Advocates launched protests, being staged outside the Madras High Court campus, which began on 1 November and will end on 1 December.
The Madras High Court
Advocates in Tamil Nadu have launched month-long protest meetings for declaring Tamil the official language of the Madras High Court.
The long-pending demand is yet to be met, 36 years after it was first raised.
The protests, being staged outside the Madras High Court campus, began on 1 November and will end on 1 December.
Buoyed by the response to the first day’s meeting, the advocates have decided to seek the support of all political parties.
Those who have extended support so far include freedom fighter and senior politician R Nallakannu, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) president Thol Thirumavalavan, Manithaneya Makkal Katchi president MH Jawahirulla, and Socialist Democratic Party of India president Nellai Mubarak.
The state has seen several on-and-off protests involving even the legal fraternity ever since the MG Ramachandran government first raised the demand in 1987.
The demand went silent for a while after the death of Ramachandran and the political turmoil that followed, until the AIADMK government under J Jayalalithaa renewed the call for making Tamil the high court’s official language.
The request became loud after the DMK assumed power in 1996. The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly passed resolutions twice — in 1997 and 1999 — favouring the demand.
Both times, the state government forwarded the resolutions to the Union government, which promptly sent them to the Chief Justice of India (CJI), seeking advice.
The Supreme Court discussed the matter in a full court only to reject the resolutions on 7 May, 1997, and 15 October, 1999, respectively.
The Tamil Nadu Assembly once again adopted a resolution in 2006, and the state government forwarded it to the Union government, seeking permission to conduct the proceedings of the Madras High Court in Tamil.
The Union government forwarded it to the Chief Justice of India for advice.
In a letter dated 16 October 2012, the Chief Justice intimated that the full court, after due deliberations, decided against accepting the proposal.
Why the court’s rejection? Subclause 2 of Article 348 of the Constitution empowers the state government to pass an ordinance in the legislative Assembly and authorise the state Governor to promulgate it.
However, the matter was always forwarded to the President and Supreme Court for their decision.
In July 2013, Madurai-based Advocate G Bhagvath Singh put forth his arguments in Tamil. He represented a woman, Aysha, who sought the court’s intervention to rescue her husband, Bakeer Maideen, stranded in Mecca.
Refusing to entertain Singh’s arguments in Tamil, Justice S Manikumar dismissed the petition, pointing out that the only accepted language of communication in higher courts as per Article 348 of the Indian Constitution is English.
A group of advocates, including Singh, went on an indefinite hunger strike on the Madras High Court campus and its Bench in Madurai. Several Bar Associations across the state boycotted the court proceedings.
As things deteriorated, the Madras High Court, in consultation with the government, announced that the advocates could argue in Tamil before judges who knew the language.
However, no efforts were made to adopt Tamil as the official language.
From then onwards, all political parties have been promising in their election manifestos that Tamil would be made the official language in the high court.
Article 348 of the Constitution mandates that “all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High Court shall be in English language until Parliament by law otherwise provides”.
However, Sub-section 2 of the Article provides that the Governor of the state may, with the previous consent of the President, authorise the use of the Hindi language or any other language used for any official purpose of the state, in the proceedings of the high court having its principal seat in that state provided that decrees, judgements or orders passed by such high courts shall be in English.
The Official Language Act, 1963, reiterates this and provides under Section 7 that “the use of Hindi or the official language of a state in addition to the English language may be authorised, with the consent of the President of India, by the Governor of the state for the purpose of judgements, decrees, etc, made by the high court for that state”.
However, no law has been made in this regard by Parliament so far. Therefore, English continues to be the language for all the proceedings of the Supreme Court.
The use of Hindi has been allowed in the proceedings and in the judgements, decrees, or orders in the high courts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.
Under Article 348(2) of the Constitution and Section 7 of the Official Languages Act, the high courts of Patna, Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan have been permitted to hold proceedings in Hindi.
The Union government has received proposals from the governments of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Karnataka to permit the use of Tamil, Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali and Kannada in the proceedings of their respective high courts.
The Union Cabinet Committee approached the CJI for advice in 1965 on these proposals. The Committee had provided that comments of the CJI are necessary before considering any proposal for the use of Hindi or any regional language in the proceedings of a high court.
However, the CJI rejected the plea. Similar rejections were made on 16 October, 2012, and, the latest, on 18 January, 2016.
Currently, other states save Tamil Nadu are not raising the demand. In 2014, the Karnataka government passed a resolution in the Assembly, and the state’s Bar Council wrote to the Union Ministry of Law to fulfil the demand.
In March 2023, the then Union Law Minister, Kiren Rijiju, in a written reply to the question raised by Tamil Nadu MP D Ravikumar in the Lok Sabha, said that the Supreme Court has decided not to accept the proposal of making the respective regional languages as the official language of the concerned high courts.
Speaking to South First, Advocate Bhagvath Singh said it is unnecessary to consider the full court resolution since it does not have judicial power and the full court resolutions are administratively based.
Singh said, “Whenever such a proposal is sent from the states, the Union government points its finger at the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court points its finger at the Cabinet decision made in 1965. They always play a hide and seek game.”
He also said that the Parliament Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, in its eighty-fourth report, stated that it feels that the CJI had rejected the proposal without considering the benefits for those people who are poor, live in rural areas, and who cannot speak any language other than their mother tongue.
“The Tamil language also contains legal terms/terminologies, and even the Constitution of India has been translated into Tamil,” the advocate pointed out.
A section of advocates says that judges from across the country become justices at the Madras High Court and that it would be unfair for lawyers to insist that their pleas be heard only in Tamil.
Countering this, advocate L Ramesh said that whenever this demand is raised, the only contention of the judges and a few advocates is that judges hailing from other states and posted in the Madras High Court will face a language barrier.
“If it is true, what will be the position of other state judges who are transferred to Patna, Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan High Courts? We are not demanding that only Tamil should be the language of the court. Let there be English, too, but not English alone”, he said.
He argued that the sanctioned strength of the judges at Madras High Court is 75 and only three or four judges from other states are posted here.
On 12 May, 2022, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the then CJI NV Ramana asking they declare Tamil as the official language of the Madras High Court.
Pointing out that making Tamil the official language, in addition to English, would make justice accessible to a larger section of society, Stalin questioned why the local languages in all states were not accepted as official languages in their high courts.
“Moreover, as a language that is both classical and vibrantly modern, it would be perfectly suitable to use Tamil in the high court. Further, making law and justice comprehensible to the common man in the court proceedings is essential in the justice delivery system,” Stalin wrote.
Responding to his demand in March 2023, the present CJI, Justice DY Chandrachud, while speaking at a function, said that a constitutional amendment to Article 348 was necessary to fulfil the demand.
However, retired high court justice Hari Paranthaman opined that an amendment was not needed.
“Is there any amendment done for making Hindi the official language in those five high courts? The truth is there is no bar in the Constitution to make Tamil an official language of the court,” he told South First.
He added, “It is for the government to decide. Even the Parliament Committee has recommended making Tamil an official language. But for reasons known to the politicians in power, the issue has been dragging for this long.”
In March 2016, the Union Ministry of Law and Justice told Parliament that, as per the allocation of Business Rules, 1961, obtaining prior approval of the President for authorising the limited use of language other than English in the proceedings of the high court is a subject matter of the Department of Official Languages, Ministry of Home Affairs.
“Although the Constitution does not require consultation with CJI, this has been the tradition in the light of a Cabinet decision taken 50 years ago. The Law Minister requested the Home Minister on 11 June, 2015, to consider a review of the decision of the Cabinet Committee, which approved recommendations made by the conference of the Chief Justices of the High Court that it might also be desirable to adopt a convention whereby the CJI could be consulted before the President,” the ministry said.
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