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The Voice of the Martyrs
WE ARE now rejoicing over the release of Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal, but who among us is prepared to forget that so many have suffered for the country not less or more than he, and are still suffering? Yesterday when we welcomed the great orator, the man of high thoughts and inspired eloquence, the prophet of new ideas to his people, our thoughts went for a while to those who are now in British prisons, to Bhupen, to Basanta, to the Editor of the Barisal Hitaishi and the Rangpur Vartabaha, to the aged Moulavi spending the last years of his noble life in the severities of a criminal jail, to our fellow martyrs of East Bengal, to the few who are suffering in other provinces. For what are these men suffering? What was the hope that stirred them to face all rather than be unworthy of the light that had dawned in their hearts? No petty object fired their soul, no small or partial relief was the hope in which they were strong. It was the star of Swaraj that shone upon them from the darkness of the night into which they willingly departed, it is the light of Swaraj which creates a glory of effulgence in the squalid surroundings of the jail and makes each hour of enforced labour a sacrament and an offering on the most sacred of earthly altars. Today let us remember these brothers of ours even as yesterday was devoted to the joy of welcoming our beloved leader back into our midst. Today let us recall what it is that they expect from us; forgetting for a while our selfish preoccupations, our little fears, our petty ambitions, let us identify ourselves in heart with these nobler spirits whom it is our privilege to call fellow-countrymen, and ask ourselves whether we are really working to bring about the great ideal for which they have immolated themselves. Who is there who can really say that his work is worthy of these heroic martyrs? Prometheus chained to the rock and gnawed by the vulture’s beak endured in the strong hope of man’s final deliverance from the tyrant powers of the middle-heaven who sought to keep him from his divine destiny;
Page-744 but the human race for whom he suffered forgot Prometheus, forgot the dazzling hope to which his life had pointed them and, involved in petty cares and mean ambitions, allowed their champion to suffer in vain and their destiny to call them to no purpose. We, like the woman whom Christ censured, the careful, prudent woman of the world, are busied with many things, but forget the one thing needful. We are waiting to see whether the Congress will be revived or not, or we are watching the progress of Swadeshi with self-satisfaction, or we are anxious for this or that National School, while the fight for Swaraj seems to have ceased or passed away from us into worthier hands. Madras has taken up the herol out of our hands, and today it is over Tuticorin that the gods of the Mahabharat hover in their aerial cars watching the chances of the fight which is to bring back the glorious days of old. Gallant Chidambaram, brave Padmanabha, intrepid Shiva defying the threats of exile and imprisonment; fighting for the masses, for the nation, for the preparation of Swaraj, these are now in the forefront, the men of the future, the bearers of the standard. The spirit of active heroism and self-immolation has travelled southward. In Bengal the spirit of passive endurance is all that seems to remain and the bold initiative, the fiery spirit that panted to advance is dead or sleeping. "Work, there is no need to aspire; labour for small things and the great will come in some future generation”, is the spirit which seems to be in the ascendant. But the voices of the martyrs from their cells cry to us in a different key, "Work, but aspire, so that your work may be true to the call you have heard and which we have obeyed; labour for great things first and the small will come of themselves. Cherish the might of the spirit, the nobility of the ideal, the grandeur of the dream; the spirit will create the material it needs, the ideal will bring the real to its body and self-expression, the dream is the stuff out of which the waking world will be created. It was the strength of the spirit which stood with us before the alien tribunal, it was the force of the ideal which led us to the altar of sacrifice, it is the splendour of the dream which supports us through the dreary months and years of our martyrdom. For these are the truth and the divinity within the movement."
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Schemes for the constitution of the Congress are now being drawn up in various quarters but we fear that some important and indeed essential points are being lost sight of by the framers. A constitution may be drawn up with one of two motives, either to suit the convenience of a party or to assure the orderly and harmonious procedure of a representative assembly in which conflicting opinions are to be allowed free entrance. In the former case the country at large is not interested in the result, for a party organisation is free to make the arrangements most suitable to itself. But if the Congress is to be a Congress of all opinions and not of one section only, the Constitution must be so drafted as to remove the causes of quarrel which led up to the Surat fiasco. One of these was the conflict between authority and freedom in the proceedings of the session. The Moderates stand for official authority, the Nationalists for the freedom of debate and the rights of the delegate as a popular representative. The conflict between the Chairman of the Reception Committee and Mr. Tilak was on the issue whether the authority of the President or Chairman is absolute and autocratic or whether the individual delegate has a right to be heard according to the rules observed in all free assemblies and to appeal to the full assembly if his right is unjustly denied. The Moderates desire to establish a sort of official oligarchy in the Congress; the leaders officially recognised in previous years, must be implicitly obeyed; the voice of the President is to be absolute and final irrespective of the validity of his decision or the rights of free discussion. The Nationalists contend that the President is a servant of the Congress and not its master: — his function is to administer the rules of debate and not to make his own will and pleasure the law. There can be no doubt which attitude is in consonance with the practice of free peoples, the spirit of modern politics and the principles of democracy. Mr. Tilak has established his position by his articles in the Kesari and Maratha with the most crushing completeness and there is no possible answer to the array of authorities, precedents and sound argument which he has marshalled in those pieces of perfect political reasoning unrivalled in their force and
Page-746 clearness of exposition. Whoever wishes to draft a constitution for the Congress must take this great issue into consideration and lay down clearly, first the powers of the President and their limits, secondly the proper procedure with regard to the Subjects Committee, and thirdly, the rights of the delegates in full Congress as against the President and the Subjects Committee. We propose to take up this quesition of the constitution and deal with it at length, for it is a subject of immense importance and it is essential that those who handle it should try to grasp the principles involved. We wish to take the Congress seriously as a body which may and ought to form a seed out of which the future Indian Parliament must grow, and not a sham representative assembly meant for passing exigencies the constitution of which can be settled offhand.
There are signs that the compromise arrived at at Pabna will be ignored by the Moderates at Allahabad. We have received a communication from two leading gentlemen of Barisal enclosing a draft constitution for the Congress which seems to be a reply to another draft forwarded in the name of some Calcutta Committee. This is described in the forwarding letter as a committee of "our leaders". If it is the Calcutta Committee of the Surat Convention, it should have made its origin and nature clear while forwarding its views to the Mofussil. We are entirely unaware of any general Committee having been formed of the leaders in Calcutta which can speak authoritatively to Bengal, or of any draft constitution prepared by the common consent of Bengal’s foremost men. The Convention Calcutta Committee met in secret and seem to have issued their draft in secret to a select few in the Mofussil. The Mofussil gentlemen who sent their draft appear to be under the impression that the leaders of the Nationalist Party are in the know. We must remind them that there are two Committees, one appointed by the Moderate Convention at Surat, the other by a meeting of the delegates pledged to the four Calcutta resolutions. No attempt to arro-
Page-747 gate to the Convention Committee the sole inheritance of the Congress can succeed; and if the people of Bengal desire union on the lines of the Pabna resolution they must insist either on the All-India Congress Committee being entrusted with the work of reviving the Congress or on both the Surat Committees uniting to arrange the lines on which the Congress shall be reconstructed. A section has no right to lay down a law by which the whole will be bound and if they persist in the attempt they will be only inviting a permanent secession. Bande Mataram, March 11, 1908
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