PROTECTION OF MOSQUES IN NEW DELHI 163
in view of the present circumstances, when there is such tremendous paucity of accommodation, and when officials who are called here have to live in hutments and in all sorts of improvised accommodation, for Government to adopt a rule of this kind would be—I do not wish to say,—a dog-in-themanger policy. My Honourable friend can easily realise that this is not a thing which can be accepted by Government in the present circumstances.
Coming to the second part of the Resolution which asks Government to put certain restraints upon the occupants, I am sorry to say that that also is bound to create great difficulties. Sir, it is quite well-known that a landlord is entitled to put certain restrictions on a tenant. But I have no doubt that my Honourable friend, Sir Yamin Khan, will agree that the landlord can put such restraints upon a tenant which are intended primarily for the preservation of the premises. I have not got time to go into this in any detail. But the sort of restrictions which my Honourable friend desires Government should impose upon the tenant are not justifiable on the ground that they will not be for the preservation of the premises.
Now, Sir, I come to the second difficulty. What would be the position of the tenant who is subject to this kind of stipulation. Sir, I have no doubt and I feel quite certain that I am not exaggerating the matter, that if I were to introduce the kind of stipulation which is mentioned in the Resolution that every man, whether he is Muslim or Non-Muslim, should open his compound to anybody who wants to come and say his prayers, will be nothing short of destroying the privacy of the premises and to convert it, if I may say so, into a musaffir khana. I have no doubt about it that it would be very difficult to impose such a stipulation on a non-Muslim tenant, and I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that it would be difficult to impose a similar stipulation on a European occupant. But I venture to suggest that even a Muslim occupant would not very readily consent to the kind of stipulation which my Honourable friend wants me to impose. It is quite apparent that my Honourable colleague who is occupying premises of the kind mentioned in the Resolution, with all