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1986 was a turning point in the lives of India’s Christian women.

That year the Indian Supreme Court
ruled that women possessed equal inheritance rights with men. Prior to
that time the Christian inheritance law stipulated that the daughter of
a man or woman who died intestate was only entitled to the lesser of
two options: a quarter of the share of the inheritance due to a son; or
the sum of five thousand rupees. The driving force behind annulment of
that chauvinistic law was Prafullachandra Natwarlal (P.N.) Bhagwati, in
his position as India’s Chief Justice and Head of its Supreme Court.

A head start

His was a privileged upbringing.
Bhagwati, the eldest of seven sons, was born in 1921 to a lawyer father
who “always taught us that we should be hardworking, honest and
straightforward; and we should devote ourselves to studies” and a
mother, who, despite not having much education,

“was a highly devoted person,
highly dedicated, and gave us wonderful training”. (The senior Bhagwati
would later sit on India’s Supreme Court). The upbringing clearly left
its mark on the sons. Jagdish, one of Bhagwati’s brothers is an
influential economist and Professor at Columbia University, while
Sanat, another brother, is a world-acclaimed neurosurgeon and former
President of the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery.

The making of the lawyer

The lawyer started out a
scientist. In 1941, at the age of twenty, Bhagwati bagged a first class
degree in Mathematics from Elphinstone College in Bombay (now Mumbai).
After this he enrolled for a Masters degree, also in Mathematics. But a
chance encounter (while he was studying for his MA) with Indian
nationalist icon Mahatma Ghandi would change the course of his life
forever. “After hearing [Mahatma Ghandi] on 8 August 1942, I gave up my
studies, joined the freedom struggle,” he tells me. “I was in jail –
British jail – for one month. I was released, but I didn’t stop
participating in the freedom struggle. There was a warrant for my
arrest, I went underground, hunted by the police.” For several months
Bhagwati remained in hiding. Eventually, in 1943, the arrest warrant
against him was withdrawn, and he made the decision to “take law, and
give up mathematics.” I ask him what the transition from Mathematics to
Law was like. His answer comes instantly. “Law is basically a matter of
scientific deduction, and mathematics gave me very good training for
the purpose of analysis and deduction.” The evidence for this is
incontrovertible: he graduated with a first class in Law from the
Government Law College, Bombay.

The Emergency

In July 1960, Bhagwati became a
Judge of the Gujarat High Court. Seven years later he became the Chief
Justice of Gujarat. In July 1973 he was elevated to the Indian Supreme
Court, just like his father had been. But barely two years into his
career at India’s highest court an event would happen that would be one
of the most significant low points of his judicial career. The then
Prime Minister, Indira Ghandi would, on the advice of the President,

declare a “State of Emergency”
which essentially allowed her to rule by decree, and automatically
rendered the courts powerless in the affairs of the country.

“It was an abuse of power by
Indira Ghandi to declare emergency. There was no justification for it,”
he tells me, obviously still riled by the action. He adds that there
was nothing the judiciary could do “because the power was given by the
Constitution to the President to declare emergency.” But the lawyer in
him would not permit silence, even then. “In several judgments I gave I
criticized the action of Indira Ghandi in declaring emergency.” Those
were dark days for India. Indira Ghandi arrested tens of thousands of
opposition members, jailed them without trial, and made amendments to
the Constitution. The Emergency period eventually ended in March 1977,
after almost two years.

Justice for the common man

In 1985, barely a year after the
assassination of Indira Ghandi, Bhagwati was appointed the Chief
Justice of India. During his eighteen-month stint as Chief Justice, he
introduced the revolutionary concept of “Public Interest Litigation” to
the Indian Justice system. In layman’s terms that would mean simply
“Justice for the ‘common man’.” The concept arose out of Bhagwati’s
long-standing personal views regarding what the true role of the
judiciary ought to be: “The judiciary has the responsibility to serve
the common man because the judges are in charge of administering the
law. Judges have to give effect to the law, they have to interpret the
law, and therefore judges must have the interest of the common man at
heart. Judges must feel [and] know what the common man wants.” Apart
from the women’s inheritance laws judgment, Bhagwati considers two
other Public Interest Litigation cases the highlights of his tenure as
India’s Chief Justice. One involved Maneka Ghandi, daughter-in-law of
Indira Ghandi, whose passport was seized by the government, to prevent
her from travelling abroad. “She filed a petition in the Supreme Court
challenging the forfeiture of her passport, and I, speaking on behalf
of the Supreme Court held that the right to go abroad is a part of
personal liberty. It is a right guaranteed by the Constitution of
India, and no one can be deprived of that right except by procedure
established by law, a procedure which is reasonable, fair and just,”
Bhagwati recounts. “Forfeiture of a passport without giving any valid
reasons is contrary to fundamental (human) rights. And therefore I set
aside the order of the government of India, and said that the
forfeiture of the passport was invalid.” He says the judgment “gave a
new meaning to the Constitution of India, which was not there, which
was not even intended by the makers of the Constitution. I expanded the
reach and content of basic human rights.” The second case dealt with
environmental degradation, which he tells me was a recurring theme in
the cases he handled as Chief Justice.

Limestone quarrying was polluting
the land and water in a hilly region in Northern India, and causing
rapid deforestation. “A public interest litigation was brought before
me,” Bhagwati says. “I appointed a Committee of 3 persons, geological
experts, to examine and make a report to me. And on the basis of the
report after hearing the parties I directed that this limestone
quarrying must stop. The hill slopes which are barren, they should be
reforested again, so that greenery is again established. The water of
the river should be cleaned up, so that the people get the benefit of
clean waters.”

A lifelong passion

Judgments like these, together
with his efforts in helping create a successful Legal Aid Program in
India earned him the unassailable reputation he holds as one of the
world’s leading human rights jurists. Today, at 88, neither his mental
alertness, nor his passion for promoting human rights, have waned. He
is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (has been a
member for 18 years), a position which requires him to travel “three
times a year – twice to Geneva, once to New York; one month each time –
to attend the meetings of the [Committee].” He remains actively
involved with several non-governmental organizations, and continues to
travel extensively on missions for international human rights
organizations.

During the recent visit to Nigeria
(he was here twenty years ago as a guest at an African Chief Justices
conference) he emphasized the need for Nigeria to emulate India and
allow Public Interest Litigation to flourish in Nigeria, “because that
will bring basic human rights within the reach of the common man.” He
also advocated the creation of “an annual exchange of lawyers and
judges between the two countries.” This he premised on the startling
similarities he sees between both Nigeria and India. “I’ve found that
there is very much in common between Nigeria and India – the legal
system is very similar, problems of the people are similar.” All are
equal Bhagwati also has advice for Nigeria and India, both
multi-religious countries, prone to religious violence. “If you profess
one religion you must also respect the other religions also, because
all religions are about different paths leading to the same goal,
namely, realization of God.

Therefore no one religion is higher than another,” he argues. That principle is one that he applies in his personal life.

When I question him about his religious persuasion, he says,

bluntly: “I’m not religious in
that sense. By birth, Hindu, but I’m a universal person. I believe in
all the religions, all the religions are about different paths leading
to the same goal, the divinity.” It is very clear that a belief in
equality is a significant driving force in his life. His has been an
existence devoted to demonstrating that all men (irrespective of class
or caste), like all gods, are equal. One can only wish that the
religious fanatics of Nigeria, and of India, will someday very soon,
grasp this simple truth.