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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, November 16th, 1907 }
Nagpur and Loyalist Methods
The decision of the All-India Congress Committee, holding its session appropriately enough not in any place of meeting suitable to its character as a public body but in “Sir Pherozshah Mehta’s bungalow”, has put the crown on one of the most discreditable intrigues of which even Bombay Loyalism is capable. We held our peace about the real meaning of the Nagpur affair so long as there was the remotest possibility of the sense of shame and decency reawakening among even a section of the Nagpur Loyalists, lest a too trenchant exposure of the whole intrigue might imperil that slender chance. Now that the die is cast, it is time for us to speak our minds. From the whole course of the Loyalist manoeuvres in Nagpur since the strength of the Nationalist party in the Central Provinces became apparent, it was quite evident that from the first the Loyalists had made up their minds under inspiration from Bombay to prevent the holding of the Congress at Nagpur. To effect this object they were prepared to bring about a public scandal of the most shameful kind and bring discredit on the Congress if only their party might win a tactical advantage and, as the chief Moderate organ in Bombay frankly put it, keep the Congress out of the hands of the Extremists. It was in order to keep the Congress out of the hands of the Extremists that the session was originally arranged to be held at Nagpur and the prior claims of the Punjab ignored. For Nagpur was then supposed to be a sleepy hollow of politics, a happy-hunting-ground of Rai Bahadurs and Government pets and tame patriots with the official collar round their necks, where there was no fear of Mr. Tilak’s nomination becoming even a remote possibility and Sir
Page – 740 Pherozshah Mehta might safely hope to retrieve the crushing blow his dictatorship had received at Calcutta. The Congress cabal had, unfortunately for themselves, reckoned without the fiery energy and indomitable self-confidence which have always been the characteristics of Nationalism in every country and every age of its emergence. The Nationalists of the Berar and Central Provinces took the work of proselytisation in hand and as the result of several tours undertaken by leading members of the party from town to town and village to village the sleepy hollow awoke to life, a great revolution of opinion was effected and Nationalism became in a few months a power to be reckoned with. It soon appeared that in Nagpur there was on one side the small body of wealthy, respectable and successful elders with their dependents, hangers-on and satellites and on the other side, behind a growing body of true patriots among the men of name and standing, the great bulk of the young men and the poorer middle class. When a trial of strength came over the question of Mr. Tilak’s nomination the Loyalists could muster a large body of votes on the Reception Committee only by the wealthy men paying for the admission of their dependents and hangers-on, while even so against the Rs. 21,000 they could muster, the Rashtriya Mandali was able to show a total of more than Rs. 30,000, representing what would have been a substantial majority of votes if the rule of a three-fourths majority had not been in force. It thus became apparent that the Nationalist party might easily command a majority of the local delegates and, since the place of session was within easy reach of Bengal and a strong body of Nationalist votes from the North, from Madras and from the Deccan might be expected, Loyalism was evidently in danger of a serious reverse compared with which its experiences at Calcutta might sink into insignificance. Nor was the outlook made rosier by the fact that there was on the Nagpur Executive Committee an active Nationalist majority led by a strong and fearless stalwart. It had become imperative, if the primary object of Loyalist politics, “to keep the Congress out of the hands of the Extremists” and so avoid a rupture with the bureaucracy, was not to be hopelessly frustrated, either
Page – 741 to drive the Extremists out of the Executive Committee and turn it into a convenient instrument for Sir Pherozshah Mehta’s masterly manoeuvres or to transfer the Congress to a less central and thoroughly Loyalist locality where the Dictator’s will could reign supreme. From this point onward the hand of the great wire-puller behind the scenes can be observed in all the developments on the Nagpur stage. Left to themselves there is little doubt that the two local parties would have come to some understanding; nor can it be for a moment supposed that the audacious and high-handed attempt at a shamelessly unconstitutional coup d’état on the 22nd September was conceived in the brain of so harmless and insignificant a personality as Mr. Chitnavis. The attempt to expel Dr. Munje and his Nationalist colleagues from the Executive Committee was a failure because leonine tactics require a leonine personality to carry them through and Mr. Chitnavis was trying to wear the giant’s robe without possessing the bulk and sinews of the giant. But their failure and the disturbance that followed it served the alternative plan of the Loyalists. That disturbance was obviously not engineered by the Nationalist leaders since, their point having been gained, it could serve no purpose whatever and on the contrary might do them harm, as it was bound to give and did give the Loyalists a handle for discrediting the Nationalists and stood them in good stead as a convenient and always serviceable pretext for breaking the Nagpur session if every other trumped-up excuse should fail. The same guiding hand is seen in the skill with which the very success of the Rashtriya Mandali was turned to the uses of the intrigue by the preposterous and cynical demand that the condition under which money had been paid into it should be disregarded and a breach of faith with the public committed. Neither can we regard seriously the much advertised visits of Moderate leaders to Nagpur to effect a reconciliation, followed as they were by ostentatiously sorrowful and misleading telegrams to the effect that both sides refused to accept any compromise while the simple truth was that the Nationalists in their eagerness to have the session at Nagpur were making every time larger
Page – 742 and larger concessions and it was the Loyalists who throughout showed themselves intractable. It is not to be believed that if such influential peacemakers had been in earnest, the Nagpur Loyalists would have showed this spirit of inflexibility; it was obviously not a local product but made in Bombay, and all these attempts at conciliation were simply meant to prepare the public mind for the transfer to Surat which had already been decided on by the mastermind in Bombay. Meanwhile the wires were pulled at Surat and Madras and the Surat respectables and Mr. Krishnaswamy Aiyar and his Mahajan Sabha danced to the skilful manipulation. We do not believe the Madras offer was anything but a feint, for Madras is much too near to Bengal and there is already a strong Nationalist party in the northern parts of that province; but to have only the single offer from Surat would have been to leave the whole intrigue too bare to the public eye. Our belief is confirmed by the Bombay correspondent of the Bengalee who openly says that Madras was not chosen because there were men in Madras pledged to Extremist views. Finally, the last act of the farce supplies the key to all that has gone before. An informal and unofficial representation from a minority of the Reception Committee is precipitately seized upon by the All-India Congress Committee, a meeting is announced not at Nagpur where the members might have gone into the matter on the spot and arranged a working compromise, but in Bombay and at Sir Pherozshah Mehta’s bungalow, as if the Committee and the Congress itself were Sir Pherozshah’s personal movable property; and instead of calling for a report of the Reception Committee or taking cognisance of the fact that there were citizens of Nagpur willing and able to reconstitute the Committee and hold the session as arranged at Calcutta, the Moderate majority records a predetermined decision to transfer Sir Pherozshah’s movable property to Surat at a safe distance from Bengal where the Loyalist position is as yet unbreached and there is no time for the Nationalists to instruct public opinion before the holding of the session. The intrigue is now complete, to the huge delight of the Englishman, and officialdom is full of hope that Sir Pherozshah
Page – 743 will this year save the British Empire. For the Nationalists it should be a spur to redoubled efforts to spread their creed into every corner of the country so that Loyalism may nowhere find a secure resting place for its foot-soles. As to the Surat Pherozshah Congress it would be the logical course for us regarding the decision of the All-India Committee meeting as a misuse of the powers of that body, to abstain and allow the Loyalists to hold a purely Moderate Congress of their own. The other alternative is to arrange forthwith the organisation of Nationalist propaganda in Gujarat and make full use of the opportunity such as it is which the session will provide. In either case a conference of our party is necessary, for, in view of the bureaucratic campaign on one side and the danger of a retrograde step on the part of the Congress on the other, the times are critical and concerted action imperative. __________
The Life of Nationalism
For all great movements, for all ideas that have a destiny before them, there are four seasons of life-development. There is first a season of secret or quasi-secret growth when the world knows nothing of this momentous birth which time has engendered, when the peoples of the earth persist in the old order of things with the settled conviction that that order has yet many centuries of life before it, when Krishna is growing from infancy to youth in Gokul among the obscure and the despised and the weak ones of the earth and Kansa knows not his enemy and, however he may be troubled by vague apprehensions and old prophecies and new presentiments, yet on the whole comforts himself with the thought of his great and invincible power and his mighty allies and by long impunity has almost come to think himself immortal. Then there comes the leaping of the great name to light, the sudden coming from Gokul to Mathura, the amazement, alarm and fury of the doomed powers and greatnesses, the delight of the oppressed who waited for a deliverer, the guile and violence of the tyrant and his frantic attempts to reverse the
Page – 744 decrees of fate and slay the young deity,— as if that godhead could pass from the world with its work undone. This is the second period, of emergence, of the struggle of the idea to live, of furious persecution, of miraculous persistence and survival, when the old world looks with alarm and horror on this new and portentous force, and in the midst of wild worship and enthusiasm, of fierce hatred and frantic persecution, of bitter denunciation and angry disparagement, assisted by its friends, still better assisted by its foes, the new idea, fed with the blood of its children, thriving on torture, magnified by martyrdom, aggrandized by defeat, increases and lifts its head higher and higher into the heavens and spreads its arms wider and wider to embrace the earth until the world is full of its indomitable presence and loud with the clamour of its million voices and powers and dominations are crushed between its fingers or hasten to make peace and compromise with it that they may be allowed to live. That is its third period, the season of triumph when the tyrant meets face to face the man of his own blood and sprung from seed of his own fostering who is to destroy him, and in the moment when he thinks to slay his enemy feels the grasp of the avenger on his hair and the sword of doom in his heart. Last is the season of rule and fulfilment, the life of Krishna at Dwaraka, when the victorious idea lives out its potent and unhindered existence, works its will with a world which has become in its hands as clay in the hands of the potter, creates what it has to create, teaches what it has to teach, until its own time comes and with the arrow of Age, the hunter, in its heel it gives up its body and returns to the great source of all power and energy from which it came. But in its second period, the season of ordeal and persecution, only the children of grace for whom the gospel is preached are able to see that vision of its glory. The world admires and hates and doubts, but will not believe. The enemies of the idea have sworn to give it short shrift. They promulgate an ordinance to the effect that it shall not dare to live, and pass a law that it shall be dumb on pain of imprisonment and death, and add a byelaw that whoever has power and authority in any part of
Page – 745 the land shall seek out the first-born and the young children of the idea and put them to the sword. As in the early days of the Christian Church, so always zealous persecutors carry on an inquisition in house and school and market to know who favour the new doctrine; they “breathe out threatenings and slaughters against the disciples of the Lord” and “make havoc of the Church, entering into every house, and haling men and women commit them to prison”. The instruments of death are furbished up, the rack and thumbscrew and old engines of torture which had been rusting in the lumber-room of the past are brought out, and the gallows is made ready and the scaffold raised. Even of the nation to which the gospel is preached, the rich men and the high-priests and pundits and people of weight and authority receive its doctrine with anger, fear and contempt;— anger, because it threatens their position of comfortable authority amongst men; fear, because they see it grow with an inexplicable portentous rapidity and know that its advent means a time of upheaval, turmoil and bloodshed very disturbing to the digestions, property and peace of mind of the wealthy and “enlightened few”; contempt, because its enthusiasms are unintelligible to their worldly wisdom, its gigantic promises incredible to their cautious scepticism and its inspired teachings an offence and a scandal to their narrow systems of expediency and pedantic wisdom of the schools. They condemn it, therefore, as a violent and pernicious madness, belittle it as a troublesome but insignificant sect, get their learned men to argue it or their jesters to ridicule it out of existence, or even accuse its apostles before the tribunal of alien rulers, Pontius Pilate, a Felix or a Festus, as “pestilent fellows and movers of sedition throughout the nation”. But in spite of all and largely because of all the persecution, denunciation and disparagement the idea gathers strength and increases; there are strange and great conversions, baptisms of whole multitudes and eager embracings of martyrdom, and the reasonings of the wise and learned are no more heeded and the prisons of the ruler overflow to no purpose and the gallows bears its ghastly burden fruitlessly and the sword of the powerful drips blood in vain. For the idea is
Page – 746 God’s deputy and life and death, victory and defeat, joy and suffering have become its servants and cannot help ministering to its divine purpose. The idea of Indian Nationalism is in the second season of its life history. The Moderate legend of its origin is that it was the child of Lord Curzon begotten upon despair and brought safely to birth by the skilful midwifery of Sir Bampfylde. Nationalism was never a gospel of despair nor did it owe its birth to oppression. It is no true account of it to say that because Lord Curzon favoured reaction, a section of the Congress party lost faith in England and turned Extremist, and it is vain political trickery to tell the bureaucrats in their councils that it was their frown which created Extremism and the renewal of their smiles will kill it. The fixed illusion of these Moderate gospellers is that the national life of India is merely a fluid mirror reflecting the moods of the bureaucracy, sunny and serene when they are in a good humour and stormy and troubled when they are out of temper, that it can have no independent existence, no self-determined character of its own which the favour of the bureaucracy cannot influence and its anger cannot disturb. But Nationalism was not born of persecution and cannot be killed by the cessation of persecution. Long before the advent of Curzonism and Fullerism, while the Congress was beslavering the present absolutist bureaucracy with fulsome praise as a good and beneficent government marred by a few serious defects, while it was singing hymns of loyalty and descanting on the blessings of British rule, Nationalism was already born and a slowly-growing force. It was not born and did not grow in the Congress Pandal, nor in the Bombay Presidency Association, nor in the councils of the wise economists and learned reformers, nor in the brains of the Mehtas and Gokhales, nor in the tongues of the Surendranaths and Lalmohans, nor under the hat and coat of the denationalised ape of English speech and manners. It was born like Krishna in the prison-house, in the hearts of men to whom India under the good and beneficent government of absolutism seemed an intolerable dungeon, to whom the blessings of an alien despotic rule were hardly more acceptable than the plagues of Egypt, who
Page – 747 regarded the comfort, safety and ease of the Pax Britannica,— an ease and safety not earned by our own efforts and vigilance but purchased by the slow loss of every element of manhood and every field of independent activity among us,— as more fatal to the life of the people than the poosta of the Moguls, with whom a few seats in the Council or on the Bench and right of entry into the Civil Service and a free Press and platform could not weigh against the starvation of the rack-rented millions, the drain of our life-blood, the atrophy of our energies and the disintegration of our national character and ideals; who looked beyond the temporary ease and opportunities of a few merchants, clerks and successful professional men to the lasting pauperism and degradation of a great and ancient people. And Nationalism grew as Krishna grew who ripened to strength and knowledge, not in the courts of princes and the schools of the Brahmins but in the obscure and despised homes of the poor and ignorant. In the cave of the Sannyasin, under the garb of the Fakir, in the hearts of young men and boys many of whom could not speak a word of English but all of whom could work and dare and sacrifice for the Mother, in the life of men of education and parts who had received the mantra and put from them the desire of wealth and honours to teach and labour so that the good religion might spread, there Nationalism grew slowly to its strength, unheeded and unnoticed, until in its good time it came to Bengal, the destined place of its self-manifestation and for three years, unheeded and unnoticed, spread over the country, gathering in every place the few who were capable of the vision and waiting for the time that would surely come when oppression would begin in earnest and the people look round them for some way of deliverance. For that an absolute rule will one day begin to coerce and trample on the subject population is an inevitable law of nature which none can escape. The master with full power of life and death over his servant can only be gracious so long as he is either afraid of his slave or else sure that the slave will continue willing, obedient and humble in his servitude and not transgress the limits of the freedom allowed him by his master. But if the serf
Page – 748 begins to assert himself, to insist on the indulgence conceded to him as on a right, to rebel against occasional harshnesses, to wag his tongue with too insolent a licence and disobey imperative orders, then it is not in human nature for the master to refrain from calling for the scourge and the fetters. And if the slave resists the application of the scourge and the imposition of the fetters, it becomes a matter of life and death for the master to enforce his orders and put down the mutiny. Oppression was therefore inevitable, and oppression was necessary that the people as a whole might be disposed to accept Nationalism, but Nationalism was not born of oppression. The oppressions and slaughters committed by Kansa upon the Yadavas did not give birth to Krishna but they were needed that the people of Mathura might look for the deliverer and accept him when he came. To hope that conciliation will kill Nationalism is to mistake entirely the birth, nature and workings of the new force, nor will either the debating skill of Mr. Gokhale nor all Dr. Ghose’s army of literary quotations and allusions convince Englishmen that any such hope can be admitted for a moment. For Englishmen are political animals with centuries of political experience in their blood, and though they possess little logic and less wisdom, yet in such matters they have an instinct which is often surer than reason or logic. They know that what is belittled as Extremism is really Nationalism and Nationalism has never been killed by conciliation; concessions it will only take as new weapons in its fight for complete victory and unabridged dominion. We desire our countrymen on their side to cultivate a corresponding instinct and cherish an invincible faith. There are some who fear that conciliation or policy may unstring the new movement and others who fear that persecution may crush it. Let them have a robuster faith in the destinies of their race. As neither the milk of Putana nor the hoofs of the demon could destroy the infant Krishna, so neither Riponism nor Poona prosecutions could check the growth of Nationalism while yet it was an indistinct force; and as neither Kansa’s wiles nor his vishakanyas nor his mad elephants nor his wrestlers could kill Krishna revealed in Mathura, so neither a revival of Riponism nor the poison of
Page – 749 discord sown by bureaucratic allurements, nor Fullerism plus hooliganism, nor prosecution under cover of legal statutes can slay Nationalism now that it has entered the arena. Nationalism is an avatara and cannot be slain. Nationalism is a divinely appointed shakti of the Eternal and must do its God-given work before it returns to the bosom of the Universal Energy from which it came.
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