Karnataka High Court bench pronounces order in Kannada, says language must be recognised

Stepping aside from the usual practice of pronouncing judgments in the English, a Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court on Thursday pronounced an order in a matter in Kannada [Nanjavudootha Swamiji v. S Linganna]..A Bench of Justices Krishna S Dixit and CM Joshi pronounced its order on a matter pertaining to granting probate of a will.The judges authored the same judgment in two languages - Kannada and English.Before pronouncing the order, Justice Dixit said, “We in fact, want to set a new trend...If Kannada is not to die out, then Kannada should be recognised.”.Justice Joshi too chipped in and said, “We give all our judgments in English. If we do this, how will the common people understand? In England, court proceedings were conducted in Latin until 1730. Thereafter, a law was made that the orders and judgments of the English court should be given in the local language. Therefore, since 1730, proceedings in England have been conducted in English.”He pointed out that all judgments of the Supreme Court and the high Courts were written and pronounced in English. While the Supreme Court had consistently encouraged the translation of such judgments in regional languages, they were authored only in English, the judge said.“This was done with the intention that everyone should understand. However, we ourselves do not know the Kesavananda Bharati judgment in Kannada. You (the lawyers) can know. We should know the operative part at least in Kannada. Then the litigants will understand the judgment,” he said.The Court also said that while Article 348(1)(a) of the Constitution mandated that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High Court, shall be in English language, it did not say that they should be in “English only.”.The Bench also revealed that it had written the same order twice, once in English and then in Kannada.“This is not a translation. We have written it in Kannada. Just like how poet Rabindranath Tagore used to write poems in Bengali and English,” the Bench said.With the consent of the Governor and the Chief Justice, regional languages too can be used in High Courts, the judges said..At the end of the pronouncement, Justice Joshi read out the operative part of the judgment in English..The advocates present in the Court lauded the judges’ initiative and said that even the common man will be able to understand its judgments. They expressed the hope that other judges of the High Court will be inspired to do the same.Justice Dixit then said, “We do not know about that, but we have done our part.”.Back in 2008, Justice Arali Nagaraj had pronounced a verdict in Kannada.In 2010, then Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa had made a special mention in a public speech and commended Justice Nagaraj for delivering the verdict in the regional language.