-54_Facts and Opinions 11-12-1909.htm

Facts and Opinions

Volume I – Dec. 11, 1909 – Number 23

The United Congress

The controversy which has arisen between the Bengalee and the Amrita Bazar Patrika on the subject of an united Congress does not strike us as likely to help towards the solution of this difficult question. We should ourselves have preferred to hold silence until the negotiations now proceeding between representatives of both sides in Calcutta are brought to a definite conclusion either for success or failure. But certain of the positions taken up by the Bengalee cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. Our contemporary refers to the meeting in the Amrita Bazar Office last year as an All India Conference. He ought to know perfectly well that it was nothing of the kind. The Mahratta Nationalists were extremely anxious for a settlement and they approached the Bengal Moderates to that end through the mediation of Sj. Motilal Ghose. The terms arrived at were so humiliating that, although they gave way rather than imperil the success of the negotiations, it was with great difficulty they could bring themselves to consent, and Bengal Nationalism has never accepted the surrender on the subject of the creed. At the Hughly Conference, when the four Nationalist members of the Committee were named, great anxiety was expressed by the delegates that men should be chosen who would not repeat this surrender. If the meeting in Bagbazar last year were an All India Conference, how is it that Bombay Moderatism refused to have anything to do with its resolutions, or that Sj. Surendranath and his following did not consider themselves bound by the decision to which they were a party and joined the Madras Congress ? It was an attempt at negotiation and nothing more and, having fallen through, binds nobody. The Bengalee says that unless the Nationalists sign the creed, an United Congress is impossible, since no one shall be admitted to the Congress who is not satisfied with self-government within the Empire

and constitutional means of agitation. This seems to us to be an indirect attempt at intimidating us by hinting that, if we do not join the Moderates on their own terms, we shall be declaring ourselves seditionists and anarchists. That is a method of bringing about unity which we think the Bengal Moderates had better leave to their friends in Bombay and Punjab; it will not work in Bengal. If by constitutional means is meant acquiescence in the Reforms, — that is the only constitution given to us, — we decline to join in using constitutional means. If peaceful means are intended, we do not know that any party advocating public political action is in favour of any but peaceful means. Nor is it a question of adhesion to or secession from the British Empire. That is an ultimate action which is too far off to form a question of practical politics or a subject of difference. The dispute is one of ideal, whether we shall aim at being a province of England or a separate nation on an equality with her carrying on our ancient Asiatic development under modern conditions. Whether such separateness and equality can be effected without breaking the English connection is a question which can only be decided by the final attempt at adjustment between Indian and British interests. We Nationalists lay stress on the ideal, which is a matter of principle, and not on the form it takes, which is a matter of expediency and detail. As far as the United Congress is concerned, the Nationalists are willing to accept the self-government of the provincial type as the object of the Congress and to make no attempt to disturb this provision until India becomes unanimous for a change, but any attempt to make them sign a creed which violates their conscience will be resisted. There can be no farther weakening on that point, and if the Moderates demand that we shall lay down our principles on the altar to Sir Pherozshah Mehta before they will admit fellowship with us then farther negotiations are useless. Disunion must take its course.

The Spirit of the Negotiations

Both the Bengalee and the Amrita Bazar Patrika seem to us to

misunderstand the spirit of the negotiations which are proceeding. The Patrika harps on the inconsistency of the Moderate leaders negotiating on one side and at the same time holding a meeting to send delegates to the Three Men’s Congress at Lahore. There is no such condition underlying the negotiations. At Hughly Sj. Surendranath expressly reserved his liberty to attend Sir Pherozshah’s Congress and there is no reason why he should not do so if he thinks that his duty or his best policy. Nor do the Nationalists ask the Bengal Moderates to refrain, though they will naturally put their own interpretation on an alliance based on the pusillanimous surrender of the Boycott Resolution. On the other hand the Bengalee is quite mistaken in thinking that what the Nationalists seek is admission to the Convention or that they feel themselves under any necessity to go cap in hand to Sir Pherozshah Mehta and Mr. Gokhale. On the contrary they distinctly state that the Convention is not the Congress, but they recognise that as a mere matter of convenience the reparation of its errors by the Convention is the readiest method of bringing about a compromise and they are therefore willing to take the status quo as a basis for negotiations. They recognise no obligation to conform submissively to that basis or approach the Bombay leaders as the arbiters of their destiny.

A Salutary Rejection

We draw the attention of all weak-kneed Nationalists to the ban placed by the Bombay Government on the candidature of the distinguished and able Poona Nationalist, Mr. N. C. Kelkar. Mahratta Nationalism has never been so robustly uncompromising as the Bengal school in its refusal of co-operation in the absence of control, and Mr. Kelkar, though a sincere and ardent Nationalist, a friend and constant fellow-worker of Mr. Tilak, has always preserved an independent line in this matter and considered himself at liberty to help the cause of the country on bodies controlled by the Government. It greatly helps our cause that the Government should so emphatically set its face against any mistaken diplomacy of this kind. Mr. Kelkar’s only specific

offence against eligibility was a sentence of fine and two months’ imprisonment for contempt of court, and that is short of the time required for ineligibility. Sj. Surendranath, who was, by the way, sentenced to six months for a still graver contempt, has been specially exempted, unasked, by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal from another disability. It is obvious therefore that Mr. Kelkar’s real offence was his Nationalist views and his friendship with Mr. Tilak. We hope that all compromising Nationalists will take the lesson of this rebuff to heart. The object of the Government is to rally the Mahomedans and the Moderates and isolate the Nationalists. No doubt they mean by the Moderates the Loyalist section of that party, but they are evidently wishful not to entirely alienate the Nationalist Moderates, if they can do so while excluding them from all real weight on the Councils. But by what reasoning any Nationalist can imagine that he will escape the operation of the excluding clauses, we are at a loss to understand. We may also ask our Mahratta brothers what advantage they have gained by being less rigid than ourselves. They are, if anything, more rigorously persecuted than we are in Bengal. Weakness of any kind does not pay in dealing with the Briton.

The English Revolution

The note of revolution which was struck with resounding force by Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill in the quarrel with the Lords, is now ringing louder in England and has been taken up in soberer but not less emphatic tones by Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey. There can be no doubt that there was dissension in the Cabinet over the Budget and that the concessions made by the Government in the process of passing it were forced upon Mr. Lloyd George and certainly not to the taste of that fiery and uncompromising Celt. But the reactionary attempt of the House of Lords to control finance, has evidently closed up the ranks by driving the Moderates over to the cause of revolution. It is evidently felt by the Liberals that, with an Upper Chamber more and more shamelessly and constantly a mere tool

of the Conservative leaders, it is impossible for any Liberal Government to accept office unless it has a mandate to end or mend the Lords. We cannot believe that a similar feeling will not actuate the great mass of Liberals all over Great Britain and heal all differences. Already the Labour Executive has decided to make the victory easier for the Government by not dividing the forward vote in a considerable number of constituencies and we have no doubt this is the outward sign of a secret compact between the Labour Party and the Liberals by which the return of a powerful Socialist party has been secured. Even the extreme Socialists, who usually are against all dealing with the middle class and whose motto is "A plague on both your houses", are calling on Socialists of all shades to support the Government in abolishing the House of Lords. If Mr. Asquith had followed the line we suggested as possible in a previous number and introduced a moderate but effective bill for nullifying the Lords’ veto, he would certainly have gained a number of Moderate votes which will now be denied to him, but it is doubtful whether the gain of the entire Socialist vote, secured by keeping himself free to end the House of Lords, is not, in the present condition of English politics, a compensation far exceeding the loss. Already Tariff Reform is receding into the background and promises to be a subordinate issue. The battle is over the constitutional, not the fiscal issue. By their anxiety to bring Unionist Labour candidates into the field and the eager talk of Conservative leaders about the necessity of reforming the Lords, the party of reaction show that they perfectly understand from what quarters disaster threatens. Now that the Liberal party is pledged to destroy the Lords’ veto, the English Revolution is assured and it will be not a middle class but a Socialist and Labour revolution. This result is assured whether the Liberals win or lose in the present battle. One campaign does not decide the fortunes of such a war.

Aristocratic Quibbling

When we speculated that the Lords would be more likely to amend the Budget and leave their opponents the onus of throw-

ing the finances of the whole country into confusion, we underestimated the want of wit of which this highly venerable but somewhat brainless house is capable. This want of wit has shown itself in an unseasonable and wholly futile excess of refined cunning. The House of Lords felt that its great weakness, when its conduct went before the country for its verdict, would be the odium of its unconstitutional attempt to interfere with the control of the finances by the people. To mend the unconstitutional appearance of their act, they have taken up this position, that they have no right to amend but they have the right to reject the Budget. It appears to be a right which they have sometimes been unwise enough to claim, but never unwise enough to enforce. The aristocratic hair-splitter who discovered this quibble seems to have forgotten that, however pleasing the distinction may be to his ingenuity, the mass of the voters will not care one straw to examine fine distinctions which claim the whole and disclaim the part. They will simply say that the right of rejection means the right of baffling the representatives of the people and paralysing finance. The other device of the Lords is to avoid the appearance of disputing the people’s right by putting the rejection in the form of a referendum to the people, a procedure which the British constitution does not include in itself and which is entirely new. Unfortunately they have made too much noise about the woes of the Dukes and Mr. Balfour has made the damaging admission that it is only the liquor and the land clauses to which he objects, so that it is too late to pretend that it is anxiety for the liberties of the people and not solicitude for their own pockets and the pockets of their allies the publicans that has dictated their action. The indecent crowding of Lords who never before attended a single sitting, to reject the Budget, was also a tactical error. On the whole the action of the House of Lords has greatly helped Mr. Asquith and we may await with some confidence the result of a struggle in which India is deeply interested.