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Facts and Opinions Volume I – August 21,1909 – Number 9 Srijut Surendranath Banerji’s Return
The veteran leader of Moderate Bengal has returned from his oratorical triumphs in the land of our rulers. The ovations of praise and applause which appreciative audiences and newspaper critics of all shades of opinion have heaped upon him, were thoroughly deserved. Never has the great oratorical gift with which Srijut Surendranath is so splendidly endowed, been displayed to such faultless advantage as in these the crowning efforts of his old age. The usual defect of his oratory, an excess of language and rhetoric over substantial force, a defect which also limited Gladstone’s oratory and made it the glory of an hour instead of an abiding possession to humanity, was absent from these speeches in England. For the first time the orator rose to the full height of a great and sound eloquence strong in matter as in style. With the statesman’s part in the speeches we do not wholly agree. Nevertheless it must be accounted as righteousness to Srijut Surendranath that he enforced the Moderate Nationalist view of things, — a very different view from Mr. Gokhale’s which is certainly not Nationalism and hardly even strong enough to be called Moderatism, — to its utmost limits and did not leave the English public under the vain delusion that some paltry tinkerings with the Legislative Councils would satisfy the aspirations of an awakened India. His first speeches accepting the reforms were great blunders which might have done infinite harm, but his later utterances, however equivocal on this point, did much to redress the balance. We await with interest Sj. Surendranath’s action in this matter. In our view the one policy for us is "No control, no co-operation", and in this we believe we are supported not only by the whole mass of advanced Nationalist opinion but by a great body of Moderates. The danger is that the older Moderates, trained
Page – 158 in a much less exacting system of political agitation, may attempt to enforce the demand for control only in speech while in action conceding co-operation without control and thus giving away for some fancied and worthless advantage the vital position of the new movement. The reforms give no control, therefore the reforms must be rejected. Co-operation is our only asset, the only thing we can offer in exchange for control, the only thing by withholding which we can by pressure bring about the cession of control. It would be the height of political folly to give away our only asset for nothing.
Sj. Surendranath’s maladroit reference to the outrages when speaking at Bombay was a false step which he has since made some attempt to recover. However it be put, it was maladroit and unnecessary. Any promise of co-operation in this respect implies an admission that we have the power to prevent these incidents and are therefore to some extent responsible either for bringing them about or for not stopping them before. It echoes the indiscretion by which Sir Edward Baker sought to make a whole nation responsible for these acts of recklessness and excuses the vindictive and headstrong utterances in which Mr.Gokhale tried to protect his own party and invoke the fiercest repression against his Nationalist countrymen. The isolated instances of assassination during the last year or more have been the reaction, deplorable enough, against the insane policy of indiscriminate police rule and repression which was started and progressively increased in the recent stages of the movement. Not by a single word or expression ought any public man to allow the responsibility to be shifted from the right quarter and to rest in the slightest degree on the people who had no part in them, no power to detect and stop the inflamed and resolute secret assassin and no authority given them by which they can bring about the removal of the real causes of the symptom. To dissociate oneself is a different matter. That should be done clearly, firmly and once for all.
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It is a pity that his oratorical triumphs in England seem to have blinded Sj. Surendranath to their small utility to the country. So far has he been led away by the slight and transient effect he has produced on the surface of the public mind in England that he is attempting to revive the old and futile idea of a Congress in London. Whether he will prevail on his fellow-Conventionalists to perpetrate this huge waste of money, we cannot say. The break-up of the Congress and the "stern and relentless repression" of the Nationalist party has delivered the old Congress Conservatives from the fear of public opinion. Needless to say, no so-called Congress held under such circumstances will be representative of the people. It is the old love of striking theatrical effects addressed to an English audience as patrons that has been revived in Sj. Surendranath by his visit. We notice that the dead cant about the faith in the sense of justice of the Government and the British democracy once more reappears in the columns of the Bengalee. All these are bad signs. What is it that the Moderate Leader proposes to effect by this expenditure of money which might be so much better used in the country itself ? We fail to see how a meeting of forty or fifty Indians, however eminent and respectable, prosing about Indian grievances and the sense of justice of the British democracy or the immaculate Liberalism of Lord Morley can do any lasting service to the cause of India in England. Even if this could be turned into a really imposing theatricality, the effect of such shows in European countries is merely a nine days’ wonder unless they are followed up. It is natural that an orator should overrate the effect of oratory, but Sj. Surendranath is surely aware that the greatest speeches or series of speeches unconnected with its own interests now produce on the blasé British public only the effect of a passing ripple which is immediately effaced by the next that follows. Either therefore his proposal means only some temporary theatricals and waste of money or he must persuade our people to resume the old abandoned policy and carry on a perennial campaign in England for the "education" of the British Public. Only as part of such a campaign had the proposal of a London Congress ever any
Page – 160 meaning or justification. But even in its best days the Congress leaders could never produce enough men, money and energy for so stupendous a work, and it is doubly impossible now that the old policy is discredited. Certainly, if Sj. Surendranath thinks that the newly awakened energies of India are going to follow him in throwing themselves into this channel, he is grievously mistaken. Not all his prestige and influence can put back the hands of the clock so utterly. The Indian movement has really to deal not with the British democracy, which is an almost negligible factor in Indian affairs, but with the politicians in Parliament, His Majesty’s ministers and the powerful influence in England of the official and commercial English out here. These are hard-headed and obstinate forces which, so far as they can at all rise out of the narrow groove of class interests or racial pride and prejudice, can only be influenced by one consideration, the best way to preserve the Empire in India. Even in the minds of Sir Henry Cotton and Mr. Mackarness that cannot fail to be a dominant consideration. If any educational work has to be done in England, it is to convince these classes that it is only by the concession of control that the co-operation of the Indian people can be secured. And that work is best done from India.
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