Ask any regular Supreme Court practitioner and they will tell you that on a final hearing day, a post-lunch session gets challenging for even the most alert in the bar and bench. The court assembles at 2 pm and, given that the Indian Supreme Court does not impose time limitations on oral hearings, the rambling arguments of certain lawyers can even put the most diligent judge to sleep.
One could assume that 2:35 pm on March 13, 1968, was one such day when a three-judge bench assembled in then Chief Justice of India (CJI) Mohammad Hidyatullah’s court. The CJI, flanked by his ‘brothers’ (as judges refer to each other) A.N. Grover and Vaidyalingam J., was engrossed in the hearing, when Manmohan Das from West Bengal’s Mushirabad – described in the next day’s report by the Hindu as a “half-mad man” – leapt onto the judge’s pedestal armed with a knife.
Gauri Grover,
The Unyielding Judge: The Life and Legacy of Justice A.N. Grover,
OakBridge (2024)
The CJI ducked and the assailant managed to stab Justice Grover on the right side of his head, until he was overpowered and “neutralised”.
What followed was no less dramatic than the recent attack on a Bollywood star. Justices Hidyatullah and Vaidyalingam drove Justice Grover to the Willingdon Hospital (now rechristened as Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital), where a team of doctors attended to him.
Gauri Grover, in her book, The Unyielding Judge-the Life and Legacy of Justice A.N. Grover, chronicles this unforgettable episode of her beloved grandfather’s life. What is commendable is that her loyalty to Justice Grover does not come in the way of her faithful narration of one of bar’s wittiest anecdotes related to the only assassination attempt on a judge inside India’s Supreme Court.
It is said that one of the visitors who rushed to look up on the injured justice was the legendary Attorney General C.K. Daphtary. Pointing to the judge’s fractured skull, Dapthary allegedly remarked with a mischievous smile, “They are most dastardly, these assassins – they always attack you on your weakest part.”
Gauri’s labour of love for her grandfather traces his early days – when fate led him to be born in Myanmar, destiny led him back to his roots in Amritsar, the need for education took him to England and the desire to make his mark as a lawyer drew him to Lahore.
It was India’s vivisection by Radcliffe’s scalpel that brought the Grovers to Shimla, and then to Chandigarh, where the Lahore high court’s Indian successor – the high court of Punjab and Haryana finally found its permanent address.
Gauri deftly intertwines the historical and political progress of the times to contextualise her dada’s journey as a lawyer to a judge of the high court, ultimately leading to his elevation to India’s top court.
The unyielding judge
A substantial part of the book – as its title suggests – is devoted to the landmark events which led to Justice Grover earning the well-deserved title of ‘the unyielding judge’. This is the story of the Kesavanada Bharati case which, also known as the Fundamental Rights case.
Gauri explains the case in detail and deftly gives a synoptic view to the lay reader, as well as the trained lawyer, of the case that ended in the dramatic supersession of Justice Grover.
Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, at the pinnacle of her power, was jousting with the courts to push through her ambitious socialist and “pro-poor agenda”. It could be called the mother of all custody battles and the fight was over the custody of India’s basic law – the Indian Constitution.
Gandhi’s government asserted that Article 368 of the Constitution gave parliament an unfettered right to amend, alter or modify it at will. Many judges, such as Justice A.N. Ray, were sold onto this idea of parliamentary supremacy. However, there was a block of justices, led by CJI S.M. Sikri and Justices J.M. Shelat, K.S. Hegde and Grover, that was not convinced.
In Kesavananda’s case, the Supreme Court sat as a bench of 13 judges. By a slender majority, Gandhi’s view was rejected and the court came up with the theory of basic structure. This meant that while the parliament could amend any part of the Constitution, such an amendment could be struck down by a court if it violated the basic features of the Constitution such as democracy, rule of law and judicial independence. Gandhi’s most vocal supporter on the bench, Justice Ray, dissented and even refused to sign the judgment.
Justice Grover’s supersession
As news of this judgment, delivered a day before Chief Justice Sikri retired, was aired on radio, the government was ready with another announcement. It was not going to follow the custom of appointing the next senior most judge as the new CJI.
Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had once tried to break this custom as well, when he wanted to pass over Justice Meher Chand Mahajan, who, as premier of Kashmir, had given him untold grief. When Nehru bounced this idea off Justice Vivian Bose, he was told that all judges would resign if he tried to do so.
Nehru’s daughter was luckier. The three senior most judges after CJI Sikri had all signed the majority view in the Kesavananda Bharati case. Justices Shelat, Hegde and Grover were all superseded and Justice Ray was anointed the next CJI.
Gauri writes about the silence in the car when the judges returned from the court – Justice Grover, shattered by his punishment, and Justice Ray, silent about his windfall.
She also mentions another witty quip from Dapthary – this time the target was not her grandfather but the judge who benefitted from his passover. Dapthary said, “The boy who wrote the best essay won the first prize.”
Gauri shares an interesting fact which I think enters the public domain for the first time through her book. It seems that Justice Grover was just collateral damage and that the government actually wanted to target Justices Shelat and Hegde. She tells us about how the government later reached out and apologized to Justice Grover.
A challenge for historians
Gauri’s book also contains a chapter on her grandfather’s landmark cases and another on his fulfilling life post retirement.
Justice Grover lived in an era before social media and WhatsApp. Today’s law student and lay reader, so accustomed to live streaming that has brought Supreme Court proceedings into people’s drawing rooms, can hardly imagine a time when judges adhered to the “ivory tower” notion.
They were of the belief that a judge must avoid publicity and public interaction, as they only speak through their judgments and not podcasts justifying the same. This is why there is very little information available about them in the public domain. India’s judges deserve more attention than we have given them.
Lawyer and writer Gobind Das, historian George H. Gadbois and, to an extent, historian Gravile Austin, have made efforts. While it is challenging to recreate and bring to life these personalities, given that the information on them is sparse, this should not be a deterrent.
In this respect, Gauri’s book leaves the reader wanting more. While anyone can look up and read the judgments from law reports, a more curious reader would want more fly-on-the-wall-level information: What was the discussion between a judge and his family on the evening he came back with news of his supersession? What were the pressures on him during the intrigues played by the government, and so on. Some of these are well documented in narratives by Austin.
Gauri has, to my glee, quoted from my article on some of the palace intrigues that this case witnessed. She mentions how the pro-government Justice Mirza Hameedullah Beg checked into a hospital mid-hearing and CJI Sikri discreetly visited AIIMS himself to cross-check from the attending doctors whether his “sickness” was simply to derail the hearing and push it beyond his retirement date.
Although the pleadings of Kesavananda could have been better positioned as an appendix at the end of her book instead of being inserted within the narrative, Gauri has successfully brought to life her grandfather as a smart, proper old school lawyer-turned-judge.
Having a more anecdotal bent of mind, I was left wanting more ‘gems’ to flesh out Justice Grover’s personality. In a conversation with Justice Rajiv Endlaw, former judge of the Delhi high court, I asked him to tell me about Justice Grover.
He gave his characteristic smile, and said “I never knew him well but I can tell you about the only time I interacted with him.” He then went on to narrate a fascinating tale from his early days as a young lawyer at Khaitan & Co. Primarily involved in drafting opinions, he was once tasked with accompanying a client to a hearing at the Press Council of India. On a hot summer day, Endlaw arrived with his client, who was facing a complaint before the press council.
To his surprise, the session was like a proper court hearing, with the chairman dressed in a full suit. That was Justice A.N. Grover – the epitome of the old-school, English-educated Indian gentleman. Justice Grover then looked disapprovingly at Endlaw and remarked, “Lawyers are now appearing in half-sleeved shirts?”
Endlaw’s embarrassment was compounded by the fact that his humiliation was witnessed by his client, none other than the legendary Khushwant Singh, who was sitting next to him. It is indeed fascinating how lawyers remember judges.
Sanjoy Ghose is a senior advocate.
