The Calcutta Weekly Notes January 17 1949

Irony apart however the Court did not pursue the matter any further and contented itself with the remark that " a claim of privilege on behalf of the Goernment in respect of the production of the letter was all the more extraordinary." Yet it is very extraordinary that in the flush of newly-gotten power the safeguards of civic freedom are being ignored with ipunity and the executive is v [...] His Excellency the Governor-General has in a recent oration in Bombay assured the Indian Press that it enjoyed the same rights as the Press in England and that its future was safe in the hands of the Government of India and those engaged in drafting the new constitution. [...] The journalists who gave the Governor-General a reception said somewhat bitterly in their address: " It is a strange irony that after all the Press in India has done for the achievment of the country's freedom our consttutiomakers should fight shy even of the mere mention of the Press in the constittion." Rajaji repeating the argument of 86"Vol. [...] But how does one get over the fact that in Bombay journalists were driven to form a Freedom of the Press Committee and that in Bengal there is a Civil Liberties Committee from both of which sources we have received plenty of materials about a continuing attack in rcent months on the freedom of the Press materials that none of the leadir.g papers in the country are prepared to print? [...] And on the next clay at a inaminoth gathering of the citizens of Calcutta as well as of representative Buddhists from many countries India's Prime Minister made over to the president of the Mahabodhi Society the holy relics that have come back befittingly to the country which the Buddha hallowed by his birth the country which after much stern travail has attained political freedom long deni