V.R. Krishna Iyer: Splendour of Humanism and Justice

Erathara Xavier Joseph is a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India. But his life has been amazingly varied and he has made a mark in a number of fields. His poem on Blue Mountaisn is Wordsworthian while those romantic verses on innocence and The Beginning roll between heaven and earth too sublime for easy description. The last poem has the splendid profundity of Rabindranath's Gitanjali. He started practice in 1976 in the Supreme Court of India when Justice Krishna Iyer was a Judge of the Supreme Court. He was designated as a Senior Advocate in 1993. He has been Standing Counsel of the Union of India in the Delhi High Court and the Central Administrative Tribunal, Senior Counsel of the Union of India, Railway Ministry, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, The Central Social Welfare Board. In private practice he was a dedicated fighter for employees' and workers' rights. He has practised law strictly adhering to ethics and justice and this earned him a great reputation among lawyers, judges and litigants. Before entering the legal profession, Joseph was the Chief Editor of the Weekly "Century" founded by V.K. Krishna Menon. He wrote extensively on national and international affairs. His editorial on Bangladesh was appreciated by Jaiprakash Narain. His poem "Bangladesh" was appreciated by Mujibur Rahman. Indira Gandhi had conveyed to an M.P. her liking of the poem which Joseph wrote on Jawaharlal Nehru after his death,. 'Red Roses Bloom in the Abode of Peace'. After Krishna Menon's death, the weekly was closed down and Joseph, who was made to study law by Krishna Menon, joined the legal profession. During the eyars 1957 to 1967, Joseph was a hero of the Central Government Employees' movement. As Secretary General of All India Audit and Accounts Association, he led a unique fight against authoritarianism. In a leading case in constitutional law O.K. Ghosh V.E.X. Joseph, the Supreme Court struck down the rule denying the employees the right of demonstration and membership of the Union of the choice. He was also the Secretary of the Confederation of Central Government Employees and was one of the leaders of the 1960 strike and was jailed in Arthur Road Prison in Bombay under the Preventive Detention Act, alongwith the cream of the trade union leadership of Bombay including George Fernandus and many others. when his mission of establishing the trade union rights of the employees was fulfilled, he left Central Government Service and the trade union movement and joined Krishna Menon. He declined the request of the trade unions of Kochi, his home town, in 1967 to contest for the Loksabha. He was considerably influenced in his early eyars by the American poet, Walt Whitman and the great thinker, J. Krishnamurthi. Possibly common intellectual pursuits brought him close to Justice Krishna Iyer to be near whom he has Menon Memorial Society, V.K. Krishna Menon Educational Initiative and the Human Rights Initiative in Kerala. He now practices int he Kerala High Court, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India. Joseph Lives in Kerala in Udayamperoor Village near Kochi, with his wife, Kalpana, who is an Educational consultant. His two daughters live in USA, Kavitha with her husband Sathyakumar Natarajan and their two daughters Arundhati and Anjali, and Priyadarshini, with her husband, Thomas.