§ 8.4 p.m.
§ Brigadier-General CLIFTON BROWNI beg to move, in page 16, line 23, after "proceedings," to insert:
except in respect of incitement to treason, mutiny, murder, arson, riot, sedition, and civil disobedience.I think that if we are putting this democratic constitution on Indians, who are not accustomed to it, it does not necessarily follow that all the privileges we can enjoy in this House are what they want or what is best to carry on the Legislature there. We have to take account of our own character in a 292 Northern climate and of the Indian character in a hotter climate, and we must admit that East is East and West is West, and that in those hotter climates the people are much more likely to see red, and the effect of that is much more serious than it is over here. Crimes of incitement to murder, arson and riot are not looked on in India as they are here. I have seen a man condemned to three years' imprisonment for killing another man in Kashmir, while next door to him there was a man who got 13 years' imprisonment for killing a cow. These crimes are much more common and dangerous and have a more far-reaching effect, and they have spread like a veldt fire among the people.We open the door to terrorists and others to get into this Assembly, and we saw from the experiences in 1931, when Congress incited to treason and riot, what a serious question it became. There are numerous examples. My second point is that the members of the Assembly itself, a young Assembly, will be anxious to be protected from firebrands. They may be terrorised in the House itself, a young House, with curious and very energetic speeches, and they may be afraid even for themselves and of what may happen to them at home if they disagree with some firebrand. They may get into the same way themselves, and not argue as we do in a calm atmosphere, but carry things to extremes. Indians have not shown very much strength of mind in having to deal with difficult situations which may arise as the result of firebrands. The Speaker would like some language in this Bill which would enable him to warn a member that he may be held responsible for treasonable utterances which will incite the mob to riot. It is because I think that it would be a protection for the Indian members themselves who would desire to start in a proper debating style that I move my Amendment. The more 293 one knows and reads the history of India the more one sees that it is likely to be a very riotous assembly unless certain protection is given in the way of not giving them all the privileges that we have.
§ 8.9 p.m.
§ Brigadier-General Sir HENRY CROFTI rise only for one moment to support the Amendment that has been proposed by my hon. and gallant Friend with his knowledge of India. I do hope the Government will consider this Amendment favourably and accept it, because whatever our views may be with regard to the reforms, the one thing which above everything else we want to see is that the Government of India is of a peaceful character and that it is orderly. Everybody is aware that nothing that we can do in this Bill, in these reforms, in any way can mitigate for a long period of time the intense feeling there is between the various communal sections of the people of India, and it is an undoubted fact that if you once allow the propagations of ideas in Parliament where you get intense divisions of opinion upon religious issues particularly, you will turn your Indian Parliament right from its inception into a perfect bear garden. I would only remind the Committee very briefly that at the time of the Cawnpore massacre some 2,000 people suffered death simply because the Hindus proclaimed a hartal, which meant the cessation of all business, in order that they might protest against the execution of the murderer of a British administrator at Lahore. When you can see that happening, that extraordinary feeling which is created, involving that massed murder, it must be clear that if we are really to see parliamentary institutions developed upon the kind of lines we hope for in this country, we must do everything in our power to eliminate the kind of in-cendiarist speeches which we would never dream of in this country, but which you would get in India with one man calling upon his colleagues to demand certain measures. I believe that in the interests of the kind of constitutional government the Government desire to see in India it would be wise to accept this Amendment.
§ 8.12 p.m.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESThe question of religion would not be covered by this 294 Amendment at all. This Amendment would not affect it in any way whatever.
§ Sir H. CROFTWhat I meant was that you may get a sudden incitement to riot or to arson or murder. It has happened again and again, and the only reason that I mentioned religion was because religion was uppermost. I had a letter from the late head of the whole of the orthodox Hindus just before his death in which he told me that this Measure must inevitably lead to strife and disturbances, leading to great difficulties and possibly to widespread massacre, and it is because I realise that fact that I am urging the Government to consider whether it is not possible to insert this Amendment and render these possibilities less likely.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESI wonder if hon. Gentlemen think that it is worth while putting this Amendment in? Nobody in this House—as far as I know, nobody in this country—wants to support murder, arson, riot and so on. But is it not best that the Indian people in their own legislature should draft their own rules governing their discussions? Let us not try to keep these Indian people constantly in leading strings. I have not read reports of all the discussions in the Legislative Assembly that there is in India now, but I wonder if there has been anything that justifies an Amendment like this? Have there been many incitements to treason? Have there been any incitements to mutiny, murder, arson, riot?
§ Mr. JONESThe hon. and gallant Gentleman wants to put the new central Legislature in certain leading strings. He wants to limit the power of the people in the new Parliament. Has he any evidence from the discussions of the present Legislative Assembly that justifies him in saying that these things are necessary?
§ Mr. JONESCan the hon. and gallant Gentleman recall any instances on a large scale, justifying special legislative action, of appeals to treason, arson and riot. Outside the Assembly he may be able to refer to instances. I wish the 295 Noble Lady the Member for Kinross (Duchess of Atholl) would sit down for a minute and let me finish my sentence. Is it worth while introducing a big machine like this where there is not a case for its existence? If there be a case, surely the best people to produce such regulations are the standing committee of the new Legislative Assembly, representative of all parties, presided over, if you like, by the Speaker of the new House. Surely we might leave something to these people. Do not let us regard them as children eternally. There is nothing more offensive or aggravating that for them to be treated as children even to their graves. I ask the Committee not to treat them in this rather silly and supercilious way.
§ 8.16 p.m.
Duchess of ATHOLLI would remind the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. M. Jones) that this Indian Assembly is very young. It only began its deliberations towards the end of January of this year.
Duchess of ATHOLLI think the hon. Gentleman will see, when he reads the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow, that he did ask a specific question about this Assembly, and it is to that point I was replying. Young though the present Assembly is, there has already been a debate in which there was raised the question of an official circular from the Government of India to the various provincial Governments, in which they discussed with great anxiety Mr. Gandhi's new village industries association, because they believed it was a move for a new civil disobedience campaign, and the Member of the Government who defended the circular from the attack of the Congress party kept on reading quotations from speeches or writings of prominent Congress men pointing out the desirability of a movement of this kind—speeches which, according to the Press reports, received considerable acclamation. From the short experience we have had of the present Assembly we are already able to say that there have been expressions of opinion in favour of civil disobedience.
Then I ask the hon. Member to remember that prior to this there had been for some years no Congress party, 296 as such, in the Assembly, and that if there have not been very violent statements of the type mentioned in the Amendment it may well be because the Congress party had given up parliamentary methods and was operating entirely outside. But now the Congress party is back in the Parliamentary arena and is back in strength. It is the strongest party in the Assembly to-day. Therefore we have every reason to fear that there may be more violent expressions of opinion than there have been in the last three or four years. I think I am justified in saying that, because on the showing of the Secretary of State in a memorandum that he submitted to the Joint Select Committee, he admitted an alliance between the Congress party in Bengal with terrorism—a revolutionary party which, we know, seeks to achieve its aim by violent political crime of the most desperate kind. It has already caused the loss of many valuable lives of Government officials, British and Indian.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESAs far as I know the Congress party in India has always repudiated utterly any connection with the terrorism in Bengal.
Duchess of ATHOLLThen I ask the hon. Member to inquire of the Secretary of State what is the authority for his statement. It is also well known that a few years ago the Calcutta Corporation, which has had a strong Congress clement, and, I am afraid, a terrorist element, passed a resolution of sympathy with the man who suffered execution for having murdered Colonel Simpson. That was an expression of sympathy with the terrorist movement on the part of the premier municipality of India. Though we might perhaps regard a thing of that kind as academic, we must remember that in India there is a population of which a very small proportion is literate, that it is a country which has excitable material in it—I believe the climate must tend that way—and that violent passions are very easily aroused. The terrorist movement that has proved extremely difficult to eradicate in Bengal has in fact since 1930 existed in all the provinces in India. Surely, therefore, any expression of opinion in favour of some terrorist act is calculated to inflame the feelings of the young people who chiefly drift into terrorism. The movement is 297 largely recruited from young people who from misguided patriotism can be excited to act.
Therefore special precautions seem to be necessary to prevent the debates in the Assembly adding greatly to the difficulty of the administration in India. Then there is a mention of mutiny in the Amendment. There is a revival of the movement which sought to incite Sikh regiments to mutiny during the War. It was an attempt to deflect those splendid regiments from their loyalty, and that I believe is the aim of the movement today. You have therefore in India to-day the most dangerous potentialities, not merely in Bengal but in other provinces. The Sikhs are chiefly in the Punjab, of course, and the movement is at work there. You may easily have expressions of opinion in favour of one or all of these movements in the Assembly. Therefore I strongly support the Amendment. I do not want to limit to the slightest degree freedom of speech in the Assembly, so long as it does not lead to licence. I want the members to enjoy every bit of freedom that we enjoy here. We know, however, that if any of us here ventured to utter a seditious speech we should be instantly pulled up by the Chair. In India there has not been time for such traditions to grow up around the Chair, and there are dangerous opinions at work in the political field.
§ 8.24 p.m.
§ Sir ROBERT HAMILTONI sincerely hope that the Government will not accept this Amendment. It seems a monstrous thing that this Parliament should attempt to propose a limitation of the freedom of speech in another Parliament which it is to set up overseas. We perfectly well realise that there are in India movements of the sort referred to, but the place where those matters should be ventilated is surely in the Indian Assembly. Are the people who are going to that Assembly not to be responsible people? Are we to treat them absolutely like children? I have nothing more to say.
§ 8.25 p.m.
§ The SOLICITOR-GENERALAs we pass from one Amendment to another I find myself getting very different impressions from time to time as to the classes of persons whom one may expect to find in this Federal Legislature. Earlier in the day I heard the right hon. 298 Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) deliver a speech from which one gathered that we might expect to find an Assembly largely composed of rich and rather selfish men engaged in shackling—I think that was the word he used—extreme forms of capitalism on the people of India.
§ The SOLICITOR-GENERALThe right hon. Gentleman at the time was speaking generally on Clause 18 and I thought he was referring to the Parliament as a whole but we need not dispute about that point. Now after hearing the speeches in support of this Amendment I have the impression that the Federal Legislature will be filled with young firebrands of a very different type from the kind of people indicated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping. This Amendment however raises a narrow point. Some of the speeches in favour of it Bought to bring into the picture the whole question of terrorism and incitement and so forth. But the real point with which it is concerned is whether or not there should be put into the Bill a provision which would make it possible for a member of the Legislature to be prosecuted for words used inside the legislative chamber. Obviously the whole broad question of dealing with incitements to riot and mutiny is a much bigger matter. We have to deal with that outside the legislative chamber. On the assumption that such things are likely to be said in the legislative chamber even if you could stifle those statements within the walls of the Assembly the real problem would still be the general problem of enforcing the criminal law.
Of course nobody in opposing this Amendment for a moment defends incitement to treason, mutiny, murder, arson, or riot. Nobody desires or contemplates that members of the Federal Legislature should incite to treason, mutiny, murder, arson, riot, or any of these other matters. But we are setting up here a responsible Legislature, and in that connection the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. M. Jones) asked a pertinent question. He asked what had happened in the past in regard to this matter. Since 1919 con- 299 ditions similar to those outlined in the Bill and not in the least comparable to those contemplated in the Amendment have existed, and no inconvenience has resulted from the fact that it has been impossible to prosecute members of the Legislature in circumstances of this kind. Most of the speeches in favour of the Amendment have come from those who hold that this whole experiment is a mistake and who do not think that democracy in the form in which it is to be found in the Bill is going to work in India. I am sure that hon. Members themselves will realise that, having that conviction, it is difficult for them not to want to put into the Bill here and there things which are inconsistent with its general spirit and intention.
I am sure that all in this Committee realise that it must be fundamental to a great legislative assembly that it should have freedom of speech and the power to frame its own rules to prevent abuses. It is in that spirit, realising what has been said by those who have spoken for the Amendment, realising the dangers but also believing that if this scheme is to succeed—as we believe it will and as my hon. and gallant Friend the Mover of the Amendment believes it will not—this is a matter which must be left to the assemblies themselves to control. We believe that they will control it in the proper spirit. While I hope I have not said anything which would indicate any lack of sympathy with what has prompted the Amendment, I must conclude by saying that we think it would be wrong to insert these words in the Bill.
§ 8.30 p.m.
§ Sir H. CROFTI do not know whether my hon. and gallant Friend is going to press this Amendment to a Division, but it would seem that the Government are determined not to concede any of our Amendments.
§ The SOLICITOR-GENERALOh, yes, I think two Amendments have been accepted.
§ Sir H. CROFTThey were very small ones.
§ Mr. BUTLERI think the Government have tried as far as possible to meet points raised from all sections of the Committee.
§ Sir H. CROFTThe hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I say that he has not met us on the most important points that have been urged from our side. This Amendment has been submitted purely and simply with the desire that if you are determined to go on with this experiment it should be given a reasonable chance of success. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Sir R. Hamilton) said that the basis of this scheme must be freedom of speech. Anybody who has made a profound study of the kind of assembly which we are about to set up in the East, must realise that there will be an entirely different spirit there from the spirit which prevails here. Would it not be helpful to the success of this Measure if we were to insert words of this kind, at any rate for the inception of this movement? Am I wrong in suggesting that since the present Assembly has been elected a vote of sympathy has been passed in it to one member who was unable to take his seat because he was in durance vile. That surely is an indication of what is going to happen. Hon. Members must realise that the Congress movement is a powerful machine which is working to create every kind of trouble. I do not want to detain the Committee but I hope the Under-Secretary will mark my words. If this scheme goes through, he will, within five years, be regretting that this Amendment was not accepted. There is every danger, so long as Congress controls politics in India, of the Assembly being turned into a bear-garden if you have no provision of this kind.
Brigadier-General BROWNIn asking leave to withdraw the Amendment, may I express the hope that the Government will put into the Instrument of Instructions to the Governor-General some direction which will save the situation in this respect?
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ 8.34 p.m.
§ Major MILNERI beg to move, in page 16, line 35, to leave out Subsection (3).
We have just been told by the Solicitor-General that we are setting up in India a responsible legislature, a great deliberative Assembly, and yet in Sub-section (3) of this Clause we propose to take away 301 from that great legislative body the power to compel the attendance, for any purpose, of any person, before either Chamber or both Chambers sitting together and also to take away from it any punitive or disciplinary powers other than the mere power of removing or excluding persons infringing the rules and the standing orders. I thought that one of the great evidences of a legislature's responsibility was its right, within the confines of its own country, to compel the attendance of persons for any purpose but particularly for the purpose of giving evidence or information. I suggest that it is contrary to the whole spirit of the Bill that that power should be refused to the Indian Assembly. This Clause is a typical instance of what is being done in this Bill. The first Sub-section provides that there shall be freedom of speech and certain other rights; the second Sub-section sets out certain privileges such as may from time to time be defined by acts of the legislature; the third Sub-section, the deletion of which I am moving, takes away from the powers given by the previous Sub-sections.
We are sitting in the High Court of Parliament which has power to bring before it persons for any purpose, to compel their attendance, and to inflict punishment upon them if they do not come, and yet, in setting up an Assembly in India, a country more than 20 times the size of this country, and giving that Assembly powers, we take away from it the powers which, so far as Parliament is concerned, are quite mild. This Subsection is uncalled for. It is far too wide and it is an outrageous limitation on the powers of the Federal Legislature which this Bill sets up that it should not have the right to call witnesses before it. If it sets up a committee to consider any subject, how can it have power to hear evidence or to compel evidence to be given, and to fulfil its proper function if its powers in that respect are taken away before it begins to function? We have been told by the Under-Secretary that the Government have been amenable to reason and that they have agreed to one or two Amendments. I hope they may see the reason of my plea in this respect and restore to the proposed responsible legislative body in India the power which we have in this Parliament.
§ 8.38 p.m.
§ Mr. BUTLERThe Government have been considering this Sub-section, and we think that its terms are somewhat unduly restrictive of the powers of the Federal Legislature. There are obviously certain rights which it would be a good thing to secure to the Federal Legislature, and, without going into any of the technical points involved in the Sub-section, I should like to say that when we come to the equivalent Clause and Sub-section in the provincial part of this Bill, we shall have a proposal to make. When we resume discussion on this part of the Bill on the Report stage we hope to put down our revised views of the extent to which the powers of the Federal Legislature in this respect should be restricted.
§ Major MILNERIn view of that assurance, but retaining our right to express our satisfaction or otherwise on the Report stage, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
§ Clause 29 ordered to stand part of the Bill.