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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, July 26th, 1907 }
Srijut Bhupendranath
At the meeting held day before yesterday in the College Square to express sympathy with the editor of the Yugantar and congratulate him on his good fortune in being so signally chosen out to suffer for the Motherland, it was pointed out that Srijut Bhupendranath had initiated a new departure in the struggle with the bureaucracy. He is the first who standing in the dock, called to account by the alien under alien-made law for preaching the gospel of Indian freedom to his countrymen, has refused to acknowledge any responsibility to the alien bureaucracy. It is extremely important that the real meaning of the attitude of the accused should not be mistaken, for it has undoubtedly been obscured by the shape into which it was put under the influence of others more accustomed to legal notions and legal phraseology than to the plain utterance of the heart. The accused was strongly represented, Srijuts Ashutosh Chaudhuri, Aswini Banerji, Chittaranjan Das and A. K. Ghose appearing for him in the case, and had he chosen, as he did not choose, to make a sensational trial of the Yugantar case and win for himself popular notoriety, he could easily have done so. We think, however, it might have been better if Srijut Bhupendranath had rejected even this brilliant legal assistance and relied on the frank and straightforward utterance which wells up from the depths of a strong and abiding feeling and profound intellectual conviction. The over-careful language of legality, guiding its feet with delicate scrupulousness among a million traps and pitfalls and intent only upon avoiding a stumble, that is one thing; the clear bold speech of the patriot speaking straight to his countrymen’s hearts, enamoured of martyrdom, exalted with
Page – 612 the passionate realisation of sacred liberty, that is quite another. Bhupendranath’s statement was a political declaration, not a legal formula, and it should so have been expressed. Unfortunately it was toned down into legal form and lost half its force. In the original statement drawn up under the instructions of the accused he had declared sans phrase, “I have done what I considered my duty to my country” and ended by saying, “I do not wish to make any farther statement or to take any part in the case.” This was clear enough; the editor of Yugantar, consistent with the views he had publicly professed, refused to do anything which would seem to be an acknowledgement of responsibility to the codified caprice or selfishness of the small handful of alien officials who call themselves the Government established by law. He had written with his eye not on the limitations imposed by the Penal Code, but on the needs of his country. This responsibility was to his countrymen, not to a group of English officials. To plead before a Court constituted by the bureaucracy, was to admit his responsibility to aliens and deny his responsibility to his countrymen. Unfortunately the edge of the utterance was blunted by the verbal alterations made by the pleader, who looked on the statement with the eyes of the lawyer, not of the politician. The calm and dignified appeal to the duty his country demanded of him was marred by the legal plea of good faith; the patriot’s refusal to take part in a trial before the very authority it was his whole mission to displace, was modified into a legal abstention from any further “action” in an ordinary undefended trial. Later in the day a worse thing happened. Srijut Ashutosh Chaudhuri has been severely criticised for the remarks with which he accompanied his refusal to give any address. It is fair to state that he does not seem to have been accurately reported. We are informed that he prefaced his remarks by saying that as his client had refused to plead, he had no locus standi in the case; whatever he said, was therefore not spoken in the name of Srijut Bhupendranath, but merely expressed his own opinion. We are also informed that he did not say that the accused had placed himself in the Magistrate’s hands, but simply that the case was now in the
Page – 613 Magistrate’s hands and Counsel had no farther concern in the matter. Nevertheless, Mr. Chaudhuri’s intervention was unfortunate, as it has led to the obscuring of the true spirit of the statement, so much so that Srijut Bhupendranath was considering whether he should not make an additional statement in order to make clear his position but was advised that the opportunity had passed. The proposed statement was to the following effect, “I do not wish any address to be delivered by Counsel on my behalf. I have refused to plead not because I wish to withdraw a single word of what I have written or acknowledge the justice of any sentence that may be passed on me, but for an opposite reason. I have written what everyone knows to be true and what is in the minds of all my countrymen, but I was aware that in doing so I would have no chance of justice in the British Courts. I do not think it consistent with the views I have always preached to plead before them.” The justice of which there was no chance, was of course, not justice according to the letter of the alien law, but moral justice. When Mr. Aswini Banerji declared that the accused neither pleaded guilty nor not guilty, but simply declared that he had done no wrong, the Magistrate asked whether he meant legal wrong or moral wrong and certain empty-headed people in the audience laughed. But it is no laughing matter to a rule which has no roots in the soil, when there comes to be a recognized opposition, recognized equally by rulers and ruled, between the laws it enforces and the obligations of morality, when an action savagely punished by authority is recognized as morally inoffensive or praiseworthy. It means that the whole basis of the rule has become rotten, that it has neither a material nor a moral foundation. Srijut Bhupendranath’s attitude was dignified and consistent. His duty to his country, the interests of her future, of her very life, demanded that he should preach the gospel of independence. But the duty to our country, the interests of our country can be no justification before the law of the alien. Rather the interests of the rulers being diametrically opposed to the interests of the ruled, those who try to promote the latter are
Page – 614 natural enemies of the former and punishable by the alien law. To hope for justice therefore in political cases where one of the parties is the judge, is irrational and to plead justification to those against whom one’s action was directed, an inconsistency and a degradation. It was open to the accused to plead not in order to defend himself, but to make his position clear to the world at large. But not even to this would Bhupendranath condescend. He refused to do anything which could be construed into an acknowledgement of responsibility for his political actions to an established authority ruling and resolved to continue ruling without the consent of the Indian people.
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