Mahatma Gandhi has been recognised throughout the world as a glorious symbol of truth and non-violence. He laid great emphasis on the purity of means for achievement of noble ends. Truth is as old as the Himalayas. Everyone knows its value and strength but Gandhiji applied it in every aspect of his life and proved that one could achieve success even in the most difficult areas of his activities by sticking to truth. There is an erroneous belief that to be a successful lawyer one has to twist facts and sometimes present certain facts which are not wholly true. But this was not so with Gandhiji. He had been in search of truth from his early life. There are a number of incidents in his life which go to show that he followed the path of truth even in the face of numerous difficulties. He disproved the theory that without using untruth no one could be a successful lawyer. He held that ‘it was not impossible to practice law without compromising truth’.
He had expressed that in England and South Africa lawyers were consciously or unconsciously led into untruth for the sake of their clients. He vehemently opposed an English lawyer when he advocated that the duty of a lawyer was to defend a client even if he knew that he was guilty. Gandhi on the other hand was emphatic that the duty of a lawyer was to place correct facts before the judge and to help him to arrive at the truth, and not to prove the guilty as innocent.
* Research Officer, (Law) U.P. Government
** This Article was first published in Supreme Court Cases (1970) 1 SCC J-7. It has been reproduced with the kind permission of Eastern Book Company
