Justice BV Nagarathna To NDTV On How She Balanced Law Career, Family Life

More women are coming forward to take up roles in the country's judiciary, once a male-dominated space, Supreme Court judge Justice BV Nagarathna told NDTV in an exclusive interview today.

Justice Nagarathna, 61, is in line to be the country's first woman Chief Justice. This morning, she attended a lecture at National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, in the memory of her father and India's 19th Chief Justice ES Venkataramaiah. The memorial lecture was delivered by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud.

Speaking to NDTV, Justice Nagarathna said that while she was determined to continue a career in the judiciary, she did not know she would become a judge and get elevated to the Supreme Court. "As the years rolled by, it became clear and dreams were fulfilled."

On her father's advice to her at the beginning of her judicial career, Justice Nagarathna said, "He would always tell me to complete work in time and not procrastinate. As they say, finish tomorrow's tasks today and today's tasks now because you never know when somebody will knock on the door and you have to serve them. Another advice was to always be present in court when cases come up. Absence of an advocate in court will prejudice the case. These are two pieces of advice he gave me." 

The legal profession in the country, she said, was male-dominated. "For women to continue in the profession, especially when they get married and have children is difficult unless they have support from the family. Therefore, unless there is cooperation from seniors, the system and the family, it will be difficult for women to continue their practice. As I always say, many women get into the profession but many do not reach the higher echelons. It is because of the onerous responsibilities of women in the profession as well as the family that may deter them from continuing after a point of time," she said.

"It is a decision that has to be made by the woman by bringing together her family and the system and balancing the two," she said.

Justice Nagaratha said things are changing now. "Many women are now crossing hurdles and coming forward. Now, at the district judiciary level, over 50 per cent of judges are women. There are many women now in legal practice too," she said.

On how she managed to strike the balance between work and family, she said, "I am very lucky on that front. My husband, BN Gopalakrishna, has always given prominence to my work and taken much of the domestic responsibilities on his shoulder. My daughters Nayanthara and Prerana, understood very early that they have a working mother. They knew they could not disturb their mother and they grew up on their own. That lessened my guilt."

"What happens with a woman is that as and when she achieves success, there is a sense of guilt because she feels she might have neglected her family," she said.

"There is a saying that behind every successful man, there is a woman. But I would say that behind every successful woman, there is a family. So I am very lucky that my family supported me a lot," Justice Nagarathna said.

On what would be her advice to young women eager to build a career in law, the judge said, "More women should come into the profession and decide how to divide time between work and family. They need to be determined that husband, children and in-laws (need attention), but work needs to be done." She said if women advocates receive support from their families, there will be more women judges.