‘Upendra Baxi’, the name, I read for the first time in or about 1968 just below the title ‘“The Little Done, the Vast Undone”: Some Reflections on Reading Granville Austin's The Indian Constitution’, published in the Journal of the Indian Law Institute. Impressed not only by the title and the size of the paper—107 pages—but also by its writing style, I continued to be confused about the nationality of the author until quite a few persons confirmed that he was very much an Indian who also worked at the Indian Law Institute for some time, even in the editorial team of the Journal of the Indian Law Institute. Confusion also persisted because around that time some foreign scholars like A. R. Blackshield had written quite long articles running into more than one issue of the journal, while no Indian scholar had ventured to do so until then. Later, I had the opportunity to read one of his articles, perhaps in the Jaipur Law Journal, on the issue of compensation for acquisition of property as decided in the Shantilal case, which in his opinion amounted to ‘paying peanuts for the gold coin’. The two writings showed similarity in his concern for sustaining traditional civil rights with little regard to the constitutional philosophy represented in the Directive Principles of State Policy. It was much later, perhaps after the 1975–1977 Emergency, when the Supreme Court shifted its emphasis from haves to have-nots that Professor Baxi also came up with ‘taking suffering seriously’ and removing weapons of impoverishment of people.

After shifting from the small-town Meerut College to Delhi University in 1970, sometime in late 1971 or early 1972 I heard that Professor Baxi had also been appointed as professor of law where I was a junior lecturer. I got the first opportunity to see him in person after he joined as Professor-in-Charge of Law Centre II of the Faculty of Law in 1973. Given the difference between his and my position at the university as well as the daunting impression left by his writings on me, I was always hesitant about introducing myself and talking to him.