Courts, couplets and the decoupling of law and complex, tangential language

This Independence Day, advocate Saif Mahmood asks an important question: Is the freedom to write a judgment carte blanche for judges to showcase their literary or linguistic prowess?

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IS the freedom to write a judgment carte blanche for judges to showcase their literary or linguistic prowess?

On a warm summer morning in 2018, I was holding the fort for senior counsel Salman Khurshid before a rather hostile Bench of the Delhi High Court. As soon as the Bench took a break, the counsel arrived and inquired about the proceedings.

When I told him that the judges seemed quite antagonistic, he asked if I could capture the situation in Urdu poetry. I recited Shuja Khawar's couplet:

Ho gaya is baat par sab munsifon main ittefaaq

Main laga patthar ko pehle, phir mujhe patthar laga

On this issue, all judges concurred

I struck the stone first, and then it struck me in return

He smiled and, when the Bench resumed, he told the judges that he wanted them to hear the couplet, particularly because it pertained to munsifs.

Justice Siddharth Mridul, who was presiding, remarked, "An Urdu couplet about a munsif can never be charitable to the munsif," and requested that I recite it.