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Facts and Opinions Volume I – Dec. 18, 1909 – Number 24 Sir Pherozshah’s Resignation
The resignation of Sir Pherozshah Mehta took all India by surprise. It was as much a cause of astonishment to his faithful friends and henchmen as to the outside world. The speculation and bewilderment have been increased by the solemn mystery in which the Dictator of the Convention has shrouded his reasons for a step so suddenly and painfully embarrassing to the body he created and now rules and protects. A multitude of reasons have been severally alleged for this sudden move in the game by ingenious speculators, but they seem mostly to be figments of the imagination. It was an ingenious guess that Sir Pherozshah has been appointed, as a reward for his great services to the Government, on the India Council and could, therefore, take no farther part in party politics. But until the appointment, if real, is announced, such self-denial is not obligatory, and surely Lord Morley would be quite willing to give his choice ten days’ grace in order that he might pilot through this crisis in its fortunes a body so useful to the Government as the Convention that is striving this year to meet at Lahore. We ourselves lean to the idea that it is the complications ensuing on the unmasking of the Reforms that are chiefly responsible for the move. The Reforms are exasperating to Hindu sentiment, destructive to popular interests and a blow even to the Loyalist Hindus who were loudest in acclaiming the advent of the millennium. The Bombay leaders cannot accept the Reforms without exasperating the people or refuse them without offending the Government. They are in that embarrassing position which is vulgarly called being in a cleft stick. It is not surprising in a tactician of Sir Pherozshah’s eminence that, at such a critical juncture, he should prefer to guide the deliberations of the Lahore Convention from behind the veil rather than stand forward and become personally responsible for whatever he may think it
Page – 304 necessary to compel the Convention to do. The Bengal Conventionists are already in danger of drifting away from the moorings and the new Regulations have, we believe, created the imminence of another dissension among the remaining faithful. The resignation of Sir Pherozshah makes it easier for the Bengal Moderates to attend the Lahore Congress, and that may not have been absent from the thoughts of the master tactician. But we never thought that Sir Pherozshah would care so much for the co-operation of the Bengalis as to allow Srijut Surendranath to be President, as certain sanguine gentlemen in Bengal seem to have expected. Failing Sir Pherozshah and Mr. Gokhale, who for obvious reasons cannot be put forward so soon after the Benares Presidentship, Mr. Madan Mohan Malaviya was evidently the man, and we find accordingly that he has been designated for the succession by the obedient coterie at Bombay. We await with interest the upshot of this very attractive entanglement and the method by which the Convention will try to wriggle out of the very difficult hole into which Lord Morley has thrust it.
The elections for the Reformed Councils, so far as they have proceeded, entirely justify the description of the new bodies which we gave in our article on the Reforms. The elections for the United Provinces give a fair sample of the results which are sure to obtain all over India. With the exception of two or three gentlemen of the type of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, there is none on the Council to represent the educated wealthy, much less the people at large; all the rest are Europeans, Mahomedans and grandees. It is a Council of Notables, not a reformed Legislative Council representing both the Government and the people. In Bengal two gentlemen have been elected who represent the most lukewarm element in the popular party, for Sj. Baikunthanath Sen and Mr. K. B. Dutt stand not for the new movement in Bengal so much as for the old antiquated Congress politics which Bengal, even in its Moderate element, has left far behind.
Page – 305 Behar sends one independent man in Mr. Deep Narayan Singh. All the rest are of the dignified classes who either have no patriotic feelings or dare not express them. It is possible that Sir Edward Baker, in order to remove the stigma of unrepresentative subserviency from his Council, may try to nominate two or three who will help to keep Sj. Baikunthanath and his friend in countenance, but that purely personal grace will not mend matters. The Bengal Council is likely to be an even more select and unrepresentative body than we expected. We counted the District Boards as possible constituencies for representatives of opposition and independent opinion, but, for the most part, they might almost as well have been preserves for the aristocracy. In East Bengal it is evident that the Councils will be a Mahomedan and European body.
By all Anglo-Indian papers it was triumphantly announced as a conclusive proof of the unfitness of the Indian people for self-government that the Surat Congress should have been broken up by the storming of the platform when passions were highly excited and relations between parties at breaking-point. Every ordinary sign of excitement at a public meeting is telegraphed to England under some such graphic title as "Uproarious proceedings at the Provincial Conference". But if rowdyism is a sign of unfitness for liberty, there is no country so unfit as England itself and logically, as lovers of England, our Anglo-Indian friends ought to pray that Germany, which knows how to sternly stop such disturbances, or Russia, which knows how to punish them, should take charge of England and teach her people respect for law and order. The excitement of the great revolutionary struggle now proceeding in England has already in these few days induced such lawlessness and disorder that it is becoming almost impossible for Conservative speakers to command a public hearing. At first it was the Liberal Minister, Mr. Ure, whose meetings were systematically interrupted and broken up by organised Conservative rowdyism. Since then the Radicals have
Page – 306 retaliated with much greater effect, first, with "good-humoured" interruption, then with more formidable tumult and, finally, we see the temper rising to absolute ferocity. Not only do we read in one telegram of four Conservative meetings which were of a disorderly nature, while Lord Kesteven and Lord Harris were refused a hearing, but the windows at Mr. Ure’s last meeting were broken with a battering-ram and several of his audience were cut; and the other day a Conservative meeting was broken up, the agent left senseless by his assailants and the candidate only saved by a skilful flight. Nor were the worst excesses of which our young men were accused in the prosecution of the Boycott and picketing, anywhere near the violence and recklessness of which Englishwomen have been systematically guilty during the last few months. Clearly it is time that a more capable nation conquered and took charge of England.
The prospects of the Lahore Convention seem to be exceedingly clouded. In the matter of the Presidentship the fiat has gone forth from Bombay that Pandit Madan Mohan shall be President and, unless the dissatisfaction with the Mehta leadership has extended itself to the subservient Congress Committees, it is likely that the Bombay nomination will give the lead to the rest of the Conventionist coteries, excepting perhaps Burma and Bengal. The Convention is now at a critical stage of its destinies. Disowned by the Punjab, troubled by strained relations between Bombay and Bengal, it has received the crowning blow from the Government which supports it; its policy has been discredited before the country and once more it has been proved to a disgusted people that the methods of the Conventionists lead to nothing but rebuffs, humiliation and political retrogression in the name of reform. If this body is to survive, there is need of a strong hand and skilful guidance, otherwise the present session is likely to be the last. Already the Convention is becoming the refuge of an out-of-date and vanishing coterie who no longer command the confidence of the country. By its very constitution the
Page – 307 Convention has cut itself off from the people and a few men meeting in conclave elect the delegates in the name of an indifferent or hostile public. The dying past in vain strives to entrench itself in this insecure and crumbling fortress. Every day will serve to undermine it more and more and the Nationalists are content to let time and inevitable tendency do their work for them. Only by a radical self-purification and change of policy can the Convention hope to survive.
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