Debate in Punjab House

Lahore, Thursday, August 7, 1924

THE debate which took place in the Punjab Legislative Council on Monday last over the resolution of Rana Feroz-ud-Din, urging the immediate and unconditional release of Maulana Zafar Ali, was chiefly notable only as affording a striking instance of official obduracy. The proposition before the House was a simple one. The Maulana had served four out of five years of his sentence, and in normal course would be released within a few months. It was asserted during the debate on the authority of the Superintendent of his jail himself that he would probably be released in November. All that the resolution amounted to in effect was that the Government be asked to reduce the sentence of five years passed upon the Maulana at a time when, as one of the speakers pointed out, it had become almost customary for courts in Punjab to sentence persons for sedition to long terms of imprisonment, by three or four months. A more modest proposal than this it would be almost difficult to think of. If one were, indeed, so minded, one could justly find fault with the Council not for bringing forward his proposal at the present time when the Maulana’s sentence is about to expire, but for not having brought it forward earlier. And yet this is the resolution which was opposed from the official benches with a strength and vigour which seemed to show that in the opinion of the speakers and those for whom they spoke, it would be a grave calamity for the Government and the Province if the resolution were carried. Sir John Maynard described the Maulana as a criminal of a dangerous and insidious character, said he found no assurance that Mr Ali could abstain from repeating what he had done.