The Governor’s speech

IT was a remarkable speech which Sir Malcolm Hailey made at the meeting of the Punjab Legislative Council on Thursday. To that part of the speech in which His Excellency made the important announcement of the release of Sikh prisoners we have referred already. We have said that we would have preferred an unconditional release. But the point of view of the Government, as His Excellency explained, is that the present is not a case of general amnesty, but of amnesty granted in special circumstances. Those circumstances are the passing of the Gurdwara Bill and the expectation that it will compose the differences which resulted, among other things, in the arrest or conviction of a large number of Sikhs; and in granting the amnesty, the Government evidently wants to make sure that this expectation shall be realised. We may think what we like of this argument, and assuredly it will not commend itself to everyone. But, as we said yesterday, the important fact is that the conditions laid down by the Government will make no difference to the actual position. It would have made a difference if the prisoners had been required to say anything which would have involved an admission of past guilt. No such admission is involved in this case, because what they are asked to do is to undertake to obey the provisions of a law which did not exist when they did the things for which they were prosecuted, a law identical in substance and essence with that which they themselves have been asking for, and the absence of which was their chief justification for acting as they did.