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A Statement
MR.
John Morley has committed himself in the House of Commons to a trenchant and
unqualified statement that the whole blame for the disturbances in East Bengal
lies upon the Hindus who, by a violent and obstreperous boycott attended with
coercion and physical force, have irritated the Mahomedans into revolt. Whether
Mr. Morley made this statement out of a sweet trustfulness in the man on the
spot or relying upon his philosophical judgment and innate powers of reasoning
does not concern us at all. Everyone knows that the statement is untrue. The
boycott was no doubt the final cause of the hooliganism in the East just as the
Russian revolutionary movement was the final cause of the excesses of the Black
Hundred, but it as in no way the immediate and efficient cause. It was the final
cause in this sense that its first success compelled Sir Bampfylde Fuller to
look about for a counteracting influence and he found it in the Nawab of Dacca
and the use that could be made of the Nawab's position to help on a breach
between the Mahomedans and Hindus. That is the whole and sole connection of
boycott with the Mymensingh disturbances. The rest followed by a natural course
of evolution. Sir Bampfylde favoured the Mahomedans and depressed the Hindus,
the Nawab excited his co-religionists against their fellow-countrymen. There was
no concealment about this policy, no pretences. Sir Bampfylde Fuller openly
declared that of his two wives the Mahomedan was his favourite and his
favouritism was gross, open, palpable. He flourished it in the face of the
public instead of concealing it. The Nawab of Dacca has also openly preached to
his co-religionists about the wrongs they have suffered at the hands of the
Hindus and called upon them to separate themselves from that evil and injurious
connexion. There has been no concealment whatever about his anti-Hindu campaign.
After the disappearance of Sir Bampfylde from the scene of his exploits, the
philo-Mahomedanism of the
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Shillong
Government was no longer openly flourished in the face of the public but it was
steadily continued in practice. The alliance of Anglo-India with the Nawab was
from the beginning made the most of by the Englishman which for some time
carried on a very active philo-Mahomedan and anti-Hindu crusade in its columns
and did its best to stir up enmity between the two communities. So there came
the first Mymensingh disturbances, the Comilla riots and finally the supreme
conflagration that started from Jamalpur. That conflagration was brought about
by Maulavis preaching outrage and plunder in the name of the Nawab of Dacca and
the Government, an imputation which the Nawab of Dacca has made no attempt to
repudiate, though, it is said, he has been challenged to do so in answer to his
hollow professions of a desire to bring about amity between the two communities,
while the Shillong Government has repudiated it only tardily and indirectly if
at all, and only after the full mischief had been done. In all the incitements
urged by the Maulavis and by the authors of the notorious Red Pamphlet, there
has been no mention of a violent enforcement of the boycott on the Mahomedans,
neither has any such connexion been established by any of the judicial
proceedings which have hitherto been concluded. The theory of Mr. John Morley is
therefore a dead thing and of no farther interest to any human being.
Of course the bureaucracy will go on playing with the bones of this dead
scarecrow; it will wage war on Swadeshism on the plea that it leads to disorder;
but that is only because, like all bureaucracies, it is sublimely indifferent to
reason and fact and public opinion. It has served its turn by the fiction which
it foisted through the mouth of Honest John on a loudly applauding though
somewhat befogged House of Commons and it does not care even if the fiction is
disproved a thousand times over. It will go on acting as if the fiction were a
fact. We do not see therefore the utility of the statement which a majority of
the Bengal leaders have published and which we hear is to be telegraphed or has
been telegraphed to England. If the object is to set ourselves right in the
opinion of the world, well, that is an innocent amusement. If it is to convince
Mr. John Morley, it is a futility. It is absurd to suppose that Mr. John Morley
at his age
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is going to allow himself to be convinced. He is far too
old and wise to admit inconvenient facts. The statement contains a number of
facts which all Bengal knows, which all India is sure to believe and all
officialdom sure to deny. Beyond that the statement, a very able one in its way,
merely encourages the consumption of stationery, patronises a printing-press,
startles the Empire and enriches the Telegraph Office. Was
it worth while?
Bande
Mataram,
June 6, 1907
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