Part 1 - Whole Truth with Ashok Desai

by Anonymous | October 23, 2010

This video is a part of Aju John's interview with Senior Advocate and former Attorney General of India, Ashok H. Desai, and is best viewed on full-screen. If your office or college has blocked access to YouTube, please scroll below to listen to the audio version of the interview, or read edited extracts from the transcript of the interview.

Click the play icon on the media bar below to listen to the audio version of the interview:

Edited extracts from the transcript of the interview:



Ashok H. Desai, a Senior Advocate and former Attorney General of India has said that the “meeting ground of actual practitioners and academics is still very much missing …  and has to be made up.” He said that his suggestion to the Delhi University was to call upon ten eminent Supreme Court lawyers to deliver a series of five lectures. A legal lion coming every Saturday to teach a particular narrow subject of law will bring a whole new meaning to the students, he said.

He was speaking with Rainmaker’s Aju John.

The Padma Bhushan recipient recounted his younger years in Mumbai where he studied in a “very modest school”. He had a middle class professional upbringing and his father wanted him to study in an almost austere school. His first language until matriculation was Gujarati and it was during this period that he developed his love for Sanskrit.

He went on to study at Fergusson College in Pune where he occupied the same room that his father had lived in, almost 40 years earlier. He said that the teachers at the college worked for a pittance, due to the sheer love for teaching. “Throughout my education, there was no great particular affection for accumulating wealth”, he said.

He then joined the Government Law College, Mumbai where many young lawyers took up the role of professors in the mornings, before court hours. He recollected being taught by Nani Palkhivala and Y.V. Chandrachud, who went on to become the Chief Justice of India. With obvious pride, he also spoke about having Fali Nariman, M.C. Bhandari – the Governor of Orissa, Anil Diwan, and Soli Sorabjee, for classmates.

The Government Law College had a well-equipped library and many extra circular activities to offer its students. There was a law college parliament, and the parliamentary duties were taken very seriously. Elections were conducted periodically and once the council even witnessed a vote of no confidence.