"Access to justice is incomplete if justice is delivered in a language the litigant cannot understand." Examine the constitutional framework governing the language of higher courts in India, and the case for multilingual access over linguistic substitution.

Under Article 348(1)(a), all proceedings of the Supreme Court and every High Court are in English [2]. That is a language most litigants cannot read. Real access to justice therefore needs more Indian languages to be added. Replacing English with a single language would not solve the problem.

Constitutional and statutory framework

• Art. 348(1)(a): English is the language of SC and HC proceedings. There is no exception for the Supreme Court [2].
• Art. 348(2): a Governor, with the President's prior consent, may authorise Hindi or the State's language in that State's High Court. Hindi was allowed in Rajasthan (1950), then in UP, MP and Bihar (1969–72) [2].
• 1965 Cabinet Committee decision: the CJI's consent is needed for any non-English language in a High Court. The Full Court has declined requests from Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West Bengal and other States [2].
• Sec. 7, Official Languages Act, 1963: a High Court judgment in Hindi or a State language must carry an English translation, so English remains the authoritative text [2].

Why multilingual access beats substitution

• Federal fairness: under Art. 141, SC rulings bind every court in India. A Hindi-only SC would leave a Tamil or Malayalam litigant no better off than English does. The exclusion would simply move to a different group.
• Settled position: the Law Commission's 216th Report (2008) found Hindi as a compulsory SC language "non-feasible" [1].
• Technology route works: by Aug 2024, 36,271 SC judgments had been translated into Hindi and 17,142 into 16 regional languages, all hosted free on e-SCR [3]. SUVAS now covers 18 languages, with human-led final validation under the Justice Abhay S. Oka Committee [4].

Gaps to address

• Hindi tilt: Hindi has more translations than all 16 other languages combined [3].
• No legal force: if a translation and the English original differ, the English text prevails [2].
• Only after the case ends: hearings and pleadings stay in English. Litigants can read the result but cannot follow their own case as it happens.

Justice in a litigant's own language follows from Article 39A (equal justice and free legal aid). The way forward is to set language-wise translation targets, give certified translations official standing, and let the Full Court consider Art. 348(2) requests case by case. This would make the courts multilingual without displacing English as the common link, consistent with SDG 16 (access to justice for all).