Document Based Question
During the Great Trial of 1922, Mohandas Gandhi was put on trial for speaking out about the British Government in India, and how it was doing nothing to benefit the people of India, but instead hurting them to help benefit the British. More specifically, he lectured about the slow deterioration of the liveliness of the natives of India, as the British government in India was taking away the meaning of their lives. Natives were also deprived of any freedom of speech or expression, which only goes to show the level of dehumanization the natives were put through. Gandhi pointed out that the judicial systems and laws were geared towards the benefit of the British government, with no consideration of the natives involved. He said all of his teaching and speeches about the coarse British power of the Indians fall under section 12-A, to which Gandhi happily accepted the charge because that law was “perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.”
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For example, the British ensured that “the profits are sucked away from the people… Nothing can explain the misery of the people”. Furthermore, the legal system is also completely concerned only about the economic benefit of the British. Through Gandhi's view and studies, “Their crime consisted out of love of their country. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, justice has been denied to Indians as against Europeans in the courts of India.” out of ten men convicted of a crime was completely innocent. The crime, Gandhi said, “consisted in love of their country.” Gandhi believes that British government had done the worst out of all the systems India was put through, therefore seeing that it must be spoken about. Because “what in law is a deliberate crime but appears to me to be the highest duty of a