Fali Nariman was the greatest lawyer and jurist of our time. We will find him in the vast pages of law reports which illuminate his contribution, his own story written by him, Before Memory Fades (2010), his writings and the speeches on public affairs. The experience of working with and against him in court will never happen again. His eloquence was unparalleled as also his pithy sense of humour.
His contribution began with the famous Golak Nath case (1967) and continued through the Judges Appointment case (2015) and others that followed it. He was attacked for representing Union Carbide in the famous Bhopal gas leak case. It upset him and he was forced to confront moral issues. This was the same man who had handed in his resignation as a law officer when the Emergency was declared in June 1975. It is not that he followed the rule that a lawyer must take whatever cases come to him. There were many cases where he refused to accept a brief on moral grounds. Why the Bhopal case, then? It was surely not for the money. Could he have left it? Many believe that lawyers do not just provide an across-the-shelf service but are part of an ethical involvement. The Bhopal case worried Fali. In his autobiography, he said that it had been a mistake to take it on. I think in view of the vastness of his contribution to public life, we can forgive and forget.
I once asked him what we are as lawyers. He agreed we are “mediators of accountability”, not just in public affairs, but in corporate matters as well. He believed in India’s Constitution which accommodates the various interests and ideologies that confront it. He fervently believed that the next generation must understand the Constitution and how it developed. This was the subject matter of his most recent book on the Constitution, You Must Know Your Constitution (2023) – unusual in style and insightful in its depth, as it helped to understand liberal democracy and its working. His belief that the judiciary is crucial to India’s development was further explicated by his involvement in the Judges Appointment case (2015) when he asked many of us to join it — it could have surrendered appointments in the higher judiciary to executive dominance. We need to know more about his ideas. It is for his close associates to bring his contributions, articles and speeches together to help us understand the past and future. He was a champion of liberal democracy; he was nominated as Member of Parliament and remained involved in public affairs as a public speaker and writer.
It could not have been easy to be the lawyer and legend that he became. He recalls how in the opening years of his practice, his place in the famous Kanga chambers was at a small desk, with several others crowded in the same office room. As a latecomer into practice, I admired his dedication and friendship. He associated me with many cases. On the occasion of the first St Stephen’s college case, he asked the court to hear me and he would “pass books to me” to be cited in the hearings as if he was a junior counsel. People mattered to him. When the question of who should succeed him as the Indian representative in the International Commission of Jurists, Geneva, arose, he chose me when he should have chosen his brilliant son, Rohinton, who later became a distinguished judge of the Supreme Court. I was not among his closest friends but, like others, he made us feel we were.
Legends don’t die. He is needed even more in the present troubled time. In the words of the Bard: “The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: We that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long.”
The writer is a senior advocate in the Supreme Court of India
