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234 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
of the Council of Action and they have all been given in the body of this report practically from page 10 onwards, do not in my judgment support this finding. As I stated, I am taking this as a finding of fact for the sake of argument and the question that I am going to ask to the Honourable the Home Minister is this : Does he believe that this report is true ? If he says that this report is true, is he prepared to prosecute the members of the Council of Action for having aided and abetted this violence ? Speaking for myself, inasmuch as I was connected with this Council of Action, I am prepared to take my trial. Let any man who has the courage, who has the confidence, who believes in this evidence, come forward and prosecute me. I am prepared to take my trial and suffer what punishment the law might inflict upon me. That is my first question. The second question that I am going to ask the Honourable the Home Minister is this, and that is again based upon a finding of the Enquiry Committee which, as I said, I am going to accept for the sake of argument. I thought that the principal question with which this Committee was concerned was the question of justification of the firing. The Committee has stated that the firing was justified, that there were reasons for the firing. The Committee, I believe, has also reported that without firing the violence could not have been curbed, in other words, that the firing was just sufficient for the purpose. As I said, I am taking that finding as true for the purpose of my argument. I am also asking therefore another question to the Honourable the Home Minister. Is he prepared to prosecute the police officers who indulged in this firing in an ordinary court of law and get the finding given by this Committee sustained by a Judge and a Jury? Sir, I like to point out to this House that so far as the law is concerned, there is no difference between an ordinary citizen and a police officer or a military officer, and I would like to read for the benefit of the House a short paragraph from a very classical document which I am sure my honourable friend the Home Minister knows, namely, the Report of the Featherstone Riots Commmitee. In one passage it says :—
“Officers and soldiers are under no special privileges and subject to no special responsibility as regards the principle of the law. A soldier for the purpose of establishing civil order is only a citizen armed in a particular manner. He cannot, because he is a soldier, excuse himself if, without necessity, he takes human life. The duty of magistrates and police officers to summon or abstain from summoning the assistance of the military depends in like manner in this case. A soldier can only act by using his arms. The weapons he carries are deadly. They cannot be employed at all without danger to fife and limb, and in these days of improved rites and perfected ammunition without some risk and endangering distant and possibly innocent bystanders. To call for assistance against rioters from those who can only interpose under such grave conditions