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It was time now for the judge, C.N. Broomfield, to deliver his judgment. The son of a London barrister, he had spent almost two decades in the Indian Civil Service. After saying that Gandhi had made it easy for him by pleading guilty, Broomfield remarked that it was
'impossible to ignore the fact that you are in a different category from any person I have ever tried or am likely to have to try. It would be impossible to ignore the fact that in the eyes of millions of your countrymen, you are a great patriot and a great leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and of noble and even saintly life.'
The law, however, was ‘no respector of persons’. Gandhi had by his own admission broken the law. The judge had agonized as to what would be a just sentence, and—addressing the accused directly—said he had finally decided on a jail term of six years, which he hoped Gandhi would not consider ‘unreasonable’, since Bal Gangadhar Tilak had once got the same sentence under the same section of the law. Then, in what must surely be among the most unusual wishes offered by a judge anywhere at any time, Justice Broomfield remarked that ‘if the course of events in India should make it possible for the Government to reduce the period and release you, no one will be better pleased than I'.
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