Frames per Second: Banality of Law

Chaitanya Tamhane's Court has eerie echoes for our contemporary times

Early in Chaitanya Tamhane-directed Court (2014), lawyer Vinay Vora (Vivek Gomber) describes a modus operandi of the police he has observed in several cases where innocent people are framed. A Muslim man is arrested on suspicion of being involved in a terror plot. His bail is denied, and he is kept in jail for several months or years as his case drags on. Finally, the accused is released for the paucity of evidence. But he is arrested almost immediately on a completely different case. Even as he describes this to an audience at the Mumbai Press Club, Vora is getting embroiled in another such case.

This time, Vora’s client is a folk singer, Narayan Kamble (Vira Sathidar). Kamble is picked up by the police from a cultural meet organised on the outskirts of Mumbai to protest against a massacre of Dalits. He is charged with abetment of suicide of Vasudev Pawar, a human scavenger who died while cleaning a manhole. (India has outlawed manual scavenging but it continues to be a common practice.) The police claim that Pawar had committed suicide after listening to one of Kamble’s songs. As the case continues, it becomes evident that there is no merit in it. Vora manages to get Kamble released on bail. 

But he is arrested almost immediately, accused of running camps for seditious elements, and charged with the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. This is the same law under which several accused of the Bhima Koregaon case have been charged.  

Bhima Koregaon is a large village about 40 km from Pune where hundreds of thousands of Dalit-Bahujans assemble every year on January 1 to commemorate the victory of the British over the Maratha army in 1818. The British army had a contingent of Dalit soldiers who fought against the upper-caste army of the Peshwa. In 2018, a larger-than-usual crowd had gathered to mark the 200th anniversary of the victory. The gathering was allegedly attacked by an upper-caste mob of right-wing groups, leading to a riot. Hindutva leaders Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide were accused of triggering the riots by several anti-caste activists. Ekbote was arrested and then released on bail; no action has been taken against Bhide so far.

On the other hand, an FIR lodged by Pune-based businessman Tushar Damgude has been the basis of the investigation conducted by the Pune police and the National Investigation Agency. They have arrested human rights activists, lawyers, scholars — 16 so far — who have been accused of triggering violence, of being “Urban Maoists”, and even plotting the assassination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A few of them have been in jail — some in deplorable conditions — for more than two years now. January 1, 2021, was the third anniversary of the event.

Director Tamhane chooses a deliberate pace for Court, possibly in an attempt to let the audience experience the painfully slow legal process. Some of the action is humorous, some absurd, such as when the judge (Pradeep Joshi) refuses to hear a case because the appellant has come wearing a sleeveless dress. But, more than the action, the camerawork of cinematographer Mrinal Desai and editing by Rikhav Desai create a suffocating atmosphere. The camera is mostly still — it could be the perspective of someone sitting in court and watching the proceedings dispassionately. The cuts, when they occur, are imperceptible, unless one is actually looking out for them.

While the case proceeds in court, the camera follows the main protagonists — defence lawyer Vora, prosecutor Nutan (Geetanjali Kulkarni), and judge Sadavarte — outside. Their lives are astonishingly commonplace. Vora, who is from a rich Gujarati family, hangs out in upscale restaurants with friends or family, is harangued by his parents for not getting married, and likes to drink wine while watching the evening news. The judge goes to a beach resort with his family and friends; he advises an acquaintance on astrology; discusses good career prospects for children (MBA, engineering). He falls asleep in the afternoon on a park bench and scolds children playing nearby for disturbing his nap.

Perhaps more interesting is the character of Nutan. We see her travelling to the suburbs on a local train, discussing if she should be using olive oil and mixed grain, picking up her son from a daycare, cooking dinner for her family — husband, son, and daughter. On the weekend, she and her husband take the children out for lunch and then to watch a play with pronounced anti-immigrant propaganda. She works on her briefs after dinner. There is absolutely no evil in her. 

But, in a conversation with her colleagues, where she discusses the Kamble case, she says: “Simply throw him in jail for 20 years and finish the matter.” At this point, Kamble is charged with abetment of suicide, which draws a maximum sentence of 10 years under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code. Her casual disregard for due process and justice is not the result of any inherent malice, but from what Hannah Arendt would describe as the banality of evil. The judges and lawyers — even defence lawyer Vora — are not evil, they are even kind and generous in their personal lives, but they are also essential clogs in the crushing terror of legal bureaucracy. As we see in the case of Kamble and others, its pincer grip is even more terrifying as it is banal.

The writer’s latest publication is a novel, Ritual (2020).