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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, May 13th, 1907 }
Government by Panic
One does not know precisely how to take the extraordinary accounts of the charges against Lala Lajpat Rai and the panic among Europeans which have been reaching us from the North. We used to think the English deficient in imagination, but the vivid and fluorescent powers of fancy which this panic has revealed, puts all our preconceived ideas to rout. Not only have the Government given vent to an outburst of poetical fancy beyond all parallel but they have insisted on staging and enacting their dramatic creation in real life. Sir Denzil Ibbetson reminds us of that great aesthetic realist, Nero, who made slaves and prisoners enact the parts of classic tragedy and had them actually stabbed or crucified or torn by real wild beasts to embody his mimic imaginations. Sir Denzil has conceived a splendid melodramatic tragedy called The Rebellion Forestalled or British Empire Saved and the Punjab Bar have been obliged to play the leading parts. The conception is admirable. An inoffensive pleader sitting among his briefs, to all appearance harmless, unmilitary, civilian, but in reality a masked Tamerlane, Napoleon or Shivaji, full of dark and tremendous schemes; a disarmed and helpless mob of workmen and peasants who are really a dangerous, well-equipped and well-organised army of a hundred thousand Jats capable of overthrowing the British Empire; a widespread and diabolically complex plot on the bursting point, Lahore Fort to be seized and, we presume, Lajpat to be crowned the first Punjabi Emperor of India,— when suddenly, lo and behold! the glorified and splendiferous figure of Sir Denzil Ibbetson appears, hurling lightnings and clothed in majesty, catches up the arch-conspirator in his mighty hand and a motor-car
Page – 400 tosses him over the continent to Rangoon or the Andamans, envelops the rebel province in a cloud of cavalry and siege-guns and the British Empire— and incidentally Lahore Fort— is saved. A most admirably dramatic denouement! And to add the right Shakespearian touch of grotesque humour, we are told that this phantom army foreshadows its attack by throwing stones at the gate of Lahore Fort, whose feelings must have been deeply hurt by such contumelious behaviour— either as a sort of chivalrous warning to the garrison or as a symbolic rehearsal of the intended storm! Are these the imaginations of sane men, or the diseased and distorted phantasmagoria which presents itself to bemused intellects in a Chinese opium-den? If it had been a little more plausible, we might have thought it a Machiavellian invention of Anglo-Indian statesmen to justify their instituting a Russian policy of repression. But a lawyer militarist leading an army of Indian peasants, Lahore Fort to be stormed by an unarmed mob with their fists— or with stones, the British Empire to be overthrown by this extraordinary army— the whole is a wild nightmare of panic-stricken brains. We are told that the Europeans were so panic-stricken, many of them passed the night on the railway platform, ready for flight. The Civil and Military Gazette also solemnly affirms that Lajpat Rai was an arch-rebel with a hundred thousand men under his orders and hints pretty plainly that the prompt action of Sir Denzil Ibbetson saved the British from a rebellion. And these are the men who think that they can go on ruling a nation of three hundred millions by mere repression and the terror of the sword, after the moral bases of their supremacy are gone! The great strong successful despots of the world were not men who started at every shadow and took every bush in the darkness for an enemy. Government by panic has never yet been a success and we doubt whether it will be any more successful in India than elsewhere. But here we find panic initiating a policy, bewilderment approving of it and alarm sanctioning it. Not only the Punjab Government, not only the “level-headed” Lord Minto, but even the austere and philosophical Mr. Morley has committed himself to government
Page – 401 by panic. It is for us to take full advantage of the mistakes of our political adversaries. __________
In Praise of the Government
We cannot sufficiently admire the vigorous and unselfish efforts of the British Government to turn all India into a nation of Extremists. We had thought that it would take us long and weary years to convert all our countrymen to the Nationalist creed. Nothing of the kind. The Government of India is determined that our efforts shall not fail or take too long a time to reach fruition. It will not suffer us to preach Nationalism to the people, but in its noble haste and zeal is resolved to preserve the monopoly of the Nationalist propaganda to itself. “Alone I will do it,” they have evidently said to themselves, even as Louis XVI said to his people when he resolved to take the work of reform out of the hands of the States General into his own. The Government of India also has resolved to take the work of inculcating Nationalism into its own hands. There is no farther need of the inspiring oratory or compelling logic of a Bipin Chandra, the fine and vigorous lucidity and competent organisation of a Tilak, the attractive charm, self-sacrifice, moral force and steady quiet work of a Lajpat Rai. The Government will brush them aside and take their place. We cannot deny that the methods of the Government far excel our poor efforts. Our methods are long, wordy, weary, and when all is said and done, only half-effective; those of the Government are magnificent, brief, laconic, decisive, triumphantly effective. By its policy of leaving the Mymensingh Mahomedans for weeks together to inflict the utmost horrors of rapine and brigandage on a Hindu population sedulously disarmed and terrorised by official severity, they have convinced the country that the Pax Britannica is an illusion and no peace worth having which is not maintained by our own strength and manhood. By the deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai they have destroyed the belief in British justice. By their Resolution for the prohibition of meetings they have convinced everyone that we possess the right of free speech
Page – 402 not as a right, not as a possession, but as a temporary and conditional favour depending for its continuance on despotic caprice. We await with confidence fresh developments of this admirable Nationalist propaganda.
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