EMPEROR Vs. GANESH DAMODAR SAVARKAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from the judgment of the Sessions Judge of Nasik, convicting the appellant Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, of the offences under Secs.124A and 121 of the Indian Penal Code, that is, of exciting disaffection towards His Majesty the Emperor and the Government established by law in British India and of abetting the waging of war against His Majesty. The appellant has been sentenced by the learned Sessions Judge to two years rigorous imprisonment for the offence under Section 124A, and to transportation for life with forfeiture of all property to the Crown under Section 121.

(2.) The offences arise out of four, from among a series of eighteen, poems, published in a book entitled Laghu Abhinava Bharata Mala, i.e., A Short Series for New India, and recorded as exhibit 6 as part of the evidence in the case. The four poems are those numbered in the book as 5, 7, 9 and 17, respectively. Of poem No. 17 only verses 4 to 7 form the subject-matter of the offences proved.

(3.) When the appeal came on for hearing before us, on the 13 of October, Mr. Baptista contended that none of these four poems had or were intended by their writer to have any reference either to His Majesty the King-Emperor or to the British Government in India or to the present political condition of the country. On examining the series of poems in the book, exhibit 6, containing the four poems, it appeared to us that there were other poems in it than those four which threw light on the intent of the writer; and that, as the whole book had been allowed in the lower Court to go in as evidence without any objection, all the poems in the book could be referred to for the purpose of determining the intention, character, and object of the poems selected as the basis of the charges against the appellant in the lower Court. We adjourned the hearing for an official translation of the whole series of poems in the book into English and also to enable the appellant's legal advisers to argue the appeal with reference to the bearing of the whole series on the poems forming the subject-matter of the charges.