New Delhi: Some may sit on a tribunal, others may assist courts on committees, and others yet may take up governorship or Rajya Sabha nominations.
But former Supreme Court judge Justice Rohinton F. Nariman has — for now — chosen a different retirement path. One that sees him talking about Western classical music, Beethoven, reincarnation, Akbar, and how having to learn the piano was “not a very happy experience” for him.
Justice Nariman, who retired on 12 August last year after a 7-year tenure in the Supreme Court, has started a YouTube channel called the ‘Justice Nariman Official Channel’.
The channel went live earlier this month, and showcases 48 videos of his lectures and conversations on everything under the sun, from law and history, to religion, music and spirituality.
The subjects dealt with include jazz, Western classical music, Persian history, Zoroastrianism, Akbar, Suleiman I, Elizabeth I, and comparative religious perspectives on reincarnation.
It currently has 8,760 subscribers, and the videos have garnered a total of over 16,000 views [as of Friday evening].
Speaking about his channel to ThePrint, Justice Nariman admitted that he was initially unaware he could have a channel of his own. “Frankly speaking, I did not know such a thing existed. I learnt about it from youngsters, juniors in the profession,” he said.
And so, when the channel was in the making, the younger generation was “uppermost” in the judge’s mind. That’s why the content does not concentrate much on legal issues.
“In fact, a lot of them (videos) are non-legal, they are on Zoroastrianism and other religions,” Justice Nariman said.
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Why piano lessons didn’t work out
According to Justice Nariman, the idea of starting a YouTube channel began with a desire to upload all his speeches — “scattered all over the place” — on one platform.
“When they (youngsters) told me that I could have a channel, then I thought about building a platform where I could put up all my speeches,” he said.
“I have something like 55 to 60 speeches and they are scattered all over the place. When people go to YouTube and punch my name in search of my speeches, they are taken to different platforms and many a time they fail to get the speech they are looking for,” the judge added.
With Nariman’s go-ahead, the “youngsters” got cracking on starting a channel for him, the judge said.
The channel seems to have opened a world of possibilities for him to share videos of his speeches and conversations over the years, and open up more about his interests that span a wide range.
In one of the videos, he speaks about how his parents used to often play gramophone records. “One of the earliest records that I can recall is ‘Mahler’s Fourth’,” he said.
“The other records that I can remember are the great Beethoven Ninth, the 1964 version with [conductor Otto] Klemperer and the Philharmonia, and, of course, Aida with Zinka Milanov [soprano]. And with this, of course, one sort of grew into classical music”.
However, he admitted that while he was made to study the piano, it was “not a very happy experience”. “I did fairly well but did not like piano-playing as a result, unfortunately,” he added.
Rig Veda, Ashoka’s rock edict, World War 2
Justice Nariman enrolled as a lawyer in 1979 and was designated a senior advocate at the age of 37, instead of the stipulated 45, as the then Chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachaliah amended the rules in 1993 for him.
He was elevated to the Supreme Court as a judge in July 2014.
It is public knowledge that Justice Nariman was ordained as a Parsi priest at the age of 12, and has a photographic memory, which allows him to talk about dates, anecdotes, events, names, and the minutest details and descriptions of history, literature, law and comparative religion.
For instance, in a lecture from 2019, uploaded earlier this month, he can be seen quoting effortlessly from the Rig Veda, the Old Testament and the Avesta [sacred text of Zoroastrianism], as well as on the idea of reincarnation in all religions.
In another speech from 2018, he spoke about how “the 5th-century BC was a remarkable century”, because “we had great thinkers here in India, the Buddha, the Mahavir; in China, you had Lao Tzu, Confucius; and in Greece, you had Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, all at the same time.”
And, at the end of this speech, he left his audience at the India International Centre in Delhi with another eidetic recollection of the text on Ashoka’s rock edict 12.
“On rock edict 12, Piyadasi, beloved of the God, has this to say: Do not ever extol the virtues of your own sect, you can replace the word sect by religion, and denigrate the sect of others,” he said.
Apart from these, the channel has his speeches on “Philosophy and practice of Zoroastrianism”, World War 2, “Outlines of Persian History — the Achaemenian and Sassanian Empires: Presentation by Rohinton Nariman”, and “Gandhi and mediation”, among other topics.
And while Justice Nariman is not a tech-savvy person, he is not worried about managing the channel.
“I now know that I can upload my speeches,” he said. “I may not do it myself, but I have many young people to help me with that.”
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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