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The Thunderer's
Challenge
THE London Times has thrown out to
us a far more comprehensive and significant challenge than the deportation of
Lajpat and all the series of repressions accomplished or contemplated. This
Thunderer has all this time been watching the growth of national sentiments in
the East with increasing mortification and has at last called out to the surging
waves: "Thus far and no further."
The British sword, which like King Arthur's Excalibur should have been
thrown into these waves because its work in India, if it had any, is fulfilled
and done with, is on the contrary being flourished vigorously as if its mere
glitter would frighten the ocean back within its limits. Agitators are menaced
and the whole East warned against her discontent with the overlordship of the
West. The Times has done well to see the ongoings in the East in their
proper perspective and not to belittle them as temporary and sporadic
disturbances. It would have done better still if it had not talked of putting
back a world-movement by the suppression of agitation or the waving of a sword
in Fleet Street. The
success of the "agitators" in bringing such a movement
to
a head should have convinced the Times that they are being aided
by a higher power than any that Lala Lajpat or Ajit Singh can wield. The Times
has got a superabundance of faith in its sword. But if it really thinks this
much-flourished weapon a security against Indian progress, it should keep it
waiting in the scabbard till the time for use. Familiarity breeds contempt and
it is scarcely dignified for a power filling so important a place in the eyes of
the world to indulge in puerile vauntings of its own strength in season and out
of season. Let it strike at the right moment, if that will help, but
unseasonable flourishings and proddings only give strength and speed to a
movement which it is the Englishman's interest to weaken.
But England's folly is India's advantage. Imprudence and wrong-headedness
on the part of the one nation are the sure pro-
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vocatives
to courage and manliness on the part of the other. It is in these challenges
that the hope of our speedy salvation lies. National regeneration would have
been quite an uphill work for us if the alien bureaucracy had continued unmoved
in their profession and begun the actual practice of sympathy. But their
increasingly militant attitude is helping the attainment of that solidarity
which we could hardly have achieved but for this pressure from without.
Nationalism which is a creed of faith, love and knowledge has no longer to creep
in the petty pace of argument and persuasion, but is making rapid strides
towards recognition by the whole people in the overwhelming reaction for which
the present bullying by journals like the Times and hasty acts of
repression like those in the Punjab are responsible. The whole of India is
turning Nationalist by one swift revolution of feeling. When the Partition
agitation of Bengal has created a universal unrest throughout India, when the
cry of resistance that emanated from the small district town of Dinajpur in
Bengal has been adopted by the whole country, united India can no longer be
called an impossibility. The scepticism about our fitness, the superstition of
philanthropy in politics, are fast disappearing before a dawning
race-consciousness. The insolence of the ruling race and their constant talk of
our inability have touched into life even our atrophied amour-propre. The
covert and open resistance to the Swadeshi-boycott movement has revealed to us
the true nature of foreign sympathy. The events of the last two years have
completed our political education.
We used to be much exercised how to bring on that struggle which alone
can call forth the energies of body and soul in a subject people. For
circumstanced as we are, we cannot act on the offensive, but if others goad us
by attack, then only can this degenerate race be saved. Misguided bureaucrats
and virulent publicists have created our opportunity. We have only to make the
right use of the challenges which are coming in quick succession, and we shall
be able to effect in a few years a work which would otherwise take centuries.
Page-366
An Irish Example
The
refusal of the Irish Parliamentary Party under Mr. Redmond's leadership to have
anything to do with the sham the Liberal Government has offered them in the
place of Home Rule, is a step on which we may congratulate the Irish people. Had
they been deluded into swallowing the bait which was devised for them with such
unscrupulous skill by Mr. Birrell, they would have committed a false step of the
worst kind and seriously compromised the Home Rule Movement. It is much better
that Ireland should have to wait longer for any measure of self- government,
than that she should commit political suicide by accepting Mr. Birrell's Bill.
We call it Mr. Birrell's Bill but in reality it is Sir Antony Macdonnell's and
has the stamp of "Liberal" Anglo-Indian upon it. Its object is
obviously to kill the Home Rule Movement by kindness, to break up Irish unity
and take the sting out of Irish Nationalism by a sham concession skilfully
calculated to corrupt the natural leaders of the people. The measure proposed
was a sort of bastard cross between a Colonial Parliament and an
Indian-Legislative Council. Its acceptance would have committed Irish
politicians to the abandonment of the policy of Parnell and to cooperation in
future with the British Government. The Irish people were openly told
that
the concession of further self-government would depend on the
way in which they used this precious opportunity, in other words, on their
abandoning passive resistance and their principle of aloofness from Government
and its favours and co-operating with it in a mutilated and ineffectual scheme
of self-government. What would have been the result, if the Irish people had
closed with this very bad bargain? They would not have got Home Rule which
England is determined never to give them unless she has no other choice. The
local self-government offered to Ireland would have been extended to Scotland
and Wales and when Ireland demanded Home Rule, she would have been told to be
satisfied with a measure of self-government which had satisfied the other parts
of the United Kingdom. The British Government would by that time have broken the
solid phalanx of Irish Nationalism and by the bribe of office, position and
influence,
Page-367
succeeded
in detaching from the cause a great number of the natural leaders of the people,
men of intelligence, ability and ambition, whose talents would be used by
England in keeping the people contented and combating true Nationalism. In this
way the great ideal of an Irish Nation for which Emmett died, for which
O'Connell and Parnell planned and schemed and which the Sinn Fein movement is
making more and more practicable, would either have been entirely frustrated or
postponed for another century. Instead of a separate nationality with its own
culture, language, government, the Irish would have ended by becoming a big
English county governed by a magnified and glorified Parish Council. The same
kind of bait was offered to the Boers, but that shrewd people resolutely refused
to associate themselves
with any form of
self-government
short of absolute colonial Self-Government.
The same kind of bait is promised to the Moderates in India by Honest John and
the honest Statesman, if they will only consent to dissociate themselves
from the New Spirit and all its works and betray their country. The Statesman
says that Mr. Redmond has been forced to the refusal by the necessity of
deferring to the Sinn Fein Party in Ireland, and hopes that the Indian Moderates
will not commit the same mistake. Our sapient contemporary opines that the
Nationalists in India are not really so strong as they seem, and that the
Moderate leaders, if they desire to betray the country, can do so with impunity,
without losing their influence and position. Well, we shall see.
Bande
Mataram,
May 24, 1907
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