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Mr. Tilak and the Presidentship
WHILE writing of the
Nagpur imbroglio we have touched very lightly
on the question of Mr. Tilak's Presidentship, the dispute over which was the
beginning and real cause of the discord at
Nagpur. We regard this issue as one of immense
importance and shall today try to make clear our position in the matter and the
reasons why we attach such a supreme importance to it. The Bombay Moderates with
their usual skill in the use of their one strong weapon, misrepresentation, have
been writing and speaking as if the question of Mr. Tilak's election to the
President's chair were a personal issue; they blame Mr. Tilak for not
withdrawing from the field, talk of us as Tilakites and assume throughout that
we are fighting for a man and not for a principle. If it were a personal matter,
Mr. Tilak who has always been an unselfish and unassuming patriot, always averse
to pushing himself or to figuring personally more than was necessary for his
work, always a strong fighter for the success of his ideas and methods but never
for his own hand, would be the first to obviate all discord by withdrawing. But
it is not a personal matter and Mr. Tilak has not himself come forward as a
candidate for the Presidentship. His name was put forward last year by the
Bengal Nationalists without consulting him and was again put forward this year
as the embodiment of a principle. This being so, Mr. Tilak has no voice in the
matter except as an individual member of the Nationalist Party, and is not
entitled to withdraw his name except with the consent of his party. In fact, his
personal right of accepting or refusing the Presidentship can only arise when
and if it is offered him by the local Reception Committee or the All-India
Committee. That the Moderates should not be able to understand this is
natural; their conception of a leader and the Nationalist conception of a leader
are as the poles asunder. Mr. Tilak by his past career, his unequalled abilities
and capacity for leadership, his splendid courage and self-sacrifice, his
services to the cause and the dis-
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interestedness and devotion with which he
used his influence, is naturally the most prominent of the Nationalist leaders,
and our party looks up to his experience, skill, cool acuteness and moral
strength for guidance on great occasions like the Congress session when it has
to act as a single body. But our idea of a leader is not and will never be one
whom we have to follow as an individual for his own sake, whether he is right or
wrong; we follow him only so long as he is faithful to the principles of
Nationalism and is ready to fight its battles in accordance with the collective
will of the party.
The question was first raised
last year in Bengal when at a meeting of the Nationalists in Calcutta it was
decided to suggest to the country the name of Mr. Tilak as President of the
Calcutta Congress and in accordance with this decision Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal,
who was then touring in the Mofussil, was communicated with and asked to bring
the question forward and take the sense of the public upon it in Eastern Bengal.
We have never concealed the fact that this was deliberately done in order to
throw down the gauntlet publicly to Loyalism, Anti-Swadeshism, Moderatism and
every other ism which seeks to bring in foreign considerations and alloy
or weaken the pure and uncompromising Nationalist creed. The nomination of Mr.
Tilak was a crucial point as between the two parties, for three separate
reasons. At that time the country was divided between the Swadeshists on
principle and the Anti-Swadeshists — or, let us say, "honest" Swadeshists of the
Mehta-Wacha type and still more sharply between Boycotters and those who
trembled at the very name of Boycott. From this point of view, the attempt to
secure Mr. Tilak's nomination was an attempt on our part to have the Swadeshi-
Boycott propaganda recognised on the Congress platform. Secondly, there was and
still is a small ring of Congress officials who treat the Congress as their own
private property, decide in secret conclave what it shall do or not do, and hand
round the Presidentship among themselves and the occasional newcomers admitted
to their ranks from the Legislative Councils, except when a live M.P. can be
secured from England or a Mahomedan had to be nominated to demonstrate Hindu-Musulman
unity. The second object of the attempt to
Page-587
get Mr. Tilak nominated .was to break
through this oligarchic ring and establish the true nature of the Congress as no
mere machinery to be engineered by a few wealthy or successful proprietors, but
a popular assembly in which the will of the people must prevail. Thirdly, the
opposition to Mr. Tilak and the attempt to force him always into the background
arose largely from the feeling that Mr. Tilak's views and personality are
objectionable to the bureaucracy and that the nomination of a public man once
convicted of sedition would deprive the Congress and, what was more important to
Loyalists, leading men of the Congress, of all chance of Government favour. But
these very reasons which made the name of Mr. Tilak an offence and a
stumbling-block to the Loyalists, imposed upon the Nationalist Party the duty of
bringing forward Mr. Tilak's name year after year until he is elected.
Leadership in the Congress must no longer be regarded as a convenient and
profitable road to appointments on the Bench and in the Government Councils but
as a post of danger and a position of service to the people and it must depend
on service done and suffering endured for the cause and not in the slightest
degree on bureaucratic approval, and the national movement must be recognised as
a sacred cause which exists in its own right and cannot consent to be regulated
by the smiles and frowns of the bureaucracy which it is its first object to
displace. These are the principles for which our party are contending when they
insist on Mr. Tilak's nomination and they are principles which are essential to
the Nationalist position and are as living today as they were last year. The
question of Mr. Tilak's Presidentship will be always with us until it is finally
set at rest by his election, for until then we shall pass it year after year.
But so far as the
Nagpur session is concerned, the question no
longer exists. The attempt to make this question wholly responsible for the
difficulty is disingenuous and the demand that Mr. Tilak should throw over his
own party by a gratuitous refusal to be President if ever he is asked, so as to
reassure irreconcilable Loyalists in their fears, is absolutely preposterous.
The Nagpur Nationalists have put his name forward and they alone are competent
to withdraw it. But such withdrawal is not
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necessary. They have failed to secure the
necessary three-fourths majority and they can therefore no longer insist on his
name unless they are asked to hold the Congress with their own funds. They are
willing to withdraw in a body from the Reception Committee if the Moderates so
desire; they are willing to co-operate on lines both definite and reasonable;
and they are willing, if called upon, to hold the Congress with any Moderate
President in the chair if the funds in Mr. Dixit's hands are paid in. But they
are not willing to misappropriate public money for the Congress funds and they
are not willing to walk into the Loyalist trap by an admission of any personal
responsibility for the disturbances that have taken place, in the shape of a
guarantee that no disturbance of any kind shall take place at the time of the
Congress. Such a guarantee can only be given by those who were responsible for
the rowdyism or instigated it, and this unwarrantable charge has already been
emphatically denied by the leading Nationalists; to ask them to give a guarantee
is to ask them to admit what they have already denied. If therefore the
Moderates insist on these preposterous conditions, the public will know whom
they have to blame.
Bande Mataram,
November 5, 1907
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