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Facts and Opinions Volume I – August 7, 1909 – Number 7 The Police Bill
The Police Bill has passed the Committee and next week, it is rumoured, will be made law. It is a provision for giving absolute power to the Police Commissioner and his underlings. It is true that the power is limited in time in certain respects, but so long as it lasts it is arbitrary, absolute, without checks and, practically, without appeal. We hear that the present Police Commissioner resents any proposal to put a check on his absolute power as a personal insult. If so, he is in good company, for he only follows the example of that great philosopher and democratic statesman, Lord Morley, who resents democratic criticism of his measures and actions as a crime and sacrilege and a petty amendment of the present provisions for the deportation of inconvenient persons as a vote of censure. The spirit of absolutism fostered by arbitrary government in India is not only swallowing up the old British virtues in India itself but encroaching on the free spirit of England. The powers of prohibition, regulation and arrest provided for in the Bill will exalt Mr. Halliday into the Czar of Calcutta. It is noticeable that any man may be arrested for the breach of any law by any policeman without a warrant and be sentenced to a fine of a hundred rupees or, for certain political offences among others, to a month’s hard labour. Any meeting can be stopped for a week at the sweet will and discretion of an individual. The provisions for search and entry of the police into houses and so-called public places are so ample as to give a power of inquisition and domiciliary visit second only to the Russian. Even boardings, messes and private lodging-houses are liable to entry at any hour and on any pretext. And by an inspired improvement on the stringent Bombay Act no action of the police, however vexatious, unwarranted and malicious, can be punished unless the aggrieved party can prove bad faith, a condition which in nine cases out of ten of
Page – 135 malicious harassment is impossible of satisfaction. It is a sound principle that where a citizen has been causelessly harassed, the burden of proving good faith rests on the harasser. An opposite proviso means the destruction of the liberty of the person. No man’s personal freedom and dignity will henceforth be safe for a moment from the whims of the lowest policeman in the street. The authorities may say that this is not the purposed object of the Bill. We have nothing to do with the intention of the framers, we have to do only with the provisions of the law itself, and it is enough if all these things are rendered possible under the provisions. To make bad laws and plead good intentions is an old evasion of weak and violent rulers.
That there is a political motive behind the Bill, any child can see and to conceal it only the most flimsy precautions have been taken. The prohibition of public meetings can have no reference to any but Swadeshi meetings, the reference to objectionable cries is obviously aimed at the national cry of Bande Mataram and the power of harassing under the pretext of regulating public processions and meetings can have no objective but the revived meetings and processions which have shown that the national movement was not dead but only suspended. Other provisions of the Bill may be dictated by the sole object of strengthening the hands, already overstrong, of the Calcutta Police in keeping order, but the nature and wording of these provisions coupled with the amazingly comprehensive definition of "public place" leave us no option but to see the obvious political motive behind. It is possible for the Police Commissioner under these provisions to paralyse every legitimate form of public activity in the city of Calcutta. It is no use sheltering under the provisions of the Bombay Act. The Bombay Act has been used to paralyse public activity of a kind inconvenient to the Government in that city. What, moreover, was the necessity of suddenly resorting to the stringency of the Bombay Act at this particular juncture ? It is not alleged that any of the meetings or processions recently orga-
Page – 136 nised were disorderly or led to disturbance or public inconvenience. The only fresh emergency was the political.
The Amrita Bazar Patrika notices a case from Dinajpur which may give a few hints to Sir Edward Baker if he really wants or is wanted to establish police autocracy in Calcutta. Mr. Garlick there justified the caning of witnesses and accused by the police as a necessary "method of examination" without which the administration of justice in this country cannot be carried on. He says, "I dare say the police frequently quicken the witness’ answers with a cut from their riding canes. Such methods of examination are no doubt to be deprecated but without them I do not suppose the police would get any information at all." The case will come up before the High Court and we await with interest the view that authority will take of this novel legal dictum. Meanwhile why should not Sir Edward Baker take time by the forelock and, after a now familiar method, validate such "methods" beforehand by a clause in his Police Bill empowering any policeman to cut with a cane any citizen whom he may fancy guilty of breaking any law so as to persuade him to desist ? Of course the said policeman will not be liable to punishment unless it can be proved that he cut in bad faith.
The Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company
We publish elsewhere an appeal from the promoters of the enterprise which first encouraged Indian energy and capital into the new path many are now preparing to follow. This Company, as the pioneer, had to face all the difficulties of a novel enterprise of considerable magnitude and it has suffered more than others from competition supported by official sympathy. To Nationalists it will be sufficient to recall the name of Chidambaram Pillai, condemned to a long term of imprisonment on the strength of police reports, and the plucky struggle made by the Company
Page – 137 against overwhelming odds. The Company represents an output of patriotic effort and self-sacrifice such as no other has behind it and it would be a public disgrace if its appeal went unheard.
One of the great weaknesses of the Swadeshi movement at present is the ease with which, under the stress of necessity, we admit articles as Swadeshi which are to all intents and purposes foreign. It is always therefore an encouraging sign when a real Swadeshi enterprise is started which liberates us from the necessity of such humiliating compromises, especially when they affect articles of daily necessity. We take for an instance what we choose to call Swadeshi umbrellas although these are Swadeshi only so far as the labour of fitting the parts together is concerned. Sirdar Rajmachikar of Poona and his brother have done a service to Swadeshi by starting a factory in which all the parts except the iron ribs and stretchers are either made in the factory or, in the matter of cloth, procured from Poona and Bombay mills. The only drawback is the high prices of these articles compared with the cheapness of the fractionally Swadeshi umbrellas. This we believe, is largely due to the high prices of the cloth produced from the Bombay mills, but the people of Bombay and Poona are taking these umbrellas by the thousand in spite of the difference. We hope Bengal will be as patriotic in this small but important matter. The prices will come down as soon as a sufficient market is created. Meanwhile we must take the Swadeshi article at a sacrifice as we have pledged ourselves to do by any number of vows and resolutions. To replace foreign by indigenous in the objects of daily use is the very life-breath of Swadeshi.
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