Being fully alive to the fact that it is a serious matter to be asked to declare a law enacted by Parliament to be unconstitutional, I have again and again asked myself the question: What are we to put in the scales against the construction which I am inclined to adopt and in favour of the view that preventive detention does not take away the freedom of movement guaranteed in article 19 (1) (d)? The inevitable answer has always been that while in one of the scales 157 we have plain and unambiguous language, the opinion eminent jurists, judicial dicta of high authority, constitu tional practice in the sense that no Constitution refers to any freedom of movement apart from personal liberty, and the manner in which preventive detention has been treated in the very laws on which our law on this subject is based, all that we can put in the opposite scale is a vague and ill rounded apprehension that some fearful object such as the revision of the Penal .Code is looming obscurely in the distant horizon, the peculiar objection that the mere men tion of the scheduled tribes will alter the meaning of certain plain words, the highly technical and unreal dis tinction between restriction and deprivation and the assump tion not warranted by any express provision that a person who is preventively detained cannot claim the right of freedom of movement because he is not a free man and certain other things which, whether taken singly or ,collectively, are too unsubstantial to carry any weight.