It is a happy augury for Indian democracy that the country’s young talents aspiring to join the legal profession have thought it fit to call a spade a spade. They have put under scrutiny the remarks and actions of even the Chief Justice of India (CJI) and Chairman of the Bar Council of India (BCI) that evidently grievously hurt the sentiments and self-respect of the country’s students and youths.
In a significant development, 165 graduating students, 409 current students and 128 alumni of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, had opposed any move to invite CJI Surya Kant and BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra to the institute’s convocation ceremony that is usually held every September. In an open letter, they have condemned the BCI’s now-withdrawn order of 13 August, directing state Bar Councils not to enrol this year’s graduates of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad. Mishra had issued the directive following a campaign by around 450 NALSAR students opposing the choice of CJI Surya Kant as chief guest for their convocation.
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The BCI with its controversial chairman, had issued a letter and then backtracked on the drive to boycott all NALSAR graduates, as the institute had witnessed protests against the CJI attending their convocation. Mishra could not withstand the pushback by the students to his effort to show his unasked-for allegiance to the CJI. The graduating students of India’s first law university, the NLSIU, Bangalore, have been joined by both current students and alumni, condemning the BCI chairman’s patently illegal order issued on his own. Mishra’s action seems to have been taken as authoritarian and also understood as degrading the legal profession itself through cringing submission to the CJI, upbraiding law students exercising their democratic right to speak their mind. It is desirable that the Bar and the Bench work in tandem to give justice to litigants.
However, if the spirit of cooperation is construed as a brazen surrender of the Bar to the Bench as revealed by the BCI chairman’s obnoxious order and the language in which it was couched, demeaning the NALSAR law students, the judiciary as a whole has been shown in the poorest light. There surely is more to the BCI chairman’s arrogant and cowardly actions. His position as BJP’s Rajya Sabha member gives away his real intent.
The youth and students of the country have rebelled against the way the ruling dispensation has, for so long, taken them for granted, trampling down their future and aspirations through utter neglect and corruption in the education system. The government at the Centre was forced to swallow its pride recently by conceding their demand for the resignation of the former Union Education Minister for high-stakes exam question paper leaks. This has severely battered the image of the Narendra Modi government and the BJP as a whole, and the image of a mighty organization that rules by arousing fear and awe has been broken.
In fact, the agitation spearheaded by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), born online through a satire of the current CJI’s uncalled-for and demeaning remarks on the youths, has broken the shackles of fear. It is apparently at the behest of the BJP that the BCI chairman acted when he issued the deplorable order to browbeat the law students of NALSAR and use their “audacity” to take on the CJI for his remarks and create a precedent for existing and future law students of the whole country not to dare question the judiciary. His action deserved condemnation with the strongest of words since he sought to give a wrong message to law students even before they could join the legal profession. Fortunately for the country, the criticism was intense, and that forced the BCI chairman to withdraw his statement unconditionally.
Instead of fearlessly presenting their case backed by reasoned arguments, he sought to tell them to bow to the CJI and perhaps buy justice. This is the most dangerous move. No wonder the NLSUI students clamour for his “unconditional” apology to the students and faculty at NALSAR for attempting to “infringe their fundamental right to free speech and expression.” They have also cogently argued that at no point, even after the recall of the ban on enrolment and inquiry into the motives and persons behind their protest against the CJI order, has the BCI acknowledged the arbitrary and illegal nature of its actions. They want to set the record straight and prevent such events from happening in the future. They have the legal knowledge to call the “BCI’s actions ultra vires the Advocates Act, 1961.” The law students are showing exemplary maturity and sense of judgement even before they qualify to defend their clients in the courts when they assert the “immortal words” of Rabindranath Tagore: “Where the mind is without fear,” that they see before entering their classrooms every day and reflect the ethos of all law universities. These are indeed well-spoken words by the law students. It is vital that both the judiciary and the executive take note of their newfound confidence to fight for justice and mend their arbitrary ways.
