Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 7th August 1909 — No. 7
Facts and Opinions
The Police Bill
The Police Bill has passed the Committee and next week, it is rumoured, will be made law.
It is a provision for giving absolute power to the Police Commissioner and his underlings.
It is true that the power is limited in time in certain respects, but so long as it lasts it is arbitrary, absolute, without checks and, practically, without appeal.
We hear that the present Police Commissioner resents any proposal to put a check on his absolute power as a personal insult.
If so, he is in good company, for he only follows the example of that great philosopher and democratic statesman, Lord Morley, who resents democratic criticism of his measures and actions as a crime and sacrilege and a petty amendment of the present provisions for the deportation of inconvenient persons as a vote of censure.
The spirit of absolutism fostered by arbitrary government in India is not only swallowing up the old British virtues in India itself but encroaching on the free spirit of England.
The powers of prohibition, regulation and arrest provided for in the Bill will exalt Mr. Halliday into the Czar of Calcutta.
It is noticeable that any man may be arrested for the breach of any law by any policeman without a warrant and be sentenced to a fine of a hundred rupees or, for certain political offences among others, to a month's hard labour.
Any meeting can be stopped for a week at the sweet will and discretion of an individual.
The provisions for search and entry of the police into houses and so-called public places are so ample as to give a power of inquisition and domiciliary visit second only to the Russian.
Even boardings, messes and private lodging-houses are liable to entry at any hour and on any pretext.
And by an inspired improvement on the stringent Bombay Act no action of the police, however vexatious, unwarranted and malicious, can be punished unless the aggrieved party can prove bad faith, a condition which in nine cases out of ten of 
malicious harassment is impossible of satisfaction.
It is a sound principle that where a citizen has been causelessly harassed, the burden of proving good faith rests on the harasser.
An opposite proviso means the destruction of the liberty of the person.
No man's personal freedom and dignity will henceforth be safe for a moment from the whims of the lowest policeman in the street.
The authorities may say that this is not the purposed object of the Bill.
We have nothing to do with the intention of the framers, we have to do only with the provisions of the law itself, and it is enough if all these things are rendered possible under the provisions.
To make bad laws and plead good intentions is an old evasion of weak and violent rulers.