Mind your ‘administrative’ language, Supreme Court report tells judiciary

Halalkhor, Cycle Sawar, Dhobi, Coolie, Scavenger, Masalchi, Malan, Basta Bardhar, Chowkidar, Bundle lifter are some of the job titles a Supreme Court report wants the judiciary to get rid of.

A report from the Supreme Court’s Centre for Research and Planning said these and several other terms used in the administrative language of the courts perpetuate a “grammar of inequality”.

The report, titled ‘Reforming Administrative Nomenclature in the Indian Judiciary Embedding Dignity and Equity in Service Rules’, explained that the ‘grammar of inequality’ referred to “the set of unwritten, hierarchical rules inherited from feudal, colonial, and caste-based systems that structure the judiciary’s administrative nomenclature”.

Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai, in his foreword to the report, said the continued use of this outdated terminology had the “unintended effect of normalising outdated hierarchies and undermining the respectful work culture that the judiciary must uphold”.

‘Significant step’

The Chief Justice, as one of his last acts in office before retiring on November 23, has sent the report to all the State High Courts with a gentle nudge that updating the judiciary’s administrative nomenclature would be a small but significant step towards affirming the worth of every individual working within the judicial system, regardless of rank or role.

The Centre has found that the archaic terminology were once used as “powerful tool of dominance that causes ‘thingification’ of the individual. ‘Halalkhor’ and ‘scavenger’ violate the prohibitions of caste-based discrimination under the Constitution, the report said.

“Align the language of the administration with the language of the Constitution. Close the gap between what the judiciary pronounces and what it practices. Reaffirm that language itself is the judiciary’s first act of justice — an act of recognition, pedagogy, and symbolic justice,” the Supreme Court’s research centre recommended.

To start with, the report said courts must abandon halalkhor for sanitation assistant, dhobi for laundry operator, coolie for freight assistant, cycle sawar for logistics assistant, basta bardar for document handler, bundle lifter for material coordinator, masalchi for kitchen assistant, malan for horticulture attendant, scavenger for sanitation assistant.