Nani Palkhivala: the expensive lawyer who fought for liberty

It was part legal analysis, part economics lecture and part indictment of the Indian government, all delivered with mathematical precision and wicked wit.

Born on 16 January 1920, into a working-class Parsi family in Bombay, Nani was hampered as a child by a severe stammer. He conquered the impediment through a ferocious, hyper-disciplined regime of reading aloud. At St. Xavier's College, he racked up a brilliant academic record and harboured ambitions of becoming an English professor. But when a university post slipped through his fingers due to institutional politics, he turned to the bar.

In 1945, he married Nargesh, his steadfast companion in a deeply private marriage. The couple had no children, allowing Nani to channel his singular focus into his work and eclectic hobbies, including a deep love of fine literature and a passion for tracking bird migrations.

For the next four decades, Palkhivala's career touched many of the constitutional crises that mattered in post-independence India. When Indira Gandhi overnight nationalized fourteen banks in 1969, Palkhivala argued in court that the ordinance violated property rights and offered shareholders grossly inadequate compensation. He won, emphatically, with a bench of the Supreme Court ruling 10-1 that the Act was unconstitutional. It was a staggering legal blow for the regime, though Indira Gandhi swiftly re-enacted nationalization through fresh legislation.

His finest hour came in 1973 with the famous Kesavananda Bharati vs State of Kerala case. The existential question before the bench was whether Parliament had unlimited power to amend the Constitution. Could it vote away fundamental rights entirely? Palkhivala argued, across a legendary weeks-long oral submission, that while Parliament could amend the text, it could not touch the Constitution's “Basic Structure”. The Court agreed, albeit by a razor-thin 7-to-6 majority.

The doctrine shored up Indian democracy: without it, Indira Gandhi's 1975 Emergency would have been constitutionally unassailable. The Basic Structure idea was not wholly new. Advocate M.K. Nambiar had first coined the phrase while arguing in 1967. But it was Palkhivala, the ultimate salesman of liberty, who packaged it for the history books.

He was arguing against state monopolies in court while sitting at the apex of India's largest private industrial empire. With anyone else, it could be seen as a conflict of interest, but Palkhivala manoeuvred the two hats adroitly and honestly.

In 1977, the Morarji Desai government sent him to the US as India's ambassador. The courtroom lion turned out to be a natural diplomat, charming the American political elite before resigning in 1979 when the Janata government collapsed.

Nani Palkhivala died on 11 December 2002, aged 82. The suffocating Licence Raj he spent his life attacking was eventually dismantled in 1991, less by his soaring rhetoric than by a balance-of-payments crisis and the quiet technocracy of Manmohan Singh. The financial prophet, witty, fiery, and fiercely outspoken, had the particular misfortune of being heard by thousands and listened to by no one in power, until history finally proved him correct.