Noted among one of India’s “50 most influential people” by the India Today Magazine of 2004, Mr. Raian Karanjawala is the co-founder of 37-year-old Karanjawala & Company that is widely regarded as one of India’s leading law firms. Mr. Karanjawala is an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce and Government Law College, Mumbai and has a lot to share about his professional and personal life.
Read on as Mr. Karanjawala goes candid about his alma mater, colleagues and his experiences migrating from Delhi to Mumbai.
Q. How did you happen to migrate from Delhi to Mumbai?
A. As I have said in many earlier interviews, Shriram College of Commerce, which I had joined for my B. Com in Delhi was one of the best experiences of my life. I was the captain of the college debating team, I was in student politics, I became President of the college, I organised a festival called “Bonanza 74” and so on. However, the one thing I did not do well in was studies and, at the end of the 3rd Year, I got a third division (which knocked out two of the potential courses of action that I could have taken, namely – either becoming a Chartered Accountant or doing an M.B.A) and left me with Law. However, just that year, Delhi University Law College passed a rule, that you must have a minimum of 50% to be eligible to study over here. So, that left no option insofar as Delhi Law College was concerned, and then I looked at the other options and found, that in Bombay, the premier institution was Government Law College, and they had no such cut-off.
So, I went to Bombay to try and get admission and when over there, I went, as I always did in those days, to my friend, Rohinton’s father, who was like a mentor to me, namely Mr. Fali Nariman. Fali had come down to Bombay for a case at that particular point of time, and I remember going to his suite at the Oberoi and Bapsi, his wife, was also there, and coming to brief Fali was a professor at Government Law College, called Mr. Rafiq Dada, who today is one of the most reputed Senior Advocates of Bombay. Rafiq was there instructing Fali in a case and Bapsi went to Rafiq and said – “look, this is Rohinton’s friend – Raian. He is a very nice boy. You must do your best to get him admitted into Government Law College”. Rafiq helped out, and, as I also had a lot of extra-curricular activities, which were also looked at for admission, I got admission to Government Law College, Bombay in the year 1976. That is how I happened to migrate from Delhi to Mumbai.
Q. Just give an overview of your Law school days and your professional and personal takeaways from your alma mater.
A. Government Law College in Bombay was very different from the colleges of Delhi. It was situated physically just behind old Church Gate station, at a corner of what was called ‘A Road’ and was situated in a very unprepossessing three-storied building. Unlike the colleges of Delhi, there were no lawns on which to play, there was no swimming pool to swim in, nothing; it was just a building. But what Government Law College did have was a lot of history, and it was one of the most reputed legal institutions in the whole of Asia.
Many decades ago, the principal of the college was Prof. (Dr.) B.R. Ambedkar, who had drafted our Indian Constitution. Also, if you look at the alumni of the College, it could boast at least five former Chief Justices of India, starting with the first Chief Justice, Justice Harilal Kania. Then, the ones I remember offhand, are Justice Chandrachud, Justice Bhagwati, Justice Madhukar Kania and Justice Sam Bharucha. If you look at Attorney Generals again, at least five former Attorney Generals stepped out of the gates of Government Law College, including the first Attorney General, Mr. Motilal Setalvad. Then Mr. Soli Sorabjee, Mr. Ashok Desai, Mr. Goolam Vahanvati and Mr. Mukul Rohatgi.
When I joined in 1976, it had Mr. Balsara, as our college principal. We had as our Labour Law teacher, Mr. Wadegaonkar, a blind professor, who used to teach us Labour Law from memory. Then, of course, there was Mr. Rafiq Dada and Mr. Harish Jagtiani, both today are distinguished Senior Advocates, Mr. Ravi Kulkarni, who went on to become a partner in Little & Co. and is now in Khaitan’s, Prof. Shekhar Nafade, Senior Advocate, who practices in the Supreme Court and many others. Mr. Goolam Vahanvati and Mr. Aspi Chinoy had just stopped teaching at that time.
When I stepped into Government Law College, the first person I met was my old friend, Anip Sachthey, who had been with me in Delhi from both school and college. So, as naturally happens when people come from outside, they gravitate towards people they know. Anip was already very friendly with Mukul Rohatgi, who was also from Delhi. So, the three of us got together and became a triumvirate. For those two years, when they were in college along with me, there was virtually not a day when we did not spend time with each other. Mukul used to live at Altamount Road in his uncle’s house in a building called ‘Dilkush’, just opposite Ambani’s house today. Mukul was fortunate as his uncle had put a car his way, and so, almost every evening, he would come and pick us up and we used to go out galivanting together.
Anip used to stay at the ‘C Road hostel’ at Church Gate, and we would often spend our time with him over there or would go and pick him up and then used to go galivanting together, having coffee at either the Oberoi or the Taj or somewhere else. When we used to come back for the summer vacations, both Mukul and I would work in the family business. My father in those days had just started a dealership of ‘Grindwell Norton’ and used to run a hardware shop in Chawri Bazar and Mukul’s grandfather had a textile shop in Chandni Chowk. So, in our summer vacations, both of us used to go to our respective shops and, because the distance between Chawri Bazar and Chandni Chowk was not much, we often met up for lunch. We had a great time together and these were the beginnings of a lifelong friendship.
I met a lot of other interesting people in Government Law College e.g., when the freshers’ debate came up for the first time, I participated in it, and came up against Shardul Shroff of “Shardul Amarchand” and Berjis Desai, the former Managing Partner of “Jyoti Sagar & Co.”. It was a close debate, but I won. Berjis came second and, that began a close friendship between Shardul, Berjis and I. Whilst they may have been behind me in debating, as far as academics were concerned, Shardul and Berjis just dominated the field. Shardul, in our 1st Year, came first class first in the University and Berjis came second. In the 2nd Year, Berjis came first class first and Shardul came second. Everyone was looking forward to seeing who would top in the 3rd Year, but as it so happened in his sixth semester, Shardul got married to Pallavi Shroff (Pallavi Bhagwati in those days), and therefore, he dropped out of that semester and gave his exam in the next semester, as a result of which, Berjis topped that year and (probably because Shardul was out of it) I got a bit of a leg up myself and came fifth in the University. That was the only time I achieved an academic ranking in my life.
There were a lot of other people, with whom I was also friendly. There was Pheroze Sorabjee, Gopal Kamath, Atul Rajadhyaksha, Vasudev Navlani, Kiran Patrawali (who is no more) and of course my close friend, Navroz Seervai (son of the great Constitutional Lawyer, Mr. H.M. Seervai), who I met when he was in Elphinstone, and my other friend from Elphinstone, Maneck Dawar. I also had a few friends, who were studying at Xavier’s College, namely my cousin, Nizwar Karanjawala, Shiavax Vazaifdar, and Amita Kagal. Insofar as the girls of Government Law College were concerned, I was very friendly with Arti Malhotra, Alka Shah, Yaksha Bhat, Bela Shah, Amita Sawant and many more.
The culture in Bombay was very different from that in Delhi in those days. The one important thing about the culture of Bombay was that nobody used to bother about who you were, how rich you were, where you came from, where you lived, or what your parents did. It was about whether they liked you or not, and everyone was on equal terms. Even in those days, when we used to go on dates and things like that, between boys and girls, it was always dutch. The girls always insisted on paying for themselves.
Q. Was there much difference between the atmosphere in Government Law College in Bombay and Shriram College of Commerce at Delhi and was there any important event which took place which you would like to share with us?
A. You see, Government Law College had a slightly different culture. First of all, it had two separate timings. There was a morning college and there was a day college. The morning college started from 7:00 AM to 10:30 AM, and the day college used to start from 10:30 AM to 1:00/1:30 PM, and essentially there were a lot of people who would study and work at the same time; so there was in Bombay at that time, a very professional culture which was inculcated. A lot of people used to finish their college classes and then go to work. In the 3rd Year, everyone was in morning college.
One event that stood out was the elections of 1977. In 1977, Mrs. Gandhi had chosen to lift the Emergency and had chosen to call for elections. So, the students of our college got very active during that election. There was a professor called Harish Jagtiani, who was very close to Mr. Ram Jethmalani. At that time, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, who had been underground in America, had decided to come back to fight the elections. I remember Harish had organized a lot of us, students, about 60 of us, to go in a cavalcade to greet and meet Ram at the airport when he landed. Ram made a small speech at the airport, and from there we went straight to his house at Advent in Church Gate where Ram said that he would contest against H.R. Gokhale, who was then the Law Minister of India. We all dedicated ourselves to campaigning for Ram and Harish called us the “Youth for Janta”. So, in the month before the elections, a lot of students from the Government Law College would troop up every morning (he was contesting I think from constituency North-West), go to Juhu and campaign for Ram, who eventually won.
Q. You discussed the differences that you noticed while shifting from Delhi to Mumbai. How would you describe it in the light of prospective law students that might be seeking to shift from Delhi to Mumbai or Mumbai to Delhi today?
A. Let me tell you, things have greatly changed. When I went to Bombay to study law, it was at Government Law College, by far the best-known college in India for Law. Apart from that, the Bombay Bar was at its zenith. Fali Nariman had shifted, but Sorabjee, Anil Divan, Ashok Desai and Mridul were still practising in the Bombay High Court. All the top lawyers were still there. Commercial work was still very much a repository of the commercial capital, which was Bombay. As a result of that, at that particular time, had I chosen to stay on, it would have perhaps been considered by many to be a sensible decision; but now, when you look back, you find that things have tilted so much in favour of Delhi, that today Delhi is the litigation capital of India. Lots of people study here and the Delhi law colleges are equally good. So, today if someone were to ask, I would just say – if you are studying in Bombay, and you live in Bombay, stay in Bombay because that is an easier city for you to live in. But if you are living in Delhi, then there is no reason for you to shift at all, not today.
