The District Magistrate of Tanjore, Mr. J. F. Thorne I.C.S., issued a circular that the Satyagrahis marching to Vedaranyam (on the sea coast in the district) under the leadership of C. Rajagopalachari to break the salt law should not be given hospitality or any help and if anyone did so he would be put in jail. THE HINDU : “If we know the intelligent and partiotic people of Tanjore aright they are not likely to be frightened away by this kind of mischievous and disingenuous propaganda from their adherence to strict dharma that those who ask for food and shelter shall not be turned away empty-handed, much less those who ask for it as of right in the name of the motherland.”
APRIL 11, 1930
An egregious circular
THE DISTRICT MAGISTRATE OF TANJORE HAS IN FURTHERANCE of his peculiar notions of safeguarding law and order to which we referred yesterday, caused to be printed and distributed in the district a notice to the public in Tamil, which we reproduce elsewhere with a close translation. The notice begins by blandly asserting that the Salt satyagrahis who propose to start from Trichinopoly for Vedaranyam on the 13th instant constitute an unlawful assembly. This, as we pointed out yesterday, is fundamentally wrong, since the proposed violation of the Salt Act does not come under the category of any of the offences mentioned in Section 141 and secondly, even if its meaning should be strained so as to render the Satyagrahis an unlawful assembly, they would become so only if and when they are presently to become engaged in breaking the law by actually manufacturing salt at Vedaranyam. Mr. Thorne himself seems to dimly apprehend that his conception of what constitutes an unlawful assembly may not square with that of the law of the land; for if he were convinced that the Salt Satyagrahis constituted an unlawful assembly when they began their march, he could arrest them himself and send them for trial. It is evidently an uncomfortable feeling that such a charge might not stand that has prompted him to hamper and obstruct the Satyagrahis by issuing a warning to the people in the localities lying on their route with a view to compelling them to refuse the Satyagrahis even elementary needs. And he proceeds to do this by what we cannot help characterising as a perversion of the plain meaning of Section 157 of the Penal Code. This Section, as we pointed yesterday, can only apply to cases of harbouring and assisting people who have been or are about to be hired, engaged or employed by some others to join or become members of an unlawful assembly already existing or hereafter to be brought into existence and it is not ex hypothesi intended to apply to those who have, as the District Magistrate says, already become an unlawful assembly themselves and have committed an offence of which he can himself take cognisance at once. It is plain, therefore, that no offence of harbouring under Section 157 can be committed in the face of the Magistrate’s own admission that they have already become members of an unlawful assembly; and as there is no design or intention to screen any of them from punishment on the part of the villagers who may give them food and lodging, they are not liable to punishment for any offence whatever.
Naturally he does not stop with merely expounding the law. He embroiders a few diplomatic devices thereupon, even as his confreres in Gujarat and the Andhra country have done, each according to the light of his inspiration. He poses as the champion of outraged local patriotism. For he proclaims that Tanjore does not want to be worried by these pestilential folk, and God willing, they shall not be worried, if he, Mr. Thome, could help it. Lest, however, some misguided folk in the district should not know what is good for them and persist in
receiving the Satyagrahis as the dictates of common humanity and the immemorial laws of hospitality require, he concludes by telling them (a perfect example of the iron hand in the velvet glove) that if they do not behave like good boys why, then, they will be put in jail. If we know the intelligent and patriotic people of Tanjore aright, they are not likely to be frightened away by this kind of mischievous and disingenuous propaganda from their adherence to the eternal dharma that those who ask for food and shelter shall not be turned away empty-handed, much less those who ask for it as of right in the name of the motherland.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I