‘Tamil be given its entitled constitutional opportunity’: Vijay revives State’s bid to use it in High Court

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay moved a government resolution in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday urging the Union government and the President to clear the use of Tamil as the primary language of the Madras High Court, alongside English.

The move revives a demand the House endorsed 20 years ago. The resolution seeks procedures allowing petitions, documents and arguments to be submitted in Tamil; a system for judgments, decrees and court orders to be issued officially in Tamil; and training in legal Tamil and translation for judges, advocates and court employees.

“This is not a demand to remove English,” Vijay told the Assembly. “It is a demand that Tamil be given the constitutional opportunity to which it is entitled.” The proposal turned a constitutional question into an argument about lived experience.

A person may be physically present in a courtroom yet remain outside the meaning of what is unfolding if the words determining one’s life, land, family, employment, property or rights cannot be understood. “The language of justice being a language that the people can understand is a fundamental objective of democracy,” Vijay said.

Tamil is already the State’s official language under Section 2 of the Tamil Nadu Official Language Act, 1956. Sections 4-A and 4-B, introduced through amendments in 1976, legally permit evidence to be recorded and judgments, decrees and orders to be written in Tamil in civil and criminal courts subordinate to the High Court, as well as in tribunals, rent courts and revenue courts.

The constitutional route for extending that use to the High Court is more complicated. Article 348(1) of the Constitution provides for English to be used in proceedings before the Supreme Court and High Courts. But Article 348(2) allows a State governor, with the President’s prior consent, to authorise the State’s official language in High Court proceedings.

Section 7 of the Official Languages Act, 1963, similarly allows the governor, again with prior presidential consent, to authorise an official language in addition to English for judgments, decrees and orders. An English translation must accompany a ruling delivered in the State language.

Tamil Nadu’s Assembly unanimously passed a similar resolution on December 6, 2006, and forwarded it to the Union government. During the debate, lawmakers stressed that Tamil would supplement, rather than displace, English.

The proposal did not advance. According to the present resolution, the Union law minister told the Rajya Sabha on February 22, 2018, that it had been referred to the Chief Justice of India and that the Supreme Court’s full court had declined it in a letter dated October 16, 2012.

Vijay argued that rejection at one point could not close the question forever. Legal education, law books, dictionaries and translations of judgments in Tamil have expanded, he said, while digital courts, legal databases and technology-assisted translation have advanced.

Artificial intelligence now makes it possible, he said, for speech in Tamil to be heard simultaneously in English. Vijay described Tamil as the world’s oldest language, still spoken vibrantly, with grammatical and literary riches spanning thousands of years and about nine crore speakers worldwide, including eight crore in India.

The Union government recognised it as a classical language on October 12, 2004, based on its antiquity, continuous literary tradition, inscriptions and historical evidence. The resolution calls on the Union government to act immediately on a proposal forwarded by the governor under Article 348(2) and Section 7.

Vijay asked members of every party to adopt it unanimously, calling it not a demand against another language, but a democratic claim to understand, approach and experience justice in one’s own. Arun Janardhanan is an experienced and authoritative Tamil Nadu correspondent for Read More