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Facts and Opinions Volume I – August 14,1909 – Number 8 The "Englishman" on Boycott
The speech of Sj. Bhupendranath Bose at the Boycott celebration and the Open Letter of Sj. Aurobindo Ghose have put the Englishman in a difficulty. It has been the habit of this paper to lay stress on any facts or suggestions real or imaginary which it could interpret as pointing to violence and so persistently damn the movement as one not only revolutionary in the magnitude of the changes at which it aims but violently revolutionary in its purposed methods. The speech and the open letter have cut this imaginary ground away from under its feet. As a matter of fact there is nothing new in the attitude of either the Moderate or the Nationalist leader. What they say now they have said always. The Moderate party have always been in favour of constitutional methods which, whatever be the precise meaning of that phrase in a country where no constitution exists, must certainly exclude illegality and violence. The Nationalists on their side have always, while repudiating the principle that men are under all circumstances bound to obey unjust or injurious laws imposed without national consent, advocated observance of the law in the circumstances of India both on grounds of policy and in the interests of sound national development. Passive resistance to arbitrary edicts and proclamations in order to assert civic rights, test illegal ukases or compel their recall is not breach of the law but a recognised weapon in the defence of civic liberty. Yet the Englishman chooses to save its face by imagining a change of front in the Boycott policy. There is no change. The Boycott has always been a movement within the law and such it remains. If there have been some individual excesses, that no more detracts from the legality of the movement than the excesses of individual strikers would affect the legality of a strike. The Englishman is full of anxiety as to the best way to meet the imagined change of front. With great sapiency it
Page – 143 suggests to the Government the free use of deportation, for which it has been for some time clamouring in vain, and threatens the boycotters with an antiboycott. One does not quite see how this mighty movement could be engineered. If a boycott of Indians by Englishmen is suggested, we would remind our contemporary that in life in this country Indians might conceivably do without Englishmen but Englishmen cannot do without Indians. That is precisely the strength of our position. The misfortune is that we ourselves still fail to realise it.
It seems to be especially the Boycott President’s able defence of social boycott as opposed to violent constraint that has alarmed the Englishman. Here also there is nothing new. The social boycott is a weapon absolutely necessary for the enforcement of the popular will in this matter, the power of using fiscal law for the same purpose being in the hands of authorities who have been publicly declared by Lord Curzon to be active parties in British exploitation of the resources of India. It means the coercion of a very small minority by a huge majority in the interests of the whole nation; it consists merely in a passive abstinence from all countenance to the offender, — sending him to Coventry, in the English phrase; it is effective and, if properly applied, instantaneously effective; it involves, as the Englishman has been obliged to see, no violence, no disregard of public order, no breach of the peace. The only weapon the Englishman can find against it is deportation, and after all you cannot deport a whole town, village or community. The Nationalist Party have always struggled for and often obtained the recognition of the social boycott at various District Conferences and it has been freely and effectively applied in all parts, though mostly in East Bengal. It is gratifying to find the most moderate of Bengal Moderate leaders supporting and justifying it in a carefully prepared and responsible utterance on an occasion of the utmost public importance.
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We have long noticed with the deepest disapprobation and indignation the equivocal conduct of the National Council authorities with regard to matters of great national importance, but we have held our peace from unwillingness to hurt an institution established with such high hopes and apparently destined to play an important part in the development of the nation. We can hold our peace no longer. The action of the authorities in forbidding their students to attend a national festival commemorating the inception of the movement by which the College and Council were created, — a prohibition extended by them to the mofussil schools, — is only the crowning act of a policy by which they are betraying the trust reposed in them by the nation, contradicting the very object of the institution and utterly ruining a great and salutary movement. They imagine that by being more servile than the most servile of the ordinary institutions and flaunting their high academical purpose they will save themselves from official repression and yet keep the support of the people. They are wrong. Already there is such deep dissatisfaction with the Council that the mofussil schools are dying of inanition and people are turning away from the new education as differing in no essential from the old. If the authorities persist in their evil course, the public mind will write Anti-national instead of National over their signboard in Bow Bazar and their schools be left empty of students. We shall return to this subject in a future issue.
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