PM Modi supported demand to make Tamil official language of Madras High Court: Judge

During the release of Tamil translation of an English book, Justice G. Jayachandran recalled Modi to have supported the demand during his tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2013

Release of Tamil translation of English book ‘I must say this’ penned by former Bombay High Court judge Mridula Bhatkar at the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in Chennai on Friday. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had supported the demand for making Tamil as the official language of the Madras High Court when he served as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2013, said Justice G. Jayachandran of the Madras High Court on Friday.

He said so, while felicitating Bombay High Court retired judge Mridula Bhatkar on the release of a Tamil translation of her English book titled ‘I must say this’ in which she had narrated the travails faced by her during her tenure in the judiciary.

The book translated jointly by former Madras High Court judge P.N. Prakash and visually challenged Senior Civil Judge T.D. Chakravarthi, and published by the Alliance Publishing House, was released at the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry auditorium (BCTNP) in Chennai.

In his address, Justice Jayachandran said, the translators suffered to find apt Tamil words for many legal jargons and that the absence of a comprehensive and authoritative English-Tamil legal lexicon was the reason for Tamil not having been made an official language of Madras High Court so far.

He recalled that the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly had passed an unanimous resolution in 2007 for declaring Tamil as the official language of the High Court. A letter written by the then Chief Justice, A.P. Shah, to the State government, was also discussed by the Assembly before passing the resolution.

In that letter, the then Chief Justice had made it clear that the judges of the High Court had no objection to declare Tamil as the official language of the court, if they could be provided with necessary infrastructural facilities, such as proper legal books in Tamil, good translators and Tamil stenographers.

After that, a Joint Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices was held in New Delhi on April 7, 2013. The then Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, could not attend the conference but her speech was read out by the then Law Minister, K.P. Munusamy, demanding the declaration of Tamil as the official language of the High Court.

“The then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who spoke next to Tamil Nadu’s Law Minister in the conference, supported the demand. He stated that the regional languages should be declared as the official languages of the High Courts situated in the respective States,” the judge said.

Subsequently, the Supreme Court wrote to the Madras High Court asking whether Tamil could be declared as its official language and the issue was discussed in the Full Court (a body comprising all judges of the High Court) in 2016. Again the issue that cropped up was the unavailablity of infrastructure.

“Therefore, since all these years, neither the people in power nor Tamil scholars or even us, the legal professionals, had taken any effort to come up with an authoritative Tamil lexicon and improve the infrastructure required to make Tamil the official language of the High Court,” he lamented.

“It is not enough to write Tamil Vaazhga (Long live Tamil) on government buildings, we must also work towards making it a reality,” the judge requested the audience. Justice N. Anand Venkatesh said, he turned emotional while reading most of the portions of Ms. Bhatkar’s book.

Bar Council of India vice-chairman S. Prabakaran and BCTNP chairman P.S. Amalraj also spoke.