More than a decade ago, at the inception of my career as a lawyer, I had the opportunity to assist Ram Jethmalani in a few cases. No senior lawyer has left a deeper impression on me since. Beyond discipline, hard work and legal acumen, he possesses a magnetic personality. I recall how during the course of lengthy conferences and courtroom dramatics, his expressive face would tighten with anger almost as easily as it softened with a disarming smile. His sonorous voice can intimidate and comfort in equal measure.
After reading The Rebel: A Biography of Ram Jethmalani by Susan Adelman, I can now better appreciate the background behind the immense stature that surrounds him both within and beyond the legal profession. Dr Adelman, a paediatric surgeon, an artist and a long-time friend of the Jethmalani family, presents a compelling account of an extraordinary life. She skillfully weaves together the considerable achievements and experiences of Ram Jethmalani with the eventful political history of independent India. Adelman tells us, “The milestones of India’s politics and history have shaped Ram’s career, and many of the milestones of Ram’s career have left their imprint on the history of India.”
The dramatic tone is set in the very first chapter with Ram’s exile from India in 1976, as he faced imminent arrest during the Emergency. We are told that he was the first Indian to receive political asylum in America during this time. As one reads of Ram’s early achievements, there is a sense of fate carrying him to inexorable greatness. The author helps us understand the impact on Ram, particularly on his politics, of Partition and the accompanying displacement of his family to Bombay. As for Ram’s legal career in Bombay, it moves swiftly from struggle to success, with significant victories on behalf of refugees. We also learn of Ram’s two wives and several children and his having to shoulder considerable responsibility at an early age for the large extended family.
The author takes us through the significant milestones in Ram’s legal career spanning many decades, including a large clientele of ‘smugglers’. The accounts of the cases are always engaging and readable, and often fascinating.
Adelman adeptly traces Ram’s politics to his particular experiences, including his singular support for Israel. We learn of Ram’s dogged campaign against the Emergency and putting the government on the mat on Bofors. The author then leads us to what she describes as one of Ram’s “least recognized” achievements, his role in establishing the National Law Schools in India and his indelible imprint on legal education.
In defending the implementation of the Mandal Commission Report for affirmative action for backward classes before the Supreme Court, Ram fought one of his most significant constitutional law cases, which according to Adelman, placed him “in a distinguished list of lawyers who can be called social activists.”
In describing Ram’s fight against corruption, she begins with a seeming contradiction: “Ram has fought for years against the Gandhi dynasty and its trail of corruption, yet he defends corrupt politicians. He rails against dacoits in political power who impoverish India, but he represents stockbrokers who personify corruption. In his mind, these are not contradictions. He feels a responsibility to expose corruption to sunlight but also to make sure that every citizen, even if corrupt, has proper representation in court.”
Ram’s stint as law minister and minister of urban affairs in the government is depicted as uneasy and beset by stand-offs and flashpoints, Ram’s outspoken, principled positions creating tensions within and without. Then comes Ram’s involvement with Kashmir and his commitment to peace through the ‘Ram Jethmalani Kashmir Committee’ formed in 2002 as an unofficial, private effort at mediation and dialogue. Adelman describes Ram’s more recent push to repatriate Indian ‘black money’ stashed in private European banks as “a new battle in an old crusade”.
For all that The Rebel tells us about the professional and political life of Ram Jethmalani, the insight into his personal life feels limited, making the overall picture somewhat incomplete. Despite having had access to the family as a long-time friend or perhaps because of it, the account only hints at aspects of Ram’s personal life and relationships without scratching beyond the surface. At times, the objective lens of a biographer feels compromised by the protective eyes of a friend.
Interview: Susan Adelman
A paediatric surgeon and an artist, Dr Susan Hershberg Adelman recently turned author with The Rebel, a biography of veteran lawyer and politician Ram Jethmalani. She speaks to Supriya Sharma about her book, her over 40-year-old friendship with Jethmalani and keeping bias out of her debut work. Excerpts:
Tell us about your friendship with Mr Jethmalani? What made you decide to write his biography?
We got to know Ram through his daughter, Shobha, who was my colleague at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. My husband and I were planning a second trip to India in 1973 and she suggested we meet Ram here because my husband, Martin Adelman, was then the acting dean of the Wayne State University law school. So we called Ram when we got here and we immediately hit it off. During the Emergency, Ram came to Detroit in 1976 and my husband got him a teaching position at the law school for that six-month period that he was with us. After National Law School, Bangalore, was established, Ram invited my husband to teach there. We’ve had a long association.
I have some journalistic experience and was on the Michigan Daily. In medicine, I was the editor of Medical Society Journal for 17 years and a columnist for the American Medical News for 10 years. So once I stopped practising medicine in 2002, I went on to do other things. I decided to write a book and it just seemed that I should pick the most interesting and famous person I know.
What new aspects of his life have you explored in this book?
People don’t really think of Ram as a law teacher. They think of him more as a lawyer. My husband says Ram is the greatest law teacher he knows. I think I focused more on him as a law teacher than other things that are written about him. I am personally interested in the work he has done to further relations between Israel and India. I don’t think Ram’s mediation on Kashmir has ever been put in context. The previous biography [by Nalini Gera] was written while he was a minister and I wrote this one almost 15 years later. It is only when you look back that you see how some of the things that he initiated as minister came to fruition later.
Being a doctor, what sort of research did you do to write about a lawyer?
Extensive. I had a modest familiarity with the material but to be precise, I had to read a lot. The legal bit was harder to work on as I am not a lawyer. I have been making all these jokes about my husband’s role, but he really wanted me to do it for myself. He never read any cases for me, never really sat down and explained things, but if I had a substantive legal question just like any law student, he would explain the issue to me. Or if I saw Ram criticised in the press and would say ‘the press says he has done this and this and it is terrible’ he’d say ‘a criminal lawyer represents criminals and a lot of criminals are really bad people’. So he was helpful on perspective, but I had to study from the scratch.
How did you stay objective while writing a friend’s biography?
Oh, it’s very easy. You also have to understand the psychology of his family. His family knows him very well. We know the family very well so when he [Ram] does good things we are all very proud of him, but when he does things that are kind of like...eh... we all are kind of like ‘oh God he didn’t’. We are well aware of when there are things that are ‘oh I wish he hadn’t done that’. So all I had to do is to just put it in the way I look at it.
What next?
I am interested in Christians of the Middle East who are being killed and who speak a modern version of the 3,000-year-old Biblical language Aramaic. I will be in Israel in June to speak to some experts. I would like to write a book about it.