John D.

Mayne

John Dawson Mayne QC (1828–1917) was a British lawyer and legal expert
who served as acting Advocate-General of the Madras Presidency and a member
of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. He is remembered as the author of
Mayne's Hindu Law regarded as the most authoritative book on the Indian Penal
Code. His married life was marred by a scandal, which prevented him from
gaining a knighthood.

Born on 31 December 1828, to John Mayne (1793–1828), a Dublin lawyer who

died before John Dawson was born. His mother, Anna (Graves) Johnson (1798–
1864), had first married Edward Johnson (died 1818) J.P., of Ballymacash
House . Antrim. Mayne's middle name was for his great-grandfather's cousin and
benefactor, Thomas Dawson, 1st Viscount Cremorne. He came from a well-
known family and was a grandson of Judge Edward Mayne and Dean Richard
Graves. He was a nephew of Sir Richard Mayne and a first cousin of Admiral
Richard Charles Mayne, Chief Justice Sir William Collis Meredith, Edmund
Allen Meredith, Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell, Major-General Arthur Robert
MacDonnell and Francis Brinkley. His sister married a son of Abraham Colles,
and through her he was the uncle of Ladies Ashbourne and Bewley.
Mayne had his initial education in Dublin and graduated in law from Trinity
College, Dublin. He was called to the English bar in 1854, but practised in the
United Kingdom from 1854 to 1856 before moving to Madras, India. Mayne
served as the Professor of law, logic and moral philosophy at the Presidency
College, Madras from 1857 throughout the 1860s. He also served as Assistant
Legal Secretary to the Madras government from 1860 to 1872 and as a Clerk of
the Crown during the 1860s. He served as Advocate-General of Madras from
1862 to 1872. He left India in a cloud of scandal, running away from his wife
with the wife of another man, Annie Craigie-Halkett.

In England, despite the scandal, Mayne was appointed and a member of the Privy
Council of the United Kingdom in 1873, retiring in 1903. He also served as a
Professor of Common Law at the Inns of Court from 1879 to 1883. In 1880, he
unsuccessfully contested for the Parliamentary seat at Falmouth. He was an
enthusiastic family historian, producing an impressively long 'pedigree' of the
Maynes from 1900 back through some thirty generations to Normandy, but
beyond the17th century, like so many family histories of the time, it was riddled
with errors of assumption.

At Madras, 1859, he had married his first wife, Helen Sarah Hamilton (born
1841), daughter of Colonel Robert Hamilton of the Madras Staff Corps. She
divorced Mayne in 1872 after he ran off with his soon to be second wife, Annie
Craigie-Halkett (1833–1917). Annie's first husband's name is unknown, but she
was the daughter of Charles Craigie-Halkett-Inglis of Hallhill, Fife and Cramond
House, near Edinburgh, by his wife Susan, the youngest daughter of Sir John
Marjoribanks of Lees (1763–1833), 1st Bt., M.P., Lord Provost of Edinburgh.
Annie and 'JD' (as he was known) divorced their respective spouses so they could
marry in May 1873. Annie was reputed to be very beautiful despite her face
being marred by a 'Port wine mark' (birth mark), which led her to favouring veils
in later life.

In 1917, he and Annie died within six weeks of one another, at their home also
known as Shinfield Park, Berkshire. The gardens were so extensive at Goodrest
that they required twenty gardeners to maintain its upkeep. Mayne left no
children by either marriage, but took great joy in being both a financial and legal
help to many of his relatives.
 T. Muthuswamy Iyer

Sir Thiruvarur Muthuswamy Iyer KCIE (28 January 1832 – 25 January 1895)
was an Indian lawyer who, in 1877, became the first native Indian to be
appointed as judge of the Madras High Court. He also acted as the Chief Justice
of the Madras High Court in 1893. He is also one of the first Indians to have a
statue. Iyer was born in a poor Brahmin family of Vuchuwadi in the Tanjore
district of the Madras Presidency. He lost his father when he was young and
completed his schooling in Madras with the assistance of the tahsildar
Muthuswami Naicker.

On completion of his schooling, Iyer served in subordinate posts in the civil

service even while continuing his education. Iyer graduated in law from the
Presidency College, Madras while serving as the magistrate of police and served
as a judge in mofussil centres from 1871 to 1877, when he was appointed to the
bench of the High Court of Madras. Iyer served as a judge of the Madras High
Court from 1877 till his death in 1895, even acting as the Chief Justice for three
months in 1893. Iyer was acclaimed for his sharp intellect, memory and legal
expertise. He advocated social reform and campaigned in support of women's
education, widow remarriage and the legal recognition of sambandham.
However, he was criticised for his alleged remarks on temple entry and views on
Varnashrama Dharma. In 1893, Iyer was made a Knight Commander of the
Indian Empire in recognition of his services.

Iyer was born in a poor Brahmin family in Vuchuwadi, Madras Presidency,

British India on 28 January 1832. Iyer's father, Venkata Narayana Sastri, died
when Muthuswamy was young and he moved with his mother to Thiruvarur to
make a living. At Thiruvarur, Iyer found employment as village accountant.
However, his mother died soon afterward leaving Iyer with little support. At this
time, he was known to have read under the street lamp at nights, while working
in early morning and evening. Around this time, Iyer's talents were recognised by
the tahsildar Muthuswamy Naicker who arranged for the former to study at Sir
Henry Montgomery's school in Madras as a companion to his young nephew, and
there he won prizes and scholarships year after year.

About this time, the Madras government instituted an examination for pleaders
known as "Pleader's Test". In the examination held at Kumbakonam in February
1856, only three succeeded, Iyer and R. Raghunatha Rao emerging first and
second. On successfully passing the Pleader's Test, Iyer was appointed District
Munsiff of Tranquebar. On 2 July 1859, Iyer was appointed Deputy Collector of
Tanjore. On 9 July 1865, later was appointed Sub-Judge of South Canara and
served till July 1868, when he was appointed District Magistrate of police at
Madras.

While serving as the magistrate of police, Iyer obtained his law degree law from
the Presidency College, Madras.He also held a degree in Sanskrit at that
time.Iyer commenced his legal career immediately after graduation. He was
appointed a judge of the Court of Small Causes in 1871. The very next year, he
was made Fellow of Madras University. In 1877, the Madras Government took
the controversial decision to appoint him as the first Indian judge of the High
Court of Madras.

In 1877, Iyer was appointed to the bench of the High Court of Madras. He was
the first Indian to be appointed to this prestigious post.However, Muthuswamy's
appointment was vehemently condemned by a Madras newspaper called The
Native Public Opinion. This prompted a strong reaction from Indian nationalists
who founded The Hindu newspaper to voice public opinion against the outrage.
Muthuswami Iyer served as a judge of the Madras High Court from 1877 to 1895.
He acted for three months in 1893 as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court,
the first Indian to do so.

During his early career, Iyer also served as the President of the Malabar
Marriage Commission. During his tenure as President of the Commission, he
campaigned for the legal recognition of Sambandham and other forms of
marriage practised in the Malabar.In 1872, Iyer established the Widow
Remarriage Association in Madras and advocated remarriage of Brahmin widows.
In 1872, he was nominated fellow of the Madras University. He became a syndic
in 1877. He was also invited to attend the Coronation Durbar at Delhi in 1877.

In 1878, Muthuswami Iyer was created a Companion of the Most Eminent Order
of the Indian Empire.In 1893, he was knighted for his services to the Crown.

Muthuswami Iyer died in January 1895 after an illness of ten days. On his death,
Sir S. Subramania Iyer took the seat in the bench of the Madras High Court left
vacant by his death. A statue of Muthuswami Iyer was erected in the precincts of
the Madras High Court campus. The section of Kamrajar Salai connecting
Chepauk with the Madras High Court is known as T. Muthuswamy Salai.
 Sir Subbier Subramania Iyer

Sir Subbier Subramania Iyer KCIE was an Indian lawyer, jurist and freedom
fighter who, along with Annie Besant, founded the Home Rule Movement. He
was popularly known as the "Grand Old Man of South India".

Subramania Iyer was born in the Madurai district of Madras Presidency. On

completion of his schooling in Madurai, Subramania Iyer qualified as a lawyer
from the University of Madras, and went on to practice as a lawyer in Madurai
and Madras, before being appointed a Judge of the Madras High Court, in 1891.
He also served as the first Indian Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, before
retiring in 1907.

Subramania Iyer was born in Madurai in the Madras Presidency, on 1 October

1842. His father Sooravally Subbier Aiyer (1794–1844) was the legal agent of
the Raja of Ramnad's zamindari, but died when Subramania Iyer was barely two
years old. He had his early education at the English Mission School, Madurai,
joining the Zilla School, Madurai, in 1856, from which institution he completed
his schooling. As his mother was not willing to send him to Madras for a higher
education, Subramania Iyer decided to join the administrative service. He served
as a clerk in the Deputy Collector's Office, Madurai, Deputy Collector's Office,
Ramnad, and the Collector's Office, Madurai. While working in the Collector's
Office, he studied privately for the Pleader's Examination and stood first among
the successful candidates.
Though unable to secure a 'Sanad' to practice, he was appointed the Public
Prosecutor, when the Criminal Penal Code came into force, in 1862. Desiring to
practice as a lawyer, he studied privately for the Matriculation Examination and
passed the same in 1865, followed by the First Arts (F.A.) examination in 1866.
Two years later, in 1868, he passed the B.L. examination from Presidency
College, Madras, standing first (in the Second Class) among all successful
candidates. He served as an apprentice under J. C. Mill, Barrister-at-Law, and
thus qualified himself to practice as a Vakil. Practising as a Vakil at Madura from
1869 to 1885, he appeared in some important cases, the most notable among
them being the Ramnad Zamindar's Case and the Meenakshi Temple Funds
Misappropriaion Case. While at Madura, he also earned a reputation as a public
worker, being appointed a Municipal Commissioner of Madura and a member of
the Local Board, besides being elected a member of the Devasthanam Committee
of the Meenakshi Temple at Madura.

He presented an 'Address of Welcome', on behalf of the people of Madura, to the

Prince of Wales, who visited Madura in 1875. In 1877, he gave evidence
andpleaded for the necessity of protecting tenants from arbitrary eviction by the
landlords, before the Famine Commission when it visited Madura. He also served
as the Vice-Chairman of the Madura Municipality, from 1882 until his departure
for Madras."After his wife, Lakshmi's death in 1884, he shifted to Madras, where
he emerged as a formidable rival to the redoubtable lawyers Bhashyam Aiyangar
and Eardley Norton. Recognising his merit, the Government appointed him
Government Pleader and Public Prosecutor in 1888, the first Indian to be
appointed so. As Government Pleader, he appeared in two sensational cases – the
Nageswara Iyer Forgery Case and the Tirupati Mahant Case. He was appointed
an Acting Judge in 1891 and continued in that position until being appointed a
Judge of the Madras High Court in January 1895, succeeding Sir Muthuswamy
Iyer to the bench of that Court.

As Judge, amongst other cases, he presided over the insolvency court which
investigated into the crash of a Madras bank, Arbuthnot & Co, in 1906. He also
acted as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court in 1899, 1903 and 1906, the
first Indian to do so. After serving as a judge of the Madras High Court for 12
years, he resigned on 13 November 1907 due to failing sight, and was succeeded
by Mr. Chettur Sankaran Nair.

He presented the Welcome Address to the Prince of Wales, in 1914, on behalf of

the public of Madras. Subramania Iyer was nominated a member of the
Legislative Council of Madras by the Government, in 1884 and left a creditable
record as a non-official member of the Council although the rules did not permit
non-official members to play a very useful role. Serving as a member of the
Malabar Land Tenure Committee (1885), largely due to his initiative, an act was
passed providing compensation for tenants' improvement in Malabar. Nominated
for a second time, Subramania Iyer made his association with the council as
useful as possible under the system extant then.

One of the founding members of the Indian National Congress, he led the Madras
delegation to its first session at Bombay, in December 1885, where he seconded a
resolution proposed by K. T. Telang urging the increase of the elected element in
the Legislative Councils and for councillors to be given real and effective powers,
and where he made the following statement, as published in the annals of the
Indian National Congress of 1885:
"All of us have the utmost faith and confidence in the justice and the fairness of
the English people, and we only have to solicit an enquiry into the facts, being
content to leave the issue in the hands of their great political leaders."

He used to attend sessions of the Congress until he became a Judge of the High
Court and contributed in no small measure to the strengthening of the Congress's
organisation in the Madras Presidency. He was close to Sir Arthur Lawley,
whom heis held to have substantially influenced and assisted in his
administration of the Madras Presidency, in a private capacity. As Chairman of
the Reception Committee, he welcomed the delegates to the 29th session of the
Indian National Congress held at Madras in 1914. He presided over a public
meeting at Madras in 1915 organised to welcome Mr. M. K. Gandhi just then
returned from South Africa. Welcoming

Mr.Gandhi, he suggested the lines on which national work in India should

proceed:
"We want the soul-force which Mr. Gandhi is trying to work up. Soul-force
consists in a man being prepared to undergo any physical or mental suffering,
taking the precaution that he will not lay a single finger to inflict physical force
upon the other side. It was that soul-force that was manifested by the South
African Indians and it is the same force that should be developed in this country."

He agreed to serve as the Honorary President of the All India Home Rule League
established in Madras on 1 September 1916, by Mrs. Annie Besant, whose arrest
was ordered on 16 June 1917, by Lord Pentland, Governor of Madras. As
President of the League, he took up the cause of Mrs. Besant and her colleagues
and started a movement for their release, which occasioned his rupture with the
Government.
Immediately after Mrs. Besant was interned, Sir Subramania Iyer wrote a letter to
Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America describing British
Rule in India and appealing for the sympathy and support of the American
Government and people, in which he stated:
"Officials of an alien nation, speaking a foreign tongue, force their will upon us;
they grant themselves exorbitant salaries and large allowances; they refuse us
education; they sap us of our wealth; they impose crushing taxes without our
consent; they cast thousands of our people into prisons for uttering patriotic
sentiments-prisons so filthy that often the inmates die from loathsome diseases.

"Subjected to scathing criticism in the House of Commons and the House of

Lords, the Secretary of State, Edwin Montagu, and the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford,
rebuked him when he met them in Madras in 1918 to make a representation on
the proposed political reforms. A few days later, Sir Subramania Iyer renounced
his knighthood and returned the insignia to the Government.

His interest in the scholarly aspects of law led to his residence, the Beach House
on the Marina at Mylapore, being used for the "Saturday Club" that met at 11 a.
m. every week, between 1888 and 1891, with all leading members of the Madras
Bar participating, and cases being critically analysed. At one of these meetings it
was decided to start 'The Madras Law Journal', which was inspired by the then
recently
established periodicals the 'Law Quarterly Review', started by Sir Frederick
Pollock in England in 1885 and 'The Harvard Law Review' established by the
Harvard Law School Association in 1887.

During his tenure as Judge of the Madras High Court he introduced the practice
of referring to American jurisprudence in addition to the English, which had been
the sole point of reference until then. He was nominated Senator of the Madras
University in 1885 and continued to be connected with that institution till 1907.
As a member of the Senate, he advanced many reforms in education. He was a
member of the Syndicate for the University for some time and was appointed
Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1896.

The Madras University conferred on him the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Law
in 1908, making him the first recipient of an honorary degree from the University.
He presided over the Madras Students' Convention in 1916 and delivered the
Presidential Address. He also served as the Chairman of the Council of Native
Education for two years. He delivered a series of lectures at Madras University
on Ancient Indian Polity, in 1914 which were published in 1916. He extended his
co-operation to Mrs. Besant in the establishment of the Central Hindu College at
Benares which subsequently became the nucleus of the Benares Hindu
University.

He was the President of the Dharma Rakshana Sabha, which he founded in 1908,
and which sought to prevent the mismanagement of the funds of Hindu Religious
Endowment and Charitable Trusts. He also worked for the promotion of
Sanskritic study, and established two schools for Vedic Studies in Madura and
Thiruparankundram. As the President of the Suddha Dharma Mandala, which he
founded, he was instrumental in publishing several important Hindu religious
works.

Having been greatly interested in spirituality and the study of religion he became
interested in the Theosophical Society which he formally joined soon after his
retirement. He was also the Vice-President of the Theosophical Society between
1907 and 1911. As one of the prominent members his literary contributions were
a regular feature of the Theosophical Society's publication The Theosophist right
up to the 1920s. His participation in the activities of the Theosophical Society
gradually drew him closer to Annie Besant and the Indian independence
movement.

The Suddha Dharma Mandala or 'Pure Religion Society' resulted in a rift between
himself and the Theosophical Society, since he desired to provide a rival world
leader to Jiddu Krishnamurti, the favoured champion of the Society.

The Government awarded a Certificate of Merit to Subramania Iyer on 1 January

1877 as a mark of their appreciation of his services to the public, on the occasion
of the Proclamation Durbar at Delhi. He was appointed a Companion of the
Order of the Indian Empire, in 1890, and was elevated to a Knight- Commander
of the same order on New Year's Day, 1900. In 1893, he had the title of Dewan
Bahadur conferred upon him.

He died on 5 December 1924 and was survived by three sons borne to him by his
wife Lakshmi. The Mani Iyer Hall in Triplicane was built by the Theosophists in
his memory and named after him. He is also commemorated by a statue, unveiled
in 1935, outside the Senate House of the Madras University.
 V. Bhashyam Aiyangar

Diwan Bahadur Sir Vembakkam Bhashyam Aiyangar CIE was an

eminent lawyer and jurist who served as the first Indian Advocate-
General of Madras Province and also as a Judge of the Madras High
Court.

Bhashyam Aiyangar served as the Acting Advocate General of Madras

from February 1897 to March 1898 and September 1899 to March 1900.
He was the first Indian to hold the post. In February, 1897, Bhashyam
Aiyangar was nominated to the Madras Legislative Council as an
official member He was nominated for two more terms in November
1899 and March 1900.

In July 1901 Bhashyam Aiyangar was appointed a Judge of the High

Court at Madras, in which position he served until 1904. Bhashyam
Aiyangar was created a Companion of the Indian Empire in May 1895.
He was knighted on 5 February 1900, after a knighthood had been
announced in the 1900 New Year Honours list. A statute of Bhashyam
Aiyangar was donated by M. S. Nagappa in 1927 and has been installed
in the Madras High Court campus, just outside the Madras Bar
Association entrance.

Bhashyam Aiyangar had a number of daughters. His third daughter was

married to eminent lawyer and freedom fighter S. Srinivasa Iyengar.
The Indian independence activist Ambujammal is his granddaughter.
 Rashbehary Ghose

Sir Rashbehary Ghose CSI CIE was an Indian politician, lawyer, social worker
and philanthropist. Rashbehari Ghose was born on 23 December 1845 at Torkona
village in KhndaGhose area in Purba Bardhaman district in Bengal Presidency.
He attended Burdwan Raj Collegiate School and Presidency College, Kolkata.

He obtained a first class in the MA examination in English. In 1871, he passed

with honours the Law examination and was awarded the degree of Doctor of
Laws in 1884.Ghose became a member of the Indian National Congress and
leaned towards the moderate wing. He had deep faith in progress but was
opposed to radicalism in any form. He served as the President of the Congress for
two terms. First in the 1907 Surat Session, succeeding Dadabhai Naoroji, after
which the Congress split into Moderates and Extremists, and then the year after
in Madras, 1908.

Ghose was a member of the Bengal Legislative Council (1891–94, 1906–9) and
the Council of India. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian
Empire (CIE) in the 1896 New Year Honours and appointed a Companion of the
Order of the Star of India (CSI) in the 1909 Birthday Honours. He was knighted
in the 1915 New Year Honours and conferred with his knighthood on 14 July of
that year.Ghose's ability and contributions earned him a series of honours, such
as the Tagore

Law Professorship (1875–76) at Calcutta University and an honorary DL degree

from Calcutta University (1884). He made a fortune through his legal practice,
but donated much of it by way of charity and endowments. In 1913, he
established an endowment for scientific studies at Calcutta University with an
initial capital of ten lakh rupees. He also donated 13 lakh rupees to establish a
National Council of Education (NCE) at

Jadavpur. It later became Jadavpur University. Ghose was the first president of
NCE. Sir Rashbehari Ghose Mahavidyalaya was established at Ukhrid in
KhandaGhose CD Block in 2010. He also established schools and hospital in his
village.

Considering the contributions made by Ghose for the people of India, a street
was named after him in Kolkata. Rashbehari Avenue, named after him, starts
from Chetla-Sahanagar Bridge (Shaheed Jatin Das Setu) and runs eastwards to
Ballygunge and Gariahat.
 Eardley Norton

Eardley John Norton (19 February 1852 – 13 July 1931) was a Madras barrister,
Coroner and politician of British origin. He was also one of the earliest members
of the Indian National Congress and a champion of civil liberties and rights of
the Indian people.

Eardley was born in India in 1852, the eldest son of lawyer John Bruce Norton,
who had served as Advocate-General of Madras. He received his education in
Rugby School, England.He matriculated on 15 October 1870 at the age of 18 and
graduated in arts from Merton College, Oxford. He read law at Lincoln's Inn and
was called to bar in 1876. In 1879, he set sail to India to practice in the Madras
High Court.

Eardley Norton practised as a lawyer in Madras from 1879 to 1906.Norton was

elected to the Imperial Legislative Council (India) in 1894 but had to resign
within a month due to an adultery suit against him.In 1897, a furor was raised
over the appointment of a lawyer V. Bhashyam Aiyangar as Advocate-General of
the Presidency. Norton suggested that it was better to seek the opinion of the
Bombay Bar over it and his suggestion was implemented.
Norton was a close friend of G. Subramania Iyer, who founded The Hindu.He
wrote a column in The Hindu called "Olla Podrida" under the pseudonym
Sentinel. This column ran from May 1889 to December 1889. Norton started the
Indian Aluminium Company for the manufacture of utensils in 1900.

Norton was associated with the Indian National Congress for about seven years
from 1887 to early 1895. He participated in the 1887 session at Madras in the
course of which he made a much acclaimed speech defending his support for
Indian nationalists and association with the Congress. He also gave a magnificent
garden party for the visiting dignitaries, as did the Governor Lord Connemara at
Government House and the sheriff of Madras, S. Ramaswami Mudaliar.

Norton attended the Allahabad Congress of 1888 and moved a resolution for
simultaneous Civil Service examinations in England and India. He campaigned
in England along with Dadabhai Naoroji and W. C. Bonnerjee for greater
political rights for Indians and there they enlisted the support of Charles
Bradlaugh, Member of British Parliament for Northampton. The three said
Congressmen, along with William Digby created a UK chapter of the Indian
National Congress. Accordingly, the UK-wing came into existence in July 1889
under the leadership of Bradlaugh who was accorded the title "Member for India".

Norton was also part of the Congress' first deputation to England in 1889.Norton
attended the Bombay Congress of 1889 which came to be popularly
called'Bradlaugh Congress' because Bradlaugh attended it. In that Congress, he
introduced the Madras scheme for reform of the Indian Legislative Councils and
that scheme, due mainly to the efforts put by Bradlaugh and the Indian
Congressmen, metamorphosed into the Indian Councils Act, 1892. Norton also
participated in the tenth session of the Indian National Congress held in Madras
in 1894.A scandal of his adulterous affair with a married woman, who he married
after her divorce from her husband, wrecked his Congress career. After
resignation from the Congress in 1895, he only attended one Congress, the
Madras Congress held in 1903, in which his participation was hardly significant.

Eardley died on 13 July 1931 at Bexley in Kent.Norton lived in Dunmore House

in Alwarpet, Madras. He moved to Calcutta in 1906. When he was called a
'veiled seditionist' for his association with the Indian National Congress, he
responded to the charge in a hard-hitting speech in the Madras Congress of
1887.If it be sedition, gentlemen, to rebel against all wrong, if it be sediton to
insist that the people should have a fair share in the administration of their own
country and affairs, if it be sedition to resist class tyranny, to raise my voice
against oppression, to mutiny against injustice, to insist upon a hearing before
sentence, to uphold the liberties of the individual, to vindicate our common right
to gradual but ever advancing reform – if this be sedition. I am right glad to be
called a seditionist; and doubly, aye trebly, glad when I look around me today to
know and feel I am ranked as one among such a magnificent array of seditionists.
 Ashutosh Mukherjee

Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee CSI FRAS FRSE MRIA (anglicised, originally

Asutosh Mukhopadhyay, also anglicised to Asutosh Mookerjee)was a prolific
Bengali educator, jurist, barrister and mathematician. He was the first student to
be awarded a dual degree (MA in Mathematics and MSc in Physics) from
Calcutta University. Perhaps the most emphatic figure of Indian education, he
was a man of great personality, high self-respect, courage and towering
administrative ability. The second Indian Vice-Chancellor of the University of
Calcutta for four consecutive two-year terms (1906–1914) and a fifth two-year
term (1921–23), Mukherjee was responsible for the foundation of the Bengal
Technical Institute in 1906, which was later known as Jadavpur University and
the University College of Science (Rajabazar Science College) of the Calcutta
University in 1914.

Mukherjee also played a vital role in the founding of the University College of
Law popularly known as Hazra Law College. The Calcutta Mathematical Society
was also founded by Mukherjee in 1908 and he served as the president of the
Society from 1908 to 1923. He was also the president of the inaugural session of
the Indian Science Congress in 1914 held at the Rajabazar Science College,
which he founded. The Ashutosh College was also founded under his
stewardship in 1916, when he was Vice-chancellor of University of Calcutta. He
was often called "Banglar Bagh" ('The Bengal Tiger') for his high self-esteem,
courage and academicintegrity. According to historian D. R. Bhandarkar, the
epithet 'Vikramaditya' is also ascribed to Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee.

Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee's ancestral town was Jirat in Hooghly District, West
Bengal. His grandfather actually came to Jirat from another village named Digsui,
situated also in the Hooghly District and settled down there. Sir Ashutosh's father
Ganga Prasad Mukherjee was born in Jirat, Hooghly District on 16th December,
1836. He was a very meritorious student and he came to Kolkata to study in
Medical College with the help of the wealthy people of Jirat. Later he settled
down in Bhawanipore area of Kolkata.

Ashutosh Mukherjee was born on 29 June 1864 at Bowbazar, Kolkata in a

Brahmin family to Jagattarini Devi and Ganga Prasad Mukhopadhyaya, a well-
known doctor who founded the South Sub Urban School in Calcutta. Among his
ancestors were several distinguished Sanskrit scholars, including Pandit
Ramchandra Tarkalankar, a professor of nyaya who had been appointed by
Warren Hastings to that chair at the Sanskrit College in Kolkata. Brought up in
an atmosphere of science and literature at home, young Ashutosh went to the
Sisu Vidayalaya at Chakraberia, Bhowanipore and showed an early aptitude for
mathematics.

When he was young, he met Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar who was a major
influence on him. He was a student of Madhusudan Das.In November 1879, at
the age of fifteen, Mukherjee passed the entrance exam of the Calcutta University
in which he stood second and received a first grade scholarship. In the year 1880,
he took admission at the Presidency College now (Presidency University) in
Kolkata where he met P.C. Ray and Narendranath Dutta who would later become
famous as Swami Vivekananda. Later that year, though only a first-year
undergraduate, he published his first mathematical paper, on a new proof of the
25th proposition of Euclid's first book.

In 1883, Mukherjee topped the BA examination at Calcutta University

tocomplete a postgraduate degree in mathematics. In 1883 S.N. Banerjee wrote
an article in the newspaper Bengalee against the orders of the Calcutta High
Court and he was arrested in contempt of court. Protests and hartals erupted
across Bengal and other cities, led by a group of students headed by Mukherjee at
Calcutta high court. In 1884, he won the Harishchandra Prize for academic
achievements, and completed an M.A. with first-class honours in mathematics in
1885. In 1886, he was awarded a second Masters in Natural Sciences, making
him the first student to be awarded a dual degree from Calcutta University.

In the same year he was married to Jogomaya Devi, and also published his third
mathematical paper, "A Note on Elliptic Functions." The paper was praised by
the distinguished British mathematician and Fellow of the Royal Society Arthur
Cayley as a contribution of "outstanding merit."[10] Mukherjee was recognised
for his achievements by the grant of the Premchand Roychand Fellowship in
Mathematics and Physics, Pure and Applied. Still only aged 22, he was further
recognised by his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).
By 1888, Mukherjee was a lecturer in mathematics for the recently established
Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS).

Mukherjee continued publishing scholarly papers on mathematics and physics

into his 30s. By 1893, aged 29, Mukherjee had been further elected to the
fellowships of the Physical Society of France and the Mathematical Society of
Palermo, and was a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He subsequently
became a member of the London Mathematical Society, the Paris Mathematical
Society and the American Mathematical Society (1900). Although after 1893 he
largely abandoned his mathematical pursuits for a legal career, Mukherjee has
been recognised as the first modern Indian mathematician to enter the field of
mathematical research, and founded the Calcutta Mathematical Society in 1908.
Among his mathematical contributions, Mukherjee determined several crucial
derivations of Gaspare Mainardi's answer to determining the oblique trajectory of
a system of confocal ellipses. He also made lasting contributions in differential
geometry, developing analytical methods of simplifying Gaspard Monge's
interpretation of his general differential equation for conics.

At the age of 24, Mukherjee became a Fellow of the Calcutta University. Turning
down a job offer in the Department of Public Instruction in order to complete his
Bachelor of Law degree, he received his degree in 1888 and enrolled as a vakil of
the Calcutta High Court. By 1897, he had received an LL.D. and was appointed
the Tagore Professor of Law of the Calcutta University in that year. In 1904, he
was appointed a puisne judge of the High Court, and subsequently served as its
acting Chief Justice for a couple of years.

Mukherjee was influential in the University affairs throughout his life. From the
age of 25, he was a member of its Syndicate, serving on the University Senate
and Syndicate for the next 16 years. He served as President of the Board of
Studies in Mathematics for 11 years, and represented his university in the Bengal
Legislative Council from 1899 to 1903. He was appointed Vice-Chancellor from
1906 to 1914 and again from 1921 to 1923. He was instrumental in discovering
the talents of C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan.The French scholar Sylvain
Lévi commented : Had this Bengal Tiger been born in France, he would have
exceeded even Georges Clemenceau, the French Tiger. Ashutosh had no peer in
the whole of Europe.

Ashutosh Mukherjee had a vision of the kind of education he wanted young

people to have, and he had the acumen and courage to extract it from his colonial
masters. He set up several new academic graduate programs at the Calcutta
University: comparative literature, anthropology, applied psychology, industrial
chemistry, ancient Indian history and culture as well as Islamic culture. He also
made arrangements for postgraduate teaching and research in Bengali, Hindi,
Pali and Sanskrit. Scholars from all over India, irrespective of race, caste, and
gender, came to study and teach there. He even persuaded European scholars to
teach at his university. He was one of the first persons to recognise the work of
Srinivasa Ramanujan. He also established Asutosh College in South Kolkata in
1916. He laid the foundry stone of Jagadbandhu Institution in 1914 and
Santragachi Kedarnath Institution in 1925.
Curzon's education mission in 1902 identified the universities including the
Calcutta University, as centres of sedition where young people formed networks
of resistance to colonial domination.The cause of this was thought to be the
unwise granting of autonomy to these universities in the nineteenth century. Thus
in the period of 1905 to 1935, the colonial administration tried to reinstate
government control of education.

In 1910, he was appointed the President of the Imperial (now National) Library
Council to which he donated his personal collection of 80,000 books which are
arranged in a separate section. He was the president of the inaugural session of
the Indian Science Congress in 1914. Mukherjee was a member of the 1917–
1919 Sadler Commission, presided over by Michael Ernest Sadler, which
inquired into the state of Indian education. He was thrice elected as the president
of The Asiatic Society. Having served as a fellow and subsequently as a vice-
president of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science since the 1890s,
in 1922 he was elected President of the IACS and held the office until his death.

After serving five terms as Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, Mukherjee

declined to be reappointed to a sixth term in 1923 when the university's
Chancellor, Governor of Bengal the Earl of Lytton, tried to impose conditions on
his reappointment. Shortly thereafter, he also resigned his judgeship on the
Calcutta High Court and resumed his private practice of law.
While arguing a case in Patna the following year, Mukherjee died suddenly on 25
May 1924, a month before his sixtieth birthday. His body was returned to
Kolkata and cremated at a funeral service which drew crowds of mourners.

Mukherjee was a polyglot learned in Pali, French and Russian. Apart from his
fellowships and memberships in several international academic bodies, he was
recognised by an award of the title of Saraswati in 1910 from pandits in
Nabadwip, followed by that of Shastravachaspati in 1912 from the Dhaka
Saraswat Samaj, Sambudhagama Chakravarty in 1914 and Bharat Martanda in
1920. Mukherjee was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Star of India
(CSI) in June 1909, and knighted in December 1911.

In his lifetime, he was appointed to numerous academic societies: Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS, 1885).Fellow of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh (FRSE, 1886; Member: 1885) Member of the Bedford Association for
the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching (1886)Fellow of the Physical Society
of London (FPSL, 1887) Fellow of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (1888)
Membre de la Société mathématique de France (1888)Member of the Circolo
Matematico di Palermo (1890) Membre de la Société française de physique
(1890) Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA, 1893)Fellow of the
American Mathematical Society (AMS, 1900).The Government of India issued a
stamp in 1964 to commemorate Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee for his contribution to
education.
 Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer

Dewan Bahadur Sir Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer was an Indian lawyer and
member of the Constituent Assembly of India, which was responsible for
framing the Constitution of India. He also served as the Advocate General of
Madras State from 1929 to 1944.

Noted neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran is his grandson. Alladi

Ramakrishnan, an Indian physicist and the founder of the Institute of
Mathematical Sciences (Matscience) was his son.

Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer was born in 1883 to a Tamil Family in the small
village of Pudur in Madras State (present day Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh).
His father, Ekamra Sastry, was a priest. Krishnaswamy passed his matriculation
examination in 1899 and joined the Madras Christian College to study history.
Alladi used his spare time to attend classes in law and passed the B.L. exam and
became one of the leading members of the bar. He was made a Dewan Bahadur
in 1930 and was knighted in the 1932 New Year Honours List.

He was married to Venkalakshmamma. He was the Advocate General of the

Madras Presidency from 1929 to 1944. He played a major role in drafting the
Constitution of India.The main architect of Indian Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar,
who also chaired the constitution's drafting committee, credited Alladi's
contribution: "There were in the drafting committee men bigger,better and more
competent than myself such as my friend Sir Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer."
When the Constituent Assembly adopted the principle of universal adult
franchise, Shri A.K. Iyer, a member, remarked that this was done, "with an
abundant faith in the common man and the ultimate success of democratic rule,
and in the full belief that the introduction of democratic government on the basis
of adult suffrage will bring enlightenment and promote the well-being, the
standard of life, the comfort, and the decent living of the common man".

He was a part of nine committees including: Drafting Committee and Advisory

Committee. In the Constituent Assembly he defended suspension of certain
political rights in circumstances of national crisis.

Alladi Memorial Trust was founded in 1983 by Alladi Kuppuswami to

commemorate the birth centenary of his father Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer. It is
aimed to help poor litigants, lawyers and students of law and for helping in the
administration of justice. Alladi Memorial Lectures are delivered every year on
issues relating to the Indian Constitution. The lecturers included V. R. Krishna
Iyer, Y. V. Chandrachud, P. C. Rao, Pavani Parameswara Rao, Nandita Haksar,
Rama Devi and M. Jagannadha Rao.
Sir Benegal Narsing Rau

Sir Benegal Narsing Rau, CIE, was an Indian civil servant, jurist, diplomat and
statesman known for his key role in drafting the Constitution of India. He was the
Constitutional Advisor to Constituent Assembly. He was also India's
representative to the United Nations Security Council from 1950 to 1952. His
brothers were Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Benegal Rama Rau and
journalist and politician B. Shiva Rao. One of the foremost Indian jurists of his
time, Rau helped draft the constitutions of Burma in 1947 and India in 1950. As
India's representative on the United Nations Security Council (1950–52), he was
serving as president of the council when it recommended armed assistance to
South Korea (June 1950). Later he was a member of the Korean War post
Armistice United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission
(UNCMAC). A graduate of the Universities of Madras and Cambridge, Rau
entered the Indian civil service in 1910. After revising the entire Indian statutory
code (1935–37), he was knighted (1938) and made judge (1939) of the Bengal
High Court at Calcutta (Kolkata). His writings on Indian law include a noted
study on constitutional precedents as well as articles on human rights in India. He
served briefly (1944–45) as Minister of Jammu and Kashmir state. From
February 1952 until his death, he was a judge of the International Court of Justice
at The Hague. Before his election to the court, he was regarded as a candidate for
secretary general of the United Nations.
Rau was born on 26 February 1887 in a Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin family.His
father Benegal Raghavendra Rau was an eminent doctor. Rau graduated from the
Canara High School, Mangalore, topping the list of students of the entire Madras
Presidency. He graduated in 1905 with a triple first degree in English, Physics,
and Sanskrit, and gained an additional first in Mathematics in 1906.On a
scholarship, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, and took his Tripos in
1909, just missing the Senior Wranglership.He died of intestinal cancer at Zurich
on 30 November 1953 and at that time he was a Judge of International court of
Justice, Hague.

B. N. Rau passed the Indian Civil Service Examination in 1909 and returned to
India, posted to Bengal. Doing well on the executive side, in 1909 he moved to
the judiciary thereafter, and served as a judge in several districts in East Bengal.
In 1925, he was offered a dual position by the Assam government, as Secretary
to the provincial council as well as Legal Remembrancer to the government. He
served in this position for about eight years. In addition to these duties, he
occasionally fulfilled additional functions for the Assam government, such as
drafting memoranda for financial support for the Simon Commission's tour of
India in 1928–29, and presenting their case before the Joint Select Committee of
Parliament in London after the third Round Table Conference in 1933.He also
worked with Sir John Kerr to prepare a note on how provincial legislatures in
India might be designed to work better.
Bureaucratic and Judicial career
On his return to India in 1935, Rau worked with the Reforms Office of the
Government of India, on drafting the Government of India Act, 1935. At the end
of this project, Sir Maurice Gwyer, the first Chief Justice of India's Federal Court,
suggested that he gain the necessary five years' experience that would qualify
him to serve as a judge on the Federal Court as well. He served thereafter as a
judge on the Calcutta High Court, but his tenure was interrupted by two
additional projects that he was assigned to by the Government of India – he first
presided over a court of inquiry concerning wages and working conditions on
railways in India, and thereafter with a commission working on reforms
concerning Hindu law. He also was reassigned to chair the Indus Waters
Commission, which submitted a report on riparian rights on in 1942.Bureaucratic
and Judicial career
His distinguished work brought him a Companion of the Order of the Indian
Empire (CIE) in the 1934 New Year Honours list and a knighthood in 1938. Rau
retired from service in 1944, and was then appointed as the Chief Minister of the
princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. He resigned from this position in 1945,
following differences with the then-Maharaja of Kashmir, writing in his
resignation letter that "...I have been conscious for some time that we do not see
eye to eye on certain fundamental matters of external and internal policy. And
that leads, as it must lead, to disagreement in many a detail. I have never
questioned and I do not now question, the position that in all these matters Your
Highness' decision must be final. The Prime Minister must either accept it or
resign."Bureaucratic and Judicial career

Following his resignation as Chief Minister of Kashmir, Rau was asked to serve
in a temporary capacity in the Reforms Office of the Government of India, which
he did so. He was also offered, and declined, the position of a permanent judge
on the Calcutta High Court, preferring to stay in the Reforms office and work on
constitutional and federal issues. He was consequently appointed as a Secretary
in the Governor-General's office, working on constitutional reforms, until he
became the Constitutional Advisor to the Constituent Assembly in 1946.Burea
ucratic and Judicial career
While the Constituent Assembly was engaged in discussing the draft Constitution,
Rau also worked on preparing a brief on the question of whether the United
Nations Security Council could intervene in a dispute between the Nizam of
Hyderabad and the Indian government, and was part of a delegation that
represented India at the United Nations General Assembly, concerning this
question as well as issued relating to the peaceful uses of atomic energy.Role in
Drafting the Constitution of India
Rau was appointed as the Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly in
formulating the Indian Constitution in 1946. He was responsible for the general
structure of its democratic framework of the Constitution and prepared its initial
draft in February 1948. This draft was debated, revised and finally adopted by the
Constituent Assembly of India on 26 November 1949. As part of his research in
drafting the Constitution of India, in 1946, Rau travelled to the US, Canada,
Ireland, and the United Kingdom, where he had personal consultations with
judges, scholars, and authorities on constitutional law. Amongst others, he met
Justice Felix Frankfurter of the American Supreme Court, who famously advised
him against the inclusion of a clause for 'due process' in the Indian Constitution
as it would impose an 'undue burden' on the judiciary.
a
The Constituent Assembly's resolution setting up the Drafting Committee on 29
August 1947, under the chairmanship of B. R. Ambedkar, declared that it was
being set up to "Scrutinise the Draft of the text of the Constitution prepared by
the Constitutional Adviser, give into effect the decisions taken already in the
Assembly and include all matters ancillary thereto or which have to be provided
in such a Constitution, and to submit to the Assembly for consideration the text
of the Draft Constitution as revised by the Committee." The draft prepared by the
constitutional advisor was submitted in October 1947. Along with this draft, the
proposals offered by the various other committees set up by the Constituent
Assembly were considered and the first draft by the Drafting Committee was
published in February, 1948.

The people of India were given eight months to discuss the draft and propose
amendments. In the light of the public comments, criticisms and suggestions, the
Drafting Committee prepared a second draft, which was published in October
1948. The final draft of the Constitution was introduced by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
on 4 November 1948 (first reading). The second reading was clause by clause
consideration and took over a year. After three drafts and three readings, the
constitution was declared as passed on 26 November 1949. Dr B. R. Ambedkar
in his concluding speech in constituent assembly on 25 November 1949 stated
that: The credit that is given to me does not really belong to me. It belongs
partly to Sir B.N. Rau the Constitutional Advisor to the Constituent Assembly
who prepared a rough draft of the Constitution for the consideration of Drafting
Committee.GROUP PHOTO OF THE DRAFTING COMMITTEE -1948Role in
Drafting the Constitution of Burma
Rau also assisted in drafting the early Constitution of Myanmar, or Burma, as it
was then known. He met with U Aung San, Burma's Prime Minister, in New
Delhi in December 1946, who invited him to assist in drafting Burma's
Constitution. Burma's Constitutional Advisor was deputed to New Delhi in April
1947 where they worked together to collect research materials, and prepared a
first draft that was taken back to Rangoon for modifications by a Drafting
Committee. The Constitution was adopted on 24 September 1947. Rau went to
Rangoon (now Yangon) to witness the final draft of the Constitution being
passed by the legislature.

Rau served India as a representing delegate in the United Nations. From 1949 to
1952 he was India's Permanent Representative to the UN, till he was appointed as
a Judge of the International Court in The Hague. He also served as the President
of the United Nations Security Council in June 1950. Rau was invited by the
Ministry of External Affairs to stand for election to the International Court of
Justice towards the end of 1951, and began service towards 1952. He served for
about a year, before succumbing to ill health while being treated in Zurich in
1953. In 1988, On the occasion of his birth centenary, the Govt. of India issued a
postage stamp in honor of B.N. Rau.
M. C. Chagla

Mohammadali Carim Chagla was an Indian jurist, diplomat, and Cabinet

Minister who served as Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court from 1947 to
1958.

Born on 30 September 1900 in Bombay to a well-off Gujarati Ismaili Khoja

family, Chagla suffered a lonely childhood owing to his mother's death in 1905.
His childhood was spent in their family mansion in near Nagdevi Street and
Janjiker Lane, Khokha Bazar in Pydhonie. He later bought a mansion in Malabar
Hill in 1934.

He was educated at St. Xavier's High School and College in Bombay, after which
he went on to study Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford from 1918–21,
taking a BA in 1921 and MA in 1925. In 1922, he was admitted to the Bar of the
Bombay High Court, where he worked with such illuminaries as Sir Jamshedji
Kanga and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who would one day become the founder of
Pakistan.
Initially, like many nationalists, Chagla idolized Jinnah due to his then
nationalistic views and held membership in the Muslim League. He worked
under Jinnah in Bombay for seven years, often, as he recounts in his
autobiography in a state of penury. However, he severed all ties to Jinnah after
Jinnah began to work for the cause of a separate Muslim state. Chagla, along
with others, then founded the Muslim Nationalist Party in Bombay, a party which
was ignored and pushed aside in the independence struggle.

He was appointed as Professor of law to Government Law College, Bombay in

1927, where he worked with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. He was appointed as a judge to
Bombay High Court in 1941, becoming Chief Justice in 1948 and serving in that
capacity to 1958. All through, he continued to write and speak strongly for the
Indian freedom cause and against the communal two nation ideology.In 1946,
Chagla was part of the first Indian delegation to the UN.

From 4 October to 10 December 1956, Chagla served as Acting Governor of the

then state of Bombay, later broken up into the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Following his tenure as Chief Justice, he served as the one-man commission that
examined the Finance Minister of India, T. T. Krishnamachari, over the
controversial Haridas Mundhra LIC insurance scandal, which forced
Krishnamachari's resignation as Finance Minister. Krishnamachari was quite
close to Nehru, who became intensely angry at Chagla for his revelations of
TTK's part in the affair, though he later forgave Chagla. From September 1957 to
1959, Chagla served as ad hoc judge to the International Court of Justice at The
Hague.

After retirement he served as Indian ambassador to the US from 1958 to 1961.

Chagla then served as Indian High Commissioner in the UK from April 1962 to
September 1963. Immediately on his return, he was asked to be a Cabinet
Minister, which he accepted, and he served as Education Minister from 1963 to
1966, then served as the Minister for External Affairs of India from November
1966 to September 1967, after which he left government service. He then spent
the remaining years of his life actively, continuing to practice law into his
seventies.

As Minister of Education under Jawaharlal Nehru, Chagla was distraught by the

quality of education in government schools: Our Constitution fathers did not
intend that we just set up hovels, put students there, give untrained teachers, give
them bad textbooks, no playgrounds, and say, we have complied with Article 45
and primary education is expanding... They meant that real education should be
given to our children between the ages of 6 and 14.
In 1930, Chagla married Mehrunissa Dharsi Jivraj, a lady of his own community
and similar family background, in a match arranged in the usual Indian way by
their families. Their marriage was harmonious and conventional. The couple
were blessed with four children, being two sons, Jehangir (b. 1934) and Iqbal (b.
1939) and two daughters, Husnara (b. 1932) and Nuru (b. 193x). Their son Iqbal
Chagla became a lawyer; with his wife Roshan, he has a daughter (M.C. Chagla's
granddaughter) Rohiqa, who is the wife of Cyrus Mistry, the former chairman of
Tata Sons in the period 2014–2016. Iqbal's son Riaz (b. c. 1970) was himself
appointed a judge of the Bombay High Court in July 2017.

Chagla's younger daughter, Nuru, married Subbaram Swaminathan, a south

Indian Hindu gentleman, son of politician Ammu Swaminathan and brother of
captain Lakshmi Swaminathan and Mrinalini Sarabhai. Mehrunissa Dharsi Jivraj
died in November 1961. Chagla survived her by nineteen years, dying in
February 1981.

In 1973, Chagla published his autobiography, Roses in December, with the help
of his son Iqbal. He vehemently protested against the Indian Emergency. He died
on 9 February 1981, at the age of 80 of heart failure. He had been unwell for
several years, and had suffered four heart attacks. True to his active and energetic
nature, he had not let his health slow him down. On the day of his death, he went
as usual to his club in Bombay and had a good time with his friends. He then
slipped away to the dressing room and there, peacefully died. According to his
wish, he was cremated instead of having a traditional Muslim burial. The
Bombay High Court was closed to show respect for him, and several speeches
were made in his memory, including one by former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee.

In 1985, a statue of Chagla was unveiled and placed within the High Court itself,
appropriately outside the Chief Justice's Court where once he served. The
inscription on the statue plinth reads: "A great judge, a great citizen, and, above
all, a great human being." Though born a Muslim, Chagla was more of an
agnostic. The surname "Chagla" was not his original surname.

In Chagla's autobiography, he recounted that in his youth, he was known as

"Merchant" as both his father and grandfather were merchants. Hating the name
due to its associations with money, he went to his grandfather one day and asked
him as to what he should call himself. His grandfather promptly replied "Chagla"
as his father, Chagla's great-grandfather, had had Chagla as his pet name, which
in the Kutchi language means "favourite". Chagla promptly adopted the new
surname.
 Mohammad Hidayatullah

Mohammad Hidayatullah was the 11th Chief Justice of India serving from 25
February 1968 to 16 December 1970, and the sixth vice president of India,
serving from 31 August 1979 to 30 August 1984. He had also served as the
acting president of India from 20 July 1969 to 24 August 1969 and from 6
October 1982 to 31 October 1982.and from 25 July 1983 to 25 July 1983.and
from 25 July 1984 to 25 July 1984. He is regarded as an eminent jurist, scholar,
educationist, author and linguist.

Hidayatullah was born in 1905 in the well-known family of Khan Bahadur Hafiz
Mohammed Wilayatullah. His grand father Munshi Kudartullah was advocate in
Varanasi. His father was a poet of all-India repute who wrote poems in Urdu and
probably it must have been from him that Justice Hidayatullah got his love for
language and literature. Wilayatullah was Gold medallist of Aligarh Muslim
University in 1897 besting famous mathematician Sir Ziauddin Ahmad, a
favourite of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He served till 1928 in ICS and from 1929 to
1933 as member of Central Legislative Assembly. Hidaytullah's elder brothers

Mohammed Ikramullah (ICS, later Foreign Secretary, Pakistan) and Ahmedullah

(ICS, retired as Chairman, Tariff Board) were scholars as well as sportsmen. He
on the other hand excelled in Urdu poetry.After completing primary education at
the Government High School of Raipur in 1922, Hidayatullah attended Morris
College in Nagpur, where he was nominated as the Phillip's Scholar in 1926.
When he graduated in 1926, he was awarded the Malak Gold Medal. Following
the trend of Indians studying British law abroad, Hidayatullah attended Trinity
College at the University of Cambridge from 1927 to 1930 and obtained B.A.
and M.A. Degrees from there.

Here he secured the 2nd order of merit and was awarded a gold medal for his
performance in 1930. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn when he was
just 25 years old. He was awarded LL.D. (Honoris Causa) from University of the
Philippines and D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) from University of Bhopal (now
Barkatullah University) and University of Kakatiya. While at Cambridge,
Hidayatullah was elected and served as the President of the Indian Majlis in 1929.
Also while here, he pursued English and Law Tripos from the renowned
Lincoln's Inn. In addition he secured a place of Barrister-at-Law in 1930. After
graduation, Hidayatullah returned to India and enrolled as an advocate of the
High Court of Central Provinces and Berar at Nagpur on 19 July 1930. He also
taught Jurisprudence and Mahomedan Law in the University College of Law at
Nagpur and was also the Extension Lecturer in English literature. On 12
December 1942, he was appointed Government Pleader in the High Court at
Nagpur. On 2 August 1943, he became the Advocate General of Central
Provinces and Berar (now Madhya Pradesh) and continued to hold the said post
till he was appointed as an Additional Judge of that High Court in 1946. He had
the distinction of being the youngest Advocate General of an Indian state,
Madhya Pradesh.

On 24 June 1946, Hidayatullah was appointed as Additional Judge of that High

Court of Central Provinces and Berar and on 13 September 1946 he was
appointed as permanent judge of said High Court where he served until being
elevated to Chief Justice of the Nagpur High Court in 1954 on 3 December 1954,
being the youngest Chief Justice of a High Court. In November 1956, he was
then appointed as the Chief Justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court. On 1
December 1958, he was elevated as a justice to the Supreme Court of India. In
his time he was the youngest judge of the Supreme Court of India. After serving
as a judge for nearly 10 years, he was appointed as the Chief Justice of India on
28 February 1968 – becoming the first Muslim Chief Justice of India. He retired
from this position on 16 December 1970.

During his term as the Chief Justice of India, the then-President of India, Zakir
Husain died suddenly, in harness, on 3 May 1969. Then Vice President of India
Mr. V. V. Giri became the acting President. Later, Giri resigned from both
offices as acting president and Vice-President to become a candidate in the 1969
Presidential Election. Hidayatullah then served as the President of India for short
period from 20 July to 24 August. The visit of President of the United States
Richard Nixon to India made his presidential term historic. After his retirement,
Hidayatullah was elected as the Vice-President of India by a consensus among
different parties and occupied that high office with distinction from 1979 to
August 1984. During his tenure as the Vice-President, he won the respect of all
concerned for his impartiality and independence.

In 1982, when the then President Zail Singh went to the U.S. for medical
treatment, Vice-President Hidayatullah officiated as president from 6 October
1982 to 31 October 1982. Thus, he officiated as acting president twice. Having
served at all of these positions made Hidayatullah unique among other members
of Indian history. He became the only person to have served in all three offices of
Chief Justice of India, President of India, and the Vice President of India.

During his long tenure in the Supreme Court he was a party to a number of
landmark judgments including the judgment in Golaknath v. State of Punjab
which took the view that the Parliament had no power to cut down the
Fundamental Rights by constitutional amendment. His judgment in the case of
Ranjit D. Udeshi dealing with the law of obscenity, displayed a flair for literature
and is particularly of note.

Before being elevated as a judge to High Court, Hidayatullah was involved in

local and state affairs. The following are some of the committee positions he held:
 Member of the Nagpur Municipal Committee (1931–1933)
 Member of the Nagpur University's Executive and Academic Councils (1934–
1953)
 Member of the Nagpur Improvement Trust (1943–1945)
 Member of the Nagpur Bar Council (1943–1946)
 Chief Commissioner of the Madhya Pradesh Bharat Scouts and Guides
(1950–1953)

Many of these positions, as well as those of High Court Justice were held prior to
Indian Independence, they were all considered service to Great Britain, thus
Hidayatullah was conferred the honour as an Officer of the Order of the British
Empire by King George VI in the 1946 King's Birthday Honours.

Having received an education at one of the premier legal institutions of the time,
Hidayatullah was able to segue into an academic career not long after returning
to India. In 1935, he took a teaching post at University College of Law, where he
taught until 1943. Later he served as Dean of the Faculty of Law at Nagpur
University from 1949 to 1953. In addition, he served as Faculty of Law at
various other institutions throughout the 1950s: Sagar University, Court Vikram
University, and the Aligarh Muslim University. He was Pro-Chancellor of the
Delhi University from 1968 to 1970, Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia from
1969 to 1985, Chancellor of the Delhi and Punjab Universities between 1979 and
1984 and Chancellor of the Hyderabad University from 1986 to 1990. He was the
President of the Indian Law Institute from 1963 to 1970, President of the
International Law Association (Indian Branch) from 1968 to 1970 and of the
Indian Society of International Law in 1969–70.

He was, at one time, a Member of the Executive Council of the World Assembly
of Judges and of the Managing Committee of the British Institute of International
and Comparative Law. He was a Member of the International Council of Former
Scouts and Guides, Brussels, and Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts Association of
India. Post-retirement, Hidayatullah renewed his interest in Boy Scouts and
served as Chief Scout of the All India Boy Scouts Association from 1982 to 1992.
He held the posts of the President of Bombay Natural History Society and of the
Patron of Schizophrenic Research Foundation of India and Commonwealth
Society of India. He was also a Member of the World Association for Orphans
and Abandoned Children and a Settlor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cambridge
University Trust. He also represented India in International Conferences held in
different countries and cities, such as, Washington, London, Geneva, Sydney, the
Hague, Tokyo, Stockholm, Belgrade, Cairo and Bangkok. Hidayatullah was a
scholar in Hindi, English, Urdu, Persian and French. He had working knowledge
of some other Indian languages including Sanskrit and Bengali.

Hidayatullah was the president of Indian Law Institute, International Law

Association (Indian Branch), Indian Society of International Law from 1968 to
1970. He also presided the Indian Red Cross Society in 1982. He was closely
associated with Hunger Project of USA, World Association of Orphans and
Abandoned Children (Geneva), and Independent Commission on International
Humanitarian Issues (1982– 84).The Hidayatullah National Law University at
Naya Raipur is named after him.
 K K Mathew

A brilliant jurist-judge Justice Mathew made seminal contribution in the fields of

Constitutional and Administrative Law. In him one saw a Cardozo at work
bringing new insights and arguments to the delicate task of balancing of
competing claims. His depth of learning further reveals itself in his lectures and
addresses contained in In his Foreword to the former book,

Chief Justice Y.V. Chandrachud said :

"In our present dispensation, a Judge cannot, except for honourable exceptions,
lay plausible claim to legal scholarship. Justice Mathew belongs to that
exceptional class, as if to prove the rule. His writings and speeches, and not the
least his judgments, reflect the uniqueness of his approach as a man and
Judge. Not for nothing did the Supreme Court Bar accord to him the rare honour
of a speaking farewell on his retirement.

The farewell tea, if at all, on the Supreme Court's beautiful though neglected
lawns is generally a silent tribute to the retiring Judge. The Bar made a departure,
as it rarely does, on the occasion of Justice Mathew's retirement when the
President of the Bar paid a glowing tribute to him extolling his manifold qualities.
It was evident that he had endeared himself to the Bar, which is the best judge of
judges, with his rugged simplicity, his frank and good-humoured sallies, his
penetrating analysis and above all his legal scholarship.
The privilege of sitting with Justice Mathew in a number of celebrated cases. I do
not hazard the guess, in such close proximity of contemporary history, that future
generations will find more acceptable the opinions expressed by him in those
cases. But I am confident that further generations will find it rewarding to make a
dispassionate study of the views so carefully and felicitously expressed by him in
those cases. They will find in the judgments of Justice Mathew a most detached
and realistic appraisal of the legalistics arising out of events which shook the
nation."

Born on January 3, 1911 at Athirampuzha, Justice Mathew had a very

distinguished career as a student. He studied in the St. Ephrem's English High
School at Mannanam and later graduated from the Arts College, Trivandrum. He
secured the coveted Harvey Memorial Prize in essay competition and also the
Victoria Jubilee Scholarship. He took his law degree from the Trivandrum Law
College and joined the Bar in 1935. Initially he practiced in Kottayam and then
moved on to the High Court at Trivandrum.

He worked under late Shri A.J. John. He later shifted to Ernakulam after 1956
and commanded a very lucrative practice in the High Court. In 1960, he was
appointed as the Advocate-General to the State of Kerala and in that capacity he
distinguished himself as an eminent lawyer and jurist. Justice Mathew was
appointed as a Judge of the Kerala High Court on June 5, 1962. He was elevated
to the Supreme Court on October 4, 1971 and retired on January 2, 1976.

After retirement he adorned the Law Commission of India as its Chairman and
was subsequently appointed Chairman of L.N. Mishra's Enquiry Commission,
the Boundary Commission and the Press Commission. Justice Mathew has left a
rich legacy of judgments bearing high precedential value. The notable ones that
readily come to mind Bennett Coleman, Sukhdev Singh Ambica Mills, St.
Xavier, Prabhu Dayal, Khan Chand, Gobind, K.P. Joseph, Gwalior Rayon,
Kodar, N.M. Thomas and Kesavananda Bharati followed by Indira Gandhi
Election case. In that respect he shall live forever in the pages of the law reports.
 Hans Raj Khanna

Hans Raj Khanna was an Indian judge, jurist and advocate who propounded the
basic structure doctrine in 1973 and upheld civil liberties during the time of
Emergency in India in a lone dissenting judgement in 1976. He entered the
Indian judiciary in 1952 as an Additional District and Sessions Judge and
subsequently was elevated as a judge to the Supreme Court of India in 1971
where he continued till his resignation in 1977.

He is eulogized for his minority judgement in the highly publicized Habeas

corpus case during the Indian Emergency, in which the remaining four judges of
the five-member bench, Chief Justice A. N. Ray, Justice M. H. Beg, Justice Y. V.
Chandrachud and Justice P. N. Bhagwati, agreed with the government's view and
submission that even the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of
India like the right to life and liberty stood abrogated during the period of
national emergency.

Khanna's was the lone dissenting vote, and his opinion, claiming that the Article
21 of the Constitution could not possibly be the sole repository of the
fundamental rights to life and liberty as these predate the Constitution itself and
the existence of these rights cannot be subjugated to any executive decree even
during the period of national emergency for these are inalienable to one's life and
dignified existence, is praised for its 'fearlessness' and 'eloquence'.

In January 1977, nine months after delivering his venerated dissent in the ADM
Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla (Habeas Corpus) case, Khanna was superseded to
the office of the Chief Justice of India by Justice M. H. Beg, contrary to the
convention of appointing the senior-most puisne judge as the next Chief Justice
of India on the superannuation of the incumbent, at the behest of the then Prime
Minister of India Indira Gandhi, despite him being the senior-most puisne judge
in the Supreme Court at the time of superannuation of A. N. Ray, the incumbent
Chief Justice of India.

As a result of this, he promptly resigned from the court which was effected in
March. Khanna had previously authored the basic structure doctrine of the
Constitution of India in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, which curtailed
Parliament's seemingly unfettered amending power under article 368, restricting
its scope of amendment in areas which were part of the Constitution's "basic
structure". In addition, he delivered noted judgements in the Ahmedabad St.
Xavier's College v. State of Gujarat (1974) and State of Kerala v. N. M. Thomas
(1975) cases.
After resigning from the Supreme Court on getting superseded by Justice M. H.
Beg to the office of the Chief Justice of India, he served as the central minister of
law and justice for a very short period of three days in the Charan Singh Ministry
after the fall of the Indira Gandhi Government and was later made acombined
opposition sponsored candidate for election as President in 1982, losing to Zail
Singh. In 1999, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in recognition of his
career in judicial service, the second highest civilian honour given by the
Government of India.

Khanna was born in Amritsar, Punjab in 1912, the son of lawyer and freedom
fighter Sarb Dyal Khanna. The family hailed from a trading tradition, but Hans's
father had become a leading lawyer and later, the mayor of Amritsar. Hans's
mother died at a young age, and the household was run by his grandmother.
Khanna took interest in law from an early age and did complete his schooling
from DAV High School, Amritsar. After completing his schooling from D.A.V.
High School, Amritsar (1918–1928), He studied at the Hindu College, Amritsar
and Khalsa College, Amritsar, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, before joining
the Law College, Lahore (1932–1934).He married Uma Mehra in 1934 at the age
of 22.
After completing his graduation in law, he practised law primarily in Amritsar,
dealing mainly with civil cases and soon gathered a large practice which he
maintained till his elevation to the bench in 1952. In January 1952 he was
nominated by Sir Eric Weston, Chief Justice of Punjab, as District and Sessions
Judge. This was "an uncommon appointment.... it had long been the practice to
appoint only from the civil service". He served in the district courts at Ferozepur,
and then Ambala. He became known for his decision convicting India's leading
industrialist Ramkrishna Dalmia for corruption.Dalmia was to serve several years
in Tihar Jail.

He moved as District and Sessions Judge, Delhi until he was appointed Judge of
the Punjab High Court in 1962. On the formation of the Delhi High Court, he
joined the bench as one of its first judges. He conducted the inquiry into
corruption charges against Biju Patnaik and other Ministers in Orissa. While
some of the charges were found true, Biju himself was absolved. He served as
Chief Justice of Delhi High Court from 1969 until September 1971 when he was
appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of India.

Keshavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (Basic Structure Doctrine)

While the Habeas Corpus case is Justice Khanna's most celebrated ruling, almost
as well known is his judgment in the landmark case of Kesavananda Bharati. In
1973, the Supreme Court constituted its largest ever bench of 13 judges to decide
whether Parliament had the unfettered right to amend the Constitution or not. On
24 April 1973, seven out of 13 judges held that Parliament's power to amend the
Constitution was limited. Six other judges in the case were of the view that
Parliament's power was unrestricted. Justice Khanna's judgement held that,
although the Constitution is amenable to amendments, changes that ultra vires,
tinker with its basic structure cannot be made by Parliament, that is – certain
parts of the constitution were "basic" and could not be amended. However, he
also said the right to amendment was fundamental – as he explained, "if no
provision were made for amendment of the Constitution, the people would have
recourse to extra-constitutional methods like revolution". This judgement
clarified and partially over-ruled the court's earlier verdict in Golak Nath by
holding that Parliament could amend the Constitution, particularly the right to
property.

The Habeas Corpus Case

Justice Khanna is renowned for his courage and independence during the period
that has been called the darkest hour of Indian democracy,during the Indian
Emergency (1975-1977) of Indira Gandhi. The emergency was declared when
Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court invalidated the election
of Indira Gandhi to the Lok Sabha in June 1975, upholding charges of electoral
fraud, in the case filed by Raj Narain. In an atmosphere where a large number of
people had been detained without trial under the repressive Maintenance of
Internal Security Act (MISA), several high courts had given relief to the
detainees by accepting their right to habeas corpus as stated in Article 21 of the
Indian constitution. This issue was at the heart of the case of the Additional
District Magistrate of Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla popularly known as the
Habeas Corpus case, which came up for hearing in front of the Supreme Court in
December 1975. Given the important nature of the case, a bench comprising the
five seniormost judges was convened to hear the case. During the arguments,
Justice Khanna at one point asked the Attorney General Niren De: "Life is also
mentioned in Article 21 and would Government argument extend to it also?". He
answered, "Even if life was taken away legally, courts are helpless".

The bench opined in April 1976, with the majority deciding against habeas
corpus, permitting unrestricted powers of detention during emergency. Justices A.
N. Ray, P. N. Bhagwati, Y. V. Chandrachud, and M.H. Beg, stated in the
majority decision:
In view of the Presidential Order [declaring emergency] no person has any locus
to move any writ petition under Art. 226 before a High Court for habeas corpus
or any other writ or order or direction to challenge the legality of an order of
detention.

Justice Beg even went on to observe: "We understand that the care and concern
bestowed by the state authorities upon the welfare of detenues who are well
housed, well fed and well treated, is almost maternal."

However, Justice Khanna resisted the pressure to concur with this majority view .
He wrote in his dissenting opinion: The Constitution and the laws of India do not
permit life and liberty to be at the mercy of the absolute power of the
Executive . . . . What is at stake is the rule of law. The question is whether the
law speaking through the authority of the court shall be absolutely silenced and
rendered mute... detention without trial is an anathema to all those who love
personal liberty.

In the end, he quoted Justice Charles Evans Hughes:

A dissent is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a
future day, when a later decision may possibly correct the error into which the
dissenting Judge believes the court to have been betrayed.Before delivering this
opinion, Justice Khanna mentioned to his sister: I have prepared my judgment,
which is going to cost me the Chief Justice-ship of India.
Aftermath of the judgment
True to his apprehensions, his junior, M. H. Beg, was appointed Chief Justice in
January 1977. This was against legal tradition and was widely protested by bar
associations and the legal community.Justice Khanna resigned on the same
day.After his resignation Bar Associations all over India, in protest, abstained
from the courts and took out black-coat processions, though to no avail. However,
his was the last supersession in the history of the Supreme Court, and eventually
the judiciary even wrested the power of judicial appointments from the executive
in a landmark ruling in the Advocates-on-Record case in 1993 (also known as the
Second Judges Case)

The New York Times, wrote at the time:

If India ever finds its way back to the freedom and democracy that were proud
hallmarks of its first eighteen years as an independent nation, someone will
surely erect a monument to Justice H R Khanna of the Supreme Court. It was
Justice Khanna who spoke out fearlessly and eloquently for freedom this week in
dissenting from the Court's decision upholding the right of Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi's Government to imprison political opponents at will and without
court hearings... The submission of an independent judiciary to absolutist
government is virtually the last step in the destruction of a democratic society;
and the Indian Supreme Court's decision appears close to utter surrender. This
judgement has been consistently lauded by lawyer, scholars and intellectual alike
and has been compared to the dissent of Lord Atkin in Liversidge v Anderson.
Nani Palkhivala's book, which come out soon after the emergency was revoked,
carried a full-fledged chapter on him titled, "Salute to Justice Khanna". At one
point in the chapter he says of Justice Khanna, "his statue must be installed in
every street and corner of the country for the yeoman service rendered by
him for the cause of justice".

In December 1978, his full-size portrait was unveiled in his former court,
courtroom number 2 of the Supreme Court. To this day, nobody else has had the
singular honour of having their portrait put up in the Supreme Court during their
lifetime. In fact, when the Supreme Court Bar Association asked for
contributions from its members to collect Rs 10,000 for the portrait, within half-
an-hour Rs 30,000 was on the table and the members of the bar had to be forcibly
stopped.

Post-judicial career
Upon the suspension of the emergency, the Janata Party which was preparing for
the impending elections urged him to contest them but he refused preferring
instead to carry on chamber practice. He was highly active with it, taking
international arbitrations into his early nineties. After Indira Gandhi lost the
elections of 1977, the ruling Janata Party wanted him to head the Commission of
Inquiry against the illegal imposition of the emergency and the various atrocities
committed during it but Khanna refused, as he felt he would appear biased
against Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi.

He was then offered the Chairmanship of the Finance Commission, a position he

also refused. He did however accept the office of Chairman of the Law
Commission, a post he held without any pay. He resigned from its chairmanship
in 1979 when he was inducted into the cabinet as Union Law Minister by Charan
Singh. However, he resigned within 3 days. As it so happened, the entire
government fell within six months.

In 1982 Khanna was nominated for President of India, as a combined opposition

candidate supported by as many as nine opposition parties. However, the
Congress Party had a huge majority numerically and he lost to Giani Zail Singh.
From 1985 until 2000, he was the national president of the Bharat Vikas Parishad,
after which he became patron to the organisation. He was a long time board
member of, and for many years the chairman of the Press Trust of India.

In 1998, the Justice HR Khanna committee was constituted by the railway

ministry with the mandate of "reviewing the implementation of previous accident
inquiry committees, of examining the adequacy of existing practices for safe
running of trains and to suggest safety measures." Under his chairmanship, the
Railway Safety Review Committee made 278 recommendations, out of which
239 were accepted by the railways.

In 2001 he chaired the advisory panel to the Government of India on

strengthening the institutions of parliamentary democracy.A prolific writer, he
also lectured regularly and many of his lectures were later published in book
form.

Among the books he has authored, are "Judicial Review or Confrontation" (1977),
Constitution and civil liberties (1978, based on the B. R. Ambedkar memorial
lectures), Making of India's Constitution (1981, based on the Sulakshani Devi
Mahajan lectures), "Judiciary in India and Judicial Process" (1985, based onthe
Tagore Law Lectures), Liberty, Democracy and Ethics, Society and the Law,
which mainly deal with Indian law and the constitution. He also wrote an
autobiography, Neither Roses nor Thorns, (Lucknow, 1985). In the conclusion of
his Making of India's constitution, he writes:
If the Indian constitution is our heritage bequeathed to us by our founding fathers,
no less are we, the people of India, the trustees and custodians of the values
which pulsate within its provisions! A constitution is not a parchment of paper, it
is a way of life and has to be lived up to. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
and in the final analysis, its only keepers are the people. Imbecility of men,
history teaches us, always invites the impudence of power."

He published his autobiography, Neither Roses Nor Thorns in 2003. Khanna died
on 25 February 2008 at the age of 95.The government of India honoured him
with the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, in 1999. He
has been awarded honorary Doctor of Law degrees by numerous universities,
including Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, National Law School of India
University, Government Law College, Mumbai, University of Calcutta and his
alma mater Panjab University. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, the Supreme
Court Bar Association presented him with a plaque conferring upon him the title
of "Living Legend of Law". Two sets of lectures are held in Justice Khanna's
honour. A series of lectures was organised by Justice Khanna's family for some
years after his death but was subsequently discontinued. They were presided over
by Soli Sorabjee, who was a very close friend of Justice Khanna's.
The first lecture was delivered by Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, on the topic "The
Constitutional World of Justice Khanna". In 2010, the speaker was
K.K.Venugopal. The third instalment in 2011 was delivered by Justice Santosh
Hegde. In 2012, the last in this succession of lectures, the H.R. Khanna
Centennial Memorial Lecture was held – the speakers of which were Justice J.S.
Verma and B G Verghese. The KIIT Law School also holds a H.R. Khanna
Memorial Lecture. The first one was delivered by Gopal Subramaniam, in 2011
on the topic "Legal and Political Processes in Modern Indian Democracy". It was
presided over by Justice Ranganath Misra. The same lecture for the year 2012
was delivered by Justice Dipak Misra International Journal of Law &
Management Studies holds an Essay Competition in honour of Justice
Khanna called the IJLMS Justice H.R. Khanna Memorial Essay Competition in
the month of May annually. The First Edition of this competition was held in
association with IPMarkets, Hyderabad.
 Nani Palkhivala

Nani Ardeshir Palkhivala was an Indian jurist and liberal economist. Nani
Palkhivala was born in 1920 in Bombay in what was then the Bombay
Presidency. His family name derives from the profession of his forefathers (a
common practice among Parsis), who had been manufacturers of palanquins
("palkhis"). He was educated at Masters Tutorial High School, and later at St.
Xavier's College, both in Bombay.

He was a dedicated scholar and, not letting a stammer hold him back, he excelled.
At college, he earned a master's degree in English language and literature and
thus, overcame his speech impediment. Upon graduating, Palkhivala applied for
a position as lecturer at Bombay University, but was not awarded the post. Soon
found himself trying to obtain admission to institutions of higher learning to
further his academic career. It being late in the term, most courses were closed,
and he enrolled at Government Law College, Bombay, where he discovered that
he had a gift for unraveling the intricacies of jurisprudence. Nani Palkhivala was
called to the bar in 1946 and served in the chambers of the legendary Sir
Jamshedji Behramji Kanga in Bombay. He quickly gained a reputation as an
eloquent and articulate barrister, and was often the center of attention in court,
where students of law and younger members of the bar association

Entry to the bar would go to court to watch him. His excellent court craft and an
extraordinary ability to recall barely known facts rendered him an irresistible
force. Palkhivala's initial focus was commercial and tax law. Together with Sir
Jamshedji, he authored what was then and still is considered to be anauthoritative
reference tool for tax professionals: The Law and Practice of Income Tax.
Palkhivala was 30 years old at the time of the first printing. Sir Jamshedji later
admitted that the credit for this work belonged exclusively to Palkhivala.

Palkhivala's first participation in a case of constitutional significance occurred in

1951, where he served as junior counsel in the case Nusserwanji Balsara vs.
State of Bombay [(1951) Bom 210], assisting the esteemed Sir Noshirwan
Engineer in challenging several provisions of the Bombay Prohibition Act.
Before the year was out, Palkhivala was arguing cases himself, but his first case
of constitutional importance (a challenge of the validity of land requisition acts)
was lost before the Bombay High Court. By 1954, barely 10 years after his
admission to the bar, Palkhivala was arguing before the Supreme Court.

It was in his first case before this court (concerning the interpretation of Article
29(2) and Article 30 of the Indian Constitution, which regulate the rights of
religious minorities) that he articulated his (later) famous statements on the
inviolate nature of the constitution.

To amend or not to amend

Palkhivala had a deep respect, indeed reverence, for both the Constitution of
India, and for the cardinal principles he saw embedded in it: "The Constitution
was meant to impart such a momentum to the living spirit of the rule of law that
democracy and civil liberty may survive in India beyond our own times and in
the days when our place will know us no more." Nani saw the constitution as a
legacy that had to be honoured while simultaneously being flexible. Quoting
Thomas Jefferson, he said, the constitution must go "hand in hand with the
progress of the human mind".

He was however a firm opponent of politically motivated constitutional

amendments (His favourite quotation was from Joseph Story, who said: "The
Constitution has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly
aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or
corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, the people.").
The culmination of Palkhivala's success before the Supreme Court came in the
famous Kesavananda Bharati vs. The State of Kerala case [AIR 1973 S.C. 1461,
(1973) 4 SCC 225]: Parliament had added the Ninth Schedule to the Constitution
through the very first constitutional amendment in 1951 as a means of
immunizing certain laws against judicial review. Under the provisions of Article
31, which themselves were amended several times later, laws placed in the Ninth
Schedule could not be challenged in a court of law on the ground that they
violated the fundamental rights of citizens. The protective umbrella covered more
than 250 laws passed by state legislatures with the aim of regulating the size of
land holdings and abolishing various tenancy systems. The Ninth Schedule was
created with the primary objective of preventing the judiciary – which upheld the
citizens' right to property on several occasions – from derailing the Nehru
government's agenda for land reform, but it outlived its original purpose.

In the now famous ruling, on 24 April 1973, a Special Bench comprising 13

Judges of the Supreme Court of India ruled by a majority of 7–6, that Article 368
of the Constitution "does not enable Parliament to alter the basic structure or
framework of the Constitution.". In the process it overruled a decision of a
Special Bench of 11 Judges, by a majority of 6–5, on 27 February 1967, that
"Parliament has no power to amend Part III of the Constitution so as to take away
or abridge the fundamental rights" (I.C. Golak Nath vs. TheState of Punjab, AIR
1967 S.C. 1643, (1967) 2 SCJ 486) by stating that no specific provision of the
Constitution was immune to amendment, but no amendment could violate the
basic structure or inner unity of the Constitution.

The court propounded what has come to be known as the "basic structure"
doctrine, which rules that any part of the Constitution may be amended by
following the procedure prescribed in Article 368, but no part may be so
amended as to "alter the basic structure" of the Constitution. In 1975, shortly
after the imposition of the Indian Emergency, bench of 13 judgeswas hastily
assembled, and presided over by Chief Justice A.N. Ray to determine the degree
to which amendments installed by the government of Indira Gandhi were
restricted by the Basic Structure theory.

Bythe order of the Chief Justice of 9 November, on 10 November a Bench of 13

Judges commenced hearing of the review of Kesavananda Bharati case. The
Bench consisted of Chief Justice A.N. Ray, Justices H.R. Khanna, K.K. Mathew,
M.H. Beg, Y.V. Chandrachud, P.N. Bhagwati, V.R. Krishna Iyer, P.K. Goswami,
R.S. Sarkaria, A.C. Gupta, N.L. Untwalia, M. Fazal Ali and P.M. Singhal. On 10
and 11 November, the team of civil libertarian barristers – led by Palkhivala –
continuously argued against the Union government's application for
reconsideration of the Kesavananda decision. Some of the judges accepted his
argument on the very first day, the others on the next; by the end of the second
day, the Chief Justice was reduced to a minority of one.

On the morning of 12 November, Chief Justice Ray tersely pronounced that the
bench was dissolved, and the judges rose. Post his resignation, Justice H.R.
Khanna (a member of the Bench in Kesavananda Review) praised Nani's
advocacy in Kesavananda Review case and remarked 'It was not Nani who spoke.
It was divinity speaking through him'. Justice Khanna and other Judges were of
the view that ' the heights of eloquence and advocacy reached by Palkhivala on
these two days were really unparalleled and that Palkhivala's feat would perhaps
never be equalled in the Supreme Court'. Seven years later, in Minerva Mills Ltd.
v. Union of India [(1980) 3 SCC 625], Palkhivala successfully moved the bench
to declare that clause (4) of Article 368 of the Constitution which excludes
judicial review of constitutional amendments was unconstitutional.

Defender of rights
Not only did Nani Palkhivala interpret the constitution as a message of intent but
also saw it as a social mandate with a moral dimension. As he later stated in the
Privy Purse case Madhav Rao Jivaji Rao Scindia vs Union of India "The survival
of our democracy and the unity and integrity of the nation depend upon the
realisation that constitutional morality is no less essential than constitutional
legality. Dharma (righteousness; sense of public duty or virtue) lives in the hearts
of public men; when it dies there, no Constitution, no law, no amendment, can
save it."

He was a strong proponent of the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of

the press. In an attempt to stifle dissenting opinion, the central government
imposed import controls on newsprint in 1972. In the case before the Supreme
Court [Bennett Coleman & Co. vs Union of India, (1972) 2 SCC 788], Palkhivala
argued that newsprint was more than just a general commodity: "Newsprint does
not stand on the same footing as steel. Steel will yield products of steel.
Newsprint will manifest whatever is thought of by man." In the 1970s, state
legislation (education is a subject covered by the Concurrent list in the Seventh
Schedule of the Indian Constitution – i.e., both central and state governments can
legislate on it) was increasingly encroaching on the rights of minority educational
institutions which are protected by articles in the Indian constitution.

In a landmark case [Ahmedabad St. Xavier's College Society vs. State of Gujarat,
(1974) 1SCC 717], Palkhivala argued that the extant right of a state government
to administer an academic institution did not extend to a right to maladminister.
The majority of the nine-judge bench upheld his contention, significantly
strengthening the rights of the minorities.

Prominent Cases
Major Gen Nilendra Kumar in his book Nani Palkhivala: A Role Model
(published by Universal/Lexis Nexis) has listed 140 prominent cases in which
Nani appeared, giving the name of parties, citation, opposite counsels, the name
of the judge who delivered the verdict and brief of the law points involved.
Notable cases in the list are PJ Irani, Ujjam Bai, Gujarat University, Article 143
matter on immunity of state legislatures, Keshavnanda Bharti case, Birla Cotton,
Bank Nationalization, Privy Purses, Harbhajan Singh Dhillon, Bennet Coleman,
St Xaviers College, Indira Nehru Gandhi, Minerva Mills, Mandal case and TN
Seshan matter of Chief Election Commissioner.

The economist
Although Nani Palkhivala was one of the leading interpreters of constitutional
law and a most ardent defender of the civil liberties guaranteed by the
constitution, his legacy also includes the aforementioned authoritative book, The
Law and Practice of Income Tax, which he co-authored with his mentor Sir
Jamshedji Behramji Kanga.

Although anyone who deals with the convoluted mess that is the Indian tax code
will invariably regard the work as a primary reference, the tome has also secured
international recognition and served as a tax law draft guide at the International
Monetary Fund. The first edition was published in 1950 when Palkhivala was
only 30 years old, and is still in print today (10th edition in 2014). Sir Jamshedji,
who is listed first as author, gracefully acknowledged that the credit belongs to
Palkhivala.

Former Attorney-General Soli J. Sorabjee, Nani's friend and colleague for many
years, recalls: "His talent in expounding the subject was matched by his genius in
explaining the intricacies of the Budget to thousands of his listeners. His famous
Annual Budget speeches had humble beginnings in 1958 in a small hall of an old
hotel called Green Hotel in Bombay. He spoke without notes and reeled off facts
and figures from memory for over an hour keeping his audience in rapt
attention." Describing the Annual Budget meetings, Sorabjee goes on to say:
"The audience in these meetings was drawn from industrialists, lawyers,
businessmen and the common individual. Nani's speeches were fascinating for
their brevity and clarity. His Budget speeches became so popular throughout
India and the audience for them grew so large that bigger halls and later the
Brabourne Stadium in Bombay had to be booked to keep pace with the demand
of an audience of over 20,000. It was aptly said that in those days that there were
two Budget speeches, one by the Finance Minister and the other by Nani
Palkhivala, and Palkhivala's speech was undoubtedly the more popular and
sought after."

Books authored
 Law and Practice of Income tax
 Taxation in India
 The Highest Taxed Nation
 Judiciary Made to Measure
 Our Constitution Defaced and Defiled
 India’s Priceless Heritage

We, the people We, the Nation Palkhivala received a great deal of recognition
from academics, academic institutions and the government. In 1963, Palkhivala
was offered a seat in the Supreme Court, but declined. In 1968, he was offered
the position of Attorney General by Govinda Menon, then the Law Minister in
the Congress Government. Palkhivala recounts in his book We the Nation: "After
a great deal of hesitation I agreed. When I was in Delhi I conveyed my
acceptance to him, and he told me that the announcement would be made the
next day. I was happy that the agonising hours of indecision were over. Sound
sleep is one of the blessings I have always enjoyed. That night I went to bed and
looked forward to my usual quota of deep slumber. But suddenly and
inexplicably, I became wide awake at three o'clock in the morning with the clear
conviction, floating like a hook through my consciousness, that my decision was
erroneous and that I should reverse it before it was too late. Early in the morning
I profusely apologised to the Law Minister for changing my mind. In the years
immediately following, it was my privilege to argue on behalf of the citizen,
under the same Congress Government and against the government, the major
cases which have shaped and moulded [...] constitutional law[...]"

Nani Palkhivala was appointed Indian Ambassador to the United States in 1977
by the Janata government (the first non-Congress Government in India) headed
by Morarji Desai and served in the capacity till 1979. He received honorary
doctorates from Princeton University, Rutgers University, Lawrence University,
University of Wisconsin–Madison, Annamalai University, Ambedkar Law
University and the University of Mumbai. The laudation from Princeton called
him "... Defender of constitutional liberties, champion of human rights ...", and
stated, "he has courageously advanced his conviction that expediency in the
name of progress, at the cost of freedom, is no progress at all, but retrogression.
Lawyer, teacher, author, and economic developer, he brings to us as
Ambassador of India intelligence, good humour, experience, and vision for
international understanding...."

In the last years of his life, Nani Palkhivala was severely affected by what may
have been Alzheimer's disease. According to former Attorney-General Soli J.
Sorabjee, who had known him for many years, "it was painful to see that a person
so eloquent and articulate unable to speak or recognize persons except
occasionally in a momentary flash."Nani was taken critically ill on 7 December
2002, and taken to Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai. He died on 11 December 2002.
He was 82.