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The East Bengal Disturbances
WE HAVE
said that the deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai brings no new element into the
situation beyond hastening the processes of Nationalism and bringing us from a
less to a more acute stage of our progress to independence. The second
disturbing element has been the culmination of the alliance between Salimullah
of Dacca and the bureaucracy in the anarchy and the outrages in the Mymensingh
district. These disturbances are now almost over for the time being, though we
must take full advantage of the lull allowed to us, so as to put our house in
order against a possible recrudescence after the jute season. We should now
seriously consider how far these disturbances have altered the situation and
what we should do in order to meet these new conditions. We must first notice
that neither the disturbances themselves
nor their cause are in their nature a new element in the
situation. The Salimullahi campaign, the use of Mahomedan Badmashes to terrorise
Swadeshi Hindus, the official inactivity and sympathy with the lawbreakers,
these have all been with us even before. The conclusions we arrived at at the
time, the warnings and exhortations we addressed to the people have been proved
to the hilt, justified beyond dispute, enforced in red letters of rapine,
bloodshed and outrage. Our reading of the situation then was that no serious
apprehension of trouble between Hindus and Mahomedans need be entertained except
within that tract of country immediately under the influence of Nawab Salimullah,
— Mymensingh, Dacca, Tipperah and possibly parts of Pabna. This is precisely
what has happened. In Comilla the trouble was stopped before it could do real
mischief, by the resolute spirit of the Hindus; in Dacca, in spite of small
skirmishes, individual harassment and a minor outbreak or two, it never gathered
to a head, because the great strength and early preparations of the Hindus
overawed the prime movers and their instruments; Mymensingh alone felt the full
force of
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the
storm, while Pabna still hovers on the brink of it. It is not that the Nawab's
campaign was not vigorously pursued in other parts. The Red Pamphlet has been
ubiquitous throughout Eastern and Northern Bengal; the preachings of the Nawab's
Mullahs have been as persistent, as malignant in Barisal, in Calcutta, in every
strong centre of Swadeshism. But though there have been alarms and excursions
even as far west as Allahabad and Benares, the campaign has for the present
signally failed outside the limits of Nawab Salimullah's kingdom. This is a fact
to be noted. We do not say that Salimullahism carries no dangers with it of
general disruption and disunion between the two communities; an unscrupulous
agitation of this kind, aided by official backing is always dangerous. But in
the rest of the country the blind faith in the Nawab and his Mullahs is absent
and other conditions and forces exist which, if properly used by the
Nationalists, will permanently counteract the promoters of disunion. Even of
themselves, they have been sufficient to prevent the Mahomedans from siding with
the self-elected leader against the Swadeshists.
But however limited the area of the disturbances might be, we warned the
country that Comilla was not the first and would not be the last of such
outbreaks and we called upon it to be ready in time to follow the example of the
Comilla Hindus. Moderate politicians, blind leaders of the blind, were rejoicing
over the end of the disturbances brought about, they said, by their mysterious
efforts — and crying peace, peace where there was no peace. We pointed out
that the Comilla affair was not an isolated outbreak, but part of a policy and
we knew the men we had to deal with too well to suppose that they would be put
off their machinations by a single defeat. Beaten at Comilla, they were certain
to try their luck again in Mymensingh. We warned the country also that when the
disturbances came, it would be idle to look for protection to the officials and
the police. By announcing Swaraj as our ideal we had declared war against the
existence of the bureaucracy and we could not expect the bureaucracy to help us
by making our efforts to put it out of existence safe and easy. On the contrary,
the Nawab and his hooligans were practically, if not avowedly, the allies of the
bureaucracy in their war
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against
Swadeshism and must therefore command sympathy and helpful inactivity if not
actual assistance from their friends. In all these respects our reading of the
situation has been proved correct beyond cavil or dispute. The extent to which
the Nawab has succeeded in turning the baser passions of the mob to his uses,
the extent to which the Anti-Swadeshi army has gone in its outrages, not
scrupling even to desecrate temples and violate women, the extent to which the
officials carried their connivance with the excesses, an European police
official actually leading the mob and the looting being carried on under the
eyes of the police: these things were new, but the Salimullahi campaign itself,
the use of the hooligans (our Indian Black Hundred), and the sympathy of the
officials are elements which are old, of which the country had been warned and
against which the leaders of the movement should have provided.
Even the extent to which these things were carried was due entirely to a
feature of the Mymensingh occurrences which we had already warned the country to
avoid — the non-resistance of the Hindus of Jamalpur. There are some who say
that the recent events in India are a proof of the impracticability of the
Nationalist programme. We do not follow the reasoning of these logicians. The
Jamalpur incidents and their sequel are a terrible proof of the soundness of the
Nationalist ideas and the utter un-soundness of the Moderate theories of our
relations with the bureaucracy and the best way of enforcing the Swadeshi
propaganda. The people of Comilla followed the Nationalist programme with
brilliantly successful results. They boycotted the courts, schools and every
other element of the bureaucratic scheme of things and announced their intention
of continuing the boycott so long as the Nawab of Dacca was allowed to remain in
Comilla — and the Nawab was packed off without ceremony. They met force with
force and the hooligan army of Anti-Swadeshism underwent a crushing defeat. On
the other hand, the people of Jamalpur did everything which the Nationalist
programme excludes; they trusted to the promises of the alien, they chose to go
to the Mela unarmed, like defenceless sheep, relying not on their own strong arm
but on the protection of the British shepherd. At the order of the alien they
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laid
down the lathis they carried for self-defence, at the order of the alien they
trooped to the Mela, from which they had resolved to absent themselves, to be
thrashed by Mahomedan cudgels. Then, when their sheepish trustfulness had had
its reward, that one lesson was not enough; again they trusted to British
protection and sent away the volunteers who stood between them and further
outrage. And when the second storm came, they could think of nothing better than
wholesale flight from the field of battle. Throughout we see the working of the
old political superstitions, the old unworkable compromise which tried to oppose
the bureaucracy and yet co-operate with it, to combine vigorous opposition with
meek submission, to build up a nation under the most adverse circumstances and
against the strongest opponents and yet be, first and foremost, docile, peaceful
and law-abiding. These superstitions exploded in the explosions at Jamalpur and
the conflagration that followed meant the collapse of a policy.
The hooligan disturbances in East Bengal bring therefore no new elements
into the situation, but like the deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai, merely make it
more acute and hasten the processes of Nationalism. They create no new
conditions, but they have caused certain truths to be newly appreciated. The
first is that the Pax Britannica is Maya and, if we mean to be Swadeshists and
Swarajists, we must rely in future not on British protection but on
self-protection. The second is that, as we have long insisted, our present means
of self-defence are inadequate and better means and organisation are a pressing
need. The third is the seriousness and true nature of the Mahomedan problem
which our older politicians have always tried to belittle or ignore. Any one who
wishes to deal successfully with the crisis in the country, must recognise these
three lessons of experience and shape his methods accordingly.
Newmania
Yesterday
the Special Correspondent of the Englishman finished his shilling shocker
in many chapters, The Dreadful Boy Despe-
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radoes
of Dacca or The Violent Volunteers
of Barisal. We have had many new things recently, the new Hinduism, the new
School, the new Politics, the new Province, the new John Morley and now we have
Newmania in the Englishman. The peculiarly delirious character of this
disease can be easily understood from the Khulna telegram of the Secretary,
People's Association. Mr. Newman had published from Barisal a peculiarly blood
and thunder incident of the villainous drowning and stabbing of British goods by
whiskerless young desperadoes of Khulna. The Magistrate of Khulna seems to have
been so far taken in by the life-like vividness of Mr. Newman's style as to take
this bit of heroic romancing quite seriously. He actually enquired into the
alleged murder and sudden death and naturally found that nothing of the kind had
happened. It is clear that we need a special liturgy for India. "From
Denzil Ibbetson and deportation, from the stick of the Constable and the gun of
the Goorkha, from sunstroke and the Civil and Military Gazette, from Pax
Britannica and the Nawab of Dacca, from Sir. Henry Cotton and Mr. Rees, from
Fuller, Morley and Shillong Hare, Good Lord deliver us! From lesser plague and
pestilence, from cholera and motor-cars, from measles and moderation, Good Lord
deliver us! But most of all from the friendship of the Statesman and the
ravings of Newmania, Good Lord deliver us!"
We
are glad to see that the Statesman does not happen to be the custodian of
at least one prominent Moderate's conscience. Mr. Gokhale has written to the Times
of India that "Lala Lajpat Rai has been sacrificed to a nervous
apprehension that suddenly seized the Government." The menace held out to
the prospects of administrative reform had no effect" on him and like a
patriot who on no account can be persuaded to throw overboard his fellow-worker
in the field, he has concluded his letter to the Times with the
characteristic observation: —
"Reforms
which the Viceroy and the Secretary of State are contemplating will lose their
meaning for us if they cannot be had
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without
deportation out of India of such earnest and high-minded workers in the
country's cause as Lala Lajpat Rai." It was an insult offered to the
patriotism of our Moderate countrymen to seek to bay their support for measures
like the deportation of Lajpat by dangling before them the bait of
administrative reform. In the eye of the law both the giver and the taker of a
bribe are equally criminal. It is no doubt gratifying that our moderate
countrymen do not lay themselves open to the charge of criminality, not to speak
of self-betrayal. As for Mr. Morley's offering the bribe his reputation is too
philosophic and literary to suffer shipwreck by such a single stroke of
diplomatic unscrupulousness. Besides, the ordinary standard of morality has
never been observed in the case of black races. To touch politics is to touch
tar, said Cardinal Newman, and in dealing with dark people there is an
additional inducement for using this black commodity. Mr. Gokhale's
white-washing of his high-minded friend will be of no use to the colour-darkened
vision of Mr. Morley —
it will be love's labour lost. All the same
he has come out of the ordeal unscathed.
Bande
Mataram, May 25, 1907
The
Statesman on Sunday came out with the startling fact that Mr. Morley has
"finally formulated a workable scheme giving prominent natives a larger
representation on the various bodies having effective control of Indian
affairs". This is, we presume, the last and most authoritative of the
special cablegrams with which the Statesman has been regaling us, for
want of more substantial fare, ever since Mr. John Morley became Chief
Bureaucrat for India. For, we are told, Mr. Morley will make an important
announcement when introducing the Indian budget. We would call the attention of
our readers to the wording of this portentous cablegram. There is going to be a
larger representation on the bodies having effective control of Indian affairs,
viz., the Legislative Councils and, perhaps, the Executive in which
"natives" are at present unrepresented. Indians are not to be
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allowed
any control over Indian affairs, they are only to be more largely represented on
the bodies which have that control. They are to have a larger voice, but there
is to be no guarantee that the voice will be at all effective. The share of
Indians in the government has up to now been vox et praeterea nihil, a
voice and nothing more, and in the future also it is to be a voice and nothing
more. We notice, moreover, that it is not the country, not the people of India
which is to be represented, but only "prominent natives". We shall
have a few more Gokhales, a few more Bhupendranath Boses, a few more Nawabs of
Dacca on the Councils — and there an end. There will be a little manipulation
of light and shade, an increase in the number of dark faces, and Mr. Morley and
the Statesman will triumphantly invite us to rejoice at the
"important advance that has been made in the direction of
self-government". A hint has been given from another source that there will
actually be a non-official majority of elected and nominated members. In other
words, Mr. Apcar, Mr. Gokhale and the Nawab of Dacca multiplied several times
over will form a non-official majority in the Council. Is this the reform for
which we are invited to give up Swadeshi, Nationalism and our future? Mr. Morley
and the Statesman are grievously mistaken if they think that the
newly-awakened spirit of Indian Nationalism can any longer be put off with a
gilded sham.
National
Volunteers
Our
Barisal Correspondent seems, like the Khulna Magistrate, to have taken the
Englishman's
Special Correspondent much too seriously. The fictions of Mr. Newman are too
evidently fictions to deserve serious criticism. Whether they are the
distortions of a panic-stricken imagination or actual inventions, we need not
too closely enquire. They have a certain journalistic effectiveness,
and they serve the political ends of this
paper whose efforts are wholly directed towards urging on the Government to a
policy of thoroughgoing repression. Everybody in Bengal knows that previous to
the disturbances in East Bengal, there was no movement of the kind which has
sent Mr. Newman into carefully cal-
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culated
hysterics. There was a movement for physical training and the institution of Akharas,
which was by no means so widespread or successful as it should have
been. There was also a custom which had first grown up in the Congress and
naturally extended to Conferences and then to public meetings, of employing the
services of young men in making the arrangements and keeping order. It is those
only who bore the name of volunteers and they were never a standing organisation,
but merely organised themselves for the occasion and broke up when it was over,
nor had they any connection with the Akharas. Finally, there was in the earlier
days of the Swadeshi movement great activity among the young men in picketing
and other means of moral suasion to enforce the boycott, but except in one or
two places this has long fallen into desuetude except for occasional spasmodic
attempts. Neither were the picketers ever formed into an organisation or termed
volunteers. After the outbursts of anti-Swadeshi violence at Comilla and
Jamalpur, the young men spontaneously united to present a firm defence against
hooligan outrages and this is the terrible phenomenon which has made Mr. Newman
delirious. In his ravings he has mixed up all these loose threads and woven out
of them a web fearful and wonderful. As a matter of fact hundreds of youths who
are taking part in the defence of hearth and home, never entered an Akhara or
handled a lathi before, and are now first realising what they ought to have
realised long ago, the necessity of physical exercise and training to self-
defence.
With extraordinary ingenuity this imaginative Sherlock Holmes of
Anglo-India has discovered that the Anti-Circular Society, the Bande Mataram
Sampraday and the Brati-Samity — harmless and peaceful relics of the first
Swadeshi enthusiasm, — are separately and unitedly the organising centre of
these terrible Volunteers! We only wish our countrymen had shown themselves
capable of forming such an organisation, deliberate, well-knit and pervasive.
But we have still some way to travel before this becomes possible.
Bande
Mataram,
May 27, 1907
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