Give India the “First Right”.

IN the course of a recent speech at the Bombay Students’ Brotherhood, His Excellency Sir George Lloyd said:--“One of the curses of democracy in every country has been that it makes people shout loudly and glibly that this is my right and never utter a word about their duty. The first claim and the first right that a man has is to serve his country and people.” His Excellency is right, but he has not been in India long enough to know that it is this “first right” of every man that we in India have now for years been asking for and that has not so far been adequately conceded to us. The right of a man to serve his country can have a meaning and a reality only when the press is free, the right of public meeting is sacred, the right of movement is unrestricted, and the right of association is regarded as inviolable. And these are the rights that are prejudicially affected by the Press Act, the Seditious Meetings Act, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908, the Defence of India Act and the Rowlatt Act. You cannot be said to have the right to serve your country when your best men, men like the late Mr. Gokhale, for instance, cannot leave one place and go to another without being subjected to espionage. Who does not remember the complaint by Mr. Bhupendranath Basu regarding the treatment accorded to him and his friends during a tour in East Bengal, and the reply given on behalf of Government, which practically admitted the truth of the complaint, without promising redress? Nothing so absurd is meant as that there are no opportunities of service open to the people or that all of us take advantage of the opportunities already open. What is meant is that a mere opportunity is not a right, and that it is only when the laws to which we have referred are repealed that it will be time enough to talk of the “first right” or the “the first claim” of a man in India to serve his country.

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