Law and Lawyers: the Great Trial of 1922

1. The facts

Section 124-A punished bringing or attempting to bring into hatred or contempt, or exciting or attempting to excite disaffection towards, the Government established by law in British India. “Disaffection” included disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.

2. The plea and Strangman’s demand for a full trial

Gandhi pleaded guilty to all charges (noting that the King’s name had been properly omitted). Banker also pleaded guilty.

Why Strangman urged a trial. He pointed out that under section 271 of the Criminal Procedure Code the judge may, not must, convict on a plea of guilty. He asked for a full trial because:

1. the charges were serious;
2. it was in the public interest that they be fully investigated; and
3. the judge could not fix the right sentence without the full facts.

The judge declined: nothing would be gained by going over the evidence again, and he accepted the pleas. Strangman then argued on sentence that the articles were part of an organised campaign, since May 1921, to spread disaffection and overthrow the Government; that their author was an educated and recognised leader; and that, whatever he said about non-violence, preaching disaffection had led to the Bombay riots of November 1921, Madras and Chauri Chaura. He asked for a severe sentence, and a substantial fine for Banker.

3. Why Gandhi asked for the severest penalty

In his oral remarks Gandhi accepted every word of Strangman’s charge against him and took responsibility for Chauri Chaura and Bombay: “I knew that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk, and if I was set free, I would still do the same.” Then:

• “Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.” But he had to choose between submitting to a system that had done his country irreparable harm and risking the fury of his people.
• “I do not ask for mercy. I do not plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.”
• The judge had only two honest courses: to resign and dissociate himself from evil, if he felt the law was evil and Gandhi innocent; or to inflict the severest penalty, if he believed the system and law were good for the people.

The reason in one line: non-violent non-co-operation means voluntary submission to the penalty; a satyagrahi breaks an unjust law openly and accepts the punishment in full.

4. The written statement: from loyalist to non-co-operator

1. South Africa. He found he had no rights as a man because he was an Indian, but believed this was a blemish on a system mainly good. He co-operated: ambulance corps in the Boer War (1899), stretcher-bearers in the Zulu rising (1906), the Kaiser-i-Hind medal, an ambulance corps in London in 1914, and recruiting in Kheda in 1918.
2. The turn. The Rowlatt Act; the Punjab horrors from Jallianwala Bagh to the crawling orders and public floggings; the broken promise to Indian Muslims on Turkey and the Khilafat. He still pleaded for co-operation at the Amritsar Congress in 1919, but the Punjab crime was whitewashed and the reforms proved a means of further draining India.
3. The conclusion. British rule had made India more helpless than ever, politically and economically: disarmed, impoverished, its cottage spinning and weaving destroyed, its villages full of skeletons.

“The law prostituted for the exploiter”

“The law itself in this country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter.” His reasons: in the Punjab martial-law cases at least ninety-five per cent of convictions were wholly bad; in nine out of ten political cases the condemned men were innocent, their crime being love of country; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred justice had been denied to Indians as against Europeans. “In my opinion, the administration of the law is thus prostituted consciously or unconsciously for the benefit of the exploiter.” He added that most English officials did not know this and honestly believed they ran one of the best systems in the world.

On section 124-A

It was “the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law.” One should be free to express disaffection so long as one does not incite violence. He felt it a privilege to be charged under it, since many loved patriots had been. “Non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.”

5. The judgment

Broomfield said Gandhi was in a different category from anyone he had tried: a great patriot and leader to millions, a man of noble and even saintly life. But he had to judge him as a man subject to the law who had broken it, and could not understand how Gandhi could have believed violence would not follow. He followed the precedent of Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s case under the same section: two years’ simple imprisonment on each of the three counts, six years in all, adding that no one would be better pleased than he if the Government could reduce the period. Banker received one year’s simple imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 1,000.

Gandhi replied that it was the proudest privilege to be associated with Tilak’s name, that the sentence was as light as any judge could inflict, and that he could not have expected greater courtesy. The trial is called “great” because judge and accused both behaved with dignity and courtesy, and because the accused used the dock to indict the system.

How this is examined

“Explain the great trial of Gandhiji” (January 2026, January 2025), “Explain the trial of Gandhi regarding the four articles” (June 2025), “Why does Gandhi plead to inflict the severest penalty upon him?” (January 2026, 100 marks; June 2025, “the Ahmedabad case”), “Why does the Advocate-General Sir Thomas Strangman urge for a trial?” and “Why does Gandhi say that the law administered by the British government in India is prostituted for the benefit of the ruler?” (October 2023). Use sections 1, 3 and 5 for the general question; sections 2, 3 or 4 for the specific ones.