V. M. Tarkunde

Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde (3 July 1909 in Saswad – 22 March 2004 in Delhi), was a prominent Indian lawyer, civil rights activist, and humanist leader and has been referred to as the "Father of the Civil Liberties movement" in India and a former judge of the Bombay High Court The Supreme Court of India also praised him as "undoubtedly the most distinguished judge of the post-Chagla 1957 period" in the Bombay High Court.

Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde was born in Saswad, Pune District, Maharashtra on 3 July 1909. He was the 2nd of the five children of Mahadeo Rajaram Tarkunde, a popular lawyer and social reformer at Saswad,then headquarters of Purandar taluka adjoining Pune. His father, a Brahmin by caste, had fought against the practice of untouchability.

In 1920 he migrated from Saswad to Pune and joined the New English School, Pune. In the Matriculation examination of 1925 held by the Bombay University, he stood first in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency. He also secured the prestigious Jagannath Shankersheth Scholarship for Sanskrit. He then joined the Fergusson College for BA which he completed in 1929, subsequently moving to London, where he attended the Lincoln's Inn and qualified as a Barrister-at-Law in 1931. He also attended lectures in economics, political science and social anthropology at the London School of Economics(LSE) as an external student. He returned to India the next year in December and commenced his legal practice in Pune.

Tarkunde started practice at Pune soon after he returned to India in 1933. He continued there till 1942 when he gave up his practice to become a full-time member of the Radical Democratic Party. He resumed his legal practice in the Bombay High Court in 1948 after Independence and was elevated to the bench as a Judge of the Bombay High Court in September 1957. He stepped down voluntarily as Judge of the Bombay High Court in 1969 and set up practice in the Supreme Court of India where he continued till his resignation in 1977 at the age of 68. He was chiefly concerned with Public Interest Litigations and constitutional cases, most of which he conducted with little or no fees.

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