Advocate General of Maharashtra Hormasji "Homi" Maneckji Seervai (1906–1996) was an Indian jurist, lawyer and writer.
Seervai was born on 5 December 1906 in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in a middle class Parsi family.
He matriculated from Bhada New High School, Mumbai and in 1922 joined Elphinstone College, Bombay from where he graduated with a first class degree in philosophy.
[2] His first chance in the Supreme Court of India arose in a defence of the Government of Bombay's decision to ban prize competitions, in the nature of lotteries.
The State of Kerala (1973), his most famous case, which led to the development of the "Basic structure doctrine", which inhibits politically motivated changes to the Constitution of India.
Perhaps, its full repercussions have not yet completely been understood, and it is the defining and distinguishing part of democracy under the written constitution vs. the British model.
The decision established that a legislature, elected for the legislative process, does not have the ability to amend the basic structure of the constitution.
He argued that it was the latent bias on the part of Indian National Congress leadership which resulted in partition.
The journey, Seervai says, started for Rajmohan Gandhi with his fascinating inquiry into the life of Mahomed Ali Jinnah in which the author did not shy away from criticising his famous grandfather, Mohandas Gandhi, for introducing religion into politics and for refusing to accommodate the Muslims to share power.