Democratising justice, 75 law textbooks in 12 Indian languages by next year

New Delhi, October 16

Seventy-five textbooks of law education will become available in 12 major Indian languages, including Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, by the 2023-24 academic session with plans afoot to produce the entire legal education curriculum in all 22 official Indian languages in the near future.

Push for mother tongue

• India has 35 law universities, state and private, apart from National Law Universities
• As many as 1,500 law colleges are affiliated to these UGC-recognised universities. The main medium of instruction is English
• An increasing number of students at the undergraduate level are now seeking law textbooks in regional languages
• The government’s High-Powered Committee on Promotion of Indian Languages is mandated to find speedy pathways for the implementation of the National Education Policy goal of promoting education in all Indian languages

The commitment was part of the outcomes that emerged from the first national workshop on law education in Indian languages conducted by the Government’s High Powered Committee (Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti) for the Promotion of Indian Languages in the capital this week.

Organised in collaboration with Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, engaged in the promotion of Indian languages, the workshop decided to commission an all-India survey to assess the current status of legal education in Indian languages and determine gaps for future action.

Speaking to The Tribune today, Chamu Krishna Shastry, chairman of the government’s high-powered panel on Indian languages, said the committee’s immediate commitment was to produce “75 legal education textbooks in 12 Indian languages recognised by the Bar Council of India’s Rules of Legal Education and then gradually produce law education curriculum in all 22 official Indian languages”.

These 12 Indian languages are Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Shastry said production of books in Indian languages was key to democratisation of the Indian justice system.

“The workshop was attended by 35 professors of law from 30 states and UTs. It was decided to survey the current status of legal education in Indian languages. The participating professors also pledged to write a book each in their own language and we further decided to make use of the artificial intelligence tool which the AICTE has developed to translate technical education into Indian languages. Once we have data from our pan Indian survey, AICTE’s AI tool can be modified to address the challenge of translating law education textbooks into Indian languages,” Shastry said.

The committee is, meanwhile, awaiting recommendations of the BCI panel on Promotion of Legal Education in Indian languages headed by former Chief Justice of India SA Bobde (retd).

At present, the BCI mandates English as the medium of legal education instruction but allows teaching bilingually (English and the regional language) and also permits students to write exams in the above stated 12 approved Indian languages.

Atul Kothari, head of the Nyas which collaborated for the national workshop, said democratising the justice system would require not just the production of legal education textbooks in Indian languages but also the use of these languages in courts. “The national workshop deliberated on the challenges and the way forward,” Kothari said.

In many states like UP, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, lower courts are using regional languages for official work in order for litigants to get easy justice but such instances are far and few. “The Prime Minister has repeatedly appealed that lower courts should use more and more Indian languages so that poor people can access justice. That is our challenge,” Shastry said.