Remembering M. Hidayatullah On His 120th Birth Anniversary

Mohammed Hidayatullah is one of those rare persons- distinguished and versatile and who adorned everything that he touched. Youngest Advocate General, High Court Judge and Chief Justice, Judge of the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of India, Vice President and Acting President twice, he was all this and more. On his 120th birth anniversary it is but appropriate that we remember him and draw inspiration from his life and work which were outstanding and respectfully light his memory.Born at Nagpur on 17 December, 1905 in a well-known family hailing from Benaras, Hadi, as he was affectionately called, was the youngest son of Khan Bahadur Hafiz Mohammed Wilayatullah, I.S.O., Kaiser-i-Hind. He was educated at Anjuman High School, Nagpur whose then Headmaster, J. Sen, along with the student Hidayatullah, was sworn in as a judge of the Nagpur High Court on the same day in 1946. (Justice J. Sen is the father of Justice A.P. Sen who was judge of the Supreme Court). He passed the Matriculation examination at Raipur in 1922 standing first in Chattisgarh. Collegiate education was at Morris College, Nagpur, his subjects being English Literature, History, Logic and Persian and then at Trinity College, Cambridge for English Tripos. While at Cambridge he participated in debates and also public speaking. Homi Bhabha, the great scientist was one of his contemporaries there. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn in January 1930. He eventually became a Bencher of that Inn. His teachers in law included such famous names as Professor Holland for Real and Personal Property, Dr. A.D. McNair for Contracts, Professor Winfield for Torts and Professor Goodhart for Jurisprudence. Hidayatullah says that no teacher in any college or university that he knew came up to McNair in the easy manner in which he imparted knowledge. His fifty minutes seemed only fifteen and even those students reading subjects other than law attended his lectures.On return to India Hidayatullah joined the Bar at Nagpur and steadily gathered a lucrative practice. He began mainly on the criminal side and then moved on to exclusive practice on the civil side. In 1936, the Judicial Commissioner's Court at Nagpur became a full-fledged High Court. His years at the Bar brought him in close contact with a galaxy of legal talent.On joining the Bar Hidayatullah began a thorough study of law which 'he knew only in patches.' To begin with he chose Criminal Law and read through all the leading statutes- The Indian Penal Code, The Criminal Procedure Code and the Evidence Act. Then he read and summarized every Privy Council case on these three subjects and went through every Full Bench case of the Judicial Commissioner's Court in Nagpur. Work though slow in coming, increased steadily. His first year's professional income was only Rs. 50 which compared well with Lord Haldane's income of 31.10 pounds in his first year of practice. But over the years Hidayatullah was left far behind.The Nagpur Bar then had some very famous lawyers. The most notable was Dr. Hari Singh Gour. He was the author of many classic treatises on different subjects still in use, having run into many editions. Hidayatullah says that he was amongst the six best lawyers in the country and greatly sought. It is said that he hardly read a brief fully but he had the uncanny knack of fastening on a salient point and finding an unanswerable argument with which he floored the opponent. In a case in which Hidayatullah was associated with Dr. Gour, he (Dr. Gour) appeared to have read not more than a dozen papers which were heavily marked. The judge noticed that Sir Hari Singh was not fully prepared and asked Hidayatullah to begin. Sir Hari Singh willingly gave the papers to Hidayatullah and left the court whispering, “Carry on till the recess.” Hidayatullah did so and managed to avoid serious argument. Dr. Gour promptly returned for the post-lunch session. With the permission of the Court he took over and without knowing what had been done earlier, he launched into an argument for only 15 minutes and the case was won on that argument. Sir Hari Singh had a special chair in the Bar room which none dared to use and he had permitted Hidayatullah to use it in his absence. This was a mark of singular recognition for Hidayatullah from a top lawyer. There was a case which Hidayatullah won by sheer chance. It was the case of his uncle and it was before Chief Justice Gilbert Stone and Justice Vivian Bose. Opposing him was M.R. Bobde (the grand uncle of S.A.Bobde, former CJI) a most successful lawyer who was gifted with the faculty of discovering a line of attack for which the adversary was not prepared. Hidayatullah and his team had tried to anticipate all that might be said by Bobde. Yet he came out with a point and a Calcutta ruling to support it. Hidayatullah was taken aback. There were only 20 minutes left for the lunch break. The Chief Justice stopped Bobde and called upon Hidayatullah to reply to that point adding...

Remembering M. Hidayatullah On His 120th Birth Anniversary

V. Sudhish Pai, Senior Advocate

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