________________
40
a quid pro quo for the benefit very largely of the pilgrim community itself. But a pilgrim Tax which is levied by a State, with no intent or possibility of being made into a payment for specific service rendered, is indefensible without any possibility of extenuation. It is condemned alike by statesmanship and sociology. The Tax now proposed to be levied by the Palitana Durbar on the Jains visiting the Shatrunjaya temples is of the worst kind of a Poll Tax, which has always and invariably provoked riots in other countries besides India, whenever it has been attempted. In India it is no less objectionabls on grounds of theory as well as expediency, because it affects a community whom it is not in the interests of the State to discourage or penalise.
But there is a deeper objection to this tax in India than those mentioned so far. And that objection does not lie merely in the fact that by this means a small tributary State seeks indirectly to tax the subjects of the paramount power. The Indian States may not find the present financial arrangements all that is ideal; but they cannot be allowed thus to take the law into their own hands, and cut the Gordian knot by such taxation as this. Moreover, if this tax is permitted to the Palitana Durbar, there will be no justification for preventing every other State, boasting the slightest fragment of taxational jurisdiction, from levying a burden on every
