For some years now, I had been feeling that I would be writing this tribute to Abdul Gafoor (yes, without the h) Noorani. And, so I had been badgering him to let me sit down with him and record the story of his life. I wanted to know about his childhood, his growing years, and the major influences on his life and thought, as he became a lawyer and a constitutional thinker. But modest to a fault, he refused to entertain the idea and quickly changed the subject. So this is an unapologetically personal reminiscence. “Call me Gafoor”, he commanded, and that’s how I will refer to him here.
What we know about him is very much in the public domain. His close association with Sheikh Abdullah, his deep interest in the Kashmir question, his commitment to the cause of civil liberties, and his four-month preventive detention in 1965. He will be remembered for his closely argued columns over the decades. He wrote magisterial works on subjects, ranging from Kashmir and Hyderabad to the RSS to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar to constitutional traditions, etc.
I started reading Gafoor’s columns at the age of 12, which is also when I started reading newspapers avidly. Through his columns, I developed an understanding of the political issues of the day and of the meaning of constitutional values. Among the earliest books of his which I read, when I was still an undergraduate student, was Ministers’ Misconduct (1973). And through my years as a lawyer, I read his columns wherever they appeared, and his many scholarly works.
It was sometime in 2013, when I was nearing 60 that my office received a call from “Koi Noorani Sahib, Bombay se (some gentleman named Noorani from Bombay)”. The request was for me to call him back, and go see him in room no. 38 of the India International Centre.
I couldn’t believe my ears. I was thrilled at the thought that he had heard of me, and that he actually wanted to see me. And so, there I was that evening in his room, gazing in awe at one of my heroes. It turned out that he had been following my work over the years ,and he asked me many questions. He was particularly interested in my work as amicus curiae in the Gulbarg Society case.
This was the beginning of a strong friendship (oh, how I wish I had got to know him earlier). We kept in touch regularly and I always met him in Delhi and during my visits to Bombay. Though I knew that he was a great foodie, me being largely vegetarian could be the reason why he didn’t take me on his food expeditions to Old Delhi, as he took Siddharth Varadarajan.
A stickler for punctuality
The fact that he was a difficult person and quick to take offence was something I had known over the years from senior lawyers like Soli Sorabjee and Ashok Desai, whose contemporary he was at the Bombay bar. He was known to be choosy about his friends and is known to have broken friendships over issues which others might have thought of as trivial. Gafoor was one of the Bombay intellectuals whom Khushwant Singh had befriended when he moved there in the late 1960s to take over as the Editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India. Khushwant Singh recalled ruefully that he was cut off because of a single unreturned phone call.
It was therefore with some trepidation that I approached him in 2016 to write a foreword to my then forthcoming collection of articles – I’ve been around for some time, 2017. I feared that I might be ticked off for being presumptuous, but to my pleasant surprise, he agreed and wrote it graciously, including some kind words about me. And not just that, he made it a point to come to Delhi to attend the book release.
And thereby hangs another tale. The book was to be released by Soli Sorabjee, who was an important professional mentor of mine. Soli and Gafoor had not spoken to each other for decades, but I was hugely relieved to find that both of them – probably to spare me any embarrassment – acknowledged each other’s presence with a modicum of cordiality.
On 5 August, 2019, Jammu & Kashmir lost its special status along with its statehood. I appeared in a couple of habeas corpus petitions, including one by CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury challenging the house arrest of the sole CPI(M) MLA of Kashmir, Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami.
In an unusual order, the Supreme Court bench headed by then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, instead of asking the State to justify the detention, permitted Yechury to visit Srinagar to see Tarigami. Gafoor called me to express his anguish about how the Supreme Court could follow such an unusual course in a habeas corpus petition – it is a different matter that Yechury became the first national political leader to visit Srinagar after 5 August, thanks to that order.
In another petition by Iltija Mufti, daughter of Mehbooba Mufti, specifically asking for permission to visit her mother, Justice Gogoi flippantly asked why she wanted to visit Kashmir when it was cold there. In a trenchant piece for the Frontline titled ‘Habeas corpus law: A sorry decline’, Gafoor strongly argued that “the Gogoi court has, at reckless speed, run a coach and four through the centuries-old established law on habeas corpus.”
When petitions were filed challenging the alteration of Jammu & Kashmir’s special status, the first petitioner, Shah Faesal – who, alas, beat a hasty retreat later – came to see me and told me that Gafoor had specifically told him to come and see me. In retrospect, maybe in my vanity, I believe that Gafoor might have been responsible for me being asked to be lead counsel in the first round of hearings in that case.
He remained single all his life. Khushwant Singh recounts that some time in the 1970s he had tried to set him up with a prominent woman journalist of the times. Gafoor was willing to consider the idea, and he and the lady were to meet in the lobby of what was then the Oberoi Intercontinental. But the lady arrived a few minutes late, and a stickler for punctuality that he was, the story ended.
The author is a senior Advocate in the Supreme Court of India. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)