India for Indians: Enlarged EditionDas, Chitta Ranjan
History
India for Indians: Enlarged Edition
Das, Chitta Ranjan
India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947
trial or without proof. I protest on your behalf against this policy
of internment. I say this policy is un-British, is opposed to all the
time honoured traditions upon which the British Empire is based. It
is opposed to all rules of common sense and prudence and uprightness
and the sooner this policy is abrogated the better for the peace and
prosperity of the empire.
Gentlemen, at a time when the British Government in its wisdom has
declared its policy that Home Rule in some shape or other must be
granted to this country that some sort of responsible Government is
necessary for the foundation and preservation of the empire; at a
time when His Excellency the Viceroy has advised us to preserve an
atmosphere of calmness; I ask, is it wise to detain these men against
popular opinion, against the universal desire of the Indian people.
And why should they be detained? May we not tell those who are
responsible? You detain them under an Act which has been characterised
by the highest authorities in England and in this country to be illegal
and ultra vires. You have detained these men and other persons on
political considerations which are outside the purview of the Defence
of India act under which you claim to detain them. Gentlemen, I wish to
read to you a passage from the judgment of one of the greatest judges
in England--I may say that the Act in England is similar to the Act
under which these gentlemen have been snatched away from society and
kept imprisoned. This learned Judge, Lord Shaw than whom a nobler judge
there is not in the whole of England says--You remember, gentlemen,
in England persons of German origin have been sought to be detained
in this way and His Lordship says:--"But does the principle, or does
it not, embrace a power not over liberty alone but also over life?"
His Lordship says that if by the stroke of a pen you can take away the
liberty of a man, does it not also follow that by the stroke of a pen
you can take away his life also? His Lordship goes on to say:--
"If the public safety and defence warrant the Government under the Act
to incarcerate a citizen without trial, do they stop at that, or do
they warrant his execution without trial? If there is a power to lock
up a person of hostile origin and associations because the Government
judges that course to be for public safety and defence, why, on the
same principle and in exercise of the same power, may he not be shot
out of hand? I put the point to the learned Attorney-General, and
obtained from him no further answer than that the graver result seemed
to be perfectly logical. I think it is. The cases are by no means hard
to figure in which a Government in a time of unrest, and moved by a
sense of duty, existed, it may be, by a gust of popular fury"
in this case the Anglo Indian fury
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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