Mathews J Nedumpara
23rd June 2026
98205 35428
If you say a neta is a chor, you will get applause, but if you say a judge is corrupt you invite contempt of court. Your fellow lawyers will distance themselves from you because they were told the day they joined the bar that you can afford to lose a client or your conscience, but not a judge. You are advised not to speak anything that would displease a judge, that advocacy is all about always keeping the judge in good humour. You are told that bootlicking and sycophancy are the greatest virtues a young lawyer should imbibe. Nay, you are taught that even in the law colleges, in moot courts. As a young lawyer, what you see everywhere is a jackass worshipped by jackasses.
2.If you have any doubts, go to any court. If you go to the Supreme Court you can see the Solicitor General uttering literally after every sentence, “I bow down” in response to every word that is falling from the mouth of the judges. You will find Singhvi, who has declared in his income more than a crore per day, uttering “the question I ask to myself”. He doesn’t have the courage to say, “the question that I ask is”. To be fair to Singhvi and Mehta, they are not alone to be blamed for sycophancy. That is the order. I find Rohatgi slightly different. He, to my mind, appears to be an honest man.
- Sycophancy and bootlicking are signs of lack of intellectual honesty and character. One should not say anything bad about dead men because they cannot defend themselves. Keeping that in mind, I am afraid to say that the self-serving lobby of the so-called legal luminaries like Nariman and Parasaran are singularly liable for the sorry state of affairs today. In the Judges 2 and 3 cases, Parasaran represented the Government. He did not even question the maintainability of the so-called PIL of SCAORA where the judges were the real petitioners. Rohatgi too failed to question the maintainability of the PIL of SCAORA in challenge to the NJAC. I literally begged him. But he didn’t. He could not, is more true.
4.Some people accuse me of not doing enough, not entering the streets. They fail to understand that the majority of lawyers, the press, the public, and even Parliamentarians believe that these aberrations are the right order of things. When Singhvi and Sibal mentioned the grossest and calculated attempts by the scholars who prepared the NCERT Standard Eight text book, no lawyer, none in the press, nor in the opposition raised their eyebrows.
5.How can Rahul Gandhi raise his voice against oligarchy when he himself is the locus classicus of oligarchy?
6.Don’t despair. Things are changing. The day when the public would have beaten you up for saying a judge is corrupt, for telling him “you are a rascal, judge ko bhi manta nahi” is over. The day is not far away when the common people will enter the streets and shout “judge chor hai”!
7.My words are a wake-up call. Clamouring for my blood would be no solution. Introspect. Conduct yourself worthy of a judge. That is an office people respect, nay worship. Restore livestreaming. Don’t suspend public viewing of the court proceedings as is done in the Bombay High Court.