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authorspeak
A.G. Noorani
Law
and Fodder
It
is somewhat disconcerting when the author you are about to begin interviewing
jumps the gun and announces, "I believe I write unreadable articles."
Literary flourish, as Abdul Gafoor Noorani will tell you, has never been
his strong point. What he has is a commitment to "constitutionalism
in the broadest sense of the term. To a life regulated by norms".
Kutchi by descent- "I'm as Kutchi as Nehru was Kashmiri"-Noorani
is a Bombayite by birth and inclination. Even at 70, he takes pride in
the old school tie and in calling himself "a St Mary's boy".
Actually, there is much that is old-fashioned about this public-spirited
lawyer, among whose clients were Sheikh Abdullah in 1962-64 and Ram Jethmalani
during the Emergency. Noorani, as a reading of Constitutional Questions
in India (Oxford) bears out, is a stickler for niceties, for rules
and conventions. In a political system rapidly forgetting its original
architecture, he stands out as a quaint if entirely welcome figure.
Noorani
began writing for the newspapers in the early 1960s. Generations of students
of Indian politics have turned to him as a repository on the systemic
similarities and precedents in India's cousin constitutions in the United
Kingdom and the Commonwealth. It is with some pride then that Noorani
tells you, "Arun Shourie began reading me as a college student and
years later became my editor at Indian Express." In a time
of fragmented electoral verdicts, Noorani's interventions-who else would
regularly quote Ivor Jennings' Cabinet Government? -have been useful
if sometimes seemingly against the grain. He is, for instance, not one
for blindly asking the single-largest party to form a government in case
of a hung legislature. Aside from seeking to see in Indian democracy "the
greatness of (enlightened) Athens, not the greatness of (warlike) Sparta",
Noorani has used his gift for assiduous homework to write The Trial
of Bhagat Singh, the definitive book on one of the most contested
legal cases in Indian history. Next he's working on a book about alternative
solutions to the Kashmir problem. The verbal pyrotechnics will continue.
-Ashok
Malik
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