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More about Unity
THE Bengalee has again returned to the charge about unity. The line of argument adopted by our contemporary savours strongly of the peculiar style of political thinking which underlay all our movements in the last century. The old school of politics was chiefly remarkable for a blithe indifference to facts and an extraordinary predilection for vague abstractions which could not possibly apply to the conditions with which our political action had to deal. The nineteenth century Indian politician never cared to study history, but used a ready-made and high-sounding philosophy of politics based chiefly on the circumstances and conditions of modern English politics which had no validity at all for India. The result of this divorce from real life was a tendency to use words without caring to consider their real practical meaning. We find the Bengalee in its article learnedly repeating these old mistakes. It builds wordy arguments from the terms of modern Science without grasping the true facts and hard realities of life without a knowledge of which the terms cannot be correctly applied. It argues from evolution that progress is an ever-increasing unity of ever-developing parts, that therefore progress is nothing but unity, ergo unity is not a means but an end, not an important or necessary help to arriving at progress, freedom and greatness but itself at once progress, freedom and greatness. This is merely playing with words. The question is, what is this unity which the Bengalee makes so much of and which it asks us to prefer to our principles and in its name to join in action which we believe to be harmful to the country? If our contemporary means political unity, the formation of all the communities and races in the country into a single political organism with a common centre of life, that is certainly, as we have already admitted, a necessary condition of independence and greatness; but it is a thing of the future which is impossible so long as the centre of life in the country is alien and external, and all we can do towards it is to unite people
Page-621 of all communities and races in one common struggle to replace the alien and external centre of political life by an indigenous and internal centre in the national organism itself. Very good, but the question still remains, by what method can that result be attained? We believe the methods proposed by the Loyalists to be futile and injurious, we understand their aim to be not the independence of the national organism, but an impossible scheme of two centres of political life controlling the country at the same time of which the alien shall be the supreme and yet the indigenous shall be free! What the Bengalee asks of us is to disregard this vital difference of opinion and aim and be united — in what? In aiming at an object which we believe to be absurd, by means which we believe to be futile. It does not matter, says the Bengalee, in what we are united, so long as we are united; for unity is progress, unity is freedom and greatness. So that if we are united in petitioning we are by the very fact of that unity free and great! The error of the Bengalee’s argument is that it confuses political unity, which is a necessary condition of independence, with unity of opinion and action which is an immense help, if the opinion and the action are in the right direction, but certainly not indispensable. It is not true that unity, even political unity, is identical with freedom, for a nation may be united in bondage or united in submission to a foreign and absolutist rule. Still less is it true that unity in following the wrong road is the true means to the goal, much less the goal itself. We tried to prove from history that nations had been made free not by a scrupulous pursuit of unanimity or of unity in action but by faith, energy and courage in a number of its more energetic sons carrying away the bulk of the nation into a strenuous effort to reach a great ideal. For the sake of brevity we gave one instance where we might have given a dozen. The Bengalee, however, like all Moderate politicians will have nothing to do with history or at least with the facts of history. History, it says in effect, is a record of human error, and the methods of which it tells us, involve great waste. So we in India are to invent something brand new, an ingenious and carefully calculated method of revolution which will bring us freedom and greatness without any waste, without any risk, by a minimum expenditure of trouble, disturb-
Page-622 ance and sacrifice. We fear it has left out of consideration the fact that waste also is one of Nature’s methods, indeed, what we call waste is one of the most subtle parts of her economy. No man or nation that refused to venture hugely like a gambler for huge ends ever arrived at freedom, none who has not been prodigal of his best has ever risen to greatness, and what has been in the past will be in the future; for human nature and the laws of human action remain the same, and cannot be new-shaped in Colootola. Politics is for the Kshatriya and in the Kshatriya spirit alone can freedom and greatness be attained, not by the spirit of the Baniya trying to buy freedom in the cheapest market and beat down the demands of Fate to a miser’s niggard price. That which other nations have paid for freedom we also must pay, the path they have followed we also must follow. And if you will not learn from history, you will have to be taught by a harsher teacher the same lesson — and taught perhaps at a much more tremendous price than that which you stigmatise as waste. We Nationalists have no desire to break the Congress or to part company with our less forward countrymen, but we have our path to follow and our work to do, and if you will not allow us a place in the assembly you call National, we will make one for ourselves out of it and around it, until one day you will find us knocking at your doors with the nation at our back and in the name of an authority even you will not dare to deny. Bande Mataram, December 4, 1907
The Scots wha hae not with Wallace bled but emigrated from the land of Bruce and his spider to exploit and "administer" spider fashion the land of Shivaji and Pratap, met again this year for their great national feed. The menu began with relishes and proceeded through the wedded delights of ice-pudding and liqueurs to a regale of confidences and confessions by Sir Harvey Adamson which was perhaps the most enjoyable dish of the evening. The inventive Briton has discovered the great truth that out of the fullness of the stomach the heart speaketh and the result
Page-623 is that great British institution, the after-dinner speech. So the clans gathered and Sir Harvey of the clan of the sons of Adam spoke from "beneath the spreading antlers of a Monarch of the Glen", (so at least the Englishman dropping into poetry in its fervour assured us in sonorous blank verse) and behold! even as was the state of his stomach, so was the speech of Sir Harvey full-stomached and packed with choice titbits, comfortable, placid and well-pleased.
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Of course Sir Harvey talked of the unrest, but his speech was eminently restful; it had all the large benevolence, sweet reasonableness and placid self-satisfaction of a man who had legislated as he had dined, wisely and well. It reeked of the olives and turtle soup and bannocks o’ barley meal, it had the generous flavour of the liqueurs and the champagne. He first assured the assembled clans that the unrest was not purely a seditious movement nor an anti-partition movement, — Sir Harvey has found out that, and we congratulate him on his statesman- like perspicuity. But he has found out other things too. He has not only found out what the unrest is not, he has also found out what it is. It is simply this, that the educated classes are learning to realise their own position and to aspire to "a larger share" in the government of their own country. Now at last we see this luminous reading of the situation has shed a flood of light on Mr. Morley’s policy. The educated classes want their present share in the government enlarged. Most natural, most laudable! A benevolent Minto, a Radical Morley are not the men to stand in the way of such admirable aspirations. The present share of the people in the government of their own country is nothing; they want more of it; very good, we will give them a larger share of nothing. The Legislative Council is a nothing; go to, we will enlarge that nothing; we will add fresh nothings in. the shape of an Advisory Council of not-ables to assist the educated class in doing nothing; and lest the burden of such an arduous task should be too heavy for their educated shoulders, we will give them upon the Councils plenty of capable helpers some of whom
Page-624 have been doing nothing all their lives and ought by now to be experts. If after that the educated class does not feel satisfied in its aspirations, if it does not feel as full-fed and happy as Sir Harvey after his haggis, well, they are ungrateful brutes and there is an end of it.
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Unkind people have said that the intention of the Government was not to satisfy the aspirations of the educated class but to exclude them from the Councils under the cover of a misnamed "reforms". Sir Harvey is naturally shocked at so gross an imputation against his benevolent Government. All that the Government desires is to make the representation of the lawyers and educated men a "fair" representation. It does not want to exclude educated men, but only to swamp them with Zemindars, Mahomedans and Europeans; and it does not want to "suppress the middle class" but only to reduce them to a nullity. And this because they will not have "what is scornfully known in the East as a vakil-ridden country". It was evidently the generosity of the champagne that made Sir Harvey expand all India into the East. We are not aware that the vakil class as it exists in India is to be found anywhere except in India. It is the happy result of British rule in this favoured land that the nation now consists of a huge mass of starving peasants, a small body of dumb Government servants, and sweated office clerks, a landed aristocracy habitually overawed, fleeced and for the most part well advanced on the road to ruin, a sprinkling of prosperous middlemen, and as the only independent class, a handful of lawyers, journalists and schoolmasters. That is what Sir Harvey calls a vakil-ridden country. We have heard the expression Vakil-Raj, but we have not heard it used "scornfully" except by Anglo-Indians. But no doubt when he talks of the East, Sir Harvey means himself and his brother Scots out to make money in the East, just as by Indian trade is always meant Anglo-Indian trade and by Indian prosperity the prosperity of Anglo-India. This is a sort of official slang which has become a recognised idiom of the English language.
Page-625 Anglo-India is equal to India, India is equal to the East, therefore Anglo-India is
the East. The Anglo-Indian has mastered the practice of the Vedanta, for, he
sees himself as the whole world and the whole world in himself; why should he
then make any bones about attributing his own sentiments to a whole continent?
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Sir Harvey has much to say about sedition and what he says is very interesting. He explains what sedition is and the explanation is of course authoritative, since it comes from the Law
Page-626 Member. First, the preaching of active rebellion against the British Government. To that of course there can be no objection. Whoever preaches an armed rebellion, does it with the gaol and gallows before his eyes, and is not likely to complain if he is punished. Secondly, efforts to reduce the native army from its allegiance, and then we get a remarkable sentence. "The Government has been publicly charged with instigation of dacoity and sacrilege," etc. As we all know, a charge was made by the whole press, Moderate, Extremist, and Loyalist, against local officials, of having given a free hand to Mahomedan hooliganism, and the charge was never refuted and now Sir Harvey identifies the Government with these officials and lays down the law that whoever brings a charge against any official is guilty of sedition! "I and my Father in Simla are one," the local official may now say, "and he who blasphemeth against me blasphemeth against him." Secondly the Government has been charged with "propagating famine and plague". We note therefore that it is sedition to say that the economic conditions created and perpetuated by the present system of government are responsible for famine and poverty and the diseases which thrive on poverty! Thirdly, the Government is seditiously charged with draining the resources of India for the benefit of England. So it is sedition too to talk of the drain or refer to Lord Curzon and his luminous remarks about administration and exploitation! These are, it seems, "turgid accusations which are made to sell and do not influence sober-minded men". So Mr. R. C. Dutt is not a sober minded man, nor Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, nor Mr. Gokhale, nor even the knighted Bombay Lion. They are all turgid seditionists whose utterances are "made to sell". One wonders who and where the devil are these sober-minded men of Sir Harvey’s whom he warrants immune from turgidity, and again one has to fall back on Mr. B. M. Malabari, the Maharaja of Burdwan and the Nawab of Dacca. 0 blest and sainted trio.
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Of course Sir Harvey is strong on the seditious press, in other words, the organs of anti-bureaucratic Nationalism. Our news-
Page-627 papers are "of a low class", their editors have "discovered that sedition is a commercial success", and so write, it is suggested, what they do not believe because it sells. Fudge, Sir Harvey! If you could be transformed from a perorating official Scot into the manager of a Nationalist newspaper for the first year or two of its existence, you would "discover" at what tremendous pecuniary and personal sacrifice these papers have been established and maintained. If Sir Harvey knew anything about the conditions of life in the land he is helping to misgovern, he would know that an Indian newspaper, unless it is long established, and sometimes even then, can command immense influence and yet be commercially no more than able to pay its way, especially when on principle it debars itself from taking all but Swadeshi advertisements. Fudge, Sir Harvey! The Nationalists are not shopkeepers trading in the misery of the millions; they are men like Upadhyay and Bepin Chandra Pal and numbers more who have put from them all the ordinary chances of life to devote themselves to a cause, and in the few instances in which a Nationalist journal has been run at a profit, the income has gone to Swadeshi work and the maintenance of workers and not into the pockets of the proprietors, while in almost every case men of education and ability have foregone their salary or half-starved on a pittance in order to relieve the burden of the struggling journal. These are your editors of low newspapers, traders in sedition, "interested agitators", men without sense of responsibility or "matured understanding". You say the thing which is not and know it, a licensed slanderer of men a comer of whose brains has a richer content than your whole Scotch skull and whose shoes you are unworthy to touch.
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It is refreshing to learn that Sir Harvey thinks he has got under one chief means of sedition, the platform, by his gagging ordinance turned into law. He has stiffened it he says into a tap which can be turned on wherever his vigilant eye sees a travelling spark of sedition, so on that side the British Empire and the profits of the clans are safe. But against the press he has not been
Page-628 able to find an equally effective extinguisher. The Government were apparently equal to the manufacture, but they want to try those tools they have before forging others that we know not of. The British public also might turn nasty if there were too rapid a succession of such stiffenings and Morley might find the fur-coat an insufficient protection against the cold biting blasts of his friends’ ingratitude. So Sir Harvey means to try a few more prosecutions first. But if Kingsford’s pills prove ineffective, well, then Sir Harvey, in spite of the British public and Mr. Morley’s sufferings, will be the first to recommend the smothering of the patient who refuses to be cured. After that the orator passed off into complaints about his bearer and praises of whiskey and soda and other subjects too sacred to touch. And so on the note of "whiskey in moderation" Sir Harvey closed his historic speech. And the British Empire knew itself safe. Bande Mataram, December 5, 1907
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