Justice Nanabhai Haridas

LL.B. Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Chi ...

(1832–1889), was the first Indian Justice of the

Bombay High Court The High Court of Bombay is the high court of the states of Maharashtra and Goa in India, and the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. It is seated primarily at Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), and is one of the ol ...

during 1883–1889.

Career

Haridas, son of a government official began his career as a translator in 1852. He joined the law class of Elphinstone Institute in 1855 and passed the examination as

munsif Pargana ( bn, পরগনা, , hi, परगना, ur, پرگنہ) or parganah, also spelt pergunnah during the time of the Sultanate period, Mughal times and British Raj, is a former administrative unit of the Indian subcontinent and each ...

. In 1857, he successfully completed the final law examinations and for two years, from 1859 to 1861, the Bombay government engaged his services to translate the Indian civil and criminal Laws into Gujarati. Also in 1857, he was enrolled as a lawyer of the Civil Court. When the Bombay High Court was established, he was admitted as a lawyer on appellate side. He passed the vakeel's examination at Madras in 1863, whereafter he resigned his government job and set up practice in the Bombay High Court. In 1869, he passed the LLB examination and in 1877 was appointed government pleader and 'acting' government law professor. Between 1873 and 1884, Haridas acted as temporary

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

nine times. However another pleader Jagannath Wassudewji, who was in subordinate judicial service, was appointed acting judge before him. He became the first Indian permanent Judge of the Bombay High Court with a salary of Rs. 3,750 per month from 1884. He held the office of judge till his death in 1889. He had great knowledge of

Hindu law Hindu law, as a historical term, refers to the code of laws applied to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in British India. Hindu law, in modern scholarship, also refers to the legal theory, jurisprudence and philosophical reflections on the nat ...

; and some of his judgements are among the earliest expositions of important principles of Hindu Law. During his life, he was a

Kayastha Kayastha (also referred to as Kayasth) denotes a cluster of disparate Indian communities broadly categorised by the regions of the Indian subcontinent in which they were traditionally locatedthe Chitraguptavanshi Kayasthas of North India, the C ...

and later he adopted

Pushtimarg Pushtimarg (), also known as ''Pushtimarg sampradaya'' or ''Vallabha sampradaya'', is a subtradition of the Rudra Sampradaya (Vaishnavism). It was founded in the early 16th century by Vallabhacharya (1479–1531) and is focused on Krishna.

as a follower of fifth house of

shuddhadvaita Shuddadvaita (Sanskrit: "pure non-dualism") is the "purely non-dual" philosophy propounded by Vallabhacharya (1479-1531 CE), the founding philosopher and guru of the ("tradition of Vallabh") or ("The path of grace"), a Hindu Vaishnava tradit ...

. He had also written novels and founded schools and libraries.

References

External links

Brief biography at Bombay High Court
1832 births 1889 deaths Judges of the Bombay High Court 19th-century Indian judges People from Mumbai {{India-law-bio-stub