EMPEROR Vs. NARAYAN VASUDEV PHADKE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by the accused against his conviction by the Resident First Class Magistrate of Kalyan under Section s 124A and 153A of the Indian Penal Code.

(2.) THE speech, which lays the foundation for the charges, was delivered by the accused on February 26, 1940, to an audience consisting of the members of the Peasants' Union, Kalyan taluka. THE circumstances in which the speech was made, according to1 the statement of the accused, were these. THE accused had been for some years a member of the Servants of India Society, and his activities were devoted principally to measures for the amelioration of the distress of agriculturists. He says that in October, 1939, the previous Government of Bombay, generally known as the Congress Government, had passed through the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council of Bombay three Acts,- the Bombay Small Holders' Relief Act, the Bombay Tenancy Act and the Bombay Agricultural Debtors' Relief Act,-the last two of which in particular the accused considered to be of great importance to agriculturists. Those measures had not in February, 1940, been brought into operation, and the accused was organising a march of the peasants of Kalyan to take place on March 13, a march to the Mamlatdar's kachery, in order to protest against the delay of Government in bringing these measures into operation. So far, of course, the accused was on perfectly safe ground. He was quite entitled to protest against these measures not having been brought into operation, and was quite entitled to organise a march of peasants as long as that did not result in a breach of the peace. But the particular object of the speech which he made on February 26 was to instil into the peasants sufficient enthusiasm to induce them to take part in this march on the 13th of the next month, and in order to do that he had to make something) in the nature of a fighting speech and to give the tenants a target at which their anger might be aimed. It was obviously no good in a speech of that sort to tell the peasants that their misfortunes were partly of their own making, that they married too young produced more children than their land could support, and spent too much on marriage ceremonies. That would not have inspired any enthusiasm and induced the peasants to attend the march. So the accused in his speech made, as he was likely to do, an attack on the landlords, the money-lenders and Government, and the question is whether his attack brings him within either of the two Section s to which I have referred. We have to take the speech as a whole and give it a liberal interpretation, not laying too much stress on any particular sentence.

(3.) IT seems to me in those passages, and they are merely samples of the tendency of the whole speech, the accused has used words which bring the Government established by law in British India into hatred or contempt and which tend to excite disaffection towards that Government.