What Soli and Lord Lester fought for

Lord Lester of Herne Hill leaned across the table. “Did the reforms Soli Sorabjee introduced as attorney-general have a lasting effect on India’s judicial system?” he asked. We were at a dinner party in London’s St John’s Wood. Anthony Lester was a barrister who dabbled in left-of-centre politics. The connection with Soli was explained by his passion for justice for the underdog.

London’s Times newspaper called Lester “one of the most knowledgeable and authoritative figures in the field of human rights”. Curiously for an Englishman, he was particularly committed to the 400,000 Dalits among 1.5 million British-Indians long before the controversy over a Hindu organisation using cheap and possibly illegal Dalit labour to construct a temple in New Jersey.

I told Lester that with all my love and respect for Soli, and reason for being personally grateful to him, I could not bring myself to agree that the efforts of one dedicated man could make a substantial difference to the dispensation of justice when nearly 40 million cases were pending at all levels.

I also told him how Soli had saved me when a senior Indian diplomat demanded enormous damages for alleged defamation in my book Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim. The complainant was India’s last political officer in Sikkim, lordly resident of Gangtok’s Burra Kothi and de facto overlord of what was then an independent kingdom with a crowned monarch. Years later, J N (Mani) Dixit, the former foreign secretary who died just after Manmohan Singh appointed him national security adviser, gave me a glimpse of murky moves behind the scenes.

“South Block was very worried about what you might come out with,” Dixit said one day over lunch in his bungalow in Gurgaon. So, colleagues in the external affairs ministry and the prime minister’s office played on the diplomat’s ego and convinced him he had been maligned. “His defamation suit was a godsend!” It promised to be as effective as a ban on my book while sparing the government accusations of censorship.

Normally, defamation must be proved before the courts take action. Proving can take months, even years. In my case, the Delhi High Court issued an order at the first hearing, forbidding sale of Smash and Grab until the case had been settled. A contempt charge was added when the complainant produced a receipt from some obscure shop which had unknowingly sold a copy.

At my wit’s end, I mentioned the matter to Soli, who told me not to worry. After protracted meetings and negotiations, he eventually persuaded the prosecuting lawyers to accept an out-of-court settlement entailing no damages but a cleverly worded apology. It was a generous act of friendship. I have no idea what Soli’s fees would have been but am sure they would have been well beyond my means. I am even more certain that the question of fees did not even cross his mind.

South Block was relieved with the out-of-court settlement. Other episodes suggested that the courts too were not keen at that time to take up any matter that might lead to an embarrassing public discussion of legally questionable and morally indefensible actions that had been widely criticised at home and abroad.

The sales ban was lifted but the publisher claimed he had no copies left. He wasn’t interested in reprinting either. Smash and Grab was neatly suppressed.

Lester’s great sorrow was that British law does not specifically prohibit caste discrimination. Instigated by him, parliament had amended Section 9 (5) of Britain’s Equality Act 2010 to cover caste discrimination but another law had to be passed to make this effective.

He took my wife and me once to a House of Lords debate on caste exploitation where Lord Meghnad Desai said that Britain’s upper caste Hindu lobby was “rich, powerful and persistent”, making up in wealth what it lacked in numbers. We also heard Sir Ganga Ram’s great-granddaughter, Baroness Flather, argue that migration to Britain did not change the nature of migrants used to exploiting their inferiors at home.

We learnt of Permila Tirkey, a Scheduled Tribe woman from Bihar whose Indian employers in Milton Keynes made her toil 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for 11 pence an hour as cleaner and nanny. In other ways too she was ill-treated until someone filed a complaint and, eventually, a tribunal awarded her nearly ₤184,000 in unpaid wages and compensation.

The unhappy end of Lester’s career two years before he died has no bearing on this tribute. What matters is that men like him and Soli fought for the underprivileged in different climes and contexts. Sadly, their careers also showed that noble intentions and indefatigable personal effort are not enough to transform society. That might happen only when an enlightened government introduces liberal reforms and makes obedience compulsory.