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The Rawalpindi Sufferers
THE
bureaucracy which has decided upon coercion as the most effective means of
crushing the growing national spirit in India must necessarily turn the
machinery of judicial administration also to its advantage. We have observed on
previous occasions that a certain portion of the positive laws enacted by the
British Government has been designed not so much to secure the rights and
interests of the people as to repress their free manhood. There is a popular
saying that almost every action of a man can be construed as an offence
according to the Penal Code. This attempt to penalise many natural human
activities in a conquered country, should have long ago convinced us of the true
spirit of official-made British law but we instead have lived in a Fool's
Paradise and run for safety to the institutions and professions of the
foreigner, obstinately blind to the manner in which they illustrate the British
genius for "ruling" subject races. Where the ordinary law does not
cover all the conceivable offences against the interests of the foreigner,
ordinances and ukases can easily be invented to put a stop to undesirable
activities as we have lately seen. Thus the bureaucratic machinery grinds slow
or grinds fast, but grinding is its object. In the ordinary course of things we
do not become immediately conscious of its baneful consequence; but when the
bureaucracy is face to face with an adverse force or interest it at once sets
itself to the work of repression with all its demoralising consequences. Viewed
in this light what is being described as unprecedented and
"humanity-staggering" police violence and police licence in the
alleged Rawalpindi riot case, is no more than natural and expected. The tales of
police oppression while inducing the most wholehearted sympathy with the noble
sufferers have not the least feature of novelty in them. The Patrika is
very much affected by the severe distress of the alleged rioters now on their
trial; and moved by softer feelings, it has appealed to Lord Minto who
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according
to our contemporary is "goodness personified" to come to their rescue.
The Patrika is no doubt actuated by the very best of motives but our
contemporary should remember that such nervousness while doing no good to the
sufferers is demoralising to our firmness and high spirit. So far as the accused
are concerned the die is cast. Suffer they must; their only care now must be so
to suffer that their martyrdom may be a strength and inspiration to their
countrymen. If their heroic and manful conduct during the trial and their
readiness to face the grim sequel of a conviction puts courage into other
hearts, then only will it be said that they have not suffered in vain. Otherwise
there is not much on the credit side of the account. The duty of the publicist
at such a
time is to seek to brace the nerves of the martyrs and not to take away from the
merit of their service to the country by any advocacy humiliating in form or
abject in spirit. The public attitude at such a time reacts on that of the
sufferer and if we give way to weakness at the report of their sufferings, we
set them a bad example. We also have been moved, and not merely by feelings of
grief and pity, at the dim, but only too sinister and significant hints of what
is going on behind the decent show of a fair and public trial.
But this is not a time when we should give vent to feminine emotions. To
try to rouse pity in the rulers is as unprofitable as it is unworthy of our
manhood and of our cause and in these rough
and still only superficially civilised descendants of the old sea-robbers it can
only excite a deep contempt towards us and increase their arrogance. If we must
show our grief and pity, let it be in substantial help to the victims or their
relatives. If we must pray, let it be not to the goodness personified of any
"sympathetic" repressor, but to the goodness unpersonified of the
Power that makes and breaks kings and viceroys, empires and dominations. Let us
pray to Him to give our brothers in Rawalpindi a stout and cheerful heart and a
steadfast courage so that in the hour of their trial they may nothing common do
or mean upon that memorable scene, and that we too, if our turn comes to suffer
such things or worse for our country, may so bear ourselves that our country may
profit by our sufferings. This is the only
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prayer
that befits us in this hour of the new birth of our nation. For all that the
country suffers now or will suffer hereafter are but the natural birth-pangs of
a free and regenerated India.
Bande
Mataram,
June 18, 1907
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