maharashtra assembly polls. The Bombay High Court had set aside the elections, blaming the candidates for appealing on religious ground. “The Supreme Court restored the elections, propounding Hindutva as the core of India’s Constitution. I only remember that day,” says Jethmalani. Is that all he remembers?
His eyes are now sparkling. He has talked of a success. Now, he is ready to share a failure. It was January 6, 1989, again a winter day in the capital, when Kehar Singh, one of the accused in Indira Gandhi’s assassination, was hanged at Delhi’s high security Tihar prison. Jethmalani believed Singh was innocent. “I have showed how flimsy the so-called evidence was. Losing the case was as devastating to him as the hanging. Successes, of course, are easy for him to handle,” Adelman says about him.
Visitors troop in and out of his study, pushing files. He reminds everyone, especially those seeking free favours, that he makes his money from just 10 per cent of his clients. The other four days of the week, he argues pro bono. He laughs his signature laugh when someone reminds him that those 10 per cent must be India’s richest. And then, with characteristic wit, he adds, “Imagine what would have happened if I had charged everyone?”
The man who has worn every hat, from union law minister to Chairman of the Bar Council of India, does not want to talk of what he has achieved. He wishes to dwell on what he hasn’t, especially what he calls the ‘you-aregoing-nowhere struggle to get back elusive black money stashed abroad’.
“The governments will not get it. I am hoping the Supreme Court will. The Special Investigative Team (SIT) gives me hope.” He is disturbed by a small newspaper report that says $95 billion was stashed out by Indians in 2012, making India the world’s third largest exporter of illicit cash after China and Russia.
Disappointed by any government that has stonewalled the black money issue, Jethmalani, says Adelman, won’t hesitate to attack them. “That’s why he has often alienated fellow politicians. For them, political relationships are foremost; for Ram, being on the right side of the issues is critical,” she says.
Jethmalani takes a deep breath. He wants to talk of a time when he was made an enemy of the people. When he defended Manu Sharma, the son of a Congress politician, who is serving life imprisonment for the murder of model Jessica Lal in 1999. He also defended Haaji Mastan, Mumbai’s most famous don. Why did he do it?
“The Indian judiciary is based on an adopted adversarial system. Everyone has a right to defence,” says Jethmalani, explaining the legal obligation to defend criminals, no matter how despised.
“It is important for a lawyer, like a journalist, to be a watchdog - bite and ask uncomfortable questions,” he says. Adelman agrees, offering the example of Bofors. “Him posing 10 questions a day for 30 days to Rajiv Gandhi during the Bofors scandal, was a major factor in bringing down the Gandhi government.”
Questions are his life; the cases, his laughter. That brings him to the time he resigned from the union cabinet hours before he had to address law students in Pune. He walked into the classroom only after he received a fax from the PMO, and told the waiting students, “Friends, please excuse me because I am not the same Jethmalani for whom you have gathered here. You have waited for the Law Minister. But I don’t hold the post at this moment.”
Law, claims the legndary cross examiner, is a boring profession. It’s imperative then for a lawyer to hang onto his sense of humour, client and cash.
By Shantanu Guha Ray
Ram Jethmalani, 92, Asia’s oldest working lawyer (his nearest competitor, Cesar Bacelona Bagaipo from Cagayan de Oro City of Philippines, is 71), is happy his biography has been written by friend Susan Adelmam, a maverick like himself, and appropriately titled, The Rebel (Shobhaa De Books; Penguin India). Else, it would be difficult to understand Ram the man, and Jethmalani the lawyer.
US-based Adelman is a practicing pediatric surgeon, sculptor, jeweller, silversmith and bead collector. “She knows me better than many in India, for a little over 40 years,” laughs Jethmalani about the woman he met through his daughter while she was pursuing pediatrics in Detroit. When he secured political asylum in the US to avoid arrest after public criticism of the Indian Emergency and Indira Gandhi, Adelman’s husband, who was Dean of Wayne State University Law School, arranged for him to teach there. “Thus began our friendship spanning 40 years and 17 trips to India,” says Adelman, who hopes she can offer an insight into his lesser known accomplishments. Among them she lists “his role in setting the stage for India’s Freedom of Information laws and his Parliamentary maneuver that caused the repeal of the odious Urban Land Ceiling Act of 1976”. On a personal note, she speaks about his passion for fitness. “He starts the day with an hour of badminton, and has over the years, eliminated lunch and dinner from his diet. Scotch at 8 pm stays, of course.”
It is 4.30 on an afternoon at his home close to Teen Murti Bhavan, and India’s highest paid lawyer is in the middle of breathing exercises, after wrapping up arguments in Supreme Court, cancelling three flights (he could have been in Kolkata, else Pune, failing both, in Mumbai) and going through reams of documents.
By his own admission, he says it is difficult to chronicle a life of a little over seven decades at the courts and over 400 important judgments. The boy from Shikarpur in Sind started his career in Karachi when he was 18, with friend, AK Brohi, till Partition, before shifting to Mumbai as a refugee.
“There are hundreds of those judgments. Hundreds. It’s not possible for me to remember all.”
Then suddenly, he remembers December 11 of 1995 when the Supreme Court delivered a sentence that was later called the ‘Hindutva judgment’, remarkable for its judicial balance and clarity of thought. Jethmalani was at its forefront, arguing in the country’s apex courts on behalf of Shiv Sena and BJP candidates who were accused of seeking votes by involving Hindutva as a guiding pole star in the Maharashtra assembly polls. The Bombay High Court had set aside the elections, blaming the candidates for appealing on religious ground. “The Supreme Court restored the elections, propounding Hindutva as the core of India’s Constitution. I only remember that day,” says Jethmalani. Is that all he remembers?
His eyes are now sparkling. He has talked of a success. Now, he is ready to share a failure. It was January 6, 1989, again a winter day in the capital, when Kehar Singh, one of the accused in Indira Gandhi’s assassination, was hanged at Delhi’s high security Tihar prison. Jethmalani believed Singh was innocent. “I have showed how flimsy the so-called evidence was. Losing the case was as devastating to him as the hanging. Successes, of course, are easy for him to handle,” Adelman says about him.
Visitors troop in and out of his study, pushing files. He reminds everyone, especially those seeking free favours, that he makes his money from just 10 per cent of his clients. The other four days of the week, he argues pro bono. He laughs his signature laugh when someone reminds him that those 10 per cent must be India’s richest. And then, with characteristic wit, he adds, “Imagine what would have happened if I had charged everyone?”
The man who has worn every hat, from union law minister to Chairman of the Bar Council of India, does not want to talk of what he has achieved. He wishes to dwell on what he hasn’t, especially what he calls the ‘you-aregoing-nowhere struggle to get back elusive black money stashed abroad’.
“The governments will not get it. I am hoping the Supreme Court will. The Special Investigative Team (SIT) gives me hope.” He is disturbed by a small newspaper report that says $95 billion was stashed out by Indians in 2012, making India the world’s third largest exporter of illicit cash after China and Russia.
Disappointed by any government that has stonewalled the black money issue, Jethmalani, says Adelman, won’t hesitate to attack them. “That’s why he has often alienated fellow politicians. For them, political relationships are foremost; for Ram, being on the right side of the issues is critical,” she says.
Jethmalani takes a deep breath. He wants to talk of a time when he was made an enemy of the people. When he defended Manu Sharma, the son of a Congress politician, who is serving life imprisonment for the murder of model Jessica Lal in 1999. He also defended Haaji Mastan, Mumbai’s most famous don. Why did he do it?
“The Indian judiciary is based on an adopted adversarial system. Everyone has a right to defence,” says Jethmalani, explaining the legal obligation to defend criminals, no matter how despised.
“It is important for a lawyer, like a journalist, to be a watchdog - bite and ask uncomfortable questions,” he says. Adelman agrees, offering the example of Bofors. “Him posing 10 questions a day for 30 days to Rajiv Gandhi during the Bofors scandal, was a major factor in bringing down the Gandhi government.”
Questions are his life; the cases, his laughter. That brings him to the time he resigned from the union cabinet hours before he had to address law students in Pune. He walked into the classroom only after he received a fax from the PMO, and told the waiting students, “Friends, please excuse me because I am not the same Jethmalani for whom you have gathered here. You have waited for the Law Minister. But I don’t hold the post at this moment.”
Law, claims the legndary cross examiner, is a boring profession. It’s imperative then for a lawyer to hang onto his sense of humour, client and cash.
