Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde (3 July 1909 in Saswad – 22 March 2004 in

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

), was a prominent Indian lawyer, civil rights activist, and humanist leader and has been referred to as the "Father of the Civil Liberties movement" in India and a former judge of the Bombay High CourtOutlook MAR 24, 2004 TRIBUTE – Father Of Civil Liberties In India
/ref> The Supreme Court of India also praised him as "undoubtedly the most distinguished judge of the post- Chagla 1957 period" in 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 ...

.Full Court Reference in memory of Late Shri V M Tarkunde,Senior Advocate, on Wednesday, 7 April 2004 in the Supreme Court of India Address by Soli J Sorabjee Attorney General for India

Early life and education

Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde was born in Saswad,

Pune District Pune district (Marathi pronunciation: Help:IPA/Marathi, uɳeː is the most populous district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The district's population was 9,429,408 in the 2011 census, making it the fourth most populous district amongst I ...

, Maharashtra on 3 July 1909. He was the 2nd of the five children of Mahadeo Rajaram Tarkunde, a popular lawyer and social reformer at Saswad,then headquarters of Purandar taluka adjoining Pune. His father, a

Brahmin Brahmin (; sa, ब्राह्मण, brāhmaṇa) is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The Brahmins are designated as the priestly class as they serve as priests (purohit, pandit, or pujari) and religious teachers (guru ...

by caste, had fought against the practice of

untouchability Untouchability is a form of social institution that legitimises and enforces practices that are discriminatory, humiliating, exclusionary and exploitative against people belonging to certain social groups. Although comparable forms of discrimin ...

.A Restless Crusader for Human Rights – M A Rane, PUCL Bulletin Special Issue Justice Tarkunde: Vol. XXVII, No. 3 MARCH 2007 In 1920 he migrated from Saswad to Pune and joined the New English School, Pune. In the Matriculation examination of 1925 held by the

Bombay University The University of Mumbai is a collegiate, state-owned, public research university in Mumbai. The University of Mumbai is one of the largest universities in the world. , the university had 711 affiliated colleges. Ratan Tata is the appointed ...

, he stood first in the erstwhile

Bombay Presidency The Bombay Presidency or Bombay Province, also called Bombay and Sind (1843–1936), was an administrative subdivision (province) of British India, with its capital in the city that came up over the seven islands of Bombay. The first mainl ...

. He also secured the prestigious Jagannath Shankersheth Scholarship for Sanskrit. He then joined the Fergusson College for BA which he completed in 1929, subsequently moving to London, where he attended the Lincoln's Inn and qualified as a Barrister-at-Law in 1931. He also attended lectures in economics, political science and social anthropology at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

(LSE) as an external student. He returned to India the next year in December and commenced his legal practice in Pune.Author Overview – Voice of A Great Sentinel: Selected Writings of V.M. Tarkunde – 1 January 2004 , 1st ed. – Renaissance Publishers Pvt. Ltd. In Memoriam, Justice V.M. Tarkunde (1909–2004)
/ref>

Legal career

Tarkunde started practice at Pune soon after he returned to India in 1933. He continued there till 1942 when he gave up his practice to become a full-time member of the Radical Democratic Party. He resumed his legal practice in the

in 1948 after

Independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

and was elevated to the bench as a Judge of the

in September 1957. He stepped down voluntarily as Judge of the Bombay High Court in 1969 and set up practice in the

Supreme Court of India The Supreme Court of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme judicial authority of India and is the highest court of the Republic of India under the constitution. It is the most senior constitutional court, has the final decision in all legal matters ...

where he continued till his resignation in 1977 at the age of 68. He was chiefly concerned with Public Interest Litigations and constitutional cases, most of which he conducted with little or no fees.

Activism

In 1933, he joined the

Congress Socialist Party The Congress Socialist Party (CSP) was a socialist caucus within the Indian National Congress. It was founded in 1934 by Congress members who rejected what they saw as the anti-rational mysticism of Gandhi as well as the sectarian attitude of th ...

(CSP) and the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...

but later left the CSP disillusioned with their vote against

Subhas Chandra Bose Subhas Chandra Bose ( ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945 * * * * * * * * *) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperia ...

in the January 1939 Tripuri session of Congress. He then joined the League of Radical Congressmen led by his mentor

M. N. Roy Manabendra Nath Roy (born Narendra Nath Bhattacharya, better known as M. N. Roy; 21 March 1887 – 25 January 1954) was an Indian revolutionary, radical activist and political theorist, as well as a noted philosopher in the 20th century. Roy ...

in April 1939. In 1940, Roy and Tarkunde, along with several others, left the Congress after dissenting on the question of participation in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Roy advocated participation in the war against the

Axis powers The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...

, while simultaneously striving for Indian independence, and founded the Radical Democratic Party to further this cause. In 1942, Tarkunde gave up his legal practice to become a full-time member of the Radical Democratic Party and was elected General Secretary of the RDP in 1944, thereby migrating to Delhi. By 1946 Roy formulated the philosophy of New Humanism. By 1948 he and Roy decided that political parties were an inadequate instrument for promoting freedom of the people and so dissolved the RDP in December 1948. He returned to legal practice the same year.

Radical Humanism

In 1969, Tarkunde founded the Indian Radical Humanist Association as an organisation for radical humanists. He also began editing the ''Radical Humanist'' (founded in 1937 by Roy as ''Independent India'') in April 1970, supporting it initially with his own income. In 1973 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.

Emergency

During the emergency, he worked closely with Jayaprakash Narayan, providing leadership to the NGOs Citizens for Democracy and People's Union for Civil Liberties, of which he was the founding president. He also worked on the

Citizen's Justice Committee Citizen's Justice Committee (commonly known as CJC) is an Indian umbrella organization of various human rights organizations and is known for ''pro bono'' representing the 1984 anti-Sikh riots victims in their legal battle to gain justice. Form ...

and played a principal part in resisting and investigating the excesses of the period, including the

1984 Anti-Sikh riots The 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots, also known as the 1984 Sikh Massacre, was a series of organised pogroms against Sikhs in India following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Government estimates project that about 2,800 Sikhs ...

, and human rights violations in the Punjab, Kashmir, and the North-East. His refusal to consider kashmiri pandits who had fled valley in 1990 as human right victims caused much controversy and led to his dubbing as " Terrorists' defender in chief" as he regularly attacked Indian army for fake encounters and extra judicial killings.In 1995, he departed from his earlier stand of considering firing by police as human rights violation and defended UP government in Muzaffarnagar police firing and rape on Uttarakhand state demand activists on 2 October 1994 in Supreme Court.His volte face was noted by honourable bench with humour and he won the case with court ruling that there was not adequate evidence of wilful human rights violation by State government.But it led to his breaking ranks with radical humanists. Tarkunde was a board member for the International Humanist and Ethical Union(

IHEU Humanists International (known as the International Humanist and Ethical Union, or IHEU, from 1952–2019) is an international non-governmental organisation championing secularism and human rights, motivated by secular humanist values. Found ...

), the world union of Humanist organisations for over 40 years.IHEU Glossary VM Tarkunde
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Awards and honours

At the 1978 London Congress of the

, VM Tarkunde received the International Humanist Award 1978. The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan in 1998.

Books

# Radical humanism: The philosophy of freedom and democracyAmazon book search V M Tarkunde
/ref> # Report to the Nation:Oppression in Punjab # Communalism and human rights (J.P. memorial lecture) # Through humanist eyes # Radical humanism: The philosophy of freedom and democracy # For freedom # Kashmir problem: Possible solutions # Great Britain and India # The danger ahead: An analysis of congress capitalist alignment

References

External links

People's Union for Civil LibertiesIndian Radical Humanist Association
* ttp://www.indianexpress.com/oldStory/43614 He administered justice, not just law, the Bar’s noblest soul’ FALI S NARIMAN {{DEFAULTSORT:Tarkunde, V. M. 1909 births 20th-century Indian judges 2004 deaths Indian human rights activists Indian independence activists from Maharashtra Marathi people 20th-century Indian lawyers Indian humanists Indian civil rights activists People from Pune district Judges of the Bombay High Court Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in public affairs