The Calcutta Weekly Notes June 6 1949

The Full Bench set aside the order of forfeiture and the observations it made in course of its judgment are if we may say so without impropriety not only courageous and quite in accordance with the spirit of the times but they also furnish the ideal to which this aspect of the law in our country must conform in order that the new State may develop on right lines and realise its full possibiliti [...] The charge against the newspaper was that it published a letter of a refugee in which the latter made an impassioned appeal to the Editor to take up the cause of all refugees who have lost everything and to wake up the government to their resposibilities in the matter. [...] Their Lordships regretted that the changover has not caused any the least transformtion of the outlook of the present-day executive towards the common citizen nor has it broadened its vision in the least and it is as prone as ever to stifle legitimate criticisms and com 111oxii THE CALCUTTA WEEKLY NOTES. [...] We do not think however that the Full Bench was justified in propoing a change in the law of sedition incoporating the safeguards in that judgment 112"V.1 LllIl THE CALCUTTA WEEKLY NOTES oxiii As we read that judgment Chief Justice Gwyer's real emphasis was on the mode of interpretation of the important section of the Indian Penal Code and not on an amenment of the law ; his Lordship [...] In characterising the prosecution as absurd and an attack on the subject's right of legitimate free speech the substance whereof was that the existing Government was of the capitalist class and thrived on the banning of militant organisation and on the suppression of workers' movement and that therefore the Bolshevik form of Goernment was preferable to the existing captalistic form thereof