Confessions of an ‘Outlaw’

A paralegal view of lawlessness

(Image Source)

The big problem

Conservatively speaking, the number of pending cases in Indian courts is close to 50 million. This is not a temporary glitch, but a entrenched state of affairs that will persist indefinitely.

There is justifiable frustration among the public. It's perplexing to see convicted criminal masterminds and crooked politicians receiving five-star treatment even in prisons, while the common man is punished by the court process itself.

The public sees a select group of lawyers garner enormous sums of money by defending public offenders and delaying the court process. They watch as the judiciary debates the rights of international migrants, while their own rights are trampled on daily.

The judiciary oversees this mess like a WWE referee, while acting morally superior to the common man. While the common person may not possess the tools for articulate expression, they can still understand blunt truths. They watch as western-educated "liberal" lawyers point to a Constitution that very few people can read. They wonder why they need to be lectured about secularism, women's rights, etc., when they already know it from their own dharma.

The big question

Who is responsible for the dysfunction and stagnation in India's judicial system?

To the Nationalists, the root cause appears to be the specter of British colonists living on through their (brown) intellectual descendants in the legal field along with their nepotism and “collegium system”. As the saying goes, "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

The big picture

Former CJI Ramana spoke of a mischievous Indian epidemic called "luxurious litigation," where rich people abuse the legal process by filing numerous fake cases in multiple courts, which simply lie there and can never be decided.

(Justice N.V. Ramana, Image source)

I would like to add that the less wealthy also have added their fair share of fraudulent litigation in personal and domestic matters. The company law courts are clogged with family disputes in family-owned companies. Not far behind are various incompetent government agencies, subjecting the public to unwarranted harassment.

Ramana delicately mentioned political, economic, social, cultural, and religious factors as the roots of these problems. He referred to the Mahabharata and observed that perhaps "mediation" is more suited to the Indian ethos than the British adversarial system.

His comments are a polite way of saying that the majority of the 50 million cases are fake, and that our ethos, culture and value system (i.e. our present state of “dharma”) is not suited for British courts, and we are fit for "mediation" at best.

(Graphic source)

I can confirm this from my own experience. The typical defense I hear from clients, when confronted with their own faults, is to point to the faults of others and fabricate lies and half-truths. I constantly remind them that we are before a court, not a Panchayat.

(GIF source)

The entire country operates on an ad-hoc, corrupt system where bending the rules and unofficial "mediation" through bribery and political influence are common. The newfound enthusiasm in law enforcement has taken the country by surprise.

(Justice J.R. Midha, Image source)

However, the larger point is that all these false cases are the handiwork of lawyers themselves. In my work, I am horrified to see these false pleadings, poorly written, full of denial and dispute, misrepresentations, misleading statements, irrelevant facts, and arguments. In any civilized country, one such document could have a lawyer disbarred for life. The same situation prevails inside a courtroom. As Justice J.R. Midha famously said in his farewell speech to the Delhi High Court:

“In the Court of Justice, both the parties know the truth, it’s the judge who’s on trial.”

Who’s law is it anyway?

We are incapable of adhering to even basic Western laws. For instance, honking horns is illegal in the entire civilized world. We fail to keep our streets free of garbage, stray cats and dogs, elderly and disabled people, street vendors, and other squatters. At the street level, we are a dysfunctional, "lawless" society.

(GIF source)

We are an "illiterate" culture rooted in oral promises rather than written contracts. I often see clients land in problems when conducting business and settlements without proper written agreements. In the past, honesty was maintained by caste laws and the fear of family shame and ostracism. However, in modern India, "money talks and bullsh*t walks" and oral promises are hardly kept (or even written contracts, because law enforcement and judiciary cannot deliver timely justice). With corruption being pervasive, no one feels ashamed; they just point the finger at others. It is unclear who holds the moral authority to convict whom.

(Lord Macaulay, Image source)

As Vishwa-gurus, we reject Lord Macaulay's education and his 1860 “Sepoy mutiny” IPC. However, we are stuck with their court system, and can’t do without copy-pasting their business laws. Most people have no clue how to apply these laws in the Indian context, where the “corporate veil” has been reduced to a cover for widespread illicit activities.

The big difference

It is pretty clear that the issues within the judiciary are not solely its own fault and can only be resolved with the full cooperation of the public, especially lawyers. 

So, why does the court system work in Britain but not in India? Here are a few insights from their “dharma” that might provide a clue.

(Sermon on the Mount, Image source)

For instance, in His sermons, Jesus told the common man that "Puja" would not be accepted unless he reconciled with his brother (Gospel of Matthew, 5:21-26; 5:37; 5:40; 7:3-5).

"You have heard that it was said to the men of old, You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire.

"So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

"Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.

"Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; for whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

"And if anyone wants to sue you and take your cloak, let him have your tunic as well.

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye,' when the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

So, please reconcile with your brothers and avoid unnecessary cases by making misleading statements. Before your brother sues you give him what he wants. Don’t blame others before first acknowledging your own faults.

The big solution

As a guild, lawyers have much to reflect upon. If they do not even have the decency to pay their interns and juniors a minimum wage, expecting them to champion the rights of the average person would seem unrealistic. However, the daily chanting of the following mantra may provide a much needed solution:

Today, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Indeed, I am so obsessed with truth that it would be true to say, “I am the Truth”.

(St. Thomas More, Image source)

Practically speaking, lawyers should face severe consequences for constructing fictitious cases by presenting misleading or irrelevant arguments. Once a case is accepted, the written pleadings could be sent for anonymous initial evaluation or mandatory mediation to eliminate irrelevant aspects. This process would provide a summary and evaluation of the case's merits before moving on to trial or hearing. If parties choose to proceed before Court after this initial stage, significant costs may be imposed on the losing side.

Here are Harish Salve's thoughts on the "night and day" difference between law practice in London and the "hit and run advocacy in India".

What about our own laws?

Before stepping into the field of law, I naively thought that judges would be well-versed in law. However, this doesn't always seem to be the case. Whenever a minor issue arises, everyone is scratching their heads trying to understand what the British would have done. This, combined with the constant “googlies” thrown by lawyers, contributes to the slow pace of the process.

(GIF source)

It's very odd to see recently enacted laws like the CAA and Electoral Bonds being challenged in the Supreme Court. Such legislation is typically drafted by experts and approved by parliamentary committees and the Law Ministry, among others. Their roles include ensuring that legal arguments about their constitutionality are thoroughly weighed before enactment. 

While public opinion or morality can change over time, such as the recent decriminalization of same-sex relations, etc. it's a significant system failure if laws go directly from Parliament to the Supreme Court. All branches of government have a duty to prevent public displays of institutional power struggles. Making good laws is tricky business. As Otto von Bismarck aptly noted, "Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.”

Unfortunately, we as a people are unable to work together without resorting to bullying. Recently, 600 lawyers have written a funny letter to the CJI, with the PM adding fuel to the fire, questioning why the court is being bullied by politically motivated group of lawyers who pretend to be fighting corruption, while simultaneously defending the corrupt in court. In polite, lawyerly fashion, the letter’s subject states: “Judiciary under Threat - Safeguarding Judiciary from Political and Professional Pressure.”

Dharma in limbo

In essence, courts, like any other institution, mirror our society. Evidently, we seem to be a society more concerned with group allegiance than truth, willingly condoning lies in favor of our party. This behavior is not just reflected in our personal lives, but also on TV shows, in Parliament, and in courts. We often resort to shouting, hiding our own faults behind angry emotional outbursts, interruptions, using intimidation as a form of argument (and assault as proof).

(Graphic courtesy of Kushagra Sharma)

The "why" question is easy to answer — they are Indians, not British. However, "what to do about it?" is a million-pound question!

Confessions of an ex-mathematician

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My mathematical autobiography 

(Curriculum Vitae)

Doctoral education

As a doctoral student under Alexander Varchenko, I realized that the highly abstract “pure” mathematics I had grown up with in India had gone out of fashion. Varchenko was himself a student of the great mathematician Vladimir Arnold, who famously said, “Mathematics is part of physics. Physics is an experimental science, a part of natural science. Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap”.

Although my Ph.D. thesis was considered decent and was published in a well-known journal called Annals of Combinatorics, I realized that nobody would ever read it. Nobody understood or cared that I had found some "duality" using symbolic manipulations (called "proofs"). I further realized that I didn't enjoy the unproductive labor of writing papers that nobody would read, on problems nobody cared about.

Moments of reflection

Unfortunately, it was the case back in the day (and probably still is today) that nearly all papers in mathematics had little or no impact. In a typical mathematics department, no two individuals understood each other's research. The mathematical community had become the butt of jokes for solving toy problems. As one saying goes: “A mathematician is someone who can tell you about a problem you didn’t know you had, and solve it in ways you couldn’t understand”.

I learned the hard way that for a mathematical paper to be worthwhile, it has to solve someone else's problem, not my own. I was also convinced that important ideas are most likely to arise through intuition about the real world, not by digging into mathematics itself.

Unfortunately, due to my third-world education, my knowledge of physics was nil, along with my understanding of mathematical thinking. I had learned a small area of mathematics by mentally wrestling with symbols, rules, and logic — which is akin to learning a language by reading a grammar book. Varchenko had to work very hard to clear the weeds and sow the seeds of experimental thinking by constantly repeating the four words, "Give me an example!"

The mathematics of musical sounds

Thankfully, despite my limited scientific education, my Indian heritage came to the rescue. I had a passion for music and, like many children from my generation, grew up as a fan of Bollywood songs. My interests later expanded to Ghazals and Indian classical music. I independently studied some Indian music theory of ragas and was intrigued by its mysterious scales.

A simple and intriguing question arises: Why are there 7 notes in a raga scale? (For example, there could have been 9 or 10 notes. The presence of the number "7" also suggests a mathematical problem).

Grace & awe

By the grace of God, I stumbled upon some scientific literature on music. I was utterly surprised to find that while we Indians were busy confusing each other with old theories, the West had conducted an enormous amount of experiments on the nature of musical sounds. One of the gurus in this field is William Sethares, famous for his experiments on "consonance". I wanted to apply his pioneering ideas to vocal music and incorporate my insights from Indian music theory.

Thankfully, Sethares became very interested in my ideas, leading to a lengthy collaboration that resulted in my paper titled "Local Minima of Dissonance Functions", published in the Journal of Mathematics and Music.

The paper was an instant hit, attracting enthusiasm and interest from mathematicians, sound engineers, and musicologists. I had the privilege of collaborating with experts in the field, like Pantelis Vassilakis, Thomas Fiore, and Emmanuel Amiot, in the process of writing the paper.

Reviews of paper on music

The following two reviews suggest that Indian vocal music provides key insights into the understanding of consonance. The paper could have a significant impact on the theoretical framework and experimentation of sound perception.

Anonymous review, probably by William Sethares:

Perhaps the easiest way to view this paper is as a generalization of Sethares' 1993 paper with a similar name. The paper begins by "lifting" the partials of the sound to a log space, where many of the calculations (especially the derivatives) become easier. Sethares' dissonance function is then translated into the lifted space, and a variety of mathematical results are shown at a deeper, more fundamental level. The paper defines families of timbres related by "spectral envelopes" (formants) rather than by simple transposition. This adds another layer of complexity but also makes the results closer to what might normally be meant by "the same sound" at a different pitch. The major results (which go quite a bit beyond those in Sethares' paper) involve an investigation of the conditions under which timbres lie on the boundaries of the timbre space. There is a lot of interesting work here, and I think the paper will make a nice contribution to JMM […]

Anonymous review, probably by Pantelis Vassilakis:

Key research objective of the study: to identify the conditions describing the boundary of a spectral distribution’s dissonance minima. This is a very useful objective. Accomplishing it would conceivably permit algorithmic/automatic recognition of dissonance minima and, more interestingly, dissonance minima time-profiles of time-variant spectral distributions of sound signals, even in real-time. Generation of real-time dissonance time profiles is already achievable via Vassilakis, P.N. and Fitz, K. (2007), which includes a necessary modification to the dissonance model used in the study under review (see further below). Automation of dissonance minima identification would provide a very welcomed addition/contribution to the area. It would support experimental testing of a large range of hypotheses exploring the relationship between a) sensory consonance/dissonance and b) a variety of intellectual or affective responses to sound in a variety of contexts. The theorems explored are also well thought out and appear to validly support accomplishing the study’s objective. I have not checked the theorems’ procedural validity and full mathematical soundness, leaving this task to reviewers whose expertise best serves this purpose […]

Those familiar with reviews of mathematical papers know that they are usually quite drab and disinterested, usually meaning, "Looks okay, some interesting results, don't know what it really means." However, the ones above are overly generous and kind (as if I have discovered quantum-relativity). I personally don't think it is a big deal. It's a simple application of basic principles of mathematical thinking that I was fortunate to learn under Varchenko. I am also especially glad that my interests in Indian music eventually led to a mathematical paper.

A spiritual journey

I mentioned God only once above, but the entire journey was accompanied by spontaneous spiritual changes in my life. Most of my life, my ego was consumed in trying to prove myself by learning complicated mathematical language and solving problems from the back of a book. In fact, I was quite disappointed that my doctoral thesis was rather simple and did not contain enough fancy language. Varchenko understood my psychological problem and reassured me, saying: "Yes. It is simple. But, that’s how good mathematics should be." The paper on music is even simpler, understandable to an undergraduate, and unlike my thesis, thankfully, was read by a lot of people.

Ultimately, I am grateful to God for the opportunity to dedicate a small piece of work to my great Guru, "Sri Sri" Alexander Varchenko, in gratitude for his immense generosity and relentless efforts to liberate me from the matrix of the ego. And what were his thoughts on my efforts? His response was one of delight, a note that rang with the warmth of his words, "Dear Debu, Thank you for sending me the papers. I looked through all three. I am impressed and I am very glad you are working actively in the theory of sound. Please keep me informed". Upon reading the reviews, he later added, "I am glad your work has very positive reviews.”

These were not ordinary words from Varchenko, although he was being overly generous towards his student. His favorite activity was destroying people for speaking complicated nonsense and for daring to utter the word "proof". So, for once, I felt I had done something worthwhile in my mathematical career.

Retirement from mathematics

That being said, it was also a good time to bid farewell to professional mathematics. Although I should have written a couple more papers and always wanted to work on a keyboard capable of playing ragas more melodiously, I had to stop somewhere (for personal reasons). For ordinary mathematicians like me, one good piece of work is enough — you need "one original idea".

In professional mathematics, one has to be prolific and write papers regularly, whether they are worth reading or not. For personal limitations of attributes and temperament, and lack of motivation, I am not suited for such work. I would rather take my own time and write something interesting when I can.

Today, teaching and learning have exploded over the Internet. Many top universities have made their lectures available for free, potentially leveling the playing field for students globally. In my generation, most places were completely isolated from mainstream trends in mathematics. Given my humble background, by God’s grace, I have tried my best in research. Also, conventional teaching is no longer relevant today, as the best of people have already published their videos with beautiful high-tech animations and visualizations.

So, overall, an early retirement from mathematics seemed like a good choice for me. Luckily, it also came at a time in life when I had enough time left to pursue another career in the field of Law and perhaps contribute to education in other ways in the changing environment.