Before Memory Fades… An Autobiography by Fali S. Nariman; Hay House India; Price: Rs.599; 459 pp
In these rah-rah india shining times in which the Sensex is hitting circuit breakers every week and foreign investment is pouring into the Indian economy, it’s arguably anti-national to be a dismal Cassandra. But 63 years on after the Mahatma and his patriotic lieutenants wrested the brightest jewel from the greedy hand of imperial Great Britain and transformed the crumbling post-Mughal Indian landmass into a united and sovereign nation, three of the four pillars of post-independence Indian democracy — Parliament, the executive, judiciary and media — are exhibiting massive base corrosion, and are in danger of collapse.
The plain, unvarnished truth is that over the past six decades Parliament has been in continuous decline with the vastly illiterate peasantry and lumpen urban bourgeoisie having converted democracy to its own use; the executive has been hijacked by the “freebooters” that Winston Churchill, Britain’s great WW II prime minister warned about, and the judiciary is about to collapse under the weight of its case arrears and inability to cleanse and reform itself. Perhaps the only great estate of the realm discharging its constitutional duty is India’s extraordinarily free and fearless press and audio-visual media (television). Yet even this pillar of Indian democracy is threatened by the new phenomenon of “paid news”, mass illiteracy and ignorance.
It’s against this sombre backdrop that one must adjudge the worth and value of this engaging autobiography of Fali S. Nariman (81), one of India’s most successful Bombay high court and Supreme Court lawyers, and former solicitor general of India. Also a former (nominated) member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), Nariman was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2007 for commendable service rendered over a span of 60 years to the legal profession and the nation. During this period Nariman interacted with some of the most erudite members of the bench and bar and was in the thick of great battles fought in the Supreme Court to establish the rule of law and supremacy of the Constitution (as interpreted by the judiciary). Therefore this narrative is a valuable history of post-independence India written from the perspective of a successful and respected legal luminary.
There is a history in all men’s lives. But unfortunately, the western tradition of people who shape the destinies of nations or are ringside witnesses writing their memoirs, hasn’t quite struck root in post-independence India. The too-few autobiographies in print tend to be self-exculpatory treatises which routinely omit to name and shame wrong-doers, lack credibility and are of little value to serious historians. Likewise, Before Memory Fades is an Indian-style chronicle — a personal history, gently recited — which even as it informs and enlightens, is unlikely to provoke controversy or cause offence.
That alas, is its major drawback. The book skims over several landmark events of the 20th century which require detailed comment and elaboration. It begins with the author’s birth in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1929 where his father Sam was posted as general manager of the Tata-owned New India Assurance Co. The family’s privileged tempo of life was rudely interrupted by the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1941 which compelled the Nariman family to undertake a long overland trek to India culminating in Delhi. Yet this historic trek is dispensed with in a few paragraphs as though it was a picnic, without a word recounted about widely reported Japanese atrocities in Burma. Likewise private school and St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai were a breeze for young Fali. Not a word in this autobiography about the infirmities or need for reform of the education system.
Given the placid, all-is-well tenor of this memoir, it’s hardly surprising that Nariman finds little wrong with the Indian legal system, arguably the most inefficient, corrupt, indolent and unjust worldwide. There’s nothing in this account to indicate that the author is aware that from the citizen’s perspective, the courts are dangerous territory, infested with black-gowned piranha who routinely strip litigants clean within a matter of days (Nariman’s daily fees are reportedly above Rs.5 lakh). Nor does he seem aware that India’s courts are not regarded as accessible temples of justice, but as the nearest approximation of hell on earth by the citizenry.
Curiously this celebrated lawyer seems innocent of any awareness that at its current rate of case disposal, according to economist Bibek Debroy’s calculation, it will require 324 years — provided no new cases are filed — for the Indian legal system to dispose of its pending case backlog. Nor is his judicial conscience pricked by the fact that India lacks any worthwhile system of legal aid (for civil litigants), or that it’s one of the few countries worldwide to levy court fees upon litigants, that costs are seldom awarded against government which initiates over 60 percent of the cases filed every year, or against even conspicuously affluent litigants.
Nariman’s deafening silence on the law’s delay and his conspicuous failure to press for root and branch reform of the justice delivery system during his six-year term in Parliament mars this otherwise interesting, and even intellectually stimulating autobiography. Is it possible learned counsel is unaware that Britain’s Legal Aid and Advice Act, 1949 — which entitled all citizens to receive legal aid and revolutionised legal practice — was the creation of the bar (practicing lawyers)? Moreover should he not have, as a member of Parliament highlighted the absurd paradox that despite imposing court fees on litigants, contemporary India has only 13 judges per 100,000 citizens as opposed to 105 in the US and 55 in the UK?
Regrettably, there is a smug, self-congratulatory tone which pervades this memoir. Quite obviously as the author’s photographs with the great and the good in exotic locales reinforce, Nariman has done well for himself and risen to the summit of the legal profession. But my dear sir, to rise to the summit of a malodorous mountain of iniquity and injustice while remaining impervious to the loud weeping and gnashing of teeth of the millions of litigants routinely short-changed by “learned lordships” and ripped off by “learned friends” is at best tainted achievement. The title of this autobiography indicates that the author was anxious to tell his tale before memory fades. Yet his acts of omission, if not commission, indicate that he’s been too late.
Dilip Thakore
Mughal defence
Sons of Babur — A Play in Search of India by Salman Khurshid; Rupa & Co; Price: Rs.295; 121 pp
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“Sons of Babur have only two places: the graveyard or Pakistan!” was the war-cry of Hindutva militants as they whipped up majoritarian sentiment culminating in the destruction of Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid in 1992. For these fanatics, Indian Muslims have no place in the land of their birth. They are the progeny of foreign invaders, according to Hindutva ideologues. They trace their ancestry to Zahiruddin Mohammad Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty which ruled over much of present-day India for several centuries. That their claim is, historically, totally wide off the mark — the vast majority of Indian Muslims are descendants of local converts, mainly of oppressed castes — doesn’t seem to bother Hindutva militants.
This well-crafted play is a powerful rebuttal of Hindutva propaganda about the origins of Indian Muslims. Without being preachy, and without whitewashing the darker aspects of three centuries of Mughal rule, Khurshid presents the complexity of inter-communal relations under the Mughals, highlighting that, over time they became so closely integrated with wider Indian society, that it makes no sense whatsoever to regard them as foreigners. At the top, Hindu and Muslim elites forged a rich cultural synthesis in fields of the arts, music, architecture, dress and cuisine and syncretised religious traditions that bridged the gulf between the two communities.
The play revolves around a group of college students engaged in the movement to tear down the Babri Masjid. This agitation marked a major watershed in India’s history and in the history of inter-communal relations in the subcontinent. Confronted with rival claims about Indianness and the role of Muslims in Indian history, one of the students, Rudranshu Mitra, ‘mind-travels’ to Rangoon where he has a series of extended conversations with the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. The emperor was exiled to Rangoon by the British in the aftermath of the failed Indian Mutiny of 1857, often described as India’s First War of Independence.
Sad and forlorn, miles from his home which he will never see again, the emperor takes Mitra on a series of flashbacks, where he meets Babur and a host of other Mughal rulers. From them he learns how the Mughals, who left their desolate Central Asian home, managed, over the years, not just to adapt to India but also helped create the idea of India as we understand it today. Khurshid presents Zafar as exemplifying that very idea in his own person, as a symbol who united Hindus and Muslims against British rule.
Khurshid’s attempt to project the Mughals in positive light serves a valuable political purpose. Through Zafar and Mitra, the central characters of the play, he argues the case for a pan-Indian identity that embraces, indeed celebrates, religious and cultural diversity which will inevitably result in synthesis. Critics might argue that to present Zafar as the herald of the ‘Idea of India’ seems somewhat far-fetched. They could question whether Zafar and other Muslim and Hindu rulers who threw their weight behind the Indian Mutiny of 1857 were really passionate proto-nationalists, as Khurshid projects them. More likely, they were simply attempting to protect their tottering regimes and hold on to the levers of power. Their magnificent power and glory had little to offer other than unrelenting misery and poverty to the vast majority of Indians — Hindus and Muslims alike.
Defending the Mughals from Hindutva falsehood is fine, and indeed laudable, but to extol them as passionately committed to the welfare and well-being of their subjects is over the top. To project a now long-lost cultural tradition, suffused in a deep-rooted feudal and sternly hierarchical ethos and based on the centrality of the Mughal potentate, as the pillar of modern Indian nationhood, is vacuous romanticism. It certainly holds little attraction to the vast majority of Indians today. Obviously, the basis of a contemporary Indian identity needs much firmer, more egalitarian foundations.
That said, the play makes engaging reading, and readers are treated to a host of little-known historical details. Through the enlightened discussions which Mitra has with Zafar, Khurshid is able to subtly highlight the human side of Mughal rulers which is completely effaced in Hindutva propaganda vilifying them as barbarous conquerors. One would not have expected an Indian politician, and a minister at that (Khurshid is curre-ntly the minister of state for corporate and minority affairs), to be such a gifted wordsmith.
Yoginder Sikand