38 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
proceedings which have been commenced against them are conformable to the law; or his writ of prohibition, that he may keep the respective courts throughout his dominions in the due exercise of their duties; or his writs of mandamus, that he may oblige persons to do such acts as they are bound to perform. Therefore, when the King grants to a particular court, by virtue of the authority of an Act of Parliament, these powers arising out of his prerogative, the court has them in their full extent, unless he limits them, either as to extent of territory, or in some other way. Here the King has granted the same powers as the King’s Bench exercises in England, to be exercised by the Supreme Court of Bombay throughout a territory including the places to which these writs have been sent. It may be true, that the natives of India are not within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for the purpose of suing one another for private matters of dispute; that certain writs known to our law would not run as between party and party, and yet that the prerogative writs of the Crown being restrained by no clause in the charter, nor taken away by the direct words of an Act of Parliament, the sole power sufficient for that purpose must remain in the Crown, and exercised by that court to which the constitution has assigned so high and inestimable an authority.
In the early part of his able argument in the Court of Bombay, the Advocate-General of Bombay referred to the celebrated Patna case, in the year 1777, before Sir Elijah Impey, and from his expressions, endeavoured to infer that the Court had no jurisdiction over the natives in a case like the present (Patna, Appendix, No. 17, Judgement of Sir, E. Impey, in the case of Nadarah Begum v. Behader Beg). “In this country, the gross body of the people are not, and only certain persons answering particular descriptions are, objects of the King’s laws or of the jurisdiction of this court. As therefore there are other laws and other courts, such as they are, to whom the bulk of the natives are amenable, and we were not anxious to extend our jurisdiction, we have suffered these pleas to the jurisdiction to be pleaded as freely as any other plea,” etc. On this doctrine great stress was laid by Mr. Dewar: but Sir Elijah Impey’s authority was not wanted in support of the fact, that natives