Studying Law continues...

Once a person came from Europe and gave a memory performance at the F. C. College. Hardayal repeated the performance at the Indian Association rooms near the Government College hostel the next evening. He had gone to England as a state scholar and joined Cambridge. There he had come in contact with some Indian revolutionaries whereupon he left Cambridge, and became a political sanyasi. He returned to India in I910 and stayed with Bakshi Tek Chand for some time. We became great friends. I tried to persuade him to take some good food but he insisted on keeping to dal and phulka on the ground that he needed to accustoming himself to food given in jails as he might soon have to go there! Soon however he had to leave for England. On account of his political activities he had to remain an exile on the continent and England. His entry to India was banned. I met him in England in 1932. He was living in great poverty then. Ultimately the ban on his entry in India was removed, but unfortunately before he could return home he died. I learned a good deal from Hardayal. I was lucky to have made his friendship.

The two years spent in Law College were educative. I took to law with zest. I had hated mathematics all through my student life, but I had read history, economics and chemistry. My new-found love of law overrode all my earlier interest in other subjects. Leading books on International law and Constitutional law, Hindu law and other subjects, I studied over and above the prescribed courses. Most of my fellow students in the law college contented
themselves with abbreviated pamphlets prepared by several men of law for making it easier for students to pass their examination.

You could learn them by heart and pass the examination. My friends were sarcastic at my preference for reading original books on legal subjects. Lala Jagan Nath did the same and he made me also read all of them, Dicey on Conflict of laws, Leak on Contract, Holland on Jurisprudence and similar other works.


to be continued.....