M L GAUTAM Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are applications under Section 99-B, Criminal P.C., made to the High Court to set aside two orders of the Local Government under which printed translations of two books made by the applicants have been declared forfeited. The main point for consideration is whether these books or any of them contain any matter the publication of which is punishable under Section 124.A or Section 153-A, I.P.C. It is clear from Section 99-D that if this Special Bench is not satisfied that they contain matters of such objectionable nature, we must set aside the order of forfeiture.

(2.) The first book is a Hindi translation of Lenin's "imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism" together with the publisher's announcement and the prefaces to the French and the German editions. Lenin wrote this pamphlet in Zurich in the spring of 1916 during a time when the Great War was in progress. The book was written, as the author himself admitted, "with an eye to the Tsarist Censorship," and was therefore written with a certain amount of caution. Apparently the book successfully passed the Russian Censorship, for the author boastfully stated in the preface to the later editions that "this book too is lawful in the eye of the Tsarist Censorship." The professed object of the pamphlet was that the Great War was an imperialist war on both sides. The main theme of the author as summed up in the publisher's announcement was to show that Imperialism is a developed form of Capitalism and that the Capitalist system has accomplished its work and the present age for it is an age of decay and decline. Prom the author's point of view it is only after viewing the state of the entire economic system and not merely on the basis of the condition of a particular country that it can be decided whether social revolution is possible in a country or not. He has emphasised that "on being trampled down by imperialist states even industrially backward countries can prepare themselves for a new social system." In the preface to the French and German editions the author declared that his aim was to give a picture of the economic system and the reciprocal international relations of the capitalist world, which may serve as an example to very many communists of advanced countries. The professed object was to disclose the alleged hollowness of the idea and the hopes of the Social-Pacifists to establish a republic in the world.

(3.) The author is labouring under the idea that Capitalism practises oppression through railways and other enterprises upon a billion people, and helps in harassing and plundering half the population of the world, to quote his own words, people in colonies and semi-colonies and the people in slave countries as well as the wage-slaves of capitalism even in civilised countries. He has referred to America, England, Japan, Russia, Germany and France as capitalist countries and developed his theme that the Great War was resolved upon to decide whether the bankers of England or those of Germany should get the major portion of the plunder, and asserted that the Great War has brought about a world-wide havoc due to which a revolution was simmering whose success in the end was inevitable. The idea developed is that there are certain inherent contradictions in Imperialism which make the revolutionary crisis inevitable. He considers that an international split in the proletariat is an easy matter and "armed struggle or civil war between these two tendencies is inevitable." The author suggests that capitalism has brought to the fore a few particular and powerful states forming l/10 or l/5 of the total population of the world which are exploiting the rest of the world. He has also stated that the principal spheres of investment of British capital are its colonial possessions which are very great in America and Asia. According to him, the characteristic of Imperialism is a striving not merely for agrararian countries, but also for industrialised countries. He has referred to the alleged tyrannical Imperialism of great powers including Great Britain, and has also stated with regard to India, Indo-China and China that these three colonial and semi-colonial countries inhabited by six or seven million human beings are subject to the exploitation by several imperialist powers,. Great Britain, France, Japan and the United States, etc. It is not possible to reproduce any considerable portion out of this book. Only a gist of the passages, considered objectionable by the Government Advocate and printed on behalf of the Local Government has been very briefly given to indicate the general purport of the pamphlet. It will thus appear that the author did not of course have His Majesty the King or the Government established by law in British India particularly in view. He was dealing with his own notions of what he called Imperialism and denounced Capitalism in all its forms. In order to find some support for his thesis, he has given his own, version of certain historical events and his own inferences from certain statistical figures. Interspersed here and there-may be passages which may have direct reference to the political part of Imperialism; but the author has emphasised at several places that he was interested in his book "in the economic aspect of the question." The objectionable passages printed and placed before us do not contain any direct incitement to violence or any clear instigation to use force, though there is undoubtedly the suggestion that an ultimate clash is inevitable.