§ MR. O'GRADY (Leeds, E.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware of the many cases of printers and editors of papers in India generally who have been sentenced to 1300 long terms of rigorous imprisonment and mulcted in large amounts in fines, under the sedition clauses of the Penal Code, for publishing what the police term seditious articles; whether the charge of sedition is simply that of Nationalist propaganda in the majority of cases: whether the persons charged have usually been young men, many of them under twenty years of age; and whether, in view of the fact that the campaign against the Press by the Government is, in native opinion, a campaign against the faith and aspirations of a people, and having regard to all the circumstances of the matter, he will take steps to have an inquiry with a view of defining sedition within the meaning of the Code, or with a view of amending the Code.
§ MR. MORLEYMy hon. friend has not acquainted himself precisely with the subject about which he questions me. The word "sedition" does not occur in the text of the Penal Code, and persons are not sentenced for "what the police term seditious articles," but for what duly constituted courts, and, in some cases, juries mainly composed of Indians, find to be violations of the law. All the terms under which charges are framed are explained in the Code, and I see no need for inquiry. So long as the persons concerned give expression to their "faith and aspirations" without attempting, in the language of the Code, to excite hatred, contempt, disaffection, or enmity between class and class, they will, I am quite sure, not be disturbed.
§ * MR. REESAre not these young men the agents of syndicates for the propagation of sedition who themselves escape prosecution by elaborate precautions,; and in these articles is not British India described as a hell upon earth, and Englishmen as worse than Nero, Nadir Shah, and the devil?
§ [No Answer was returned.]