Oh My Lord!

An old debate centering round court etiquette in the country took a new turn on Monday when a full court of the Rajasthan High Court resolved to do away with the salutations “My Lord” and “Your Lordship” from courtroom protocol. A notification issued by the Rajasthan High Court on July 15 referred to a meeting of its full court held a day earlier, and said that the court had unanimously resolved to request the counsels and lawyers and all those who appear before the Court to desist from addressing the judges as “My Lord” and “Your Lordship”. It was a decision taken to honour the mandate of equality enshrined in the Constitution of India, the full court has said. Addressing judges with salutations ‘My Lord” and “Your Lordship” is a practice in India that has inherited it from British rule. Media reports quoting the Rajasthan High Court notification, however, said that the expression “Your Honour” however, remains unaffected by the order. This, however, is not the first time that a court has passed such an order doing away with the two terms of salutation inherited from the colonial past. Way back in 2014, a senior advocate had filed a PIL with the Supreme Court praying for a ban on the archaic expressions. Then Supreme Court judges HL Dattu and SA Bobde had, however, rejected the petition, but not before saying that the terms “My Lord” and “Your Lordship” had never been compulsory in India. Justice Dattu and Justice Bobde had also observed that those indeed were relics of a colonial era. In this context, it is however interesting to look at what they say in the United Kingdom. According to the official website of the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary in the UK, judges of the Court of Appeals and the High Court are to be addressed in court as “My Lord” or “My Lady”, Circuit judges as “Your Honour”, Magistrates as “Your Worship”, or “Sir” or “Madam”, and District judges and Tribunal judges as “Sir” or “Madam”. In the US, on the other hand, lawyers and all other people can comfortably address a Chief Justice as “Mr so-and-so”, while all others are referred to as “Justice so-and-so” or “Your Honor”. But then, if addressing a judge as “My Lord” and/or “Your Lordship” is a colonial legacy, what happens to people in India, especially those who follow Hinduism, who address religious leaders and preachers with salutations like “Bhagawan” and “Prabhu” and “Prabhu-Ishwar” and so on?