The man whom no one took to court

Eapen Mottakose woke up the nation on the day he took his home town of Chullimanoor to court His charge was that Chullimanoor was guilty of not having taken him to court firstAs no advocate was willing to defend Mottakosersquos case in court he pleaded on his own behalf and his impassioned oratory was recorded in most national dailies including the Malayala ManoramaldquoYour Honourabilityrdquo he said tears streaming down his face ldquoas the eldest issue of the Mottakose family I have brought up my seven brother and four sisters like my own progeny since my late father became late We began disputing the division of family property in 1981 The dispute developed satisfactorily and within a few years most of them had filed court cases against each otherldquoYour Honourability despite all that I have done for my family none of them has thought me worth filing a case against I am a judicial outcast This is my final recourse If they will not take me to court I will take them to courtrdquoDoubtless you are perplexed So was I when I first met Keralarsquos Litigation Syndrome But thanks to people like Eapen Mottakose who I met in a filter coffee shop in Matunga I have an appreciation of the phenomenon and of course its cureKerala is a fillet of land shaped much like its own stunted ushi chillies Bounded to the west by the western ghats its habitable area is just a coastal strip along the statersquos length Combine this with a large literate and wealthy population of joint families and you have a state where every square inch is owned by someone or the otherFamilies that havenrsquot found the occasion to take someone to court over a property dispute are considered nearly illiterate Fortunately the opportunity arises when property is being divided up and everyone sues everyone else Families that simultaneously manage between seven and twelve court cases under one roof come under the top bracket of social distinction in Kerala perceived as highly literate in an already highly literate stateldquoMy last but one brother Manickam offered to take the last but one sister Charu to court for willfully eroding his topsoil making jackfruit cultivation impossible There was great excitement in our familyWith eight cases we would be neck to neck with the Chief Minister himself However Manickam got married to a nice girl from Thiruvayur and forgot all about itrdquoIn all this it was Mottakose himself who was neglected He would sit forlorn and dejected while his brothers conducted heated discussions peppered with words like tu toque sui generis mala fide quid pro quo and status quoldquoWhen I tried to join the conversation they would shut me up by saying that the matter was sub judicerdquo he said miserably He was an outcast almost by lawTrying to attract litigation he let his bull walk all over Kichursquos tapioca fieldldquoBut Kichu mistook the culprit and started litigation against Chellu making him a herordquo As for Mottakose he was fired his wife stopped talking to him and his children shunned himThis was when he decided to do something drastic However the historic case of Mottakose vs the People of Chullimanoor also backfired The case was dismissed with Mottakose declared to be of unsound mind and by implication I suppose bodyI easily persuaded Mottakose that a legal problem should be solved within a legal framework ldquoYour problem is that you are found to be blamelessrdquo I told him ldquoYou must put yourself in a position where you are automatically considered guiltyrdquoHe nodded and I could tell that I had started a thoughtYou will already know how it went Mottakosersquos long journey to the top ended last year when he became Union Minister for Housing and Land Reforms One of his first actions was to impound all property in Chullimanoor on the grounds that the government required it for LIG housing projectsWithin a fortnight the many residents of Chullimanoor had filed a staggering 547 cases against himWith growing excitement Mottakose repeated the exercise elsewhere in the country with identical results He now has 12308 cases pending against him He is also accused of complicity in a variety of landgrab deals extralegal demolition of tenements encouraging substandard construction and robbing poor people of their homes and sheltersWhen I last met him again in the coffee shop I congratulated him on having so successfully solved his problemWith an almost fanatic gleam in his eye he whispered at me ldquoI have proposed an even more revolutionary idea to our beloved Prime Minister It is guaranteed to provoke litigation on a national scalerdquoHe gave a dramatic pause ldquoI am planning to abolish private propertyrdquoHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper