The Angora deputation

WHILE we accept the general position taken up by the Home Member in the Angora debate in the Assembly that the state, being responsible for the conduct and safety of its citizens in the countries they wished to visit, is entitled to exercise its discretion in granting them passports before they leave Indian shores, we have no hesitation in expressing our emphatic dissent on the manner in which the Government of India has exercised its discretion in this particular case. The discretion which every government can justly claim in this matter is a discretion that has to be exercised with a single eye to the interests of the people committed to its care. In the present case, not only is there nothing to show that the action of the government has been determined by a regard for those interests, but it is as certain as anything can be in such affairs that it has not been so determined. As in so many other matters, so in this, the determining factor with the bureaucracy has been not the interests of the people but its own supposed interests. Two arguments and only two were advanced in the Home Member’s speech in support of the government’s decision. These were, first, that the governments of the countries which the deputation wished to visit must be consulted as to whether they had any objection to its visit, and second, that the Government of India had itself to satisfy certain requirements. As regards the first, assurance was given to the government that the countries concerned, or at any rate the most important ones among them, were prepared to welcome the delegation.