‘I tried my best to be objective’

On his biography of the jurist and former attorney general of India

1 What took you by surprise as you learnt more about Soli Sorabjee in the course of your research for this book?

While researching the book, I was surprised by two things in particular. First, I was quite interested to see Sorabjee’s win-loss ratio as a lawyer. As a private lawyer, he won about 50% of his cases, but as a law officer, he won about 70%. These were, of course, cases which were reported in the law reports, and I collected the data myself. Surely his advocacy skills did not improve each time he became a law officer. Secondly, I was quite fascinated by Sorabjee’s trajectory as a junior lawyer. At 34, the Supreme Court gave him his first reported judgment in a case he had argued himself. However, only a few years later, by the age of 37, some 50% of his reported judgments came from the Supreme Court alone. In other words, 14 years into his law practice, he already had a substantial foothold in the Supreme Court. His practice took off thereafter once he got his own chamber on the Bombay high court premises at the age of 38.

2 Did you come across any stories that you found interesting but could not include due to space constraints?

There were many aspects of Sorabjee’s life that I was not able to write about due to constraints of space and time. Interestingly, when Sorabjee was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2002, he lost the award at Rashtrapati Bhavan, after the ceremony (Sorabjee believed that it had been stolen by someone). He was eventually sent a replacement. His love of jazz music and support for jazz musicians was something that I wish I was able to say more about. He supported a famous Indian saxophone player, Rudy Cotton, when he fell on hard times. I have only briefly touched on Sorabjee’s international experience. My book focuses on Sorabjee’s professional life, not his personal life. I was also not able to sufficiently cover the last 15 years of his life, after he stepped down as attorney general.

3 Was it hard to write this book since you knew Sorabjee personally, and were helping him put together his autobiography?

Broadly speaking, biographers are of two kinds: those who cannot help but develop a deep sense of admiration for their subjects, and those who detest their subjects; imagine writing a biography of Hitler, for instance. After all, if you are going to devote a year (often, several years) of your life to writing a biography, it is difficult to do so if you do not have strong emotions, positive or negative, concerning the person you are writing about. Both kinds of biographers, however, have to write objectively and develop a sense of distance between themselves and their subjects. I tried my best to be objective about Sorabjee, though I certainly admired him. Interestingly, one of the best biographies written in India is a biography of President S Radhakrishnan by his son, S Gopal.

One can only imagine how difficult it must have been for S Gopal to write an objective biography of his father.