Government’s double defeat

ON Wednesday, the Government of India sustained a double defeat in the Legislative Assembly. In both cases, the defeat was perfectly well deserved. In the first case, the issue before the House was whether the present rule by which persons against whom a conviction by a criminal court involving a sentence of transportation or imprisonment for a period of more than one year is subsisting are disqualified for election to Indian and provincial legislatures should or should not continue to exist. It was not a matter in which there was any difference of opinion among educated and politically minded Indians. Not only was it repugnant to common sense and to all considerations of fairness that a man who had already served his sentence should be debarred from offering himself as a candidate for election, but the example of England, from which our laws and institutions are claimed to be derived, was entirely against the rule. Further, it was perfectly obvious that such a rule amounted in intention and in effect to a serious interference with the legitimate right of the electorate to determine who should represent it. Lastly, apart from the question of principle, there was the undeniable fact that many of the best men in the country had at one time or another been sent to prison for no other reason than the intensity of their love of the country, and not a few of these men were disqualified under the rule. The legislatures themselves, Indian and provincial, had joined in the general demand for its abolition. What had been the Government’s response to this unanimous public demand? Nothing except a small concession raising the disqualifying period from six months to one year.