/ARTS WEEKLY/INDIA: Court Marks 125th Year, Still No Toilets

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rahul Bedi

MUMBAI, India, Feb 4 2004 (IPS) - When India’s western port city of Mumbai celebrated the 125th anniversary of its colonial high court building in January, thousands of litigants and witnesses that daily throng its cavernous corridors had a simple prayer to their Honourable Justices – provide toilets on the premises.

For them, the stinking, overflowing public pay toilet just outside the awesome three-storied stone Gothic structure that dominates the city’s skyline is the only one that offers immediate relief as they patiently wait, sometimes for months, for the slow wheels of justice to grind.

"The high court’s lack of public toilet facilities and washrooms, especially for ladies, poses a major problem. But being a Heritage building, there are restrictions in constructing any news ones without contravening rules " lawyer Rui Rodrigues said.

Gautam Patel, secretary of the Bombay Bar Association, said it was "shocking" that the city’s trend-setting and highly esteemed high court, built principally for litigants offered them neither toilet nor waiting room facility. " It is not a user-friendly place for outsiders, " he lamented.

Judges, lawyers and court officers, however, face no such discomfort. They have easy access to toilets either in their chambers, the library or Bar Room, places to which public entry is banned. "We do not go to the Oval to relieve ourselves " Bombay’s advocate general Goolam Vahanvati said, referring to the large park adjoining the high court.

And though court officials admitted to feeling " bad " about the lack of public toilets, there appeared to be no imminent plans to redress this shortcoming, despite the much-hyped anniversary celebrations that will include seminars, meetings and book releases.

Designed by Col J A Fuller of the Royal Engineers and completed in early 1878, Bombay’s high court originally housed three judges and along with the handful of practising lawyers, all had voluminous chambers till the 1960s.

Today, however, there are 62 judges and hundreds of lawyers packed into the building whose vast corridors overflow with litigants and its cramped offices, which are spilling over with files and records, some dating back to the 19th century.

But the building is an architectural masterpiece, albeit with a droll touch provided by stone carvings of wolves and foxes with counsel’s bands tied around their necks.

One remarkable specimen depicts a monkey-judge with one eye bandaged, unevenly holding the scales of justice. According to legal folklore, this sculpture emerged after a legal dispute between the high courts European contractor and his Parsee partner over profit sharing, which the latter lost.

As some finishing touches to the building remained, the disgruntled suitor avenged himself permanently upon counsel and judge through the carving.

The absence of public toilet facilities in Bombay’s high court is mirrored in the rest of the country. Less than 25 percent of India’s population of over one billion had access to bathrooms in their homes or to public toilets.

The remainder or around 700 million people routinely relieved themselves in the open, along roadsides, on farmland or in municipal parks. The majority of urinals that are dotted across cities, including the capital New Delhi. are little more than a wall with a drain disappearing into a stinking hole in the ground.

"India is a toilet-less country," said S P Singh of the Delhi-based Sulabh International, possibly the world’s largest non-governmental organisation that has built nearly 1.3 million toilets across the country.

Bindeshwar Pathak, who heads Sulabh, recently told a U.S. newspaper that an ancient Hindu text gave "firm religious sanction" to unsanitary behaviour by forbidding defecation near dwellings. "It’s very difficult to bring it into the homes," he said. It’s a cultural problem in India.