Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 13th November 1909 — No.19
Facts and Opinions
House-Searches
One wonders what would happen in any European country if the police as a recompense for their utter inefficiency and detective incapacity were armed with the power and allowed to use it freely of raiding the houses of respectable citizens, ransack1 the property of absent occupants and leaving it unsafe and unprotected, carrying off the business books of Presses, newspapers and other commercial concerns, the private letters of individuals, books publicly sold and procurable in every bookshop, violating the sanctity of correspondence between wife and husband, searching the persons of ladies of the house even though it be by female hands and the trampling2 on the sanctity of the home, the dignity of the person and the self-respect which every race worthy of existence holds to be dearer than life itself.
And all this in spite of the fact, exemplified a hundred times over, that these inquisitions are wholly infructuous and can serve no purpose but harassment and exasperation.
Usually the searches are undertaken, if we do not err, on the vague information of disreputable hirelings used as spies and informers, the statements of lying approvers eager to save their own skins by jeopardising innocent men and confessions to the police of arrested prisoners made either for the same purpose or dictated by a morbid vanity and light-headed braggadocio which invents facts and details in order to give dignity to petty crime and magnitude to small and foolish undertakings.
The ludicrously irrelevant and useless nature of the articles which are the3 sole reward of this odious activity are its sufficient condemnation.
Even if the widespread conspiracy dreamed of by authorities4 were a fact is it conceivable that respectable men, knowing the police to be on the alert, would risk liberty and property by storing bombs, looted ornaments or treasonous correspondence in their houses?
We are aware that the right of house-search is a necessary weapon in the 
hands of authority for the suppression of crime, but it was never meant that this should be misused in order to supply the place of detective ability in the Police.
House searches are unwarrantable unless the information on which they proceed is precise, reliable and highly probable.
Judging from results not one of these epithets can be applied to the numerous searches which are now becoming a standing feature of life in Bengal.
And if the search of the persons of ladies is to become another common feature of these domiciliary visits, we fear that the patience of a people jealously sensitive on these matters will not long endure the strain.
Surely, the higher authorities ought to have sufficient good sense to draw inevitable5 conclusion from experience, perceive the limitations of this weapon and, if not for the possible evil consequence of creating still greater disaffection, yet for its barren inutility, renounce its excessive use.