Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present SituationGandhi, Mahatma
Religion
Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation
Gandhi, Mahatma
British -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947; Nonviolence
They are not allowed to cross-examine prosecution witnesses....
Prosecution witnesses are examined with leading questions.... Thus a
whole prosecution story is put into the mouth of police, witnesses for
the defence though called in are not allowed to be examined by the
defence counsel.... The accused is silenced if he picks up courage to
say anything in defence.... Any Cantonment servant can write down the
name of any citizen of the Cantonment on a chit of paper and ask him to
appear the next day in court. This is a summons.... If any one does not
appear in court who is thus ordered, criminal warrants of arrest are
issued against him." There is much more of this style in the letter
which is worth producing, but I have given enough to illustrate the
writer's meaning. Let me turn for a while to this official's record
during Martial Law. He is the official who tried people in batches and
convicted them after a farcical trial. Witnesses have deposed to his
having assembled people, having asked them to give false evidence,
having removed women's veils, called them 'flies, bitches, she-asses'
and having spat upon them. He it was who subjected the innocent pleaders
of Shokhupura indescribable persecution. Mr. Andrews personally
investigated complaints against this official and came to the conclusion
that no official had behaved worse than Mr. Smith. He gathered the
people of Shokhupura, humiliated them in a variety of ways, called them
'suvarlog,' 'gandi mukkhi.' His evidence before the Hunter Commission
betrays his total disregard for truth and this is the officer who, if
the correspondent in question has given correct facts, has been
promoted. The question however is why, he is at all in Government
service and why he has not been tried for assaulting and abusing
innocent men and women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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