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College Square Speech 1
I THANK you for the kindly welcome that you have accorded to me. The time fixed by the law for the breaking up of the meeting is also at hand, and I am afraid I have disappointed one or two speakers by getting up so soon. But there is just one word that has to be spoken today. Recently a speech has been made in the Bengal Legislative Council by the Lieutenant-Governor of this province, a speech which I think is one of the most unfortunate and most amazing that have ever been delivered by a ruler in his position. The occasion of the speech was a reference to certain murders that have recently been committed in London. Those murders have been committed by a young man with whom there has been no proof that any other man in India or in England is connected, no proof that any conspiracy has been behind him. Not only so but the Police in London have declared that so far as their evidence goes they find that the murder was dictated by personal and not political motives. That crime is still the subject of a trial which has not been closed. Was this the time, –was this the occasion for the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal to rise from his seat in the Legislative Council and practically associate the whole country with and make the whole country responsible for the crime of a single isolated youth in London? Not only so, but the Lieutenant-Governor, in referring to the crime, said that there had been plenty of denunciations in this country but those denunciations did not go far. And he wanted from us one thing more and that was co-operation. He wants co-operation from the whole community. He further saddled his request with the threat that if this co-operation were not
Delivered at College Square, Calcutta, on 18 July 1909. Text published in the Bengalee on 20 July and reproduced in the Karmayogin on 24 July.
Page-122 obtained, steps would have to be taken in which there would be no room for nice discrimination between the innocent and the guilty. The murders that have been committed in Bengal have been sufficiently proved by the failure of case after case to be the acts of isolated individuals. There has been only a single instance which is still sub judice, and even if it were fully established, it would only prove that the crime was done in one case by a small group of men. Under such circumstances what is the co-operation that the L.-G. demands from us? He will not be satisfied if we denounce and dissociate ourselves from the crime. He wants co-operation. It is at least desirable that he should name and describe the co-operation he insists on before he carries out the remarkable threat with which he has sought to enforce his demand. There has been much talk recently, in a wider sense, of co-operation. Now, gentlemen, we are a people who demand self-government. We have a government in which we are not at all associated and over which we have no control. What is the co-operation a government of this kind can really demand from us? It can only demand from us obedience to the law, co-operation in keeping the law and observing peace and order. What further co-operation can they expect from us? Even in the matter which the L.-G. has mentioned, we are at a loss to see how a people circumstanced like ourselves can help him. Still I have a proposal to make. I think there is only one way by which these unfortunate occurrences can be stopped. The ruler of Bengal in his speech spoke in approval of a certain speech made by Mr. Gokhale at Poona recently. In that speech Mr. Gokhale declared that the ideal of independence was an ideal which no sane man could hold. He said that it was impossible to achieve independence by peaceful means and the people who advocate the peaceful methods of passive resistance are men who, out of cowardice, do not speak out the thought that is in their heart. That idea of Mr. Gokhale’s has been contradicted beforehand by the Sessions Judge of Alipore and even an Anglo-Indian paper was obliged to say that Mr. Gokhale’s justification
Page-123 of the repressions on the ground that stern and relentless repression was the only possible attitude the Government could adopt towards the ideal of independence was absurd because the ideals and the thoughts of a nation could not be punished. This was a very dangerous teaching which Mr. Gokhale introduced into his speech, that the ideal of independence –whether we call it Swaraj or autonomy or Colonial Self-Government, because these two things in a country circumstanced like India meant in practice the same (loud applause), –cannot be achieved by peaceful means. Mr. Gokhale knows or ought to know that this ideal which he decries is deeply-rooted in the minds of thousands of people and cannot be driven out. He has told the ardent hearts which cherish this ideal of independence and are determined to strive towards it that their ideal can only be achieved by violent means. If any doctrine can be dangerous, if any teacher can be said to have uttered words dangerous to the peace of the country, it is Mr. Gokhale himself. (Loud cheers) We have told the people that there is a peaceful means of achieving independence in whatever form we aspire to it. We have said that by selfhelp, by passive resistance we can achieve it. We have told the young men of our country, “Build up your own industries, build up your own schools and colleges, settle your own disputes. You are always told that you are not fit for self-government. Show by example that you are fit to govern yourselves, show it by developing self-government through self-help and not by depending upon others.” There is a second limb to that policy and it is passive resistance. Passive resistance means two things. It means first that in certain matters we shall not co-operate with the Government of this country until it gives us what we consider our rights. Secondly, if we are persecuted, if the plough of repression is passed over us, we shall meet it not by violence, but by suffering, by passive resistance, by lawful means. We have not said to our young men, “when you are repressed, retaliate;” we have said, “suffer.” Now we are told that by doing so we are encouragers of sedition and anarchism. We have been told by Anglo-Indian papers that by speaking in Beadon Square and other places on
Page-124 patriotism and the duty of suffering we encourage sedition. We are told that in preaching passive resistance we are encouraging the people to violate law and order and are fostering violence and rebellion. The contrary is the truth. We are showing the people of this country in passive resistance the only way in which they can satisfy their legitimate aspiration without breaking the law and without resorting to violence. This is the only way we can find to co-operate in maintaining peace and order. The co-operation we expect from the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal and from the Government of this country in return is that they will respect the primary rights of the people of this country, they will respect the right of public meeting and the right of a free press and the right of free association. If they cooperate so far then we can assure them that this movement will advance on peaceful lines and the thing which troubles them will cease for ever. But the L.-G. says that measures will be passed which will observe no nice discrimination between the innocent and the guilty. A more cynical statement has seldom issued from a ruler in the position of Sir Edward Baker. If the threat is carried out, who will be the gainers? I do not deny that it may for a time stop our public activities. It may force the school of peaceful self-development and passive resistance to desist for a while from its activities at least in their present form. But who will gain by it? Not the Government, neither Mr. Gokhale and his school of passive co-operation. It is the very terrorists, the very anarchists, whom you wish to put down, who will gain by it. It will remove from the people their one hope, but it will give the terrorists a fresh incentive and it will teach the violent hearts, the undisciplined and ardent minds a very dangerous lesson that there is no peaceful way to the fulfilment of their aspirations and the consequence will be such as one trembles to contemplate. I trust the threat will never be carried out. I trust that the Government will be ruled by wise counsels and consider the matter more carefully. There are ominous signs and it seems as if measures were about to be passed which will put an end to the right of public meeting and the public expression of our feelings. But I trust that wiser counsels will yet prevail.
Page-125 The Government should remember that it stands dissociated from the people by its very constitution. If it wants co-operation it cannot get the co-operation which is simply another name for passive obedience. That is the doctrine which is being taught today, the doctrine of the divine right of officials and the obligation on the people of passive obedience. That is a doctrine which no modern nation can accept. No modern nation can accept the extinction of its legitimate and natural hopes. Co-operation can only be given if the Government which is now alien becomes our own, if the people have a share in it, not merely in name, not merely by the right of talk in the legislative council, not merely by apparent concessions, but by getting some measure of control in the matter of legislation, in the expenditure of the taxes they are called on to pay for the maintenance of the administration, if, in short, they can be given some starting-point from which in future the Government of the country can be developed into a Government of the people. That is the only condition upon which the co-operation, of which we hear so much nowadays, can be given. Without it co-operation is a satire, it is a parody. It is the co-operation in which one side acts and the other side merely says “yes” which is demanded of us. We cannot give our sanction to such co-operation. So long as even that little of substantial self-government is not conceded to us, we have no choice but to cleave firmly to passive resistance as the only peaceful path to the realisation of our legitimate aspirations. We cannot sacrifice our country. We cannot give up the ideal that is dear to our heart. We cannot sacrifice our Mother. If you take away our primary rights all that is left for us is passive resistance and peacefully to suffer, peacefully to refuse the parody of co-operation which we are asked to give.
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