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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, October 5th, 1907 }
Novel Ways to Peace
We learn from the Empire that on Wednesday evening the paharawallas got completely out of hand and that a number of them afterwards traversed the streets indulging in looting, destruction of property and assault. We are farther told by our contemporary that the moment the peace was broken, the budmash element asserted itself. And the Empire winds up with a genial and smiling prophecy to the effect that the atmosphere will be more or less disturbed for a month (that is till the Puja is over and the European merchants have been able to get their consignments through) and there will be considerable bloodletting over the business; at the end of that period, we are told, the relations between the Government and the people, especially the Extremists, will be substantially improved, because the latter will have fully realised by then what Calcutta would be like if the British Government were actually “overthrown”. We rather fancy the Empire has carefully forgotten to include two very important and indeed essential considerations in its amiable prosings on the orgy of hooliganism and police outrage to which the unarmed Bengalis have been subjected in the interests of foreign trade. The first is that if the present bureaucratic government were to be, let us not say “overthrown” but to be driven to retire in dudgeon from the scene, the Arms Act would deal with them and the people would very soon have the means as well as the will to defend themselves. The second is that the police in a free India would be compelled to protect the citizens instead of supplementing the deficiencies of the hooligans. It is easy to wrench all means of self-defence out of the hands of people, savagely repress all attempts at mutual protection, leave
Page – 702 them to the mercy of the turbulent classes, allowing even the police whom we pay to protect the peace to “get completely out of hand” and loot unpunished, and then taunt the victims with their inability to defend themselves and the necessity of an alien and irresponsible third party for keeping the peace. The argument has worn thin and can no longer serve its purpose. The Empire errs grievously in thinking that police violence and hooliganism are the royal road to peace and conciliation. Jamalpur has not pacified and conciliated, East Bengal and the Chitpur outrages will not pacify and conciliate Calcutta. The only result will be to more fiercely embitter the struggle. One other result there may indeed be,— to eventually dethrone the Nationalist leaders and destroy their control over the van of the movement as the control of the Moderates has already been destroyed; for as the exasperation increases their attempts to regulate the movement will be resented and themselves condemned as cowards and moderates at heart. But who will fill the vacant place? Police Commissioner Halliday or Mr. Blair, does the Empire think? Or prophets of desperation beside whom Bipin Chandra Pal will shine like an angel of loyalty in the eyes of Anglo-India? Yes, the bureaucrats and their underlings are doing much to break down the creed of passive resistance which we have promulgated and to prove our policy impossible. But will passive resistance be replaced by quiescence? If so, we have much misread history. The immediate future looks dark and gloomy, a chaos the end of which no man can foresee. But whatever God does is good and still our cry to our Mother is the same, “Though thou slay us, yet will we trust in thee.” __________
“Armenian Horrors”
It has been pointed out to us that the tone of our reporter’s account of Thursday’s doings was hardly in consonance with the creed and the spirit of which the Bande Mataram is the exponent. The facts reported are not materially different from those attested by other Indian dailies, but there is too much
Page – 703 hysterical and lachrymose exaggeration of phrase in describing them. As it is no part of our policy to conceal our own lapses, we will at once admit that there is truth in the complaint. To talk of Armenian horrors in such a connection is the rhetoric of an excited Moderate disappointed in his reliance on European humanity and “superior” civilization, not of a sturdy Nationalist organ which has always foreseen the possibility of this and worse things as the price we shall have to pay for liberty. We withdraw therefore this and all similar expressions. Calcutta has as yet suffered nothing like what East Bengal has suffered, to say nothing of Armenia and Bulgaria. We are as yet only at the beginning of our journey and have not gone down into the valley of death through which our way lies to the promised land. It will not do to whine or shriek over some shops looted and men robbed and beaten or even over a few corpses of our countrymen floating in the Ganges, if the report be true,— this and far worse than this we shall have to meet with a calm brow and a brave heart. Not merely in goods and money but with the blood from our hearts we shall have to pay for the sins of our forefathers.
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