impossible to avoid the conclusion that the majority of Lord
Hunter's Committee have failed to express themselves in terms
which, unfortunately, the facts not only justify, but necessitate.
In paragraphs 16 to 25 of chapter xii. of their report the majority
have dealt with the "intensive" form generally which martial law
assumed and with certain specific instances of undue severity and
of improper punishments or orders. It is unnecessary to
recapitulate the instances which the Committee have enumerated in
detail in both their reports, nor would any useful purpose be
served by attempting to assess, with a view to penalties, the
culpability of individual officers who were responsible for these
orders, but whose conduct in other respects may have been free from
blame or actually commendable. But His Majesty's Government must
express strong disapproval of these orders and punishments and ask
me to leave to you the duty of seeing that this disapproval shall
be unmistakably marked by censure or other action which seems to
you necessary upon those who were responsible for them. The
instances cited by the Committee gave justifiable ground for the
assertion that the administration of martial law in the Punjab was
marred by a spirit which prompted--not generally, but unfortunately
not uncommonly--the enforcement of punishments and orders
calculated, if not intended to humiliate Indians as a race, to
cause unwarranted inconvenience amounting on occasions to
injustice, and to flout the standards of propriety and humanity,
which the inhabitants not only of India in particular but of the
civilised world in general have a right to demand of those set in
authority over them. It is a matter for regret that,
notwithstanding the conduct of the majority, there should have been
some officers in the Punjab who appear to have overlooked the fact
that they were administering martial law, not in order to subdue
the population of a hostile country temporarily occupied as an act
of war, but in order to deal promptly with those who had disturbed
the peace of a population owing allegiance to the King Emperor, and
in the main profoundly loyal to that allegiance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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