Respect: A talk by Gopalkrishna Gandhi at

the Madras HC
Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Share · Comment (8) · print · T+ T+ · T-

The Hindu Former Governor of West Bengal Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

The text of a talk titled ‘Respect,’ delivered at the Madras High Court on August 5, 2010, under
the aegis of Juris/Legal Exl '83, formed by the alumni of the Madras Law College 1980-1983
batch.

It is not usual for the title or theme of a lecture to be made up of just one word. But then one
word can say more than a whole sentence or even a paragraph. Vanakkam, for instance.

And one word, like one look of disdain, can contain a whole Niagara of abuse. I respect this
gathering far too much to give an example of such a word.

So ‘respect’ it is, plain ‘respect’.

It is plain, this thing called ‘respect’. Evident, manifest, unmistakable, it is either there or not
there. You cannot have gradations of it. You cannot have Respect Category I, Respect Category
II, or Respect Vibhushan, Respect Bhushan, Respect Shri. Respect is Respect.

Respect does not come from reasoning or analysis. One does not take a measure of a person’s
honesty in metres, one does not weigh probity in grams. The cup of observation that holds
respect has to be filled to the brim, not less. If less, the cup may be said to hold acknowledgment,
appreciation, recognition, and even regard. But not respect.

Respect comes instinctively, not from judging or evaluating. It comes from feeling. The feeling,
wordless, image-less, comes first followed, on reflection, by the thought, ‘Here is one I respect.’
Very often, at that moment, the moment of naming, of conscious codification, respect can
weaken for then other conditioned thoughts come in such as ‘Could I be making a mistake? What
if the person does something that makes me re-consider…’ and so on.

That risk apart, respect is a feeling, pure and uncontaminated, unadulterated by thoughts of a
utilitarian or mundane kind.

How and why did I come to think of this word or this one-word theme over a host of other more
likely and serious-sounding subjects for this lecture?

For no reason other than that while contemplating a credible and a relevant subject for the lecture,
I asked myself: What do I feel for the auspices and the aegis of the evening, for those who have
invited me, those who are to hear me, for those who comprise the legal profession in India, and
the great edifice of the Indian judiciary? And I heard, clear as a bell, in my cranium, the answer
to my self-posed question ‘what do I feel?...’ in that one word: ‘Respect’.

The human mind is home to an imp. In fact, a cheeky little imp. For it is ever judging, harshly,
searingly, and often unprintably, persons and things that cross its path, especially those as are
lofty of appearance or exalted of manner. And so, no sooner had I settled on the subject (and
even mailed Shri Jayesh Dolia about it) that the imp, a creature of conditioned thinking and
habitual carping, got to work.

“‘Respect?’,” the imp said to me. “Do you not know that lawyers are not exactly society’s
favourite community, that they are known for a cleverness that is artful at its best and wily at its
worst – beguiling, bombastic, canny, calculating, crafty, devious, digressive, deceptive, and
duplicitous?”

“Enough,” I retorted, “enough of your adjectives, two in the alphabet ‘b’, three in ‘c’ , four in ‘d’;
I will not let you proceed further.”

But would it listen? Imps, like all pre-positioned thought, are difficult to control.

“Lawyers,” it continued, “use the scissors of cleverness rather than the lance of intelligence, the
spanner of device rather than the wheel of argument; dodgings, subterfuges and tricks of the
trade are their staple; they do not just make money, they rake it in, and you are going to speak to
them about ‘respect’?”

The imp then prayed, “With due respect, please speak at a gathering of lawyers on something
other than ‘respect’.”

I do not like listening to imps.

I therefore told ‘my’ imp that, like others of its kind, it has sprung from that gnome called
mischief, and is a hobgoblin; in fact, a goblin. And that I take my instructions from other
inhabitants of the thinking mind, those that have not sprung from mischief.

I then reminded myself of my own personal respect for lawyers, now no more, like H.M. Seervai,
M.C. Chagla (later Justice Chagla), N.A. Palkhivala, Govind Swaminadhan and several
contemporary lawyers as well, all of who stand for that rare attribute, veracity. And I reminded
myself, too, that Abraham Lincoln and Mohandas Gandhi belonged to that very profession and
what is more, were influenced by it in their transactions beyond and outside of court rooms. This
is because they commanded respect not despite having been lawyers but, to a not inconsiderable
extent, because they knew the value, the uses and the abuses of the legal method.

My choice of theme, therefore, has arisen from an interest in the subject of respect per se, its
origins, status and its likely future.

To my mind, the recipients of public respect have been broadly of three kinds: First, those whose
status or authority commands respect. The examples of this first category would be kings, judges,
popes, bishops, mathadhipatis, generals, ‘captains’ of industry. Second, those who get entitled to
respect by ties of family or of social assemblage, helped by considerations of age and wisdom,
such as elders in the family or community. Third, and most significant, those whose lives and
deeds, not their nativity, not their office or seniority, have generated a wide and deep respect for
them. I do not need to give any examples, right? They are known to each of us.

Respect for the first category of the status-endowed is a matter of social hierarchy, respect for the
second category, a matter of social convention, and respect for the last, a matter of social
consensus.

Today, respect for those in high office, that is to say, respect for men and women with status, is
in some difficulty. There was a time not all that long ago when disrespect for those in positions
of status was unusual. Today respect for that category has strong competition from its opposite
number.

The public is no fool. It judges. Like the imp in my mind it excoriates. From tea-stall owners,
vegetable vendors, auto and taxi drivers to fellow-commuters on a train, metro, or bus, all
evaluate high-office holders. They can rip a man’s hide off with no more than a phrase, a half-
phrase, or sometimes, by one single gesture.
In Kerala, this can be done with a movement of fingers in a Kathakali-like dismissive contempt.
In Tamil Nadu a person can be consigned to obloquy by a single despairing invocation: Sivane!
In Gujarat it can be a forehead tap signifying ‘what to do, it is our fate to endure him’. In West
Bengal it can be a withering torrent of dialectical decimation.

But those wanting to find those deserving and worthy of respect ought not to lose heart. If the
public can demolish, it is because it knows when and how to respect. Many holders of high
office are elected to them. The process of election is now used skilfully by the electorate as a
political exercise, that may or may not be connected with a moral evaluation. Persons can be
elected because they are smart, because they ‘deliver’, or simply because they are better than the
available alternative, not necessarily because they command respect. But mostly, electoral
dynamics are independent of respect. Several, not all, and not even many, but yet several among
those contesting elections, whether winning or losing them, enter the fray because they command
resources, not because they command respect. They command loyalty, they command obedience,
they command admiration, they command fear. And because after commanding all these, they
still want to command respect, they get their followers to commandeer it. People, simple people,
are able to perceive the intrinsic quiddity or thingness of a person almost by instinct, just as they
are able to tell a good potato from one that has gone fungoid. And so, at the end of the day, all
candidates, successful or not, finish up with respect for voters, those who voted for them and
those who did not.

Of course persons are often elected because it is not they but their party that is being voted for.
And one has to say that in almost all our political parties, for historical or ideological reasons,
there is something that in some if not all, generates respect. And it has to be said here with pride
and in fact with joy that elections and candidates apart, the public continues to hold the
institution of Parliament and our legislatures in respect, a respect that was outraged when
Parliament House was attacked by terrorists and also each time legislators break codes of
behaviour inside the House and let their tempers get the better of their judgment.

It is not as if status-holders of the elected kind cannot command respect. Several persons are
elected because they command respect, of course. And many are so elected. I know of several
such, across the political spectrum. But one cannot say their numbers are growing. Not unoften
respect for such persons in high office is unconnected to electoral endorsement. C.
Rajagopalachari never contested or won an election in independent India, but public respect for
him was strong, whether he was in office or out of it (which was most of the time). The same
was true of his exact contemporary, ‘Periyar’ E.V. Ramaswamy, whose ‘office’ was none other
than affectionate esteem. Stalwarts of our freedom struggle like Nehru, Patel and Azad and
towering personalities like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Babasaheb Ambedkar apart, post-
Independence Chief Ministers like Gopinath Bordoloi of Assam, T. Prakasam, K. Kamaraj,
E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Gobind Ballabh Pant, C.N. Annadurai, and Jyoti Basu are among those
whose incumbencies in elective office had little to do with the intrinsic respect they commanded
across political divides and across the country. It is immaterial that Jayaprakash Narayan did not
hold elective office. He held a respect which the spontaneous title – Loknayak – symbolised.

The commanding of respect by those in high station who are not elected but selected by
processes of appointment and elevation to such office, especially those offices which are entered
upon with oaths sworn or affirmed, is not an unmixed affair either. Take the judiciary in this
context. The public has no direct role in its composition or in its periodical re-composition. Nor
does it seem particularly interested in acquiring such a role either. All it would want is a general
satisfaction that this process is fair. And yet, distant though it is from the judiciary’s genesis or
cyclical morphosis, the public has reserved a healthy respect for it. This is not to say that among
affected litigants variegated views on individual judges are not to be found; there are those. This
is also not to say that the public has indemnified the judiciary from the prisms of evaluation
either; it has not. Lawyers, magistrates and judges arise from the same stock of humanity as any
other person. They cannot but have their due share of the same human characteristics as the rest.
But just as in certain offices or roles that a person performs in the course of daily living he or she
acts with greater circumspection than in others, the body social in its judicial offices and roles
rises above the usual and the normal and becomes all that it is meant and expected to be. This
also means of course, that quite apart from the intrinsicality of the judiciary’s work and the
contents of a lawyer’s activity, there is an expectation of them in their engagements with what
may be called ‘ordinary’ life.

The respect enjoyed by an institution like the legislature or the judiciary suffers if the incumbents
of those bodies do not treat those very bodies with respect. Respect begets respect. This would
mean that even as the obstructing of the business of the House by legislators shakes public
confidence in them as responsible legislators, the boycott of courts by lawyers hurts the
institution’s reputation. Not any less so, does the rare individual trespass by a sitting judge. The
trespass does not have to be gross. Even a red-light signal being cut by a red-light bearing car in
which a judge is travelling can shake the public’s respect in the erring dignitary’s instructions to
his chauffeur, and in the dignitary’s work-ethic and life-ethic.

Having said this, it cannot be denied that as a collective entity and as an institution, the Indian
judiciary, rather more than other limbs of the republic, has retained the respect of the people of
India. Constitutional bodies like the Election Commission of India and the Comptroller and
Auditor General are also held in similar esteem, though once again, the people play no direct role
in their appointments. This says something about those institutions and also about ‘respect’.

Respect is retractable. It is extended on trust, and maintained in verification. When it comes to

elective offices, the system of periodic elections serves as an instrument of respect-revalidation
or respect-retraction, faith-reiteration or faith-reversal, trust-reaffirmation or trust-revocation.

But when it comes to institutions like the judiciary, respect for it as an institution or for
individual incumbents in judicial office is unaccompanied by the dynamics of periodic re-
affirmation or of retraction except when, eroded by palpable misconduct, respect for the
institution is sought to be vouchsafed by off-loading the errant individual through the
constitutionally-devised processes of impeachment.

The effect of this cocooning or cloistering is that respect for the judiciary (and for judicial and
other commissions) becomes dependent on what may be termed as the willing reposing of trust.
This comes (or goes) like this: Nothing in creation is flawless, except perhaps forgiveness by the
person entitled to forgive. (Forgiveness is different, we should note, from pardon). But the
judiciary’s mandate is not to distribute forgiveness, it is about determining culpability and where
required, convicting and sentencing the culpable. Nothing in creation is infallible, not even
forgiveness. In the dispensing of justice in accordance with a differentiated code of defining and
evaluating liability, this institution too can err. But natural fallibility in our courts and
commissions is regulated through systems of appeal and revision. So there are safeguards.
Nothing in creation is constant or uniform either, except the speed of light in vacuo or the speed
of sound at sea-level. So the judiciary and constitutional bodies and commissions are a terraced
palate, where fallibility is a fact as is dis-uniformity.

There can therefore be doubts, natural and normal doubts, about the flawlessness, infallibility
and constancy of their functioning. But the institutions concerned are too vital, too valuable, to
be held in any ambiguity as regards respect. Respect for them needs to have and be seen to have
something more than the willing reposing of trust by the people of India. It needs buttressing in
the unceasing vigilance of its inner monitors. I believe that this will be best done if the concern
within our courts shifts from questions pertaining to the prestige it enjoins to questions pertaining
to the respect it enjoys. Prestige follows respect, not the other way around. Status follows stature,
not the other way around. What might happen if respect for the judiciary, even for judicial
commissions of enquiry, gets substantially eroded, is too disturbing a prospect to contemplate. I
have the confidence that the custodians of the respect of our judiciary and of judicial or
constitutional commissions will never permit that to happen.

If respect for status is a mixed affair, respect for seniority or chronological respect, is now
becoming routinised. I am not an atavistic believer in ancestor-worship. But I do lament the not-
so-gradual disappearance of certain rites of respect for seniors and for elders, like the touching of
grand-parental if not parental feet on departure or return home, or on anniversaries. This
becomes particularly so when one finds that the reverential touching of feet as such has not gone
out of vogue, but has only undergone metastatis, the recipients of prostrations being
unembarrassed political gurus and unabashed godmen and godwomen. And when one finds that
the extended namaskaram or pranam of old has got fancy modern equivalents, quite abject or
even servile in themselves. I refer to the new young genuflecting before an uncertain future in
terms of liberal life-styles and work-styles that they have unquestioningly adopted.

This reflects something more than the generational shedding and replacing of cultural mores, or
just the growing self-centredness of the younger generation. It reflects a false streak of self-
assurance that goes beyond aplomb to a kind of don’t care nerve, which thinks of itself as the
human equivalent of Bt Cotton or Bt Brinjal which India has to take to, but must, alas, co-exist in
a period of transition with insufficient, inefficient and, generally, passé traditions. It would not be
wrong to fix the responsibility for this on the nucleation of the Indian joint family. But that
would give us only a part of the explanation. The erosion of respect for social or community
institutions and leaders comes, I think, from the social coefficients of economic liberalisation and
globalization. Today ‘management’ has its gurus, the board room its gods.

The last category of respect-receivers in India, men and women of stature of different status in a
great many disciplines and fields, continues to be large and growing. I would in fact go to the
extent of saying that true worth and the repute flowing from it, are increasingly looked out for
and when discerned, are greatly and immediately respected. Yes, comparisons with a bygone age
are invariably made and a personage whose oil portrait may hang high on a public wall towers
over and all but dwarfs his or her successor-in-office. But stature as opposed to status, reputation
as distinct from rank, credibility as something that is different from credentials are to be
encountered everywhere in our country and, what is more to the point in this talk, are shown the
highest respect by regular, ordinary people. It is a different matter that in the quotidian world
status sways, rank rules, and credentials count. But there is that margent of life in our midst
where mundane needs of self-protection and self-advancement take pause and where we, the
people of India, feel and say, “That person there, we respect him for we can trust him.”

Respect is often linked to admiration for skill. There is respect for a great musician, a dancer or
sculptor, an actor or a sportsman because that person has honed a great skill to near-perfection.
And thank God, we have such skilled persons among us in great numbers. There is one
unfortunate accompaniment to skill-based stature, however, that can rob it of its appeal. And that
is the price tag that goes with high-calibre skill. Be it in sports – cricket in particular – or in
music, or in the visual arts, the interplay of money with standards threatens respect for those
persons endowed with skills and, in fact, with the place of skills in society. Today, the young
may know how much an IPL cricketer is paid than how many runs he has scored or wickets he
has put under his belt. The admiration for them remains, there is no dip in the applause, no
grudging of praise. But respect gets dismayed when confronted with the ring of money.

The obtaining or retaining of respect cannot be one’s aim or goal. If it becomes that there is no
chance of it ever coming one’s way. It is not respect but that which occasions respect that should
concern sensitive souls. And then again not because one might then come to enjoy respect, but
because things that occasion respect such as veracity, trustworthiness and a clear conscience are
what make life worth living.

Which is why respect is not necessarily directed at persons alone. It can be felt for and shown to
processes like hand-weaving, the ‘lost wax’ technology of panchaloha casting, scultping on stone,
traditions like those of the temple oduvaar, movements like Sarvodaya in its time and prime and
Chipko in ours including certain protests and heterodoxies .

Taking a pause in stillness, and reflection, let alone contemplation, has become a rarity. If that
were not the case, we would find unexpected aquifers of respect in our parched times such as
when one sees a modestly paid woman raking garbage – created by you and me – into bins and
from bins onto trucks. Or when one sees a woman washing her tiny vaasal-padi and then on that
small surface, despite cares and anxieties, ill-health and a demanding day ahead of her, drawing
an amazing kolam. Perhaps the Euclidean balance of dots and loops, lines and curves on that
little drawing give her the inner balance life denies her.

As I close, I must acknowledge the Law of Opposites. And must therefore say a word about
disrespect. How this is growing, is simply unbelievable. The level of public discourse has sunk to
an unprecedented low, with vilification flowing seamlessly like a taanam being rendered by
Semmangudi Srinivasier. Our Honourable Chief Minister Kalaignar Karunanidhi recently
reminded us of the mutual respect that Rajaji and Periyar had for each other, as did he himself
for Kamaraj, despite irreconcilable political differences. Even in the professions, the Services,
those in commerce as between ‘blood-brothers’, disrespect reigns. This points to more than a rise
in discourtesy. It points to an erosion of trust.
At the heart of respect lies trust.

The trust that says this person will be true to his calling or to her genius, will not deceive, will
not betray, and will to the best of his or her ability do what is right rather than what is expedient
(though those two are not necessarily antithetical), seeking neither applause, nor gain.

The trust that says this person will not play false, because he or she is actual not acting, real,
bona fide and because this person, be he a governor or a grocer, a judge or a jockey, a councillor
or a carpenter, an atomic scientist or an auto-driver, is trustworthy or, in Thesauran informal
equivalents, ‘honest-to-goodness, kosher, pukka, legit’, in simple Tamil a sari aal who can
therefore be trusted, ‘nambalaam’.

Respect is above prestige, higher than esteem, beyond regard and ahead of admiration. It is not
the subject of politeness, civility or courtesy. In the phrase ‘paying one’s respects’, the concept
has got routinised into a form of idle ceremony. But where it is earned and not extended, where it
is offered from one’s instinctive appreciation and not from calculation or analysis, where it is
given without expectation or conditionalities, it is something sublime. The only thing flawless in
the world, I said, is forgiveness. The only thing priceless, I believe, is nambikkai. And nambikkai
is at the core of respect. It is, as I said, either there, or not there. It cannot be insinuated into
anyone or anything. It has, simply, to be.

A society in which respect has sunk has to be a society with low self-esteem. And that is the
worst condition to be in.

Nambikkai, belief, credibility, trust and trustworthiness are under threat. We must value them the
more for their being under threat, for not to do so would be to lose the challenge of receiving and
the fulfilment of giving respect.

With respect, I thank you.

Click here to read the abridged version that appeared on the print edition of The Hindu

Keywords: respect, trust, moral values, human values

Ads by Google

Download Google Chrome

Searching is fast and easy with Google's web browser.
www.Google.com/Chrome

Related
TOPICS
social issue

Comments:
I have always believed in this connection articulated between respect and trust. Collection of
simple thoughts, great essay.

from: Aruna M Katara

Posted on: Aug 19, 2010 at 23:09 IST

The speech delivered by Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi impressed me.

This oration should be read by budding law graduates and those who aspiring to hold a high
office.

I have recommended my daughter and son to read this.

from: N.Nagarajan
Posted on: Aug 20, 2010 at 20:56 IST

Most inspiring speech that touched the bottom of my heart. people should know about
connection between respect and trust. well done
Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Thank you.

from: A A Farooqui
Posted on: Aug 27, 2010 at 23:13 IST

It is thought provoking essay and provides us with a chance for introspection. This nature of
introspection is universal for it applies to all of us be it Hindus, Muslims or believer of any faith.

from: Saurabh
Posted on: Sep 15, 2010 at 17:43 IST

This is a thoughtful exercise attempted by the respectful scholar to inculcate the theme which is
very useful to the young law gratuates planning for profession and also to the persons already on
the lines besides common people.

from: kanakiah
Posted on: Sep 16, 2010 at 21:36 IST

This is simple and extraordinary at the same time.

from: Rajesh Kumar

Posted on: Sep 20, 2010 at 11:50 IST

The introduction by Shri Rajaji given just before the soulful rendition of Bhaja Goivndam by the
nightingale of India, Smt. M S Subalakshmi, is in itself a remarkable initiation to life sciences
akin to the 'akshara abhyasa' for a child.

This simple essay, talk call it whatever, is a reminder and awakening to respect, it is so very
relevant in todays context as the legal system-lawyers, judges and the machinery that comprise
the judiciary need to urgently revalidate their presence as they have meandered away and lost
sight of the basic tenet for the existence of a judiciary - respect for the litigant who seeks a
simple fair process even if justice is not the final outcome.

from: Gopinath Hiremagalur

Posted on: Sep 29, 2010 at 20:23 IST

The author tries to make a blog for ordinary people, and I think that this had happened.

from: sibustat is
Posted on: Nov 22, 2010 at 16:45 IST