6 min readDec 24, 2022 11:17 AM IST
First published on: Dec 23, 2022 at 04:35 PM IST
As the year draws to a close, I look back, like many, at the year that was. The memories of the last few weeks, in fact, seem to set the tone for the year that has passed and the year ahead. Last weekend, I was in Mumbai for the first Ashok H Desai Memorial Lecture. Ashokbhai was my senior, my teacher and my very dear friend. He passed away in the spring of 2020 as we were under the first Covid lockdown. In India, the chambers system means that litigators like myself join the law chambers of a senior practitioner and learn from him or her. Desai was a lawyers’ lawyer, a senior advocate, and had served as Solicitor General and Attorney General of India.
The Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, delivered the lecture and spoke on law and morality. The judge spoke eloquently on changing morality, reforming laws and constitutional morality in India, from the court’s decision in Navtej Singh Johar on gay rights to honour killings, as young couples crossed caste fault lines and found love in each other. It was fitting that this was the theme for the inaugural memorial lecture since Desai himself had litigated some of our country’s defining social values and morality cases, on censorship and obscenity (Sakharam Binder) and gay rights (Navtej Singh Johar), apart from right to life cases like Nandini Sundar.
The lecture was an opportunity for Ashokbhai’s family, friends, judges and the legions of lawyers that he inspired to come together to remember him. A closure for so many of us over the passing away of a lawyer and human being who taught us so much. In attendance were his wife Suverna Desai or Suverna Aunty for us, and his children Ami, Harsh and Jai, past and present judges, and the many members of his law chambers from Mumbai and Delhi. His legacy includes a wealth of case law that protects freedoms in India, and his former juniors — judges, senior advocates and established lawyers.
We had all gathered to remember and honour a man that we admired and loved dearly. Many of us wear the gowns that he gave us, and attempt to honour him by practising law with the integrity, joy and craft which he showed us. The event was for us a chance to say goodbye to a teacher who taught us equally about how to live life elegantly, and the craft to bring to the law.
After I finally bid goodbye to my teacher, I got on a flight to see my parents and spend the rest of the weekend with them. Humans experience life in cycles, that begin and end and start afresh as if closing the loop of all our experiences. At a shop in Hyderabad, as my parents wandered about, I bought some chocolates for them and for my children. Life at its beginning and towards the sunset years seems similar for the flavours that we humans crave. Sugar, spice and saltiness.
My parents wanted India’s much loved and familiar milk chocolate flavour, popularised in all our childhoods by Cadbury. One of the most enduring memories of my childhood continues to be going to a store with my father, him lifting me up so I could ask the shop keeper for a bar of Cadbury. You only had one flavour in those days — “milk chocolate” served with a dose of fatherly love. Our children being raised in post-liberalisation India, have more choices; they prefer chilli chocolate or salted caramel chocolate or, as our son told us most recently, could he have dark chocolate please? Our daughter simply says “wow” to any chocolate. I hope for our children, the many flavours of chocolate will always bring back memories of parental love.
As a lawyer, I use the end of the year to reflect on the cases that were litigated and heard by the court and those that we plan and prepare for. In the next year, the Supreme Court will likely hear challenges to the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, petitions for marriage equality, reforms to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, limited review of its decision in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 and reconsidering its own decision on the entry of women to the Sabarimala temple.
As we use the few days that the court does not formally function to prepare for the new cases to be heard, judges will use this time to write judgments on the cases that they heard, and more senior judges will also spend time on administration issues. While we dwell on the year ahead, we must dwell on the institution of the Supreme Court the judicial vacancies that exist, the names of prospective judges to be elevated that have been sent to the Executive. At present there are 27 judges working at the Supreme Court against a sanctioned strength of 34. At the high courts there are only 777 judges working against a sanctioned strength of 1,108 or around a 30 per cent vacancy. The government should expeditiously sign off on the names sent to them by the collegium of the Supreme Court, as is envisaged by the law.
On that note, wishing you dear readers a joyous end of the year, and a wonderful year ahead.
Menaka Guruswamy is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India
As a lawyer, I use the end of the year to reflect on the cases that were litigated and heard by the court and those that we plan and prepare for. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar)
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