PRABHANDHAK SAMITI Vs. ZILA VIDYALAYA NIRIKSHAK ALLAHABAD

JUDGEMENT

(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).

(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.