-69_Facts and Opinions 29-1-1910.htm

Facts and Opinions

Volume I – Jan. 29, 1910 – Number 30

The High Court Assassination

The startling assassination of Deputy Superintendent Shams-ul-Alam on Monday in the precincts of the High Court, publicly, in daylight, under the eyes of many and in a crowded building, breaks the silence which had settled on the country, in a fashion which all will deplore. The deceased officer was perhaps the ablest, most energetic and most zealous member of the Bengal detective force. It was his misfortune that he took the leading part not only in the Alipur Bomb Case in which he zealously and untiringly assisted the Crown solicitors, but in the investigation of the Haludbari and Netra dacoities. The nature of his duties exposed him to the resentment of the small Terrorist bodies whose continued existence in Bengal is proved by this last daring and reckless crime. Under such circumstances a man carries his life in his hand and it seems only a matter of time when it will be struck from him. We have no doubt that the Government will suitably recognise his services by a handsome provision for his family. As for the crime itself, it is one of the boldest of the many bold acts of violence for which the Terrorists have been responsible. We wish we could agree with some of our contemporaries that the perpetrators of these deplorable outrages are dastards and cowards; for, if it were so, Terrorism would be a thing to be abhorred, but not feared. On the contrary, the Indian Terrorist seems to be usually a man fanatical in his determination and daring, to prefer public places and crowded buildings for his field and to scorn secrecy and a fair chance of escape. It is this remarkable feature which has distinguished alike the crimes at Nasik, London, Calcutta, to say nothing of the assassination of Gossain in jail. With such men it is difficult to deal. Neither fear nor reasoning, disapprobation nor isolation can have any effect on them. Nor will the Government of this country allow us to use what we believe to be the only

effective means of combating the spread of the virus among the people. All we can do is to sit with folded hands and listen to the senseless objurgations of the Anglo-Indian Press, waiting for a time when the peaceful expression and organisation of our national aspirations will no longer be penalised. It is then that Terrorism will vanish from the country and the nightmare be as if it never had been.

Anglo-Indian Prescriptions

The Anglo-Indian papers publish their usual senseless prescriptions for the cure of the evil. The Englishman informs us that it is at last tired of these outrages and asks in a tone full of genuine weariness when the Government will take the steps which Hare Street has always been advising. It seems to us that the Government have gone fairly far in that direction. The only remaining steps are to silence the Press entirely, abolish the necessity of investigation and trial and deport every public man in India. And when by removing everything and everyone that still encourages the people to persevere in peaceful political agitation, Russia has been reproduced in India and all is hushed except the noise of the endless duel between the omnipotent policeman and the secret assassin, the Englishman will be satisfied, — but the country will not be at peace. The Indian Daily News more sensibly suggests police activity in detecting secret organisations, — although its remarks would have sounded better without an implied prejudgment of the Nasik case. If the police were to employ the sound detective methods employed in England and France, it would take them a little longer to effect a coup, but there would be some chance of real success. It is not by indiscriminate arrests, harassing house-searches undertaken on the word of informers paid so much for each piece of information true or false, and interminable detention of undertrial prisoners in jail that these formidable secret societies will be uprooted. Such processes are more likely to swell their numbers and add to their strength. The Statesman is particularly wroth with the people of this country for their objection to police methods and goes so far as to lay

the blame for the murder of Shams-ul-Alam on these objections. If we had only submitted cheerfully to police harassment, all this would not have happened ! The bitter ineptitude of our contemporary grows daily more pronounced and takes more and more refuge in ridiculously inconsequent arguments. Is it the objectionable methods or our objections to them that are to blame ? We may safely say that, whatever influences may have been at work in the mind of the assassin, the occasional criticisms of vexatious house-search in the Bengali journals had nothing to do with his action. The Statesman does not scruple, like other Anglo-Indian papers, to question the sincerity of the condemnations of Terrorist outrage which are nowadays universal throughout the country, and to support its insinuations it has to go as far back as the Gossain murder and the demonstrations that followed it. These demonstrations were not an approval of Terrorism as a policy, but an outburst of gratitude to the man who removed a dangerous and reckless perjurer whose evil breath was scattering ruin and peril over innocent homes and noble and blameless heads throughout Bengal. We do not praise or justify that outburst, — for murder is murder, whatever its motives, — but it is not fair to give it a complexion other than the one it really wore. If it had really been true that a whole nation approved of Terrorism and supported the assassin by secret or open sympathy, it would be a more damning indictment of British statesmanship in India than any seditious pen could have framed. The Chowringhee paper’s libellous insinuation that the secret societies are not secret and their members are known to the public, has only to be mentioned in order to show the spirit of this gratuitous adviser of the Indian people. Nor can one peruse without a smile the suggestion that the Hindu community should use the weapon of social ostracism against the Terrorists. Whom are we to outcaste, the hanged or transported assassin, or his innocent relatives ?

House-Search

While we are on the subject we may as well make explicit the

rationale of our objection to house-search as it is used in Bengal. No citizen can object to the legitimate and necessary use of house-search as an aid to the detection of crime; it is only to its misuse that objection can be made. We say that it is misuse to harass a man and his family merely because the police have a suspicion against him which they cannot establish or find any ground of evidence for — on the remote chance of finding incriminating correspondence or arms in his possession. It is a misuse to take this step on the information of characterless paid informers whose advantage it is to invent false clues so as to justify their existence and earn their living. It is a misuse to farther harass the householder by carrying off from his house half his library and his whole family correspondence and every other article to which the police take a fancy and which are often returned to him after infinite trouble and in a hopelessly damaged condition. A house-search is never undertaken in civilised countries except on information of the truth of which there is moral certainty or such a strong probability as to justify this extreme step. To find out the truth of an information without immediately turning a household upside down on the chance of its veracity is not an impossible feat for detective ability in countries where all statements are not taken for gospel truth merely because they issue from the sacred lips of a policeman, and where police perjury or forgery is sure of swift punishment. Where a detective force is put on its mettle by being expected to prove every statement and take the consequences of illegal methods, they do manage to detect crime very effectively, while the chances of the innocent suffering are greatly minimised. In other countries there are or have been Anarchist outrages. Terrorist propaganda, secret societies, but nowhere, except in Russia, are such methods used as are considered quite ordinary in India, nor, if used, would they be tolerated by the European citizen. If the police would confine themselves to legitimate detective activity, they would receive the full support of the public and the occasional trouble of a house-search, caused by the existence of a suspected relative or dependent, would be patiently borne, — though it is absurd of the Statesman to expect a householder to be cheerful under such untoward circumstances. This is the rationale of our views

in the matter, and we do not think there is anything in them either unreasonable, obstructive or inconsistent with civic duty.

The Elections

The Elections at the time of writing seem to point to the return of a Liberal Ministry dependent first on Labour, then on Irish votes for its very existence. At the end of last week after being long in a slight minority, the combined Liberal-Labour Party exceeded the Conservatives by 14, but the Liberal vote, apart from the Labour representatives, was still well behind the Unionist numbers. The vicissitudes of this crisis have been utterly unlike those of any previous election. Instead of an even ebb and flow such as we find on former occasions, well-distributed all over the country, we see the United Kingdom ranged into two adverse parties on a great revolutionary issue, according to geographical, almost racial distribution. Wales, Scotland and the North are for the new age, the Centre and the South for the past. In the Southern, Midland and Eastern counties the Unionists have achieved a tremendous victory and we think there is hardly a constituency in which the Liberal majority has not been either materially, often hugely reduced or turned into a minority.

In the North, even in Yorkshire, still more in Westmoreland, the Unionists have achieved a few victories, but the verdict of the North as a whole has gone heavily against the Lords and for the Liberals. Wales is still overwhelmingly Radical in spite of one or two Conservative gains. In Scotland the Liberal Party has been amazingly successful and increased its majorities in many places, maintained them in most and balanced occasional losses by compensating victories. The Celt everywhere has declared for revolution, as was to be expected from that ardent, mobile and imaginative race; the frank, adventurous Scandinavian blood of the North may account for its progressive sympathies; but the rest of England is the home of the conservative, slow-natured Anglo-Saxon always distrustful of new adventures and daring innovations. The struggle seems to us to have been not so much one of opinions as of blood and instinct. It is notable that the

Conservative victories have been attained not so much by the reduction and transference of the Liberal vote as by a rush of Conservative electors to the polls who did not vote in previous elections. The unparalleled heaviness of the polling shows how deeply the people have been stirred and feel the magnitude and importance of the issues.