A sense of justice

Book review of In Pursuit of Justice: An Autobiography

Amongst the ever-increasing number of autobiographies of public policy figures, the best are by judges. Unlike politicians and bureaucrats, who often use compulsion as an alibi and conflate it with expediency, which can take a thousand forms, judges have only two tests to pass.

One is the technical point of law: Did they get it right or not? The other is the moral aspect: Was their judgment morally defensible?

The late Rajinder Sachar, as this posthumous autobiography shows, scored a perfect 10 on both counts. His application of the law was as good as any and his moral compass was totally accurate. That’s increasingly rare.

Justice Sachar died in 2018. At the request of the family, this book has been compiled from his notes and recordings, which were typed up by his assistant and then written up into a book by Chitra Padmanabhan, a journalist.

The result is an excellent read because the narrative is detailed yet sparse. The chaff has been most efficiently separated from the wheat.

Justice Sachar was born in 1923. His father was the famous Congress politician and chief minister of Punjab, Bhim Sen Sachar.

So for three decades Rajinder didn’t use a surname in case he was given differential treatment. That’s the kind of man he was.

He studied at the Government College, Lahore, which, like the Hindu College in Delhi, was liberal and political. This, he says, was in contrast to Foreman College, a missionary institution, which was not.

In college he played tennis and won many tournaments. And he became a socialist. That was par for the course. To become a Marxist would have been a bridge too far.

In 1946, he joined the Congress Socialist Party, which directed him to work with the railway unions. He was once beaten up by members of the rival Communist union. Sachar mentions that they were Muslims but stresses that the attack was not communal.

In 1949 he became an income tax lawyer. He was living at home, his salary was Rs 500 a month and life was comfortable.

One day in 1955 his father, who had resigned as chief minister of Punjab, invited Jawaharlal Nehru who was visiting Chandigarh, for breakfast. Sachar says he had become very disillusioned with Nehru’s policies and declined to join the meal.

He says his father didn’t tell him he was being childish. It was a stupidly presumptuous gesture, he says.

Life proceeded in its usual way till 1969 when the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, the great H R Khanna, invited him to join the Bench.

He accepted although he would have preferred a Rajya Sabha seat. But that was not to be. Punjab’s socialists didn’t have the required support.

Dress was a problem, he says. He always dressed in an achkan  and pajamas. One day a senior judge told the Chief Justice to tell Sachar to dress properly.

In Pursuit of Justice: An Autobiography 

Author: Rajinder Sachar

Publisher: Rupa

Pages: 254; Price: Rs 595

Sachar’s response was entirely logical. If for 20 years he could appear in this dress in someone else’s court, why could he not do the same in his own court? The matter was never raised again.

But there were other problems, too. One was the matter of how to address the court.

Sachar thought “my Lord” was too feudal and was able to persuade the Chief Justice of India to change it to “Sir” for the high courts and “Your Honour” for the Supreme Court. But the practice of saying “My Lord” has remained.

In 1975, Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency. Justice Sachar’s father and brother-in-law, Kuldip Nayar, were arrested immediately. It was a traumatic period for everyone, all the institutions, judiciary included.

Sachar talks about it in detail. It’s good to be reminded of the narrow escape we had. The Congress party venerates Indira Gandhi today. It thinks a mere apology by her daughter-in-law amounts to exculpation.

 Sachar tells many stories. Many of them relate to the politics of, and in, the judiciary. He is particularly scornful of judges who kow-towed to the government and simultaneously tried to build a public image of independence.

After retiring from the Bench in 1985 Sachar went on to become an important public policy figure. In this context, he was inducted into India’s Kashmir policies as well.

This is what he says at one place in his chapter on Kashmir. “Dealing with Kashmir was going to be a long process but the danger there was of American intervention, which sought the separation of the Valley from Jammu and Ladakh.” The three are separate Union Territories now, but it would have been interesting to know what he thought of the Modi government’s Kashmir policy.