Avani Bansal: Raid on Mehmood Pracha’s Office: India’s Hans Litten Moment?

By Dilip - Monday, December 28, 2020

The Indian legal community seems to have witnessed its own ‘Hans Litten’ moment as Advocate Mehmood Pracha’s office was raided by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police this week. Hitler hated lawyers, but one lawyer whose name couldn’t even be mentioned in Hitler’s presence was that of Hans Achim Litten. He opposed the Nazis at political trials between 1929 and 1932, and was most notably known for his cross-examination of Hitler for about three hours in May 1931 in the Tanzpalast Eden Trial. Of course, it didn’t go down well with Hitler, and in 1937, at the age of 34 years, Litten was sent to a concentration camp. On February 5, 1938, he committed suicide, frustrated by the continuous torture, interrogations and a failed attempt to escape the concentration camp.

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What’s interesting is that in spite of his legacy, it took Germany a long time to truly recognise him and his courage. He got attention only with the 2011 BBC broadcast, The Man Who Crossed Hitler. Now, with the increasing dominance of right-wingism in India, does India really need to repeat Germany's history to understand what’s truly happening in our country? Do we really need more Hans Littens to lose their lives for speaking truth to power? And above all, shouldn’t lawyers - who do their duty of representing clients - be seen as beyond reproach, for representing something fundamental i.e. rule of law?

Even if you are not convinced that lawyers need to be beyond reproach, at least the moral duty that is cast on them as regards protecting the privileged communication with their clients, cannot be stripped away in the way it was done in Mr. Pracha’s case….

https://www.barandbench.com/columns/raid-on-mehmood-prachas-office-indias-hans-litten-moment

NB: Here's an interesting citation from an important book on Nazism written in the 1930’s:

Franz Neumann, Behemoth, The Structure and Practice of National Socialism; (1942; repub 1963, p 27). (The counter revolution) ‘…tried many forms and devices, but soon learned that it could come to power only with the help of the state machine and never against it… the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and the Hitler Pustch of 1923 had proved this.. In the centre of the counter revolution stood the judiciary. Unlike administrative acts, which rest on considerations of convenience and expediency, judicial decisions rest on law, that is on right and wrong, and they always enjoy the limelight of publicity. Law is perhaps the most pernicious of all weapons in political struggles, precisely because of the halo that surrounds the concepts of right and justice…

‘Right’, Hocking has said, ‘is psychologically a claim whose infringement is met with a resentment deeper than the injury would satisfy, a resentment that may amount to passion for which men will risk life and property as they would never do for an expediency’. When it becomes ‘political’, justice breeds hatred and despair among those it singles out for attack. Those whom it favours, on the other hand, develop a profound contempt for the very value of justice, they know that it can be purchased by the powerful. As a device for strengthening one political group at the expense of others, for eliminating enemies and assisting political allies, law then threatens the fundamental convictions upon which the tradition of our civilization rests… DS

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