A well-known lawyer of labour laws in Delhi H L Kumar is no
more. He was courteous to the core and enjoyed a good reputation
across the country. Not only employers and their organisations but also
employees, trade unions of all hues and colours, government officials and
judges used to take advice and benefit from his knowledge and experiences.
He was more known as Kumar Saheb to all his friends and acquaintances. He
silently passed away on 24th October leaving hundreds of
admirers and colleagues to mourn his death. He was in his late eighties and was
an Ajatshatru, a friend of all and foe of none. Soft-spoken and quite amiable
with everybody, Kumar Saheb was always ready to help others in every possible
manner. He showed no signs of any illness, except age-related weaknesses, and
was found to be engrossed in works to the fag-end of his life.
Kumar Saheb used to be nostalgic about Lahore (now in Pakistan) where he
was born, spent his childhood and had his initial education. After partition,
he moved over to India under the tutelage of his parents, who owned a hotel in
Shimla. However, he did not opt to become a hotelier or a businessman but chose
to pursue lawyering. For more than sixty years he has been in the profession
and must have trained scores of lawyers. Apart from being an accomplished
advocate, an excellent Samaritan, and a lovely human being, he was a good
journalist, an expert law teacher, a writer of nearly fifty stand books and the
founder-editor of the prestigious Labour Law Reporter (LLR) for over half a
century. Yours truly has also been closely associated with this journal
for more than thirty years. Kumar Saheb possessed mines of information and was
blessed with sharp memory. He knew Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi besides having
excellent command over English, the language of his education and profession. I
requested him to write his memoirs but alas! the writer of dozens of books
could not fulfil it for the benefit of the posterity.
I was introduced to Kumar Saheb by an intrepid and courageous trade
union leader T M Nagarajan, who was opposed even by two-penny editors and
journalists besides newspaper proprietors. He had seen that a journalist, who
used to claim to be associated with a journalists' trade union body,
was closer to the Management of his newspaper than to the employee’s
union. Kumar Saheb has been having an uncanny sense of recognising such black
sheep and always kept them at arm’s length.
Kumar Saheb knew sections of different acts and relevant case laws by
heart. He used to say that Employers must be well conversant with and
advise their HR managers to implement them properly for a harmonious and
congenial atmosphere in the organisation. His golden advice to the
employers was that they should not ride roughshod over employees. He was
associated with a number of educational institutions, industrial houses
and hospitals as a legal adviser. Shri Kumar was a man of simple living and
high thinking. As a Guest Faculty of labour laws at Delhi University, he was
immensely popular among the students. Many of his students became judges of the
High Courts, the Supreme Court and the presiding officers of various Tribunals.
He is survived by his wife, who retired as a professor in Philosophy
from Daulat Ram College of Delhi University. His only son Gaurav Kumar is a
lawyer, and a talented grandson Yajat Kumar is a lawyer in the making. The
daughter is a medico and happily married. May God give eternal peace to his
soul!
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