Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [65]
I asked a weary but thoughtful woman judge, Amina Nasir Ansari, why the whole system couldn’t be moved to Urdu:
In the first place, because law is based on precedent, and all our records going back to British days are in English. If we abandoned English, there would be no solid basis for our judgments. We would have to start everything over again and God knows where that would take us. And secondly, because of the language issue in this country. In Punjab, most courts do in fact operate in Urdu, though everything still has to be translated into English for the records, and all communications are in English. But here in Karachi, if we moved to Urdu our Sindhi brothers would complain, and vice versa.14
The basic reason why this court was operating in English was carved into its ornate neo-classical façade: the letters GRI, which no one in the court could decipher for me but which stand for Georgius Rex Imperator : George V, King of England and Emperor of India.
According to old photographs, when the court was first built it stood alone, looking out onto a broad avenue. Today, it faces a traffic-choked road, and its façade towers over a bazaar. Indeed, the bazaar appears to have invaded the forecourt itself, with touts, hawkers, police, prisoners and their families, booksellers and lawyers all surging around in a slowmoving maelstrom. Workers of the Saylani Welfare Trust were distributing food from a small field-kitchen to prisoners and their families – an action enjoined by the Koran, and a small example of the private charity which does so much to soften the hard edges of life in Pakistan.
In this busy throng, by far the most exotic sight was the lawyers, who were all dressed in their uniforms of black jackets, white shirts and dark ties, on a day when the temperature in Karachi touched 45° centigrade – like penguins in hell. The women lawyers were also dressed in black jackets, but with white dupattas (scarves). Sitting in the bar-room, I asked the youngish vice-president of the Bar Association, Sayyid Mansur Ahmed, why the lawyers kept their jackets and ties on all the time when they weren’t in court. He looked at me in astonishment. ‘It is our uniform, our identity, our symbol,’ he replied. I pointed out that my sister (a barrister in London) does not wear her wig outside the courtroom, and certainly wouldn’t in this heat.
Yes, but there is a big difference between Karachi and London. There are so many people here who want to be lawyers. We have to show that we are special. I feel that our jackets show that we are advocates, because only advocates are allowed to wear them. Our seniors teach us that it doesn’t matter how hot it is, the common people will see the jacket and know that you are an advocate, and respect you.
Outside, the wall was plastered with campaign posters for elections to various positions on the board of the Bar Association. ‘Please Vote and Support Muhd. Adil Khan Advocate – For Prestige of Lawyers’, one of them read.
Elitism is one of the curses of Pakistan’s official judicial system, but also the source of whatever progressive elements it contains. The police are divided into three cadres, with hardly any movement between them: the ordinary constables and NCOs; the junior officers; and the senior ‘gazetted’ officers (around one in 800 of the total) who are recruited by examination, and rank alongside the senior civil service. This of course is derived directly from the British system, where the British senior officers were divided from their Indian officers, and those in turn from