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The East Bengal Disturbances
WE HAVE said that the deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai brings no new element into the situation beyond hastening the processes of Nationalism and bringing us from a less to a more acute stage of our progress to independence. The second disturbing element has been the culmination of the alliance between Salimullah of Dacca and the bureaucracy in the anarchy and the outrages in the Mymensingh district. These disturbances are now almost over for the time being, though we must take full advantage of the lull allowed to us, so as to put our house in order against a possible recrudescence after the jute season. We should now seriously consider how far these disturbances have altered the situation and what we should do in order to meet these new conditions. We must first notice that neither the disturbances themselves nor their cause are in their nature a new element in the situation. The Salimullahi campaign, the use of Mahomedan Badmashes to terrorise Swadeshi Hindus, the official inactivity and sympathy with the lawbreakers, these have all been with us even before. The conclusions we arrived at at the time, the warnings and exhortations we addressed to the people have been proved to the hilt, justified beyond dispute, enforced in red letters of rapine, bloodshed and outrage. Our reading of the situation then was that no serious apprehension of trouble between Hindus and Mahomedans need be entertained except within that tract of country immediately under the influence of Nawab Salimullah, — Mymensingh, Dacca, Tipperah and possibly parts of Pabna. This is precisely what has happened. In Comilla the trouble was stopped before it could do real mischief, by the resolute spirit of the Hindus; in Dacca, in spite of small skirmishes, individual harassment and a minor outbreak or two, it never gathered to a head, because the great strength and early preparations of the Hindus overawed the prime movers and their instruments; Mymensingh alone felt the full force of
Page-369 the storm, while Pabna still hovers on the brink of it. It is not that the Nawab’s campaign was not vigorously pursued in other parts. The Red Pamphlet has been ubiquitous throughout Eastern and Northern Bengal; the preachings of the Nawab’s Mullahs have been as persistent, as malignant in Barisal, in Calcutta, in every strong centre of Swadeshism. But though there have been alarms and excursions even as far west as Allahabad and Benares, the campaign has for the present signally failed outside the limits of Nawab Salimullah’s kingdom. This is a fact to be noted. We do not say that Salimullahism carries no dangers with it of general disruption and disunion between the two communities; an unscrupulous agitation of this kind, aided by official backing is always dangerous. But in the rest of the country the blind faith in the Nawab and his Mullahs is absent and other conditions and forces exist which, if properly used by the Nationalists, will permanently counteract the promoters of disunion. Even of themselves, they have been sufficient to prevent the Mahomedans from siding with the self-elected leader against the Swadeshists. But however limited the area of the disturbances might be, we warned the country that Comilla was not the first and would not be the last of such outbreaks and we called upon it to be ready in time to follow the example of the Comilla Hindus. Moderate politicians, blind leaders of the blind, were rejoicing over the end of the disturbances brought about, they said, by their mysterious efforts — and crying peace, peace where there was no peace. We pointed out that the Comilla affair was not an isolated outbreak, but part of a policy and we knew the men we had to deal with too well to suppose that they would be put off their machinations by a single defeat. Beaten at Comilla, they were certain to try their luck again in Mymensingh. We warned the country also that when the disturbances came, it would be idle to look for protection to the officials and the police. By announcing Swaraj as our ideal we had declared war against the existence of the bureaucracy and we could not expect the bureaucracy to help us by making our efforts to put it out of existence safe and easy. On the contrary, the Nawab and his hooligans were practically, if not avowedly, the allies of the bureaucracy in their war
Page-370 against Swadeshism and must therefore command sympathy and helpful inactivity if not actual assistance from their friends. In all these respects our reading of the situation has been proved correct beyond cavil or dispute. The extent to which the Nawab has succeeded in turning the baser passions of the mob to his uses, the extent to which the Anti-Swadeshi army has gone in its outrages, not scrupling even to desecrate temples and violate women, the extent to which the officials carried their connivance with the excesses, an European police official actually leading the mob and the looting being carried on under the eyes of the police: these things were new, but the Salimullahi campaign itself, the use of the hooligans (our Indian Black Hundred), and the sympathy of the officials are elements which are old, of which the country had been warned and against which the leaders of the movement should have provided. Even the extent to which these things were carried was due entirely to a feature of the Mymensingh occurrences which we had already warned the country to avoid — the non-resistance of the Hindus of Jamalpur. There are some who say that the recent events in India are a proof of the impracticability of the Nationalist programme. We do not follow the reasoning of these logicians. The Jamalpur incidents and their sequel are a terrible proof of the soundness of the Nationalist ideas and the utter un-soundness of the Moderate theories of our relations with the bureaucracy and the best way of enforcing the Swadeshi propaganda. The people of Comilla followed the Nationalist programme with brilliantly successful results. They boycotted the courts, schools and every other element of the bureaucratic scheme of things and announced their intention of continuing the boycott so long as the Nawab of Dacca was allowed to remain in Comilla — and the Nawab was packed off without ceremony. They met force with force and the hooligan army of Anti-Swadeshism underwent a crushing defeat. On the other hand, the people of Jamalpur did everything which the Nationalist programme excludes; they trusted to the promises of the alien, they chose to go to the Mela unarmed, like defenceless sheep, relying not on their own strong arm but on the protection of the British shepherd. At the order of the alien they
Page-371 laid down the lathis they carried for self-defence, at the order of the alien they trooped to the Mela, from which they had resolved to absent themselves, to be thrashed by Mahomedan cudgels. Then, when their sheepish trustfulness had had its reward, that one lesson was not enough; again they trusted to British protection and sent away the volunteers who stood between them and further outrage. And when the second storm came, they could think of nothing better than wholesale flight from the field of battle. Throughout we see the working of the old political superstitions, the old unworkable compromise which tried to oppose the bureaucracy and yet co-operate with it, to combine vigorous opposition with meek submission, to build up a nation under the most adverse circumstances and against the strongest opponents and yet be, first and foremost, docile, peaceful and law-abiding. These superstitions exploded in the explosions at Jamalpur and the conflagration that followed meant the collapse of a policy. The hooligan disturbances in East Bengal bring therefore no new elements into the situation, but like the deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai, merely make it more acute and hasten the processes of Nationalism. They create no new conditions, but they have caused certain truths to be newly appreciated. The first is that the Pax Britannica is Maya and, if we mean to be Swadeshists and Swarajists, we must rely in future not on British protection but on self-protection. The second is that, as we have long insisted, our present means of self-defence are inadequate and better means and organisation are a pressing need. The third is the seriousness and true nature of the Mahomedan problem which our older politicians have always tried to belittle or ignore. Any one who wishes to deal successfully with the crisis in the country, must recognise these three lessons of experience and shape his methods accordingly.
Yesterday the Special Correspondent of the Englishman finished his shilling shocker in many chapters, The Dreadful Boy Despe- Page-372 radoes of Dacca or The Violent Volunteers of Barisal. We have had many new things recently, the new Hinduism, the new School, the new Politics, the new Province, the new John Morley and now we have Newmania in the Englishman. The peculiarly delirious character of this disease can be easily understood from the Khulna telegram of the Secretary, People’s Association. Mr. Newman had published from Barisal a peculiarly blood and thunder incident of the villainous drowning and stabbing of British goods by whiskerless young desperadoes of Khulna. The Magistrate of Khulna seems to have been so far taken in by the life-like vividness of Mr. Newman’s style as to take this bit of heroic romancing quite seriously. He actually enquired into the alleged murder and sudden death and naturally found that nothing of the kind had happened. It is clear that we need a special liturgy for India. "From Denzil Ibbetson and deportation, from the stick of the Constable and the gun of the Goorkha, from sunstroke and the Civil and Military Gazette, from Pax Britannica and the Nawab of Dacca, from Sir. Henry Cotton and Mr. Rees, from Fuller, Morley and Shillong Hare, Good Lord deliver us! From lesser plague and pestilence, from cholera and motor-cars, from measles and moderation, Good Lord deliver us! But most of all from the friendship of the Statesman and the ravings of Newmania, Good Lord deliver us!"
Mr. Gokhale on Deportation
We are glad to see that the Statesman does not happen to be the custodian of at least one prominent Moderate’s conscience. Mr. Gokhale has written to the Times of India that "Lala Lajpat Rai has been sacrificed to a nervous apprehension that suddenly seized the Government." The menace held out to the prospects of administrative reform had no effect" on him and like a patriot who on no account can be persuaded to throw overboard his fellow-worker in the field, he has concluded his letter to the Times with the characteristic observation: — "Reforms which the Viceroy and the Secretary of State are contemplating will lose their meaning for us if they cannot be had Page-373 without deportation out of India of such earnest and high-minded workers in the country’s cause as Lala Lajpat Rai." It was an insult offered to the patriotism of our Moderate countrymen to seek to bay their support for measures like the deportation of Lajpat by dangling before them the bait of administrative reform. In the eye of the law both the giver and the taker of a bribe are equally criminal. It is no doubt gratifying that our moderate countrymen do not lay themselves open to the charge of criminality, not to speak of self-betrayal. As for Mr. Morley’s offering the bribe his reputation is too philosophic and literary to suffer shipwreck by such a single stroke of diplomatic unscrupulousness. Besides, the ordinary standard of morality has never been observed in the case of black races. To touch politics is to touch tar, said Cardinal Newman, and in dealing with dark people there is an additional inducement for using this black commodity. Mr. Gokhale’s white-washing of his high-minded friend will be of no use to the colour-darkened vision of Mr. Morley — it will be love’s labour lost. All the same he has come out of the ordeal unscathed. Bande Mataram, May 25, 1907 The Gilded Sham Again
The Statesman on Sunday came out with the startling fact that Mr. Morley has "finally formulated a workable scheme giving prominent natives a larger representation on the various bodies having effective control of Indian affairs". This is, we presume, the last and most authoritative of the special cablegrams with which the Statesman has been regaling us, for want of more substantial fare, ever since Mr. John Morley became Chief Bureaucrat for India. For, we are told, Mr. Morley will make an important announcement when introducing the Indian budget. We would call the attention of our readers to the wording of this portentous cablegram. There is going to be a larger representation on the bodies having effective control of Indian affairs, viz., the Legislative Councils and, perhaps, the Executive in which "natives" are at present unrepresented. Indians are not to be
Page-374 allowed any control over Indian affairs, they are only to be more largely represented on the bodies which have that control. They are to have a larger voice, but there is to be no guarantee that the voice will be at all effective. The share of Indians in the government has up to now been vox et praeterea nihil, a voice and nothing more, and in the future also it is to be a voice and nothing more. We notice, moreover, that it is not the country, not the people of India which is to be represented, but only "prominent natives". We shall have a few more Gokhales, a few more Bhupendranath Boses, a few more Nawabs of Dacca on the Councils — and there an end. There will be a little manipulation of light and shade, an increase in the number of dark faces, and Mr. Morley and the Statesman will triumphantly invite us to rejoice at the "important advance that has been made in the direction of self-government". A hint has been given from another source that there will actually be a non-official majority of elected and nominated members. In other words, Mr. Apcar, Mr. Gokhale and the Nawab of Dacca multiplied several times over will form a non-official majority in the Council. Is this the reform for which we are invited to give up Swadeshi, Nationalism and our future? Mr. Morley and the Statesman are grievously mistaken if they think that the newly-awakened spirit of Indian Nationalism can any longer be put off with a gilded sham.
Our Barisal Correspondent seems, like the Khulna Magistrate, to have taken the Englishman‘s Special Correspondent much too seriously. The fictions of Mr. Newman are too evidently fictions to deserve serious criticism. Whether they are the distortions of a panic-stricken imagination or actual inventions, we need not too closely enquire. They have a certain journalistic effectiveness, and they serve the political ends of this paper whose efforts are wholly directed towards urging on the Government to a policy of thoroughgoing repression. Everybody in Bengal knows that previous to the disturbances in East Bengal, there was no movement of the kind which has sent Mr. Newman into carefully cal-
Page-375 culated hysterics. There was a movement for physical training and the institution of Akharas, which was by no means so widespread or successful as it should have been. There was also a custom which had first grown up in the Congress and naturally extended to Conferences and then to public meetings, of employing the services of young men in making the arrangements and keeping order. It is those only who bore the name of volunteers and they were never a standing organisation, but merely organised themselves for the occasion and broke up when it was over, nor had they any connection with the Akharas. Finally, there was in the earlier days of the Swadeshi movement great activity among the young men in picketing and other means of moral suasion to enforce the boycott, but except in one or two places this has long fallen into desuetude except for occasional spasmodic attempts. Neither were the picketers ever formed into an organisation or termed volunteers. After the outbursts of anti-Swadeshi violence at Comilla and Jamalpur, the young men spontaneously united to present a firm defence against hooligan outrages and this is the terrible phenomenon which has made Mr. Newman delirious. In his ravings he has mixed up all these loose threads and woven out of them a web fearful and wonderful. As a matter of fact hundreds of youths who are taking part in the defence of hearth and home, never entered an Akhara or handled a lathi before, and are now first realising what they ought to have realised long ago, the necessity of physical exercise and training to self- defence. With extraordinary ingenuity this imaginative Sherlock Holmes of Anglo-India has discovered that the Anti-Circular Society, the Bande Mataram Sampraday and the Brati-Samity — harmless and peaceful relics of the first Swadeshi enthusiasm, — are separately and unitedly the organising centre of these terrible Volunteers! We only wish our countrymen had shown themselves capable of forming such an organisation, deliberate, well-knit and pervasive. But we have still some way to travel before this becomes possible. Bande Mataram, May 27, 1907
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