PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 939
to make the offender a loving person; well, let him be warned and discharged. He will continue to love and no soreness will remain in his heart. Why should he have that ? Unfortunately, my hon. friend has thought that that could not be and therefore, he has suggested this punishment.
Now, Sir, having had a little practice in criminal law, I think the rules on which punishment is based are two mainly. One is to deter the offender from repeating his offence. That, I think, is the primary rule of criminal jurisprudence. Punishment is necessary; otherwise the offender may go on repeating his offence. It is to prevent him that there must be a punishment. The second object of punishment is to prevent a man from adopting a criminal career. If a man once begins a criminal career then he may continue to do so unless there is some deterrent punishment to prevent him from adopting that career.
Now, Sir, if you accept these two principles, is the punishment proposed by my hon. friend adequate for the purpose of the Bill ? In the first place the six months’ imprisonment is really the maximum and a magistrate may only inflict one day’s imprisonment and let the man be off. There is no minimum fixed that the imprisonment shall not be less than six months or three months or whatever it is. The whole matter is left in the hands of the magistrate. What sort of a magistrate he may be, it may be quite possible and I can quite imagine that he may be a Pandit from Kashi sitting in judgement in the magistrate’s chair. What conscience would he have in the matter of administering this law?
Shri Basappa Shetty (Mysore) : Kashi or Kashmir ?
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Oh, Kashmir Brahmins are not true Brahmins, I understand. They are meat khao, machli khao, as they say. Therefore they are not Brahmins.
Now, as I said, in this case if you want to see that the law is observed, there ought to have been a minimum punishment below which the magistrate could not go. Secondly the punishment is alternative, imprisonment or fine. The magistrate may very well inflict the alternative punishment