AT A CONVERSATION organised by The Leaflet in December 2024, Justice Gautam Patel asked Professor Upendra Baxi what three things a citizen wants from a judge in the Indian judiciary. Baxi’s answer was simple, “Spine, Spine, Spine!” It is this quality that Professor Amita Dhanda sets out to trace in her biography of Justice M.N. Rao, a man who over the course of his career assumed the varied roles of a Judge, Law Secretary, Senior Advocate, and the Chairperson of the Backward Class Commission.
Although Justice Rao published his memoir, ‘Glimpses from the Recital of My Life,’ in 2021, the present book is less interested in reminiscence than in reckoning. Organised into seven chapters, it follows the major phases of his career in roughly chronological sequence, showing how each role informed the next and together shaped what she calls the “Renaissance Man of Law.”
The Law Secretary
As the Law Secretary to undivided Andhra Pradesh between 1979 and 1983, Justice Rao worked with five Chief Ministers. Professor Dhanda highlights the demands of the role, which included drafting legislation, shaping litigation policy, and articulating legal understanding with clarity.
Professor Dhanda portrays Justice Rao as a judge who resisted both excessive deference to the State and reflexive distrust of it.
One striking example involves the rampant misuse of ordinances. During Chief Minister Anjaiah’s tenure, a notification for Panchayat Raj Elections was issued that included reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but the statutory period permitting such reservations had long expired. A petition had already been filed in the High Court challenging the notification, leaving the government in a no-win situation. It was Justice M.N. Rao who effectively stepped in and advised the promulgation of an ordinance with retrospective effect increasing the period of reservation by ten years.
The Judge
Justice Rao’s judicial career is presented as a progression from a District Judge, to Chairman of the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal, to Judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, and finally Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court.
Professor Dhanda foregrounds the distinctive role of trial courts as primary finders of fact, where judges have the advantage of directly observing the parties and witnesses. One particularly unusual case from Justice Rao’s tenure as District Judge involved an intoxicated man who had raped his daughter and was later found burnt to death, allegedly by his own wife. Justice Rao took the uncharted course of acquitting the wife as there was no direct evidence against her, and ruled that the man had died by suicide since, while on fire, he was heard screaming that he was “reaping the wages of the sin he had committed,” alluding to the responsibility he took for what happened to him. This decision was later upheld by both the High Court and the Supreme Court. It reflects the book’s broader argument that Justice Rao often looked beyond mechanical legal formalism in pursuit of substantive justice.
Justice M.N. Rao also served as a Judge at the Andhra Pradesh High Court for more than a decade, delivering more than 200 judgments on issues including equality of opportunity and personal liberty. Professor Dhanda portrays him as a judge who resisted both excessive deference to the State and reflexive distrust of it. His subsequent elevation as Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court receives comparatively less attention in the book, although Professor Dhanda uses that phase to demonstrate how Justice Rao balanced judicial independence with the institutional responsibilities of court administration.
Professor Dhanda describes Justice M.N. Rao’s tenure as Chairperson of the Backward Class Commission as a reflection of his long-standing commitment to addressing caste discrimination.
The Senior Advocate
Returning to the Bar after demitting judicial office, Justice Rao, Professor Dhanda notes, brought the perspective of a former judge to advocacy. He appeared as a Senior Advocate in 165 cases. Among the most significant was the Karamchedu Massacre case, which arose out of caste-based violence. She recounts that, despite more than twenty-five years having elapsed since the incident, Justice Rao persuaded the Supreme Court to hear the case by highlighting serious errors in the High Court’s judgment.
Another case discussed by Professor Dhanda concerns the pension of High Court judges directly appointed from the Bar. The dispute arose because their years of practice as advocates were not counted towards pension, resulting in lower pensions than judges who had risen through the judicial service. Justice Rao appeared in the matter, and the Supreme Court ultimately held that there was no rational basis for counting the prior judicial service of one class of judges while excluding the years spent in legal practice by those appointed directly from the Bar for the purpose of pension fixation.
The Chairperson
Professor Dhanda describes Justice M.N. Rao’s tenure as Chairperson of the Backward Class Commission from 2010 to 2013 as a reflection of his long-standing commitment to addressing caste discrimination. He accepted the position only after receiving an assurance from the then Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment that the Commission would soon be given constitutional status and that its recommendations would become binding.
However, Professor Dhanda notes that the Commission’s functioning fell short of the reform-oriented vision Justice Rao had for it. The Commission could do nothing more than hear complaints concerning the over- or under-inclusion of communities, with the Union Government under no obligation to follow its recommendations. The Commission acquired constitutional status only in 2018 through the Constitution (One Hundred and Second Amendment) Act, though its recommendations remained non-binding.
The final chapters examine Justice Rao as a public intellectual and philanthropist. Professor Dhanda discusses his lectures and books on democracy and dissent, environmental protection, constitutional law and social justice, noting that questions of caste recur throughout his scholarship. She also traces his philanthropic initiatives, particularly in promoting girls’ education and instituting awards to recognise individuals, organisations and teachers committed to social betterment.
Professor Dhanda opens her chapter on Justice Rao as a judge with the exchange between Justice Patel and Professor Baxi with which this review began, and it is not difficult to see why. Across every role the book chronicles, the quality Professor Baxi identified remains constant. More importantly, Professor Dhanda shows how that same spine took different forms depending on the demands of each office. That is the real argument of the book, and it is a persuasive one.
The book does not mythologise its subject. Instead, it lets the roles speak for themselves, revealing a consistency of character that is rare in public life. Professor Dhanda has written a biography that is as much about what the law demands of its practitioners as it is about one man’s answer to that demand.
M. N. Rao: The Renaissance Man of Law is written by Professor Amita Dhanda and published by Eastern Book Company. The book is available through the EBC Webstore.