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The "Statesman" Unmasks
WE DO
not know why the paper which calls itself
the Friend of India and usually puts on a sanctimonious mask of liberalism,
should have suddenly allowed its real feelings to betray themselves last
Wednesday. Its attitude for sometime past has been extremely ambiguous. During
the height of the disturbances in East Bengal this Friend of India maintained a
rigid silence on Indian affairs and discoursed solemnly day after day on large
questions of European policy.
Like the Levite it turned its face
away
from the traveller
wounded by thieves and passed by. Since the deportation of Lajpat Rai, it has
cared less and less to preserve its tone of affected sympathy until on the 15th
it appeared as the
apologist of despotism and the mouthpiece not of an idea or of a policy, but of
the individual grievances of a self-seeking politician whose influence has waned
to nothing because he could not satisfy the new demand for courageous and
disinterested patriotism. Professing to be a Liberal paper, the Statesman has
defended the despotic regulation under which Lala Lajpat Rai was deported, — a
regulation opposed to all the fundamental principles of Liberalism; it has
defended the Coercion Ordinance as a proof of the leniency and liberalism of
bureaucratic rule in India. Calling itself a friend of India, it has not
scrupled to dissociate itself from its brother friends of India, the British
Committee of the Congress, and sneer at them as ill-informed nobodies. After
throwing the Congress, its principles and its friends overboard in this
extraordinary manner, it has still the assurance to pose as the guide,
philosopher and friend of the Moderate Party and lecture them on the necessity
of supporting the Government in its action with regard to Lara Lajpat Rai.
The arguments with which the Statesman defends the deportation as
a supreme act of Liberalism are of a remarkable kind. First, deportation
"is not really so bad as it sounds", because "the lot of the
so-called political exile is considerably happier
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than
that of the criminal in the common jail". Prodigious! A man is arrested
without any charge being formulated against him, without trial, without any
chance of defending himself, separated suddenly from his family and friends, his
country, his work for religion, society and motherland, and relegated to
solitary imprisonment in a distant fortress; yet because he is not treated as
Mr. Tilak was treated, as a common criminal with the daily harassment and
degradation which is part of the criminal's punishment, this remarkable Liberal
organ goes into ecstasies over the leniency of the British bureaucracy.
Injustice and arbitrary oppression, in its opinion, is an admirable thing so
long as it is not accompanied with vindictive personal cruelty. We remember a
correspondent of an Anglo-Indian print at the time of Mr. Tilak's sentence,
calling on the Marathas to admire the leniency of the British Government,
because it treated him as an ordinary felon instead of impaling him or sawing
him to pieces. The Statesman writes in the same spirit.
The second plea in defence of deportation is that no act of State is
involved in the arrest, it is only a summary dealing under Municipal law. We do
not know what to make of this rigmarole or what the Statesman understands
by Municipal law, or by an act of State. Municipal law may mean the laws and
rules which govern municipalities, but we presume it is not the Lahore
Municipality which deported Lajpat Rai; or it may mean the ordinary laws and
regulations by which local authorities arrange for local administration and the
preservation of the peace. But here is an extraordinary action, above the
ordinary laws, which needs the sanction of the Government of India and the
sanction of the Secretary of State in which a political leader is arrested for
mysterious political reasons and deported without trial. Yet this is Municipal
law, not an act of State! and since it is Municipal law, no one need protest
against it! Apparently an act of State in the Statesman's opinion is an illegal
act which there is no statute to cover. Any action however tyrannical, if
covered by a statute, ought to be borne without complaint by Indians as an act
of great leniency and liberalism. Mark again the friendship of this friend of
India and the liberalism of this Liberal.
A third plea is that "the action of the authorities in India,
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if
contrasted with that of the average European Government, is leniency
itself." So then, tyranny is quite justifiable if it can site an example of
another tyranny worse than itself. Let us remind the Statesman that the
French and German bureaucracies are governments supported by the will of the
people and that in the measures of stringency they adopt, they have the consent
of the people behind them. And what have the police arrangements of Paris and
Berlin to do with the punishment of a man without trial, a relic of medieval
despotism of which no modern and civilised Government offers an example?
The real cause of all this special pleading for despotism is revealed in
the latter part of the article. "Moderate men are apt to be pushed aside
and their services forgotten by new men who seek to force the pace."
"A long apprenticeship to journalism, a weary plodding in the musty
by-paths of the law, are the chief or only means by which power and influence
can be gained." This is where the shoe pinches. Who is this apprentice to
journalism who is being pushed aside by young and extreme journals? Obviously
the Statesman itself. Who is this weary plodder in the musty by-paths of
the law, who claims that only lawyers or, say, only solicitors, have any right
to be political leaders and whose "fame", if not his
"fortune", has been affected by the new movement? It is plain enough
now that the motive which so long actuated the Statesman was not liberal
sentiment or high principles, but its own interest and influence. Since that
interest was touched and that influence threatened by the increasing spirit of
Swadeshism and self-reliance, the temper of this Friend of ours has been growing
worse and worse until he has finally renounced his liberal principles and become
a champion of bureaucracy.
The article closes with a curious attack which seems to be directed at
Srijut Surendranath Banerji. "Violent speeches, inflammatory writings, a
prosecution, a brilliantly unsuccessful defence, paragraphs in all the
newspapers, questions by ill-informed nobodies in the House of Commons, the jail, the exit, fame and fortune, notoriety, may be a seat in
Parliament — here we have not altogether a fancy picture of the modern
Political Rake's progress." This is, we are told, not altogether a fancy
picture; in other words, with the exception of the last touch
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about
the possible seat in Parliament, it is taken from the life; and to whom can it
be applied but Srijut Surendranath? For, obviously, no leader of the new school
is meant, since no leader of the new school would aspire to a seat in
Parliament. Yet after this ill-natured attack the Statesman yesterday had
again the face to figure as the patron and councillor of Srijut Surendranath and
advise him to sacrifice his feelings of personal friendship and respect for Lala
Lajpat Rai, his principles, his patriotism, his reputation as a political leader
and his influence with the people in order to get the approbation of Mr. John
Morley and the Statesman.
A more complete unmasking could not be imagined. The Statesman not
only attacks the new school, —
that would be nothing new, — but turns round and
rends his own associates, Srijut Surendranath, the British Committee, the
friends of India in Parliament, renounces all liberal ideas and principles,
throws off every disguise and stands forth naked and unashamed. We recommend
this example of "friendship" to all Bengali customers of the
Statesman's
heavy goods, and would advise them either to cease patronising a dealer of
such doubtful candour or to insist that the goods they get shall be of the
pattern they have paid for.
The
Morning Leader in casting about for reasons, — let us call them
reasons, not excuses, — for defending Mr. Morley's Russian policy, has
discovered the fact that the case of India is sui generis, a thing apart
which stands on its merits and to which ordinary principles cannot be applied.
The Morning Leader need not have taken refuge in Latin in order to hide
its embarrassment. All India, Moderate and Extremist alike, have begun to
realise that the principles of Liberalism which are so loudly mouthed about in
Westminster and on the hustings, are not meant to be applied to India. They may
be applied to England and the colonies but they are undoubtedly unsuitable to as
subject a nation where the despotic supremacy of the white man has
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to
be maintained, as it was gained, at the cost of all principles and all morality.
Ireland also was sui generis once, until by moonlighting, Fenianism,
dynamite and Passive Resistance, she managed to break down the barrier and place
herself on the same level with other nations. Yes, India is a case apart. In
England, politics is a question of parties. In India politics is a conflict of
principles and of mutually destructive forces, the principle of bureaucracy
against the principle of democracy, the alien force of Imperialism against the
indigenous force of Nationalism. Our relations with our rulers are not those of
protector and protected, but of eater and of eaten. As man and the tiger cannot
live together in the same circle of habitation, so Indian Nationalism and
bureaucratic despotism cannot divide India between them or dwell together in
peace. One of them must go.
Bande Mataram, May 17, 1907
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