Report No. 81
Recognition of the right of freedom or conscience-Statement of Objects and Reasons.- With an opposition in the proportion of ten to one, the Bill would never have secured a place on the statute book in a democratic legislative process. But the statement of objects and reasons prepared by Mr. Grant on 17th November, 1854 underscored the fact that the object of the Bill was to give the petitioners and all who agreed with them and all who thereafter may agree with them, the relief prayed for, without interfering with any other people. Mr. Grant referred to a well-known Hindu doctrine that a Hindu widow who does not turn as a suttee (which act no longer could be committed in India) was bound to a life of the most painful bodily mortification.
Those who agreed with the petitioners allowed the reputable alternative of re-marriage. Those who did not, allowed of no reputable alternative nor did the law as administered by the courts allow a reputable alternative to either class. Mr. Grant argued that if the learning, reason and conscience of single Hindu father directed him to save his little child from life-long misery or vice, the law of the country should not stand in his way. This marks the beginning of recognition of the right to freedom of conscience, the matrix, the indispensable condition of other manifestations of freedom of an individual.
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