Vol. 17, Part II · pages 46–50

23AND THE LORD SAID UNTO— which then where, or thereafter might be, subject to or dependent upon the Government of Bombay aforesaid, and to have such jurisdiction and authority as his Majesty’s justices of his Majesty’s Court of King’s Bench had and might lawfully exercise within that part of Great Britain called England, as far as circumstances would admit. And that the said Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay should have and use, as occasion might require, a seal bearing a device or impression of his Majesty’s royal arms; and that all writes, summonses, precepts, rules, orders, and other mandatory process to be used, issued or awarded by the said Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay, should run and be in the name and style of his Majesty, and be sealed with the seal of the said Supreme Court. And that the King by the said letters patent constituted and appointed Sir Edward West, Knight, then recorder of Bombay, to be the first Chief Justice, and Sir Ralph Rice, Knight, then recorder of Prince of Wales’s Island, and Sir Charles Harcourt Chambers, Knight, to be the first puisne Justices of the said Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay. And the King did further direct, ordain and appoint a certain jurisdiction to apperatin to the said Supreme Court of Judicature, for the hearing and determining of suits and actions arising in the territories subject to or depending upon the said Government, subject to certain provisos, exemptions, and declarations in the said letters patent mentioned, and did appoint a certain form of proceeding for the commencing, prosecuting, hearing and determining such civil suits and actions, and for the awarding and issuing of execution on the judgements pronounced therein. And that the King was also pleased to grant, ordain and appoint, that the said Supreme Court should be a court of equity, and have equitable jurisdiction over the persons in the said letters patent described, and should be a court of oyer and terminer, and gaol delivery in and for the town and island of Bombay, and the limits thereof, and the factories subordinate thereto, and also a court of ecclesiastical jurisdiction within and throughout the town and island of Bombay and the limits thereof; and further, that the said Supreme Court should be a Court of Admiralty in and for the said

24 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES town and island of Bombay and the limits thereof, and the factories subordinate thereto, and all the territories which then were or thereafter might be, subject to or dependent upon the said Government. And that the said Sir R. Rice, Knight, resigned the off ice of senior puisne Justice of the said Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay, in November 1827, when the said Sir C. H. Chambers became senior puisne Justice thereof; and the said Sir R. Rice having resigned his office, the petitioner was by letters patent of the 30th of August 1827, appointed one of the puisne Justices of the said Supreme Court in his room; and that he took his seat as such at Bombay, on the 9th day of February 1828. And that the said Chief Justice Sir Edward West departed his life on the 18th of August 1828; and that on the 3rd day of October in that year a letter was addressed : “ To Sir C. H. Chambers, and the petitioner, as puisne Justices of the Supreme Court of Judicature, dated Bombay Castle, 3rd October 1828, and signed, by John Malcolm, the Governor; T. Bradford, LieutenantGeneral, Commander of the Forces; J. J. Sparrow, and John Romer, the Second and Third Members of the Council.” Which letter was of the following tenor : Honourable Sirs : “We are quite aware that we transgress upon ordinary forms in addressing this letter to you; but the circumstances under which we are placed will, we trust, justify this departure from usage, and our knowledge of your private and public characters leads us to hope, that what we state will be received in that spirit, in which it is written; and that, notwithstanding your strict obligations to fulfil every part of your high and sacred duty as British Judges, you will, on this extraordinary occasion, deem yourselves at liberty to consider as much the objects, as the rules of the Court over which you preside; and viewing the intention of the Legislature in its institution, as directed to the aid and support of the Government instructed with the administration of this Presidency, you will, for a short period, be induced by our representations to abstain from

25AND THE LORD SAID UNTO— any acts (however legal you may deem them) which, under the measures, we have felt ourselves compelled to take and which we deem essential to the interests committed to our charge, must have the effect of producing open collision between our authority and yours, and by doing so, not only diminish that respect in the native population of this country which it is so essential to both to maintain, but seriously to weaken, by a supposed division in our internal rule, those impressions on the minds of our native subjects, the existence of which is indispensable to the peace, prosperity and permanence of the Indian empire. This conclusion refers to a variety of circumstances which we are equally forbid from explaining as you are from attending to such explanation; but we deem it necessary to state our conviction of the truth of what we have asserted, expecting that it may have some weight with you as connected with the preservation of that strength in the Government, which in all our territories, and particularly those we have so recently acquired, is the chief, if not the only power we posses for maintaining that general peace, on the continuance of which the means of good rule, and of administering law under any form must always depend. “2. In consequence of recent proceedings in the Supreme Court, in the cases of Moro Ragonath [1 Knapp, 8] and Bappoo Gunness [1 Knapp, 11], we have felt compelled, for reasons which we have fully stated to our superiors, to direct that no further legal proceedings be admitted in the case of Moro Ragonath; and that no returns be made to any writs of habeas corpus of a similar nature to those recently issued and directed to any officers of the provincial courts, or to any of our native subjects not residing in the island of Bombay. “3. We are quite sensible of the deep responsibility we incur by these measures, but must look for our justification in the necessity of our situation. The grounds upon which we act have exclusive reference to considerations of civil Government and of State policy; but as our resolution cannot be altered until we receive the commands of those high authorities to which we are subject, we inform you of them; and we do most anxiously hope, that the considerations we have before stated may lend you to limit

26 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES yourselves to those protests and appeals against our conduct in the cases specified, that you may deem it your duty to make, as any other conduct must, for reasons already stated, prove deeply injurious to the public interests, and can, under the resolution taken and avowed by Government, produce no result favourable either to the immediate or future establishment of the extended jurisdiction you have claimed. A very short period will elapse before an answer is received to the full and urgent reference we have made upon this subject; and we must again express our hope, that even the obligations under which we are sensible to act, are not so imperative as to impel you to proceedings which the Government has thus explicitly stated its resolution to oppose. “We have the honour to be, etc. etc.” The petition then stated, that on Monday the 6th October instant, the Supreme Court being assembled for the despatch of its judicial business, Sir C. H. Chambers caused this letter to be read to the court by the clerk of the Crown; after which the petitioner concurring with Sir C. H. Chambers in opinion regarding both the form and the substance of the communication, the court directed that the clerk of the Crown should inform the Chief Secretary to the Government of the Presidency, by letter, that the said letter had been received, and that the Judges could take no notice thereof. That it was the intention of the said Sir C. H. Chambers and the petitioner to have laid before his Majesty, in an humble petition, the circumstances which were therein above set forth, and most dutifully and submissively have to be sought his Majesty’s royal protection against what they agreed in considering a most unconstitutional and criminal attempt, on the part of those armed with the whole power, civil and military, of the Presidency, to approach the Supreme Court of Judicature within the same, not by their humble petition, or by motion, by themselves or their counsel, in open court, the only way in which the law, for the wisest purposes, permitted his Majesty’s Judges to be addressed, but by means of such covert and private communication, as was strictly forbiden by the forms reared by the wisdom of ages, for the intrenching their persons against the danger and even the pollution of undue solicitation or menace, and this for the declared purpose of inducing the Judges, notwithstanding their most sacred

27AND THE LORD SAID UNTO— obligations to God, to the King, and to themselves, to refuse to administer justice according to what they should deem to be law, in compliance with such notions as those who had thus approached them might from time to time entertain of what they should call State policy. That, while a petition to the above effect was preparing to be transmitted to England, Sir Charles Harcourt Chambers, then acting as Chief Justice of the said Supreme Court, suddenly died on the 13th of October 1828. The petition then proceeded at considerable length to explain the motives that influenced the petitioner and his colleague during these proceedings to impugn the conduct of the Governor and Council, and to show the benefit of the Supreme Court having the power to issue the writ of habeas corpus in the manner they claimed. It ultimately prayed, that it might therefore please His Majesty to take the premises into his Royal and most gracious consideration, and to give such commands concerning the same as to His Majesty’s Royal wisdom should seem meet, for the due vindication and protection of the dignity and lawful authority of His Majesty’s Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay. The case of Moro Ragonath [1 Knapp, 5] which is allued to in the petition may be thus briefly stated; on the 25th of August 1828, writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, directed to Pandoorung Ramchander for the production of the body of Moro Ragonath, his ward, was moved for before Mr. Justice Grant, the petitioner, at his chambers, on the affidavit of Dinkar Gopal Dew, which stated that Moro Ragonath had been confined for nearly a year, and was still kept in confinement by Pandoorung Ramchander against his will, and under circumstances attended with great hardship and cruelty. This motion was opposed by the Advocate General, on the ground that Pandoorung Ramchander and Moro Ragonath were natives, residing at Poona, and not amenable to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The granting of the writ was postponed for various reasons until the 30th of August, during which time additional affidavits were put in, and in these it was stated that Moro Ragonath having made his escape from Pandoorung Ramchander on the 12th of July, was retaken and sent back again to his custody by persons acting under the order and by the directions of John