LAXMIKANT SHRIPAT BHANDARE Vs. CRGERRARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition by Laxmikant Shripat Bhandare, a young man now aged twenty-three years, who, on 4 July last, was a student of the J.J. School of Art. It is brought under Section 45, Specific Relief Act and asks for an order directing the respondent, who is the director of that institution, to forbear from enforcing an order described as of the 13th, but in fact of 12-7-1945, purporting to expel the petitioner from the J.J. School of Art and from preventing the petitioner from attending the said school. An order is also sought for directing the respondent to permit the petitioner to attend the school and to receive his training in the course for which he was studying. This petition was supported by an affidavit on the last sheet of the petition itself, which is a most unusual and admirable affidavit, in that it is exceedingly short and says no more than is necessary. Therein the petitioner verifies as true those allegations in the petition which could be within his own knowledge and states his belief in the truth of the remaining allegations. Section 46, Specific Relief Act, 1877, however, requires that every application under Section 45 "must be founded on an affidavit of the person injured, stating his right in the matter in question, his demand for justice and the denial thereof." What, if anything, the Legislature precisely meant by these words seems to me to be open to doubt. If, as Mr. Banaji for the petitioner has contended, it merely meant that the petition should be supported by an affidavit, it seems to me that it would probably have said so. I am very reluctant to treat an obviously procedural section of an Act of the Legislature as affecting substantive rights given by another section of the same Act, but I am bound to do the best I can to give some meaning to every word used in a document, including an Act, and must, therefore, give some meaning to the words "his demand for justice and the refusal thereof," and it seems to me that they necessarily import into Section 45 a provision to the effect that where a person's property, franchise or personal right is liable to be injured in the circumstances contemplated in that section, it is a condition precedent to his getting relief under that section that he should have demanded justice and that it should: have been denied. In most eases, this probably does happen; but it seems to me that the relief contemplated by Section 45 cannot be granted unless it does, and unless there is an affidavit in support and that affidavit sets out the fact that it has happened. It may be a pure formality, but I think it is a necessary formality. If, for example, a person holding a public office has obstructed a road going to my house, I cannot, I think get relief under Section 45 unless I have, verbally or in writing, or over the telephone, or in some manner, demanded that the obstruction be taken away and been met with a refusal. I think it is just as much a condition precedent as is a demand and refusal, or some other act of conversion, to a successful suit for conversion. Mere possession by the defendant of the plaintiff's moveable property is not enough, and if the writ be issued before the actual demand and refusal, the suit is premature: (1911) 2 K.B. 1031.1

(2.) That alone would be sufficient to dispose of the present petition, but in view of the questions involved, I think it very desirable, for everybody concerned, that as a matter much less technical and more substantial has been argued, an opinion should be given on it. According to the petitioner, he was admitted to the Architecture section of the J.J. School of Art in about June 1944. He had previously been a student of another section. According to him, things at the school were not, in his opinion, satisfactory, and he addressed, as he says in his petition, on or about May 31 of this year, but as he now says, through his counsel, several months earlier, a letter to the editor of a newspaper called the Blitz, in company with several other students or ex-students. This letter was actually published on 2-6-1945. No copy of this letter is alleged to have been communicated to the director before its publication in Blitz, nor is there any suggestion that the petitioner had ever applied, in writing at all events, to the director to have his alleged grievances about the management of the school rectified. I do not propose to read in full the letter which appeared over the signature of the petitioner, amongst others, because, apart from any other reason, I think it would probably add to the harm which this letter has, in all probability, already done. Suffice it to say that if the director had taken proceedings for defamation on the strength of that letter, it would, in my opinion, be capable of supporting an innuendo that the director of the J.J. School of Art had at least connived at the manipulation of examination marks by the examiners, and had deliberately abstained from appointing external examiners for an examination, where such a course would be usual, in order to enable members of his staff to slip through the examination; it further directly charged him with neglect of his duties, and a jury in a suit for defamation might have come to the conclusion that it meant, also, that he had permitted his wife to use materials belonging to the School for her personal work. Those are some matters which it contained. It also requested the director to explain why some eighteen months before its publication seven students had been asked to fill in fresh admission forms and to apply as new students before they were allowed to continue their studies. In form, this letter somewhat resembled a series of oppressive and fishing interrogatories, a form which is not unusual in effusions of this kind. I do not think it is accurate to describe it as a "scurrilous" letter. It is not couched in actually indecent or abusive words, but its tone is, of course, highly offensive. It is not for me, in these proceedings, to consider whether the facts therein alleged, or any of them are true, but I must say at once that on the affidavits before me I am far from satisfied that any of them are. That, however, does not conclude the matter. If this were a suit for defamation, the defendant might perhaps have been able to establish that the occasion of its publication was privileged in that he was making a complaint to a quarter where his alleged grievances might be reasonably expected to be rectified, though I think it is very doubtful whether he would succeed in that argument, as there were other quarters, such as the director himself, or failing him, the appropriate department of the Government, which, I should have thought, were much better qualified to give him the relief he says he wanted than the editor of a weekly paper like Blitz. However that may be, and assuming in favour of the petitioner that he thought what he did was in the best interests of the school and that he thought that its good government and discipline would be benefited by the publication in the press of a document of this kind-and they are, I think, very big assumptions indeed-the question still remains whether the mere publication by a student, during the subsistence of his studentship, of such a letter criticising his professors or masters is not an act flatly inconsistent with discipline, and if such it be, whether the occasion is not one which would justify the proper authority in having recourse to the drastic step which has been taken in the present case.

(3.) Discipline and its opposite are things which, I am afraid, I find myself perfectly incapable of defining. Still, as Scrutton L.J. said on another occasion, "I cannot define an elephant, but I do recognise one when I see one," and I think I am capable of recognising some of the more startling acts of indiscipline. I may say this about the word "discipline" itself, that one generally thinks of it, particularly in these days, as a relationship between superior and inferior members of one of the fighting services. That, however, is not the primary meaning of the word. The word "disciple" from which it is derived, literally means "pupil" and the proper primary meaning of the word is the relationship which ought to subsist between the teacher and the taught. Of course, it has been transplanted into many other walks of life. Some element of discipline is, I think, necessary between higher and lower officers of any public service, between master and servant, as well as, of course, between officers and other ranks of an army and between higher and lower officers of an army inter se. Indeed, in almost any regularly organised department of society, there must be some who rule and teach and others whose duty it is to learn, submit, and obey. I suppose that "discipline" necessarily involves a state of mind, in the person subject to it, which unquestioningly admits superiority to himself, for certain limited purposes, of another human being. Though it happens, I suppose, every day in every army in the world, the moment a private soldier says, "Our General is an ass" or something to that effect, he is, at once, guilty of a breach of "good order and military discipline," because by criticising his superior officer, he, impliedly at all events, asserts that he knows more about the manner in which the officer concerned should discharge his duties than the officer does himself, and, therefore, he is denying that superiority which discipline requires he should admit. No doubt, the case I have just given is a very trivial incident of indiscipline. But supposing the soldier writes to the Press and says that the General Officer Commanding under whom he is serving has no more idea "of tactics than a novice in a nunnery," there is a clear implication in the letter that he knows more of tactics than the General knows. The breach of discipline is, in a way, all the worse if and in so far as the criticisms are well-founded, because a brilliant and victorious General might easily enjoy the respect of those under his command in spite of the public criticism of a private, while a General who really was an ass-and such a thing is not unknown in history-could ill-afford to be criticised by anybody. It does not, of course, necessarily follow that the same thing which would be a breach of discipline in the army is a breach of discipline as between the teacher and the taught, but in considering that question I think it is most important to try to look at the matter from the point of view of the teacher. If he is to do his work at all, he must have students who recognise that he knows more about his subject than they do. The minute that is seriously called in question by his pupils, not only has he so lost the confidence of those he has to try to teach that he cannot hope to impart knowledge to them, but his own confidence in himself, which is equally essential, must be greatly undermined.