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' CEETADY MAL PACTS eltablINIID
book is sound, whether in law or in ethics. Is it
right'
to-
punish the author for writing the thirteen chapters *hick
in the view of the Government, do not offend against the
simply because the Government thinks that he must
be '
punished because the fourteenth chapter is an offence
under
the statute ? Is it right for the Government to
deprive the
reading public of the benefits which the inoffensive
and
unoffending thirteen chapters of the book confer in
order
to enforce its own executive decision in respect of its
fourteenth chapter ? Is it sane rule of law ? Is it sound
ruie of justice ? If it is not, then the purpose underlying
the
Notification is not respect for the principle and purpose
of the law or for the liberty of the subject, which is
the object of prevention of crime, but, surely, is
something outside of all these. No Government has the
right or the duty to convert the powers conferred upon it
by a statute into, to borrow Mr. Justice Mohammed
Sharirs
recent phrase, an "engine of oppression", as
the Sind
Provincial League Ministry has with Criminal Procedure
Code
done in the present case.
It is not merely relevant but it is important to
remember
that the demand for action against
Satyartha Prakaa
originated not from the responsible custodians of the law and
order of the Government, but from the League leadership.
According to Nawab Siddiq Ali's declaration', the Govern-
ment's ban on the book under the Defence of India
Rules
in 1944 was a homage paid to the demand of the Karachi
Session of the All-India Muslim League. Strictly,
the
homage was not by the Government. The resolution of
the
All
-
India
Muslim League on the subject took the form
of a
directive to the Sind Provincial League Ministry, which
obeyed it as a matter of duty it owed to its
parent body.
The actual basis of the Ministerial action against
the
book, it is reasonable to suppose, is political and communal •
party alligiance, and as such has far deeper affinity with the
Ministerial "policy" than with the only relevant question
of actual and direct commission
of crime, impartial inteewe-
Wide the Central Assembly Proceedings, (November W, 1944),
of the Adjournment Motion moved by Bhai Paramanand.