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780 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Sir Hari Singh Gour: There would be the penal clause that he who runs an unauthorised paper will be punished.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Might I give another example which comes to my mind ? Supposing for instance in a state of emergency the Central Government passes a Press Act under which provision is made that no paper may be started unless it deposits a certain amount of security. Now that sort of legislation is not going to affect any particular private individual. Supposing there is a paper in a particular province which is helping the Government of the day—a Party paper. Supposing that paper is influencing the Press Act passed by the Central Legislature, and supposing on account of that affiliation between the particular newspaper journal and the Government of the Province, the Government refuses to take any action against that particular paper, what is the position ? Surely no individual is affected in this particular case ?
Sir Hari Singh Gour: There would be the penal clause that he who runs an unauthorised paper will be punished.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: That is exactly the point.
Sir Austen Chamberlain: And has to have the information and all the machinery for reaching the Government.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: If he charges a particular officer to carry on the prosecution and the local government pays the expenses of that prosecution and does not make provision for it in the budget, what is to happen ?
Sir Samuel Hoare: I see all those difficulties. At the same time I cannot help seeing the difficulties on the other side. The case mentioned by Dr. Ambedkar is essentially a case of law and order, and law and order is a provincial subject and interest. The interest of the Federation is the interest of uniformity, but that does not affect the fact that primarily that case is a provincial case. If the argument suggested in Dr. Ambedkar’s question and in Sir Austen Chamberlain’s question, too, if I may say so, is pressed to its logical conclusion, it really does mean that the Federation will control the law and order in the Provinces, and that is directly contrary to the principles as at present drafted in the White Paper.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I beg your pardon. My point is this, if I may submit it; either you must make law and order a purely provincial matter, a provincial concern which the Centre has nothing to do with, and then, of course, you can have the argument which you urged just now, but if you make it a matter of concurrent legislation, then I think the Federation must be in the position to see that the law is corrected.
†13,129. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Secretary of State, I just want to draw your attention to the present position of the concurrent field under the Government of India Act. I am anxious to do so because it was suggested to you that under the present Government of India Act only certain subjects or parts of certain subjects are made subject to the Central Legislature.
†Minutes of Evidence, Vol. II-B, 12th October 1933, pp. 1178-81.