SINDH HUNDU SABHA’S REPRESENTATION TO THE GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY ON THE SUBJECT OF “PLEADERS” SANADS. Karachi,3rd September, 1909.
“ MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCT,--- On behalf of of the Sindh Hindu Sabha I beg to lay the following for your Excellency’s consideration.
The public of Sindh have viewed with concern a rule among those recently promulgated by thr court of the Judicial Commissioner of Sindh with the sanction of Your Excellency’s Government, where by those who pass the Sindh Courts Pleaders’ Examination, the standard of which has been raised, the Old District Pleaders’ Examination having been abolished, and those who pass the LL.B of the university are to be granted, instead of former permanent Sanad, only a temporary Certificate renewable every year for five consecutive years.
Hitherto the public looked up to legal practitioners, not only as member of a honouable profession, but also as men conspicuous for their independence of thought and action, men who have been always in the vanguard of all movements for the moral and material progress of the country, all reform, political, social, or industrial being due to their advocacy, initiate and example. Indeed, the members of this profession in every country where it exists, have proved to be the backbone of the nation.
The rule in question, therefore, as keeping suspending over their heads the menace of the refusal of the re-grand of their Sanads at the end of every year, for a term of five years, in the event of their incurring the displeasure of the Judiciary, real or imaginary, will have the inevitable effect of laying on embargo on their independence, breeding in them habits of cringing and servility, weeking their moral fiber and acting as a set-back to their character.
The Sabha is not aware of anything in the annals of the past which could have constituted the raison d’etre of this innovation. If the object of the rule is to operate as a deterrent upon the deviation of pleaders from the right rule of conduct in the practice of their profession, or in the discharge of their duties of citizenship, that object would be adequately served by the law alreadt in existence investing courts with disciplinary jurisdiction over pleaders who are liable to have their Sanads permanently withdrawn or suspended for a term according to the gravity of the offence.
The rule in question, in the opinion of the Sabha, will serve no other purpose than the that of lowering the status of pleaders, bringing their profession to contempt in eyes of public, handicapping them in the independent and free performance of their duties to clients and limiting the scope of their general usefulness for which they have been hitherto distinguished.
On behalf of the Sabha, I , therefore, pray that this rule be abrogated. – Herchandrai Vishindas, President, Sindh Hindu Sabha.
SINDH HINDU SABHA ON “REPRESENTATION”.
In 1909 Seth Harchandrai Vishindas, in capacity of the President of Sindh Hindu Sabha sent telegram to the Viceroy of India. It reads as follow: “ Sindh Hindu Sabha respectfully urges its protest against the extravagant and unwarranted demands of Muhammadans regarding representation in Reformed Legislative Council. Muhammadan assumption of superior political importance is unjustified.Other communities are in no way invancement to Muhammadans.Unequal representation demands by Muhammadans is likely to cause deep resentment among other communities and nullify the beneficial effect of the Reform Scheme”.
A Sindhi Muslim with pen name of G.N.A wrote letter to the editor of the Daily Gazette of Karachi and that was published in paper’s issue of 6th October 1909. He wrote; “ Sir! It is but fair that while the long protest of the Sindh Hindu Sabha against Muhammadan representation in Sindh is being met with a proper answer in the proper quarter, a hint may laid before those who have naturally been fascinated by the superb periods of its composition. Both the columns of your print, which it has taken up to display itself come to this, that we Muhammadans ought to entertain no fear at all of votes among the District Boards, because we are in over whelming majority there. But the President has not troubled himself to get the figures. Will he admit that as an example of the condition of our electorate, Jacobabad is the most Muhammadan electorate in Sindh, and will he also recall to his mind that out of the total of 180 voters as many as 87 walked to the voting table at the last election, and that more than half i.e 45 votes were plumped for Professor Shahani. Professor Shahani had aldo a similar majority in the Larkana District were out of 133 recorded votes, he had 55 votes”.
On second day, rejoinder to this letter appeared in the same paper. In his strong-worded letter, Seth Harchandrai Vishindas wrote as follow: “ We will possess our souls in patience till ‘a proper answer in proper quarter’ forecast. By your correspondent G.N.A in your yesterday’s issue, sees the light. But if G.N.A is an advance sample of the logic of the impending answer, we may dismiss alarm like the Mulla pedagogue of the story who commanded his pupils to silence, on the approach of a visitor of portly mien, well-sized turban and venerable bread to avoid betrayal of his short comings in the presence of such unmistakable symptoms of learning, and then after hearing the visitor announces his cognomen, cried out READ AWAY BOYS. He is only a Joosib.
Your Correspondent says ‘ Both the columns at your print, which it (the Sabha memorial) has taken up to display itself come to this that we Muhammadans ought to entertain no fear at all of votes among the District Boards because we are in over whelming majority there’,. This is however, not all the memorial comes to. It implies that if Muhammadan demand any extra seat on the basis of the unsafty of the District Board seat, such a demand is too extravagant to be compiled with, the premises being false.
G.A.N further says ‘ But the President has not troubled himself to get at the figures’. It is true that I have not troubled about all the figures of the stars in the heavens, for instance, or of the hair on a man’s head. But I have troubled about the figures of the District Board members as anyone can see from the table of figures standing prominently in the middle of the Shaba’s memorial.
Your Correspondent’s jumbling of figures of the last election to the ‘landholders seat’ with the question of the District Board seat, the only question dwelt with by the Sabha and material for the consideration of the subject in hand, is hopelessly inconsequent. What the Jacobabad and larkana elections did at the ‘landholders’ election was not point at issue. But even there the electorate taken as a whole returned a Muhammadan although there was two Muhammadan six [Hindu?] candidates. The statement made without this complement is tainted as a half-truth.
M/S Bhurgri and Yousif Ali Bhai, the spokemen for Muhammadans have made no grievences of the landholders’s seat or its insecurity, as for as the published accounts ago. And the Sindh Sabha had advisedly differentiated between the case of landholders and District Boards, the former being a diffuse and unorganized body and latter a compact and select one”
