Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Thank you, Sir.’

The conference continued for an hour and a half. But G.N. Bannerji was becoming restless, and everyone felt that the great lawyer should not be overtaxed when he still had to argue the next day. The questions had not dried up, however, when he took off his spectacles, pointed two fingers upwards and said the single word:

‘Aachha.’

It was the signal for people to gather up their papers.

Outside, it was getting dark. On the way out, a couple of juniors, unconscious of the fact that they were still within earshot of G.N. Bannerji’s son and grandson, were gossiping about the lawyer from Calcutta.

‘Have you seen his lady-love?’ asked one.

‘Oh, no, no,’ said the other.

‘I hear she is a real firecracker.’

The other laughed. ‘Over seventy, and he has a lady-love!’

‘But think of Mrs Bannerji! What must she think? The whole world knows.’

The other shrugged, as if to imply that what a Mrs Bannerji might think was outside either his concern or his imagination.

The son and grandson of the great lawyer heard this exchange though they did not see the shrug. They frowned to themselves, but said nothing to each other, and tacitly allowed the subject to drift away on the evening air.

The next day G.N. Bannerji wound up the opening for the petitioners, and several other counsel argued for short periods about their own specific points. Firoz too got his chance.

For a few moments before Firoz got to his feet, his mind plunged suddenly into an inexplicable blackness — an emptiness, almost. He could see all his arguments lucidly, but could see no point to anything at all — this case, his career, his father’s lands, the scheme of things of which this court and this Constitution were a part, his own existence, even human life itself. The disproportionate strength of the feelings he was undergoing — and the irrelevance of these feelings to the business at hand — bewildered him.

He shuffled his papers for a while, and his mind cleared. But now he was so nervous, so puzzled by the untimely incursion of these thoughts, that at first he had to hide his hands behind the lectern.

He began with the formulary remark: ‘My Lords, I adopt the arguments of Mr G.N. Bannerji on all the main points, but would like to add my own arguments with respect to the question of the lands covered by crown grants.’ He then argued with great force of logic that these lands fell into a different category from the others, and were protected by contract and proclamation from ever being taken over. The bench listened to him appreciatively; and he defended his contention against their questions as well as he could. His curious uncertainty had disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen.

Mahesh Kapoor had taken time off from his heavy workload to come and hear Firoz. Though he listened with warmth and enjoyment to Firoz’s arguments he felt that it would be a disaster if the court accepted them. A fair proportion of the rented land in Purva Pradesh fell under the category of grants given by the crown after the Mutiny in order to establish order once more through the intermediation of powerful local men. Some of these, like the Nawab Sahib’s ancestor, had fought against the British; but it had been felt that they and their families could not with safety be antagonized further. The grants were therefore given subject to good behaviour — but to nothing else.

Mahesh Kapoor was also particularly interested in another writ petition, one brought forward by those who had actually ruled their own states under the British, who had signed instruments of accession to the Indian Union after Independence and been granted certain guarantees in the Constitution. One such was the bestial Raja of Marh, whom Mahesh Kapoor would have been only too happy to dispossess completely. Although the state of Marh proper fell in Madhya Bharat, the Raja’s ancestors had also been granted land in Purva Pradesh — or Protected Provinces as it was called at the time. His lands in P.P. fell into the category of crown grants, but it was one of the contentions of the Raja’s lawyers that his privy purse from the government had been set lower than it otherwise would have been in view of the income that his estates in P.P. were expected to bring in perpetuity. These lands had been allowed to the Raja as personal, rather than State, property, and (they contended) were guaranteed by two articles of the Constitution. One unambiguously declared that the government would pay due regard to any assurances given under the covenants of merger with respect to the personal rights, privileges and dignities of the ex-rulers; and another stated that disputes arising out of such covenants and similar instruments were not justiciable in the courts.

The government lawyers, on the other hand, had insisted in their affidavits that ‘personal rights, privileges and dignities’ did not include personal property; with regard to personal property the ex-rulers had the status and guarantees of any other citizen. And they too contended that the matter — as they saw it — was not justiciable.

If Mahesh Kapoor had had his way, he would have taken over not only the Raja’s personal lands in Purva Pradesh but whatever had been allowed to him as personal land in Madhya Bharat as well — and all his urban property in Brahmpur besides — including the site of the Shiva Temple, which was now under a new spurt of construction on account of the approaching festival of the Pul Mela. This was, alas, not possible; had it been, it would have curbed the Raja’s wretched mischief. It would have been a very unwelcome thought to Mahesh Kapoor that this desire of his was in essence not very different from that of the Home Minister L.N. Agarwal when he attempted to take over Baitar House.

The Nawab of Baitar noticed Mahesh Kapoor as he came into court a little into the afternoon session; though they sat on different sides of the aisle, they acknowledged each other with an unspoken salutation.

The Nawab Sahib’s heart was full. He had listened with enormous pride and happiness to his son’s speech. He could not help thinking once more how Firoz had inherited so many of the finer features of his mother. And she too had sometimes been most nervous when she was most forceful. The attentiveness of the judges to the young man’s arguments was savoured even more by his father than by himself for he was too busy parrying their questions to allow himself the pleasure of enjoying them.

Even his senior could not have done better, thought the Nawab Sahib. He wondered what the next day’s report in the Brahmpur Chronicle would carry of Firoz’s arguments. He even somewhat whimsically imagined the great Cicero appearing in the Brahmpur High Court and commending his son’s advocacy.

But will it do much good in the end? — this thought struck him again and again in the middle of his happiness. When a government is determined to get its way it usually does so by one means or another. And history is against our class. He looked over to where the Raja and Rajkumar of Marh were sitting. I suppose that if it were merely our class it would not matter, he continued to himself. But it is everyone else besides. He found his thoughts turning not only to his retainers and dependants but to the musicians he used to listen to in his own youth, the poets he used to patronize, and to Saeeda Bai.

And he looked at Firoz with renewed concern.

Daily the crowds in court lessened until finally hardly anyone other than the press, the lawyers, and a few of the litigants could be seen.

Whether the Nawab Sahib and his class had or did not have history on their side, whether the Law propelled Society or Society the Law, whether the patronage of poetry counter-balanced the torments of the tenantry, such questions of great pitch and moment lay outside the immediate business of the five men in whose hands rested the fate of this case. Their concerns were concentrated on Articles 14, 31(2), and 31(4) of the Constitution of India, and they were grilling the amiable Mr Shastri about his view of these articles and of the statute under challenge.