​ Indian judges are partial to literary quotations

Many Indian judges, as evidenced by their multiple-paged verdicts, are partial to literary quotations. It is moot, of course, whether the litigants appreciate the judicial luminaries’ didactic flourishes. They prefer to speed-read through those scholarly preambles to the more substantive part of judgments.

Thus, it was unfortunate that one of two Delhi University students arraigned for defacing public property with campus election posters, revealed he was doing a master’s degree in literature. Worse, he named Shakespeare as one of the authors he had studied, thereby proffering a vast body of literature for cross-questioning. That the judge would ask him to name 10 Shakespearean works was, therefore, predictable, though how the student’s expertise on this was relevant to his alleged crime is unclear.

Whether his abysmal failure to list any of the Bard’s works will be held against him hangs in the balance till the hearing resumes next month. But he could mug up a few Shakespearean lines by then to mollify the judge, like those uttered by Portia in Merchant of Venice, “The quality of mercy is not strain’d,/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/ Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;/ It blesseth him that gives and him that takes/ …And earthly power doth then show likest God’s/ When mercy seasons justice.” Indian judges are partial to literary quotations