Movers of the Wheel of Justice: History of Bar Associations in colonial Assam

Movers of the Wheel of Justice: History of Bar Associations in colonial Assam
Binayak Dutta, Department of History, NEHU

Introduction

In Assam, the institution of legal practitioners or ‘ukils’ was not a colonial innovation as it is a vernacularization of the Persian term ‘Vakils’.[i] The presence of lawyers can be traced to the Ahom rule.  Gunabhiram Baruah in Assam Bandhu, refers to the practice of ‘Ukils’ in the reign of Gaurinath Simha who ruled the Ahom from 1780 to 1795.[ii] In the colonial period, the emergence of professional legal practitioners can be traced to the Assam Code that was enforced in Assam since 1837, with the permission of the Supreme Company Government in India. This Code was a series of rules of practice mainly of judicial procedure which were evolved as a result of the endeavours of the local authorities.[iii]  The Assam Code also provided for the appointment of vakils in Assam apart from establishing a procedure of the appointment and remuneration of the subordinate staff to support colonial judiciary.[iv] Since then the legal practitioners in Assam had never looked back.  With the establishment of colonial courts in Assam, the English and Bengali lawyers who had established practice in the Sadar Dewani Adalat began to make their entry into Assam. There was a close connection between Assam and Bengal. These lawyers were the earliest “circuits of communication between the rulers and the ruled”[v] who continuously defined the legal subject in colonial Assam. The colonial Company government began to encourage Bengali Lawyers and Mukhtiers to migrate to Assam.[vi] The colonial courts began to function regularly with the aid of such legal practitioners.

The Emerging Steps in the 19^th Century

Anundoram Phukan, in his memorial submitted to Moffat Mills observed ruefully that in Assam, “… We have therefore to suggest that instead of permitting an ignorant and degraded class of men to act as pleaders, a respectable, intelligent and better qualified body be organized to fill the responsible duties of advocates and ‘vakil’s, after duly testing their qualifications and legal fitness, as far as the general circumstances of the province would admit…”[vii] As the pressures began to mount, the lawyers who were in practice then, decided to form an association of legal practitioners. This led to the formation of the Lawyers Association in 1850 with a few lawyers as members[viii] - one of the earliest social organizations, in the modern sense in the Brahmaputra valley formed as a response to the stimulus of the colonial rule. The Lawyers’ Association based at Guwahati was one of the oldest lawyers’ associations of India and the oldest in Assam.

Apart from the Lawyers Association based at Guwahati, the lawyers had also organized themselves at the district and old sub-divisional towns. These local Bar Associations, as collective bodies had emerged as platforms for the organization of local lawyers. Each of them carry their unique heritage which could collectively narrate the history of advocacy and legal profession in Assam. The Goalpara Bar Association traced its foundation to the early years of the colonial founded in 1828 Another early colonial Bar associations of Assam was established at Lakhimpur in 1838 as Lakhimpur came under the control of the English East India company along with Sibsagar as the Company annexed upper Assam from the native Ahom ruler. The Nagaon Bar is one of the other oldest Bar Associations of Assam. Legal practice started in Nagaon with the shifting of the District Headquarters to Nagaon in 1839. Initially the legal practitioners who practiced at Nagaon were not local to the area. In 1873, the pleaders and Mukhtears of Nagaon contributed rupees one Hundred and twelve annas for the foundation of the Bar Library. The Barpeta Bar Association is one of the oldest among the District Bar Associations of Assam. It was founded in 1841 and was set up near the court campus. The foundation of the Sibsagar Bar can be traced to 1880. The foundation of the Tezpur Bar was laid in 1859 with Late Nabin Chandra Bose and Late Ram Chandra Sen starting their practice at the Tezpur Court. The Silchar Bar came into existence in 1874 when the districts of Cachar was transferred to the Chief Commissionership of Assam while the Dhubri Bar Association was established in 1880.

Bar Association of Shillong

The Shillong Bar Association as Shillong was the capital of the colonial State of Assam since 1874. Shillong, the colonial headquarter since 1864 had transformed itself as the colonial capital with the constitution of the Chief Commissionership of Assam in 1874 and by the close of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a strong middle class among both the indigenous and settled non-tribal population. They were the beneficiaries of colonial education promoted by both the missionaries and the colonial state.[ix] But it was the normal practice to hire and bring attorneys from Sylhet[x] to argue the cases in either the Syiem’s court at Sohra or at the court of the Political Agent, Khasi Hills as and when disputes reached the court for adjudication. By 1854, with the constitution of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills District, the office and court of the principal assistant commissioner or Deputy Commissioner was constituted and cases were tried according to the Code of Assam Rules. With the constitution of the Chief Commissionership of Assam in 1874, Shillong became the capital. It was made into a municipality in 1878. However, considering that the petitions and legal instruments were in English and Bengali till 1864 and after 1865 in English and Khasi, Bengali attorneys, especially from the adjoining district of Sylhet almost enjoyed a monopoly in legal practice in the courts of Khasi-Jaintia hills since they were versed in Bengali and English, the official languages of business at the courts of the Khasi-Jaintia Hills district. By December 1903, the Chief Commissioner of Assam, through a letter addressed to the Deputy Commissioner of the district, granted permission for the legal practice to pleaders and mukhtears, on case to case basis, to appear in ‘civil and criminal cases in British courts of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills district,’[xi] subject to conditions such as obtaining a permission to practice in these courts from the Chief Commissioner, the case in hand was not one of political nature  and would not have the effect of ‘diverting litigation from the courts of Syiems, Sirdars and Dollois’ and which would be, in the opinion of the British Courts such matters which would not be tried by a Syiem, Sirdar or Dolloi.[xii] These applications to the Chief Commissioner had to be routed through the Deputy Commissioner. This permission also provided that, ‘In the case of practioners who are qualified under the High Court rules no fee will be charged for authorization. In case of other practitioners, a fee of Rs.20 will be charged.’[xiii]  The constitution of the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam in 1905 gave a boost to the fate of legal practitioners as by 1908, the Government of the province decided to delegate powers, which had hitherto been the prerogative of the Chief Commissioner, to the Commissioner of the Surma Valley and Hill Districts to grant permission to pleaders and mukhtears to appear in the British courts of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills.[xiv] After 1911, the power of granting permission for pleaders in the British courts reverted to the Chief Commissioner with the annulment of the partition of Bengal and the dissolution of the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, Assam again reverting to a Chief Commissionership. Circulars was issued wherein it was conveyed that, “ In criminal cases in which persons who are not natives to the district are concerned they should be allowed, if they wish to do so, to employ pleaders unless there are strong reasons which should be placed on record, why permission should be refused.”[xv] In view of a labyrinth of courts and judicial forums and detailed circulars and instructions for determining the terms of legal practice in these hills, legal practice received a boost. However, the efforts to form an organized association of legal professionals or bar associations as in the district town of Assam, in the Khasi- Jaintia hills district was in its infancy. One can probably conjecture, in view of proper records and the fragmentary maintenance of the same that for most of the members primarily hailing from the plains of Sylhet and their primary affiliations being tied to their Bar Association of Sylhet, established in 1874, there was a major hindrance in their initiative to form a separate legal professional body at Shillong. It was only by 1913, that the Bar Association was inaugurated in Shillong with only five members though the names of the founder members are however not available with the Association. Some of the earliest lawyers who started their practice in Shillong were Rai Saheb Hormu Roy Diengdoh, Kalisaday Bhattacharjee, Sarat Bhattacharjee, Nemai Biswas, Gurucharan Dhar and Mr. Harris Khirod Dutta, Mr. Wassey, Khan Saheb Amjad Ali and Lala B.K.Dey who completed his M.A. in 1912, graduated in Law in 1913 and joined the Shillong Bar in 1920. It is important to take note that the Khasi- Jaintia Hills district offered to the legal practitioners a variety of experiences in terms of legal practice as the district was divided into tribal areas and non-Tribal areas with their distinct laws, legal structures, and institutions. This diversity in legal codes and institutions created opportunities for legal practitioners to develop diverse expertise both in terms of knowledge systems and patterns of practice. By 1930s, the legal practice framework came to be streamlined with initiative being taken to draft a constitution for the Association by Shri P.S. Guha and Shri Ramesh Dasgupta by the early 1940. Due to the deliberate policy of the British government to keep Shillong away from participation of politics, it was difficult for the lawyers to join any political party or movement. Yet some lawyers such as Lala B. K Dey and Charu Dutta joined the Congress to become the District President and Executive Committee Member of district Congress Committee respectively. Many members of the Shillong Bar Association were closely associated with the anti-colonial Congress politics and were imprisoned during the Civil Disobedience and Quit India movements. 

Conclusion

The lawyers of Assam had come a long way since the time they began to organise themselves as enterprising professional in the initial years of colonial rule.  From a time when there was a dearth of trained legal professionals in Assam and lawyers from the neighboring province of Bengal came over and developed a flourishing practice, there are a number of lawyers now who have moved from Assam to develop a successful legal practice in different courts of India. This process of outmigration started in the early 1950s in a very slow pace. It is important to accommodate the history of the Bar Associations in the legal history of India if the social history of colonial Assam   is to achieve a comprehensive character. Among the many institutional histories associated with a space, the history of lawyers’ bodies help in the understanding of the progress of a place and an idea about harmonious inter community relations and concomitant social solidarities and institution building in colonial Assam. In an age where social stress and tensions seems natural, such histories of institution building through mutual respect support and solidarities are inspirational and exceptional. Therefore, the importance of accommodating such narratives from colonial frontiers would give social history of the country and its regions complete character which cannot be appreciated without an investigation into the lives of men who turn the wheels of justice and make it alive. However no serious study has been attempted to recover this institutional history. This story is an attempt to bridge this research gap.

Notes and References:

1. The term Vakil refers to intermediaries in the Mughal courts who represented the legal and commercial interests of people represented by them. In the colonial period, vakils came on to take the role of lawyers representing their clients in the courts of law.
2. KatakiUkilTola, Assam Bandhu, 1885, p. 292-297, Dr Nagen Saikia (ed) Assam Bandhu, Assam Publication Board, Guwahati, 1984.
3. Barpujari, Assam in the Days of the Company, p. 209
4. Barpujari, Assam in the Days of the Company, p.210
5. Singha, Radhika, A Despotism of Law, Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1998,  p.xi.
6. Silver Jubilee Souvenir, All Assam Lawyers Association,2006,p,73
7. Appendix J in A.J. Mofatt Mills, Report on the Province of Assam, Assam Publication Board,  Guwahati, 1984,pp.129-130.
8. Silver Jubilee Souvenir, All Assam Lawyers Association, Ibid .
9. D. R. Syiemlieh, British Administration in Meghalaya, Heritage Publishers, New Delhi, 1989, pp 169-171.
10. Helen Giri, The Khasis Under British Rule,  Regency Publications, New Delhi, p.110
11. File No. 278-79, Home A, Assam Secretariat General Department, Dec.1903, Meghalaya State Archives.
12. File No. 278-79, Home A, Assam Secretariat General Department, Dec.1903, Meghalaya State Archives.
13. File No. 278-79, Home A, Assam Secretariat General Department, Dec.1903, Meghalaya State Archives.
14. File No. 1, Home A, Judicial Department, Eastern Bengal and Assam, May 1908, Meghalaya State Archives.
15. File No. 1-4, Home A, Assam Secretariat General Department, January 1917, Meghalaya State Archives.

Dr. Binayak Dutta is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), specializing in Modern India, Partition of India, Displacement/Migration and Citizenship in North-East India. He has authored several books, including "History of Judiciary in Assam" and "Recovering the ‘Other Side of Silence’.

Ka Jingshai-The Light