UK: Indian lawyer disbarred from Inner Temple a century ago is reinstated

Posted by Ameenur Rasheed on December 10, 2015.

More than a century after being disbarred for advocating independence for Indian subcontinent, barrister Shyamji Krishna Varma has been posthumously reinstated by London’s Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

In a belated rewriting of colonial history, the Inn’s governing council, at the heart of the legal establishment, has acknowledged that Varma (1857-1930) was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and “did not receive an entirely fair hearing”.

Shyamji Krishna Varma, called to the bar in London in 1884, was expelled in 1909 for backing independence for India.

Shyamji Krishna Varma was disbarred merely for writing letters to the Times arguing for Indian home rule.

His reputation is preserved in present day India where a university in the state of Gujarat was named in his honour.

This year a barrister in Delhi wrote to the Inner Temple pointing out that whereas Mahatma Gandhi had been retrospectively rehabilitated by the Inn as long ago as 1988, Varma still endured public disgrace.

Gandhi was expelled by the benchers of the Inner Temple in 1922 after being convicted of sedition for organising protests, including the salt march which was part of the boycott of British goods.

Varma, who went to school in Mumbai and studied at Balliol College, Oxford, was disbarred not for having a criminal record but merely for writing letters to the Times arguing for Indian home rule.

In London, Varma founded India House in Highgate as a hostel for then Indian students who faced racist attitudes when seeking accommodation in the capital. Lenin and Gandhi were among those who visited him there.

In February 1909, Varma sent a letter to the Times responding to attacks on India House. It pointed out that both John Milton and George Washington, who had advocated the violent overthrow of tyrannical governments, were honoured in England.

According to Guardian’s reference in a report on 11 November 2015 Varma warned his British friends and “all their countrymen against the risks they run of losing their kith and kin by allowing them to go to India in these troubled times, since every Englishman who goes there for exploiting that country directly or indirectly is regarded as a potential enemy by the Indian Nationalist party and its supporters”.

“At a meeting on Monday 9 November 2015, the Benchers of the Inner Temple decided that Varma should be reinstated as a member of the Inn in recognition of the fact that the cause of Indian home rule, for which he fought, was not incompatible with membership of the bar and that by modern standards he did not receive an entirely fair hearing.”

The Soviety said his reinstatement was also intended as “a mark of the Inn’s commitment to the principle of free speech, which remains as important as it ever was to the establishment of a free society”.

Patrick Maddams, sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple, said: “The vote to reinstate Varma was unanimous. He may have been a nationalist but he was not a terrorist. We should never have disbarred him. He had committed no criminal offence.”

Credit: Guardian