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CERTADI .TITAI4 FACTS EXAMINED
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seizure and forfeiture of
'Satyartha Prakash
And the charges
levelled against its revered saintly author are the noxious
effect of a communally vitiated mental outlook or atmosphere,
brought to bear upon the problems of the administration or
of Dirty-polities in total disregard of the sacred popular
trust. It is a typical instance illustrative of how far, to
what pernicious length, prostitution of ministerial authority
can go under cover of provincial autonomy.
CERTAIN VITAL FACTS EXAMINED
According to the Sind Notification, although in the view
of the Government it is Chapter XIV which contains matter
that offends against the statute, it is the whole book that has
been expressly banned in that province. Any view that
the ban is on the offending portion is not correct. From the
standpoint of the author and the publisher, or from the
standpoint of the Hindus, it would have made no difference
at ail if the Government had banned the fourteenth chapter
alone. For, that chapter being an essential and inseparable
part of the whole book, there can be no question of the
book being the same
Satyartha Prakash,
written by Swami
Dayananda Saraswati, with any of its essential parts•
separated from it and destroyed. With the fourteenth
chapter removed the book must look scandalously incomplete.
It will in that case lose the spirit of impartiality which
otherwise it is its one beauty. In the several chapters, the
author criticizes the current popular religious notions and
beliefs of the various sections of the Indian society, of the
Hindu, the
Jain,
the Christian, the Buddhist. And then, why
not of the Muslim ? Are all the religious teachings of alL
mullahs, maulvis and maulanas divinely pure and perfect,
130.
pure and perfect that they have all come to the end of their-