elf in this
country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased,
examination of the Punjab Martial Law cases had led me to believe that
at least ninety-five per cent. of convictions were wholly bad. My
experience of political cases in India leads me to the conclusion that
in nine out of every ten the condemned men were totally innocent. Their
crime consisted in love of their country. In ninety-nine cases out of
hundred justice has been denied to Indians as against Europeans in the
Court of India. This is not an exaggerated picture. It is the experience
of almost every Indian who has had anything to do such cases. In my
opinion the administration of the law is thus prostituted consciously or
unconsciously for the benefit of the exploiter. The greatest misfortune
is that Englishmen and their Indian associates in the administration of
the country do not know that they are engaged in the crime I have
attempted to describe. I am satisfied that many English and Indian
officials honestly believe that they are administering one of the best
systems devised in the world and that India is making steady though slow
progress. They do not know that a subtle but effective system of
terrorism and an organised display of force on the one hand and the
deprivation of all powers of retaliation of self-defence on the other
have emasculated the people and induced in them the habit of simulation.
This awful habit has added to the ignorance and the self-deception of
the administrators. Section 124-A under which I am happily charged is
perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code
designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. Affection cannot be
manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person
or thing one should be free to give the fullest expression to his
disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to
violence. But the section under which mere promotion of disaffection is
a crime. I have studied some of the cases tried under it, and I know
that some of the most loved of India's patriots have been convicted
under it. I consider it a privilege therefore, to be charged under it.
I have endeavoured to give in their briefest outline the reasons for my
disaffection. I have no personal ill-will against any single
administrator, much less can I have any disaffection towards the King's
person. But I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a
Government whi