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Barbarities at Rawalpindi
THE process of terrorism that is going on at Rawalpindi in the name of administering justice is too open and transparent to require any unravelling. Of course, every one who takes politics seriously thought that the British law and administration would at once reveal their true nature if the people were to enter on a real struggle for self-improvement and the repression that is being resorted to in the Punjab under the pretext of trial has caused no surprise to those with whom the work for the nation’s future is a duty demanding enormous self-sacrifice. But the series of episodes connected with the Rawalpindi trial in which humanity has been outraged and decency defied should nevertheless be taken to heart by the people. They demand an adequate response of stern and resolute work as an atonement and recompense for the sufferings of these martyrs. No patriot would shrink even from the agonies to which the accused are being subjected during the course of their trial at Rawalpindi if he could at least faintly hope from the attitude of his countrymen that they would carry on the patriotic work undaunted and with a greater amount of determination and energy. The man of faith no doubt is never depressed. His faith is always his stay and support. But the martyrdom becomes easier if there is the prospect of some immediate benefit to the country resulting from his sufferings. From the very beginning of the Rawalpindi trial, the bureaucratic law seems to have been whetted against the alleged offenders. The refusal of bail to the accused amongst whom there are men of unquestioned respectability and integrity testifies to the petty vindictiveness of the judiciary which ostensibly exists to diminish crimes and not to exasperate people into their perpetration. The ill-treatment of the accused can without the least exaggeration be characterised as wanton cruelty. The accused after their experience of the British law courts will find it difficult to distinguish a judge from a mediaeval executioner. The Judge
Page-508 could not be moved to the most elementary feeling of humanity when the accused were overwhelmed by the most painful domestic calamities. One man was not allowed to see his dying son till he actually expired and was past all help or need of help. This ferocity on the part of a tribunal, whose special study should be to abstain from writing the least punishment on a man till his guilt has been fairly established is a violation of the first principle of justice and turns a court of law into a torture chamber. A judge should not lack firmness in repressing crime but to pursue an alleged offender with implacable wrath from the moment of his arrest is an exhibition of vindictiveness and not of due judicial austerity. The trial has now extended over nearly two months and the sickening details of inhumanity practised upon the accused continue to be as distressing as ever. Lala Hansraj and two or three others of his position have been detained in the prison without any justification. They are not the men who can even think of shirking the consequences of their patriotic actions under an alien rule. But why anti-date their punishment from the very time of their arrest. They are not men accustomed to privations and they have all been showing signs of failing health during this pretty long period of police custody. They have already served out a term of punishment disproportionate to the nature of their alleged offence. It is a brand new feature of British Justice to go on with the trial of men stretched on their sick-bed in the court room. Our latest telegram from Rawalpindi says that on the 16th Lala Hansraj was shaking with fever and ague on a string cot borrowed from a constable. The internal pain was so intense that tears ran down his cheeks though he tried to be firm and cheerful and pretended that something had fallen into his eyes. We need not multiply the details of the prisoner’s sufferings. We have already sampled the treatment which the Pindi martyrs are receiving at the hands of the judiciary. We expect no mitigation of their sufferings. The alleged offence of rousing people to a spirit of active resistance perhaps justifies these barbarities in the eyes of the ruling class. They are innocent of all compunction and are calmly watching the effect on the people. The Englishman once opined that even the suspected offence of incit-
Page-509 ing to a riot excuses the most monstrous treatment of the offenders. But we believe their lesson will not be lost on our own countrymen. The heavy price that these men are paying for inducing the spirit of self-assertion in us should nerve others to greater and greater sacrifices in the service of the Motherland.
The situation in Bengal is one of a very peculiar kind and of extraordinary interest. There is a deep and widespread unrest in the country; a movement has commenced which the bureaucracy holds to be fraught with serious danger certainly to the British monopoly of commercial exploitation, possibly to the supremacy of British officialdom. In order to save these threatened citadels the bureaucrats in the Punjab and Eastern Bengal have embarked on a policy of thoroughgoing repression in which the practically unlimited and arbitrary power of an autocratic executive is backed up and confirmed by a zealous judiciary. The union of these two forces is essential to the success of the bureaucratic plan of campaign; for the strength of the bureaucratic position lies in the fact that all the powers of legislation and administration are centred unreservedly and without limitation in its hands. It controls the men by whom the law and the executive administration are carried out, for it not only exercises all the patronage of both services, but wields immense disciplinary powers. It can appoint and favour such men as are likely to do its will and it can punish with substantial marks of its displeasure those who disregard its interests or do not act according to its expectations. In an hour of crisis like the present when there is a powerful movement undisguisedly directed against the continued supremacy of the present ruling community in all its aspects, this concentration of all powers against the insurgence of the subject peoples is of the most vital importance. The executive must have a free hand to deal with the opposition of the demos without being hampered by inconvenient and trammelling considerations of legal procedure and the narrow limits of legality. But in a fight with an acute and intelligent people, a
Page-510 nation of born lawyers, this is only possible on condition that the judiciary are willing to support and confirm the actions of the executive unhesitatingly and without a qualm. These conditions have been secured in East Bengal and still more completely in the Punjab. But there is one weak point, the Achilles’ heel in the otherwise invulnerable constitution of the bureaucracy, and that is the High Court of Bengal. The oldest and most venerable institution of British rule with the most honourable traditions of integrity and independence maintained by a series of judges learned in the law, trained to the love of justice and equity and a calm judicial habit of mind, the High Court had become a thing cherished and valued, a refuge to the oppressed, a guarantee of eventual relief against executive vagaries. It had therefore attracted an almost superstitious reference and was the chief moral asset of British rule. But the inevitable tendency of bureaucratic rule when threatened by the increasing self-assertion of the people, began eventually to affect the High Court. It is true that the High Court is independent of the executive authorities, but it is under the control of the Chief Justice, and by the simple device of securing a Chief Justice of weak personality and multiplying civilian judges of the right kind the institution can easily be converted into a source of strength to the bureaucracy instead of a source of weakness. Since the beginning of the reactionary policy which followed the Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, this has been the increasing tendency of the High Court and the trust and reverence of the people has decreased proportionately, and the hold of British rule on their imaginations has decreased with it. We have always held that British justice as between Indians and Europeans or in cases in which the bureaucracy was judge, jury and accuser, must obviously and inevitably be a farce unless and until human nature ceases to have any resemblance to its present self. Neither had we any of that enthusiastic admiration for British Jaw and its administration which was not so very long ago the fashion among Indians of the educated class. On the contrary we were compelled to regard its procedure as costly, dilatory and often calculated to defeat justice, its penal system repressive and its punishments savage and barbarous with the cold civilised brutality of a half-baked incomplete civilisation. Our respect for the High Court
Page-511 was tempered by a perception of the ease with which it could be captured by the bureaucracy for its own ends. We have therefore always decried the old moribund belief in the excellence of the British courts and the tendency to run to them for protection in all cases of oppression and injustice. Have the recent transactions in the High Court proved us wrong? They have certainly proved that there are still Judges Indian and English who can rise above the depressing atmosphere and lowered traditions of this once venerated institution and equal the distinguished record of these strong fearless Judges who have now become a memory, almost a legend of the past. There has been nothing like the series of important decisions given in a few days by Justices Mitter and Fletcher since the 7 Bishops were acquitted. The bold opposition of the sense of justice and respect for law to the interests of an irritated and determined government in a time of great political unrest and disturbance, is an episode which history will love to record. But is it more than an episode? We apprehend it is the last flaring up of the old fire previous to extinction. The executive will surely take care not to repeat the error by which a fearless, just and religious Hindu lawyer has been placed on the Criminal Bench side by side with a young barrister Judge fresh from England and still full of the uncorrupted moral temper natural in a free country. The bureaucracy has blundered in its management of the High Court, but the power to utilise it is still on its hands and will no doubt be better handled in the near future than in the past. Let us not be unduly elated by the victory in the High Court; great as it has been its causes are transient and its tenure insecure.
Justice Mitter’s conduct in connection with the cases which were more or less of a political nature, has been a surprise to many of his own countrymen. He has risen high above the servile impulses which our education, surroundings and life raise in us, and is giving his country the full benefit of the advantageous position he holds under an alien bureaucracy. His native indepen-
Page-512 dence and uncommon intellectuality seem to have been specially invigorated by the spiritual re-awakening of which the whole country is giving some indication, and in all the cases he has lately tried he has done his utmost to annihilate the vast distance between absolute and bureaucratic justice. He has shewn the service-holding section of his countrymen an example which they will do well to imitate in the interests of their country and humanity. The moral of his conduct is that our duty as men and Indians should always get the precedence of our duty as servants. If we be true to ourselves, we cannot be false to anyone. Self-reverence cannot fail to extort respect even from our enemies. But this is by the way. Justice Mitter’s explanation of Swaraj is now the subject of talk amongst the thinking portion of our people. It has almost thrown into comparative oblivion his luminous and unexceptionable judgment in the now famous Comilla Case. And we propose to offer our opinion on his interpretation of Swaraj. His explanation of Swaraj as Home Rule under British control no doubt echoes the sentiment of Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji who is considered the prophet of this new message. But Saroda Charan is not only a Justice but a scholar too. Without seeking to justify the ideal of Swaraj under the somewhat narrow meaning which Mr. Naoroji has given to it, Justice Mitter might have taken an excursion into our Vedic literature, traced the word to its very source, and pointed out that it represents an ideal which, having regard to its inspired scriptural origin and high moral and spiritual significance can never lack the sanction of law and justice, if law and justice are of divine origin and concern themselves with promoting the real welfare of mankind. The Vedas say that if we pursue real happiness we must seek the great, the universal. Our aspiration can be satisfied with nothing short of the Omnipresent. In littleness there is no bliss. So we must not run after petty ideals. The Universal alone should be the one object of our knowledge and pursuit. Then the Vedas explain the nature of the Universal. It is independent, self-protecting, and stands by its greatness, and in its greatness — stands sva-mahimni, as we have it in the text. This sva-mahimni is synonymous with Swaraj as everyone who understands Sanskrit can very well see. Accord-
Page-513 ing to the Vedanta which is only the philosophical exposition of the Vedas, every individual self is nothing but divinity itself and should stand by and in its own greatness. To be impressed with the dignity of one’s own self, to realise its identity with the Universal is the goal of our aspiration, the end of our being. If this is the object of an individual life, the nation also should set its heart on the same ideal. The nation also should try to know itself, to work out its potentialities, to realise its mightiness and identity with the Universal. Such an ideal does not at all brook the notion of dependence. The very radical meaning of the term Swaraj excludes it. Swaraj emphasises the idea of self-sufficiency and insists on it. It mitigates against the idea of there being any limit to our expansion. We must be full, we must be perfect, we are the divinity in embryo and when fully developed we shall be coextensive with God Himself. This is what Swaraj unmistakably means. It at once embodies the ideals of independence, unity, liberty. It can never compromise itself with anything having a limit. It is the ideal of infinite possibility and Justice Mitter has not fully used the opportunity to point out to his countrymen the ideal which alone should engage their attention if they really mean self-improvement as a nation. But what he has done is so much, in his position, that the admiration and respect of the whole country for his fearless sense of Justice is no more than his right. Bande Mataram, August, 19-20, 1907
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