The Rajasthan
High Court complex is located just a few blocks from our apartment in Jaipur. I
walked over one day not long after we had arrived in Jaipur, unannounced and
unaccompanied, to see what was going on. The complex consists of several large,
two or three-story concrete buildings. I spied some statuary in the front lawn
area, and a parking lot full of motorcycles. Initially when I came in, all was
quiet. I sat in a lobby outside of what was marked as courtroom number 21. I
sat beside an officer (army or police, I couldn't tell) who had a friendly
enough look and a rather ancient looking rifle He sat quietly beside me for
some time before putting his rifle on his shoulder and walking out the door.
As I sat in the
lobby and looked around, I could see pigeons inhabiting window ledges—on the
inside of the lobby. The lobby ceiling reached about two stories high. Black
plastic covered the windows. The floor of gray and white linoleum was covered
with dirt patches and pigeon droppings. Looking upward, I saw that three of the
four overhead ceiling fans were working, providing enough of a breeze to keep
me comfortable despite the intense sun outside. The one fluorescent lamp
hanging down from the ceiling was not turned on. The light fixture had a white
veneer covered with a pattern of rust stripes, perhaps from pigeon pee. On the
either side of the lobby were plastic molded seats like the one I was sitting
on. On the left side, however, the plastic seats were covered with dirt,
debris, and pigeon droppings, while those on the right hand side of the lobby
look newer, but they seem resigned to the same ultimate fate as their
counter-parts on the left.
Two of the
three outside doors were closed, and the open door was framed by a metal
detector that stood alone and unattended. Some people exited through the metal
detector, but those entering the building went around it. My earlier armed
companion had not paid any attention to it anyway.
Down the hall
on my left was a construction site marked by a mess of debris, which I suspect
is semi-permanent. As I watched, some workers trudged in with ten-foot long
bundles of plastic pipe balanced on one shoulder.
My attention
turned to the occasional pigeon that would levitate above its window ledge to
alight again at the same spot or move down onto the concrete door lintel. On
the left sidewall, a scoreboard type sign hung about 10 feet off the ground. It
showed numbers 1 through 32, which I assumed were courtroom numbers. To the side
of the printed numerals were lighted numbers. Some were obviously in a default
mode (888) and the rest had random numbers on them. Like the rest of the building,
it spoke of want of care.
As I sat
waiting idly, I realized that I’d come around the lunch hour, and the place was
rather empty. I decided to walk around the see if there was anyone going to
show up. As I wandered around by myself, I finally saw two individuals walk by.
Both were attired in black shoes, black pants, white shirts, and Harry Potter
robes. I assumed they were attorneys and followed them. I kept a respectful
distance and saw them turn through a set of double doors. I followed them in.
As I entered, I knew exactly where I was: in a courtroom. To the front sat a
judge, an older male, listening to the robed lawyers arguing in front of him.
The courtroom was full of these black-robed lawyers and had very few civilians
in it. The walls were lined with law books. The clerk sat in front of the judge
recording entries and dealing with files. Alas, the arguments were conducted in
Hindi, so I couldn't tell what the advocates were saying, but their body
language and tones of voice provided me with a sense of what was happening.
After watching this for a while, I wandered out to see what else there might
be.
I knew there
was supposed to be a Rajasthan Bar Association office in the vicinity, and I
went to look for it. After I wandered out of the building and crossed a
walkway, I found another even larger building with a sign that read “Rajasthan
Bar Association”. I wandered in and found no one presiding in the office. Downstairs,
I stuck my head into a musty old library, marked by a few attorneys pawing
through think, tawny law books. Upstairs, I found a series of rooms, most of
them occupied by the black-robed lawyers and their clients or witnesses. I
later learned that these were the “chambers" of the lawyers that practice
before the High Court.
I didn't feel
like I should intrude into any of these conversations, so I wandered down the
hallway and met a couple of guards sitting idly. As I passed by, they asked me
something in Hindi. I couldn't respond, but I had the sense to pull out my
passport and show it to them. My passport did not impress them. They were
indicating that I couldn't continue on, and I couldn't get through to them that
I wasn't there to do anything other than to observe court proceedings. We were
at an impasse, when a young lawyer (marked by his Harry Potter robe) stopped to
inquire about the problem. His inquiry, thankfully, was in English, although
the clipped Indian accent spoken at a brisk pace proved difficult for me to
understand at first. In any event, I explained to him that I was a lawyer from
America interested in observing court proceedings. He kindly spoke to the
guards on my behalf and took me down a hallway to see about getting permission.
We entered one office where he spoke to the clerk in Hindi, and the bureaucrat
in that office directed us across the hall to another office. What must have
been the same conversation ensued (in Hindi, so they could have been talking
cricket for all I knew), and this guy sent us to an office upstairs. There,
finally, they pulled out the requisite paperwork to allow me to visit. They
took about 20 minutes to take my passport and photocopy it and for me to fill
out a questionnaire, including the name of my father, which seems a common
question on Indian forms. An odd question, I thought, but it seemed like we
were making progress. Finally, I received a small piece of paper to allow me to
enter the courtrooms, like a hall pass in high school. My new friend (Ravi)
began showing me around. We visited a number of courtrooms and watched the
arguments. He explained to me that while all arguments to the Indian Supreme Court
are in English, the local courts conduct proceedings in Hindi. And so while I
couldn't understand what the participants were saying, the makeup of the
courtrooms, the attire of the participants, and the position of the judge—all
of that was very familiar. Ravi explained to me that most of the proceedings in
the High Court (appeals court) had to do with appeals and a large number of
writs. Writs are much more widely used in India than they are in the US.
In the final
courtroom, Ravi pointed out that the presiding judge was the senior judge on
the court. His white hair marked him. He had a younger woman sitting beside
him. I assumed that she was an associate judge of some sort, or perhaps a law
clerk. As I watched several arguments, I noted that the end of each argument,
the senior judge took the file that was on the bench and flung it forward
toward the clerk sitting at the table underneath him. He flung the file so that
it flopped open at the edge of the bar down toward the clerk. The clerk then
calmly got up and took it, put the papers in order, and set it in a neat pile.
This pattern repeated itself several times during the course of my observation.
It seemed to
me, judges around the world can be quite the same.
