UK law body reinstates Indian barrister after 100 years

Over a century after Indian barrister and nationalist leader Shyamji Krishna Varma was disbarred from one of the UK’s leading law society for advocating independence for India, he has been posthumously reinstated.

Varma was disbarred by London’s Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in 1909 for conduct unbecoming a barrister following the publication of a letter in the Times in which he protested the right of Indians to free themselves from British rule.

“The Benchers of the Inner Temple decided that Varma should be reinstated as a member of the Inn in recognition of the fact that the cause of Indian home rule, for which he fought, was not incompatible with membership of the Bar and that by modern standards he did not receive an entirely fair hearing,” said the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London.

His reinstatement is also intended as a mark of the Inn’s commitment to the principle of free speech, the Inn said in its statement.

“The Inn hopes that the reinstatement of Shyamji Krishna Varma will further strengthen its existing links with its many Indian members in this country and abroad,” it said.

In 1988, the Inn reinstated Mahatma Gandhi whom it had also disbarred as a result of his political activities in support of Indian independence.

Varma, who was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, established India House in Highgate, north London, as a base for Indian students studying in England and was the founder of the Indian Home Rule Society. He was the first Indian ever to be called to the bar in 1884. He published articles critical of British rule in India in a magazine, Indian Sociologist which he had founded.