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T. S. Gopal

I HAD the privilege of knowing N. A. Palkhivala, organising many of his public lectures in Chennai in the 1970s. His stature and audience grew over the years. From the few hundreds in Gokhale Hall in the 1960s, to a few thousands at the Abbotsbury Hall and to five figures at the Congress Grounds.

Half an hour before the meeting, old people, wanting to beat the crowd and secure a seat, would be at the venue. This trickle would become a flow in 10 minutes and a torrent as the meeting time neared. In no time, every available nook and corner of the venue would be taken up and the crowd overflow outside by the time Palkhivala arrived in his immaculate white, sporting a warm smile. Palkhivala was as open in his admiration for people, as in criticising what affected the people.

Cho Ramaswamy presided over one of Palkhivala's meetings in the early-1970s. He set the mood with his introductory remarks, making people laugh first but think hard later. Palkhivala said with a broad smile that he why the organisers had got Cho to preside, and told an anecdote of a waitress in a US railway restaurant serving a customer two eggs, "in case one turned out bad".

The mutual admiration and respect between the two was obvious. But that did not stop Cho, who respected Palkhivala as a champion of freedom, from carrying on every page of his journal, Thuglak, Palkhivala's words as a box, with a picture, when Palkhivala decided to appear for Indira Gandhi in the Supreme Court when she was barred by the Allahabad High Court from holding the office of the Prime Minister. Like this writer, I am sure Cho also must have felt relieved when Palkhivala withdrew from the case after Emergency was clamped.

Palkhivala's admiration and respect for Rajaji was genuine and deep. This writer once told the jurist that the Chennai people would be most blessed if the two who were fighting for democracy on two different planes appeared and spoke together. This did happen when soon enough the government decided to have a go at the Judiciary. Rajaji, in his nineties, presided over a meeting addressed by Palkhivala on "Constitution and Common Man" in Chennai. An old, but iron-willed Rajaji preferred to be a listener and have an "ocular demonstration of the speaker's abilities" before making his presidential remarks.

Palkhivala had a soft-corner for Madras, as Chennai used to be called. He never tired of repeating at every meeting that it was a pleasure to "come back to Madras" which to him was "the intellectual capital of India". Accustomed to star comforts of hotels, he would be thrilled to stay at the Chettinad Palace, — as the guest of Rajah Sir Muthiah Chettiar — on the edge of the Adyar estuary with the Theosophical Society and the sea on the other side. The respect and admiration Palkhivala had for Mrs M. S. Subbulakshmi was well known.

If with words he evoked in people the strength to resist curbs on freedom, with melody and prayer, she brought peace to people's heart. That he bequeathed almost all he earned to the Sankara Nethralaya showed up that the Chennai link went beyond and reached the people too. The last time Palkhivala came to Chennai, in February 2001 — ailing and aided by a nurse — to receive his Honorary Doctorate. The hundreds who had gathered came to listen to him but could not do so, and many were moved to tears when they found him not able to utter a word. Born in 1920, he took his M.A. with Honours in English from Bombay University. As is to be expected, his academic career was a brilliant one. It is said that one answer paper he wrote was so good, that the examiner returned it with a note that the student knew more about the subject than he did. At the International Court of Justice, where arguments are usually prepared in advance, Palkhivala spoke extempore and won cases for India. Possibly the only one to do so.

It may seem strange to compare the Mahatma and Palkhivala. But when the freedom for the people that the Mahatma fought and got was in peril, it was men like Palkhivala who fought for the people that they may not lose it again. As he himself said of his countrymen: "Who gave unto themselves the Constitution but not the ability to keep it, who inherited a resplendent heritage but not the wisdom to cherish it, who suffer and endure in patience without perception of their potential... have hardly learnt to fight injustice nor assert their rights... "

(The author is a former Assistant Secretary to the Forum of Free Enterprise — Chennai Centre.)

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