Letter from India Rahul BediAlmost six decades after independence, Indian lawyers have finally decided to change the colonial form of addressing judges as "your lordship" and "your honour" to the more republican Mr Judge or simply sir.
Last week the Bar Council of India adopted a resolution to do away with such "relics' of a colonial past in an effort to democratise and modernise the judiciary.
The vote followed last month's dismissal by the Supreme Court of a public interest litigation by the Progressive and Vigilant Lawyers' Forum, seeking to do away with addressing Indian judges in such honorific terms used only in Britain today.
The forum maintained that the practice "undermined the dignity of lawyers".
Forum member Sanjeev Bhatnagar said there was no statutory provision or rule that laid down the manner in which judges should be addressed but lawyers continued to use the colonial form because they did not wish to "displease" them. The judges, for their part, had not stopped lawyers from addressing them as "lordship".
Mr Bhatnagar said "lord" had no place in a democratic country after independence in 1947. In fact, a constitution bench in South Africa, that was also under colonial rule, had clarified in 1995 that judges should not be addressed as "my lord" or "your honour" but as "Mr Justice", the activist lawyer added.
It was, however, not clear if the "lordships" were amused or displeased by the forum's petition, but their gavel did not come thundering down.
"Sort out this matter with the Bar Council of India and state bar councils," a division bench headed by Supreme Chief Justice YK Sabharwal said.
The Bar Council of India has now given six weeks to all its numerous state units to get back with their views. And provided there is no opposition, its resolution will hold. Thereafter, it will, once again be up to the lordships if they accept that the awesome majesty of the law no longer demands the artificial prop of archaic usage and they will henceforth be Mr Judge or sir.
"The respect due to our judges must rest on rather more surer foundations than terms of address that have lost their relevance," the campaigning Indian Express newspaper declared. In many ways a term like "your lordship" signifies the stasis at the heart of a judicial system, it added, excoriating India's notoriously slow courts burdened with over 20 million civil and 10 million criminal cases.
But nomenclature is not the only thing India's lawyers want revised. They are also pursuing a campaign to change the colonial dress code in court that makes it mandatory for them to wear starched white bands along with black coats and flowing gowns.
"The time has come for us to break with our colonial past completely, " members of the Supreme Court Bar Association said.
"We will see to it that the Indian judicial system has its own dress that is in tune not only with local culture, but climatic conditions that make such cumbersome dressing uncomfortable in the searing hot summer, they added.
"A new dress code is bound to demystify the legal professional for ordinary people," Shashi Bahadur, a leading Delhi lawyer said.
Legal activists, however, want hundreds of antiquated laws dating back to British colonial rule, some of which even refer to Queen Victoria in their text, excised.
The Indian Penal Code, 1860, for example considers homosexuality and other heterosexual acts as "unnatural" and punishable with seven years' imprisonment.
It also stipulates that no rape victim can seek redress and women guilty of any crime, however serious, have to be released on bail merely because they are female.
Other anachronistic Acts include the Indian Post Office Act, 1885, which permits intelligence agencies to arbitrarily monitor all mail. The colonial administration used this to keep a check on all subversive activity against foreign rule.
Victorian laws still on the statues include the Indian Police Act, 1861, which makes it mandatory for a policeman to doff his hat before a member of royalty while anyone out for a stroll dressed in frayed clothing in times of casual dressing can be booked for "loitering with intent" under the Vagrancy Act of 1860.
Women generally come off worse under the Indian Penal Code being the only ones punishable for adultery with imprisonment.
"The shocking, legal assumption is that a woman is man's property" said Malavika Rajkotia-Luthra, a leading Delhi high court lawyer and women rights activist. Feminists also want feeble laws against sexual harassment known locally as "Eve teasing" and "outraging a woman's modesty" to be more specific and broad-based. "Indian laws do not simply deal with modern day sexual harassment," she said. It's about time we dragged them into the 20th century.