Senior lawyer, scholar, and writer Abdul Ghafoor Noorani, who recently passed away, wanted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to learn one thing from Israel — “how a democracy debates the functioning of the army,” said Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire at a tribute meeting for Noorani.
Varadarajan said that Noorani had written an article on The Wire illustrating this point though he was a critic of Israel’s policies against Palestine.
“An observer and a critic for six to seven decades, he (Noorani) had an ability to speak honestly and dispassionately about public affairs. Although critical of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people, he would equally appreciate a good judgment of the Israeli Supreme Court on an important point of law,” Varadarajan said at the India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi.
Noorani’s criticism was always “well phrased and deeply researched, well argued, amply referenced, particularly if he was critiquing a judgement of the Indian Supreme Court,” he said.
“Decade after decade, if you want to know the arguments that got under the government’s skin, you have to read A.G. Noorani,” Varadarajan said.
