BAL GANGADHAR TILAK Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application by Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, praying this Court to revise an order made by the District Magistrate of Poona under Section 108 and the following setions of the Criminal Procedure Code.

(2.) The under complained of directs that the applicant do enter into a bond in a sum of Rs. 20,000 with two sureties each in haviour for a period of one year. The ground of the order was that in the learned District Magistrate s opinion the applicant disseminated seditious matter in the three speeches which are now upon the record.

(3.) These speeches were admittedly made by Mr. Tilak. They were made in the Marathi language, but the translations before us are, it is admitted, substantially correct, and in my view nothing turns upon certain small niceties of expression in which the defence suggest that the official translation contains slightly harsher words than the Marathi warrants. Thus the only question is, whether in the three speeches the applicant is proved to have excited, or to have attempted to excite, disaffection towards the Government established by law in British India within the meaning of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. In my opinion the application does not give rise to any real question of law. But I must notice a mistake of law into which the learned Magistrate has inadvertently fallen. Following Mr. Justice Strachey s original pronouncement to the Jury in Queen-Empress v. Bal Gangadhar Tilak 22 B. 112 at p. 151 : 11 Ind. Dec. (N.S.) 656, he has held that disaffection is the equivalent merely of absence of affection. I cannot say whether this expression did or did not influence the learned Magistrate s decision, but it is plain that it may have done so. It is, I think, equally plain that this construction of the word disaffection is opposed to all ordinary English usage in words compounded with the particle dis. Dislike, for instance, is not a mere absence of liking, nor is disgust for a thing a mere absence of taste for it. This, indeed, was recognized by the Full Bench which amended Mr. Justice Strachey s definition: see Queen Empress v. Bal Gangadhar Tilak 22 B. 112 at p. 151 ; 11 Ind. Dec. (N.S.) 656. The present Explanation No. 1 appended to Section 124A now sets the point at rest. With these definitions before us I say that there is not in my opinion any real doubt about the law governing the case.