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16. No such general custom as the Judge at first asserted was pleaded in this Court; nor, so far as I know, has been recognised in any decision of the Court. The history of the Presidency, at no time wholly subject to Muhammadan rule, suggests the improbability of a general custom. It may well be that in those districts in which the Muhammadan supremacy was more or less permanent, Muhammadan bigotry enforced respect to the religion of the conquerors, and that, even, when their supremacy ceased, the adherents of the creed compelled a concession to their prejudices. The Judge may perhaps be right in assuming that they are claimed in virtue of the supposed sanctity of the building. It is unnecessary for me to pronounce how far such privileges would be supported by the Courts if the usage were proved. But with reference to these and to other privileges claimed on the ground of caste or creed, I may observe that they had their origin in times when a State religion influenced the public and private law of the country, and are hardly compatible with the principles which regulate British administration, the equal rights of all citizens and the complete neutrality of the State in matters of religion. The members of one caste have not been allowed to restrict members of other castes from the free use of public thoroughfares. The pariah in Malabar is no longer excluded from Courts of Justice. These are innovations, but the superseded usages are obviously condemned by the spirit of our laws. When anarchy or absolutism yield place to well ordered liberty change there must be, but change in a direction which should command the assent of the intelligence of the country. With regard to processions, if they are of a religious character, and the religious sentiment is to be considered, it is not less a hardship on the adherents of a creed that they should be compelled to intermit their worship at a particular point, than it is on the adherents of another creed, that they should be compelled to allow the passage of such a procession past the temples they revere. But the prejudices of particular sects ought not to influence the law. A man may have just ground of complaint if he is compelled to recognise the sanctity claimed for a place as the seat of a worship he believes to be false; he has no just ground of complaint if he is compelled to recognise the civil right of his fellow citizens to be protected from disturbance when they are assembled for public worship, unless indeed all recognition of public worship is repugnant to him. Again, assuming that the Courts were satisfied that a privilege had been duly acquired and that it was competent to them to recognise it, it must be remembered that it is based on custom and that custom is sound only when and in so far as it is reasonable. It would have then to be considered, whether it was reasonable to require persons exercising a natural right to abstain from its exercise when passing a place where no public worship was proceeding.