Obsolete laws but awesome
Unlawful possession of guns? Problematic. Unlawful possession of vegetarian tomato omelette? Reprehensible. But telegraph wires? Strange
You know what I enjoy a million times more than a nice club sandwich with a fried egg or even reruns of Christian Bale’s Equilibrium?
Obsolete old laws. No really. I LOVE old laws and acts and Bills and statutes et cetera. Every time I come across an obsolete law in some official form I let out a little brain-scream of delight. And the weirder the law, the delighter the brain-scream.
Then I begin to wonder… When did this become a law? What prompted generations past to come up with such a bizarre edict? How did they reach a situation where they decided that, and I am not making this up, it is illegal for an intoxicated person to be in charge of a cow in Scotland. And what prompted the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839 in the UK that still punishes “Every person who in any thoroughfare shall beat or shake any carpet, rug, or mat (except door mats before the hour of eight in the morning)."
I assure you this is true. And it is wonderful. So you can imagine my endless dismay at the recent news that the Government of India is now planning to remove several hundreds of obsolete laws and regulations from our lawbooks.
What kind of *achhe din* is a *din* without the ‘Britannia Engineering Company Limited (Mokameh Unit) and the Arthur Butler and Company (Muzaffarpore) Limited (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act, 1978’?
I discovered that one and other similar delights in a document titled ‘The 100 Laws Project: Compendium of Laws to be Repealed’ that was tweeted out by the Centre For Civil Society earlier this month. This writer is certain that many of these laws, perhaps most of them, have an intriguing little story or incident behind them. I’ve been doing some digging around this week.
One of the laws that caught the eye immediately was ‘The Bangalore Marriages Validation Act (1934)’. The act was passed to undo the damage brought about by one single man’s misinterpretation of an older law.
Sometime in the early 1900s the Redwood brothers, Alfred and Walter, came to Bangalore to work as Christian missionaries. They were members of an evangelical movement called the Plymouth Brethren. Their most famous legacy in Bangalore today is the Clarence School that they established in 1914. (The school celebrated its centenary earlier this year.)
In 1929 Walter Redwood was given a license by the Resident in Mysore to officiate over marriages under the provisions of the Indian Christian Marriage Act of 1872. This piece of legislation is too complicated to explain here in full. But in Redwood’s case his permit allowed him to do something very specific: he could officiate marriages between one or two Christians residing in Bangalore provided at least one of them was a native of Mysore and both of them were *not* British citizens.
Confusing? Well it turns out that poor Walter Redwood didn’t really understand the law or his permit. So he went around willy nilly wedding couples for some seven years before people realised that lots of these weddings were legally invalid. So in 1936, The Bangalore Marriages Validating Act was passed solely in order to legally recognize Redwood’s illegitimate couplings.
My favourite piece of obsolete legislation, so far, is The Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1950.
Unlawful possession of guns? Problematic. Unlawful possession of vegetarian tomato omelette? Reprehensible. But telegraph wires? Strange.
It gets stranger when you read the act. This law only pertains to: “copper wire the diameter of which, in millimetres, is (i) not less than 2.43 and not more than 2.53; or (ii) not less than 2.77 and not more than 2.87; or (iii) not less than 3.42 and not more than 3.52."
What is stranger still is that according to the Indiankanoon.org website the law has been invoked dozens of times in the last 60 years or so.
What gives? An explanation is forthcoming in the 29th report of the Law Commission of India, released in 1966:
“The Telegraph Wires Act was enacted, because thefts of copper wires used in telegraph lines had been so rampant, that telecommunications in several parts of the country were considerably dislocated during the two years preceding the passing of the Act. Many offenders had escaped only due to the failure to prove in court that the wires found in their possession had been stolen from the Posts and Telegraphs Department."
How bad was this problem? Sixteen years after the Act was passed, in 1966, there is a startling statistic in the annual report of the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department. In the preceding year there had been an astonishing 11,478 cases of copper wire thefts all over India. Later in 1977 at least one train accident was blamed on wire theft that had led to faulty signalling. Indeed the Telegraph Wires Act has been invoked in court cases well into the 21st centuries.
So not so obsolete after all, eh?
But I suppose the government will go ahead with its spring cleaning of the law books. Nonetheless I hope they leave one or two behind for old time’s sake. How about the Police (Incitement to Disaffection) Act, 1922?
Superb.
Every week, Déjà View scours historical research and archives to make sense of current news and affairs.
Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com
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