M. N. Shukla, J. - (1.) A preliminary point has arisen in this case as to whether a writ petition drafted in Hindi in Deo Nagri script and presented in this Court can be entertained and adjudicated upon. The present writ petition was drafted in Hindi, so also the accompanying affidavit and the rejoinder affidavit and the petitioner insists on the writ petition being heard and decided as it stands. Since it is a question of law of general importance, we propose to decide the same and we cannot refrain from observing that we received valuable assistance on this point from Sri S. N. Kacker, who appeared for the petitioner and who entered, it we may say so, a vigorous defence in favour of Hindi.
(2.) THE transition from one official Court language to another whether it be under the impact of political freedom or the efflorescence of nationalist sentiment or both, is often preceded by grave misgivings, apprehensions, and even open or veiled hostility. The traditionalists feel aggrieved by what they regard as an invasion into entrenched territory. The reformers, on the other hand, are intolerant of what they are prone to regard as the tyranny of a foreign language. They are only too eager to hail the dawn of a new linguistic era. The history of the world bears witness to this precarious phenomenon of one Court language being replaced by another. The battle for supremacy of the English language in England was waged for nearly five centuries. The Saxon invaders of England obliterated nearly every trace of the Raman occupation but though their language triumphed at first, it was eventually affected in the profoundest way by Latin influences. When the French nation actually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language viz., the French, was at the same time slowly evolved, but the genius of the French language was descended from the Latin stock. Nearly every word in the French vocabulary came straight from Latin. Little wonder, therefore, that the law Courts in England were for several centuries dominated by the Latin and French languages. The "Common Law" of England Administered by the royal Court was in form chiefly a French law. French was the language of the Norman and Angevin sovereigns and their courtiers, and French continued to be the language of the common law courts long after it had ceased to be the language of the upper classes. The written records of the Common Law Courts were kept in Latin but the oral pleadings were in French. English supplanted French as the language of the ruling classes in the later fourteenth century, but French continued to be used in legal literature until the seventeenth century. (See "The English Legal System" by Radcliffe and Cross, (Third Edition) page 15). Latin was the legal language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was, therefore, the official language of such branches of the Curia Regis as the Chancery and the courts of Common Law which had begun to keep the plea Rolls at this period. In the thirteenth century learned clerks may have thought and spoken in Latin; ordinary persons of the upper classes thought and spoke in French, while the lower classes spoke in various dialects of English. But the common law was the law made by the king's courts. It was the law originally of the upper classes; and even when it had become the law of all classes, it was still administered by the upper classes. Therefore, although the formal records of these courts were drawn up in Latin, the cases were pleaded, shewed, and judged' in French. Naturally the law books and the reports which lawyers made for themselves or for one another were in the same language. The Latin of Bracton gave place to the French of Britton, "A History of English Law", by W. S. Holdsworth, Vol. II, Third Edition, page 479. In the 14th century an Act was passed superseding French for ordinary purposes, but for legal purposes the language remained French. As early as 1362 there was a famous statute which enacted that pleas should be pleaded in English and not in French, though the records were to be maintained in Latin. But so firm was the hegemony of French that the statute of 1362 failed to achieve the purpose for which it was passed. The reasons were twofold. Firstly, the task of adjudicating of law had fallen on a class of professional lawyers who, as Fortescue pointed out "could not plead or judge or read their books or reports in anything but French". Secondly, the technical terms were nearly all in French. "So many ancient terms and words" said Coke, "drawn from the legal French are grown to be vacabula artis.. .. .. ..so apt and significant to express the true sense of the law, and are so woven in the laws themselves, as it is in a manner impossible to change them, neither ought legal terms to be changed". To Roger North, who died in 1734, it seemed, as it seemed of Fortescue and Coke, that the rules of English law were "scarcely expressible properly in English" and that "a man may be a wrangler, but never a lawyer without a knowledge of the authentic books of the law in their genuine language". When we proceed to deal specifically with the problem as it has arisen in our country, it will become apparent that the situation in India is almost identical and the remarks of the English lawyers and jurists quoted above can be adopted verbatim to express the reactions of those Indians in whom the habit of using English has become so ingrained that they feel greatly perturbed over the prospect of a change over to Hindi for purposes of the court work.
(3.) BUT the language of the people ultimately replaced the language of the upper class even in the law courts of England. The language which had entered into the life of the British people was English and none could resist it entirely. Law, as Maitland has said is the point where life and logic meet. Therefore, French had at last to give way to English in spite of the former's superiority in the qualities of precision and richness of technical terms. Ultimately by the Act of 1731, which was passed in the period of the complete supremacy of Walpole, the use of Latin in the law courts was abolished in England.;