The Nehru Report and Muslim Rights — Page 63
[ 63 1 child were forced to�move in a crowd of men in a fair. it \. Yould never be right. In order to ensure fairness and justice, conditions must be made suitable to the strength of the child. To give him justice he should be carried on the shoulder, and given diet suitable to his age. Having nov. 1 proved that uniform laws do not necessarily lead to justice, and that very often they actually defeat the ends of justice, I would now proceea to sho,v that such a contingency is not merely imaginary, but that in the world we have actual instances of men trying to injure particular communities by the enactment of ostensibly equal laws. For instance, the enactment of the East African immigration Laws created quite a stir in India, when it was urged that though the la\. v was ostensibly meant to apply uniformly to all. it '\Vas actually intended to harm the Indians. Similarly. when the ne,v Government of Czechoslovakia legislated that landed pro perty of any individual owner exceeding 500 acres should be confiscated and should change hands. it appeared on the surface to be an equitable law, but it really aimed ¼t the ejection of the pre-war big German property owners. The Czecks themselves were mostly factory owners, and threfore there was little danger of any loss to them arising from the new law. The Germans raised a loud protest but their protest fell on deaf ears. The Government con-. tended that the law was just inasmuch as it affected th� Germans and the non-Germans alike. ( V ide the Protection of Minorities, p. 120). Similar action V. 1 as taken by the Rumanian Government in Transylvania where the Magayrs were in possession of the land. ( Vide, Ibid p. ' /44). Thus, it is clear from historical examples also that ostensibly un1f orm laws have often a definite purpose behind them,-that of harming a particular community or