A bankruptcy ritual was killed, but there were no drumbeats to tom-tom its death

Finally, it took an RTI reply to tom-tom a 'death' that happened two years ago.
The deceased was sub-rule (2) of Rule 54 of Order XXI of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. This sub-rule relates to the judicial practice of beating a drum when properties of the bankrupt are attached. British jurisprudence had called the bureaucratic ritual by the sound the drum makes. 'Tom-tom proclamation' it was called.

In 2022, Palakkad-based social activist and author Boban Mattumantha filed a petition in the High Court seeking an end to the 'tom-tom proclamation ', saying it was inhuman. What he did not know was that, based on his petition, the then Kerala High Court Chief Justice S Manikumar had ordered the abolition of the 'tom-tom proclamation'.

A ritual that was all about drawing public attention received no attention at all in death. Boban knew of its end only when he filed another RTI request before the High Court on August 17 this year asking for an update on his 2022 petition against the 'tom-tom proclamation'. The reply he received on September 16 said the Rule Committee of the High Court of Kerala had deleted the existing sub-rule (2) of Order XXI Rule 54 in July 2024.

The fact is, even the updated Code of Civil Procedure has not reflected this death sentence. Boban suspects that certain lower courts, because they have still not been informed of the abolition, were still persisting with the practice, though in a subdued version called the 'kinnam mutti vilambaram' ('beating the plate' proclamation).

The wild percussion of bankruptcy existed late into the eighties in Kerala. The Sathyan Anthikkad classic 'Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam' (1986) begins in the middle of a street with a man furiously beating a 'chenda' and a uniformed court official shouting out the contents of an attachment notice.

By the end of the eighties, the harsh beats of the 'chenda' were replaced by the near tokenism of tapping a plate. Since the court collects ₹100 as tom-tom charges, attention-grabbing noise, even if it is only some gentle taps on a plate, has to be made while officially confiscating the property of a debtor. Till 2016, the tom-tom charge was ₹15.

In an RTI reply in 2022, the Palakkad District Court had informed Boban that various courts, including itself and those under it – additional district courts, sub courts, and munsif courts – together collected a total of ₹56,600 as 'tom-tom' charges from creditors, mostly banks and financial institutions, till October that year. In 2022, in Palakkad alone, there were 566 instances of 'kinnam mutti vilambaram'.

It was this that prompted Boban to seek the High Court's urgent intervention to ban the ritual. "Just the fact of getting one's property attached is traumatic enough. Why would a civilised society then want to announce it to the entire world as if one family's tragedy is an occasion for public celebration. It is sadistic," Boban said.

In his 2022 petition before the High Court, Boban had spoken of a girl who committed suicide after she saw an attachment notice pasted in front of her house. "If a notice on the wall was unbearable for the child, just imagine how devastating a loud proclamation can be," he told Onmanorama. There may be lower courts in Kerala that still collect tom-tom charges.

Tom-tomming was originally the PR tool of kings and emperors. Before radio and the loudspeakers came into being, beating a drum at a public place like a market was the best way to draw the attention of the people to the king's orders. The British repurposed it to publicly disgrace those who failed to repay debts. And after Independence, we adopted this archaic colonial practice as our own, just the way we rechristened the Imperial Legislative Council as the Parliament of India.