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OFFTRACK: HISSAR, HARYANA
Longest Brief
A lawyer who has been practising for 79 years is
still at work
By Ramesh Vinayak
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RAMROD STRAIGHT: Advocate Jain in court. He is
currently handling around 50 civil cases.
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When Mahabir Parshad
Jain went to court to fight his first case, it was as a subject of the Queen
of England. The sun was beginning to set on the Raj and India was a country
astir with the feeling of revolution. Chauri Chaura had just happened and
Gandhiji had suspended the civil disobedience movement. It was July 1922.
Jain still goes to court today. At an age when
most people begin to petition the maker for release, Jain continues to
petition judges. A shock of white hair crowning a spare frame, he turns
102 on June 1. His eyesight and hearing have begun to fail him of late,
but his legal opponents testify ungrudgingly that his mental faculties
are still remarkably clear. He is handling 50-odd civil cases even now.
And apart from a walking stick he depends on nothing else. According to
family members, he does everything by himself, from dictating legal briefs
to updating case diaries and informing clients on the progress of their
cases. Without ever losing his cool too. Perhaps that is why he's still
around. Jain himself attributes his longevity to his equanimity. "My
endeavour has been to keep myself busy and yet free of worries and tension,"
he says.
On days when the Methuselah of Hissar walks
into court, there are unusual sights. Judges-many of them once his apprentices-stand
up in his honour. Sometimes they even touch his feet as a mark of respect.
When age began to tell on his hearing the judges even offered to hear
his arguments in their chambers instead of the court room. "Baujee
is an institution in himself, among the rarest of rare personalities,"
says Hissar District and Session Judge Nawab Singh.
The reason is not merely age. Antiquity has
only added to the respect he commands for his integrity and court manners.
Through the 50,000 cases he had pleaded, Jain has held steadfast to these
near-extinct qualities. On April 1, 1941, he had even received a letter
of appreciation for these.
It was a hard climb for the boy from Fatehabad,
especially because he was only 12 when he lost his father. To finance
his legal studies in Lahore he worked as a private tutor. He pulled through,
becoming the first law graduate from his town. "He is a self-made
man who rose by dint of his own hard work," says younger brother
Shanti Parshad, himself no mean achiever as a lawyer at 93. Many in Jain's
family followed his example: there are 40 advocates in the 150-member
traditional family spanning four generations.
Jain's long stint at the Bar has seen him rubbing
shoulders with several legal luminaries and top political personalities.
But, politics, even at the Bar level, is something he himself has scrupulously
steered clear of all along. Owing to his apolitical and neutral image,
Jain was one citizen whom senior politicians like Devi Lal and Bansi Lal
always met for ground-level feedback during their visits to Hissar.
As a purveyor of a bygone era, Jain has seen
it all changing-from the laws of the land to the old values. Nothing despairs
him more than the degradation in social and moral values. "Compassion
has given way to commercialisation in all spheres of life," he says.
" The politicians of yore had principles and were fired by the zeal
for public service." He remembers an instance in the early 1960s
when his client Devi Lal, who later emerged as the most prominent leader
of Haryana, refused to lie in court even at the risk of losing a case
challenging his election to the state Assembly. When Lal died, his son,
Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, did not neglect to nominate Jain on
the Devi Lal Memorial Committee. "Baujee is a repository of vanishing
values and commitment to the public good," says Chautala who released
a book on him in November last year.
In October 1999 the Guiness Book of Records
informed Jain that he would become the longest practising lawyer if he
continued for another 18 months. Now he may well find a place in that
list of achievements. In a country where cases drag on for decades, and
when integrity seems to have become a virtue possessed only by mythological
characters, there is a need for more lawyers like Baujee.
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