MAHATMA Gandhi was a lawyer; so was Mohammad Ali Jinnah. They collectively fought for freedom from colonialism albeit in their own different ways. Then they fell apart and carved out two different states where there was one.

Watching the lawyers as they led the heavily televised movement for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, the Jinnah-Gandhi equation inevitably comes to mind.

Ideologically speaking, lawyers are a mixed basket as few other professionals are. They could argue successfully for the idea of Pakistan. They made a sound case for a secular India. And then, within their respective domains thus carved out, they could just as easily refract again into a multi-hued ideological rainbow, from the left to the right of the spectrum. If the lawyers protesting against Pakistan’s emergency rule, for example, came from different strands of the ideological skein, legal luminaries who supported the military-backed government, though evidently fewer, had their own ideological axes to grind in the raging controversy.

The outcome was not dissimilar to the way the cookie has crumbled in India. Take Sushma Swaraj or Arun Jaitley from the religious right of India’s political stable or Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the notionally centrist Congress. They are all lawyers who quibble with words as spokesmen of their respective parties. Their job is to keep the discussion light, even entertaining, about vague notions of law and nationhood.

They are evasive on substantive issues, say about economic policies or about proximity to the United States or the increasing distance from Iran. What they are more likely to discuss is this. Did Sonia Gandhi call Narendra Modi a merchant of death? Did Narendra Modi admit that his government indulged in fake encounters to hunt alleged terrorists? Little do they accept or understand that these are asinine questions to pose or respond to when the speeches thus referred to were actually watched on television by everyone.

Popular writer Khushwant Singh recalls in his autobiography Truth, Love and a Little Malice, how and why he gave up the legal profession after Partition in 1947. His version of Akbar Allahabadi’s verse to justify his decision is slightly different from the one I am familiar with. He says: Paida huaa vakeel, tau Iblees nay kahaa: ‘Allah nay mujhey sahib-i-awlaad kar diya’ (The day a lawyer was born, Satan exulted: ‘Allah has blessed me with progeny of my own’).

On the other hand, Harper Lee’s account (in To Kill a Mockingbird) of Atticus, the fair-minded lawyer who fights the white man’s racism in America begins with a quote from Charles and Mary Lamb: “Lawyers were children once.”

Lawyers create their spaces in democratic and fascist states alike. Take the case of the destruction of the video recordings of terror investigations by the CIA, anchor of the world’s most powerful democracy. It was lawyers within the clandestine branch of the CIA who gave written approval in advance to the destruction in 2005 of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting interrogations of two lieutenants from Al Qaeda.

According to The New York Times, the involvement of agency lawyers in the decision-making would widen the scope of the inquiries into the matter that have now begun in Congress and within the Justice Department. Any written documents in particular are certain to be a focus of government investigators as they try to reconstruct the events leading up to the tapes’ destruction. So we shall wait and watch the denouement of this shaping battle between lawyers and lawmakers.

In Germany, shortly before it plunged headlong into fascism, Hitler was incarcerated for staging the Beer Hall Putsch of Nov 8, 1923. He was sentenced to five years. Instead of forcing Hitler to serve his entire sentence as a prisoner, the prison governor, Oberregierungsrat Leybold, wrote of Hitler’s excellent prison behaviour and became his advocate. Leybold cooperated with Hitler’s lawyers to successfully procure his release on Dec 20, 1924.

Leybold’s brief on Hitler’s behalf resembles a familiar trend favoured by lawyers who seek to explain off brazen criminality in light of nationalist fervour. “Hitler has shown himself to be an orderly, disciplined prisoner, not only in his own person, but also with reference to his fellow prisoners, among whom he has preserved good discipline,” said the statement that eventually won the Nazi leader easy reprieve. “He is amenable, unassuming, and modest. He has never made exceptional demands, conducts himself in a uniformly quiet and reasonable manner, and has put up with the deprivations and restrictions of imprisonment very well.”

The law profession finds frequent mention in Shakespeare, though not always a positive one. The bard may not have studied at a law school. But the legal terms used in his plays suggest that he was familiar with the language of the lawyers. Portia in Merchant of Venice became a universal heroine by her court craft, even if her command to Shylock — “Tarry a little old Jew” — got the play banned in Israel. The legal jargon in Hamlet’s speech in Act 5 is especially impressive.

“Why, may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillits, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this mad knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?”

Measure for Measure is an ideal play for lawyers. It raises fundamental questions of law and morality. Legal themes permeate the play and rivet the attention of both lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Or take Henry VI, where Warwick holds forth on his views of lawyers thus:

“Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye; I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.”

Yet few among Shakespeare’s characters have been as forthright as the butcher in Henry VI was when he advised Jack Cade thus: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Mercifully that was just a Shakespearean rebuke and not any state policy.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in New Delhi.

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