Shamnad Basheer: A ‘guiding light’ fades away

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One of the dearest mentors of the legal profession dies at the age of 43

Shamnad Basheer, a well-known and highly regarded legal scholar, teacher, writer, activist and lawyer, has unexpectedly passed away at the relatively young age of 43. An intellectual property rights expert, he is perhaps best known as the person behind SpicyIP, India’s leading blog for intellectual property (IP) and innovation law, which he founded in 2005.

Shamnad BasheerMr Basheer is remembered also for his efforts to expand the understanding of the intricacies of IP law in the courts. Reacting to the news of his demise, Justice Aftab Alam, a former judge of the Supreme Court whose courtroom Mr Basheer most famously appeared in during the Novartis Glivec patent case in 2013, said: “It was no time for him to die. He was one of the best that the national law school has produced. The world of legal research, law teaching and genuine legal activism is much poorer by his demise.”

Among Mr Basheer’s many achievements was the founding of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA), a non-profit organization that he set up in 2010, which seeks to increase diversity in legal education. Mr Basheer was concerned that legal education especially in the top-rung National Law Schools suffered from a noticeable lack of diversity within the student population. Over the years IDIA has helped scores of high school students from under-represented communities gain admission to India’s top law schools after first making them aware of the benefits of law as a viable and lucrative career.

Karthika Annamalai, an associate at AZB & Partners, is one of the many who benefited from Mr Basheer’s vision for access to legal education. Paying tribute to his memory she said: “For many of us IDIA scholars, Professor Basheer was a fatherly presence who always had our backs – he was our guiding light. It was his courage and conviction to always stand up for equality and against injustice that inspired many of us to dare study the law and accomplish what we believed to be impossible.”

As an academic, Mr Basheer taught first at the George Washington University Law School in Washington DC where he was a visiting professor of IP law. In 2008 he returned to India to a chaired professorship in IP law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Studies in Kolkata.

Mr Basheer’s first job after graduating from the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, was at Anand and Anand in New Delhi. Saikrishna Rajagopal, managing partner of Saikrishna & Associates, began his career at the same firm. Describing Mr Basheer as “a wonderful colleague at work, a beloved friend in life and a tenacious adversary in court” Rajagopal said: “He was truly a pioneer in his field and he had this incredible capacity to love and nurture despite all his physical sufferings.”

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