| Published on 15-03-2007 In National |
| Viewed 1813 times |
| Can Tamil morph into a 'legal' language? |
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Written by
T. S. V. Hari |
The Union Law Minister HR Bharadwaj has overruled the sentiments expressed by the Chief Justice of India on the issue of Tamil being made the language of the Madras High Court and has sent a communiqué to Chief Minister M Karunanidhi saying that our President [APJ Abdul Kalam] will soon give his assent to the state's mother tongue becoming the voice of law here as the Centre will send the documents afresh to Rashtrapathi Bhavan.
I am sure there will be many voices agreeing and disagreeing to this move because of the earlier cautioning of AP Shah, the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court against the "hasty decision" to bring in Tamil as the court language without addressing the attendant logistical problems.
Creating the appropriate infrastructure for translating all legal terms from English to Tamil will take a long time. Therefore, the attempt to make Tamil the "official language" of the courts, while being welcome, should be examined with great care, Shah was quoted as saying while reacting to the resolution of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly demanding the place of pride for Tamil in the High Court.
An attempt to find out the truth about the logistics ought to be in order.
I am in the process of translating "Falling Over Backwards" by Arun Shourie into Tamil. Since the book is full of quotations from the Constitution and judgements of the Supreme Court and various High Courts, I tried to get a Tamil version of the Constitution's bare act. The available tomes, I found, are totally inadequate in their legal expressions.
Enquiries with various publishers revealed that, for the present, no book explaining the legal terms (translated from English, Latin and a little bit of Greek – in that order) was in the pipeline till last month. If someone has begun doing that, the laborious task may take several years.
Several years?
Let me give a small example to demonstrate how difficult it will be.
The Tamil term for the Constitution is Indiya Arasial Sattam. Since the Tamil Nadu government says that all Tamil versions of legal documents will be accompanied by a "proper" English translation, I.A.S. when rendered into simple English reads: Indian Political Law.
In other words, there is no Tamil equivalent for the word "Constitution" in its exact sense. So starting with that, everything else will have to be coined afresh. The readers who wish to indulge in mind games in this regard are welcome to imagine the rest because the very thought of the prospect gives me the heebie-jeebies.
So, we now know that the evolution of Tamil as a court language is going to be--to put it mildly, a little difficult.
Let us look at the motives of the DMK on the basis of its past political stances.
The DMK had started its existence eons ago on the plank of secession – a term that kept cropping up every now and then in its pronouncements – especially during its politically tricky periods.
Twice, governments headed by M Karunanidhi have been dismissed on the basis of the party's "anti-national activities.
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The demand for giving Tamil a status on par with English has been buttressed with averments pointing to the "official" status of Hindi in at least five north Indian cow-belt states.
I have not tried to explore the compatibility of Hindi vis-à-vis English legal terms though I have a working knowledge in our national language. But a "tie" (worn as part of a formal dress code) translates into Hindi as " a loin cloth worn around the neck."
Thus, Karunanidhi's attempts to get a legal status for Tamil can result in such absurdities.
Let us return to the original argument about aspirations of regional political satraps to promote local languages. In Bengali, (another language which has attained legal status) – the Constitution is called Shongbidhan – which is a corrupted version of the Hindi term Samvidhan.
People with adequate knowledge in these languages told me that these two words translate into English as " Equal Legislation!"
Worse, despite Bengali having become a so-called legal language, nobody uses it at the High Court level because the appropriate legal terms are yet to be coined. Of course, lawyers who do not have an adequate command over English use Bengali in lower courts. And that happens in Tamil Nadu as well.
But when the matters reach the High Court and the Supreme Court the whole thing has to be translated into English anyway.
And then there are extreme cases like that of Jayalalithaa and her confidante Shashikala, whose prosecution papers have been translated from English to Tamil and thereafter to Kannada which will again be translated into English when the litigation reaches the Supreme Court. God only knows how many howlers are going to be condoned in the bargain.
It might sound as though I am canvassing against Tamil or any other Indian language becoming a court language. I am not. I have merely pointed out the pitfalls in these matters.
More importantly, is there really no currency in the efforts to develop Indian languages?
Readers can come to their own conclusions after reading the following lines – reproduced from the British Parliament's records dated February 2, 1835 attributed to Lord Macaulay – the very person who transformed us into a nation of clerks by managing to impose English at all levels.
"I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar [or] who is a thief. I have seen in this country such high moral values [and people] of such calibre that I do not think we will ever conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage. And therefore, I propose [that] we replace her old and ancient education system [and] her culture, for, if the Indians think all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them [to be], a truly dominated nation."
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