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Reasons of Secession
WE
HAVE
now placed all the facts of the
Midnapur Conference before the public and the reasons which made a Nationalist
secession inevitable are sufficiently obvious. The Loyalist legend that the
Nationalists came prepared to break up the Conference by force, but were either
baffled, say some authorities, by the "mingled tact and firmness" of
Mr. K. B. Dutt, or overawed, say others, by the presence of the President's
bureaucratic friends and allies, and in their rage and disappointment seceded
and held a separate meeting, is too contemptible a lie to be treated seriously.
"Why should they secede? What was the necessity of a second
Conference?" ask our opponents with a holy simplicity, "Did we not
pass the same resolutions? Was not a translation of the President's marvellous
address offered to the audience? What does it matter if the President broke his
word? As for the interpretation of Swaraj as colonial self-government, it is an
unimportant matter, a prejudged matter, no Conference pretending to be a branch
of the Congress organisation has any right to pass a resolution for Swaraj pure
and simple and no responsible politician can support such a resolution. The
Police Superintendent? Well, he was there only to see that the train wrecking
outrage was not repeated by the Nationalists in the Conference Pandal!"
Let us clear the matter of this jungle of irrelevancies. It was not over
the resolutions passed by the Moderate Subjects Committee and Conference that
the secession took place. When the Moderates saw that they had succeeded in
disgusting and tiring out their opponents and had the field themselves they
quietly adjourned to the Bailey Hall and held their own Committee and passed
their own resolutions —
this is a favourite trick with this party which
they perform in the full confidence that their opponents will in the end
acquiesce in the accomplished fact for the sake of "unity". We are
informed that two resolutions were seriously modified in Committee at the
command of the Presi-
Page-640
dent,
but whether these modifications stood, or repentance came with the morning, does
not matter: for the resolutions were not the cause of the secession. The
question of the language in which the President's speech should be delivered was
a detail on which the Mofussil delegates felt strongly and it is obvious that if
these Conferences are to serve the purpose for which they are created, the
vernacular must be the medium employed. It is absurd to have the President's
speech in English and then to patch up matters by offering a translation, when
the audience is already wearied out by listening to a long address in a foreign
tongue which they do not understand. If Mr. K. B. Dutt had to address all India,
though no one asked him to, he could have delivered a lecture in the British
Indian Association or published a pamphlet or written an article in the Bengalee;
the Conference Pandal was not the place for his dissertation. But in any
case the question of language was not a determining cause of the secession.
Again we do not think it a light thing that a gentleman who fills the important
and dignified position of the President of a District Conference, should, after
he has been nominated without opposition on the strength of a clear promise, go
back upon his word and yet cling to his post. Honour is not a light thing, a
public undertaking is not a light thing, and that the President did promise, has
been testified to by honest Moderates as well as Nationalists who were present
on the occasion. But the seceders did not take this ground for secession, for
they had consented, on the strength of Srijut Surendranath's qualified
assurance, to the election which, once made, could not be unmade. As to Swaraj,
we do not think it an unimportant matter, nor can we see that a District or
Provincial Conference is debarred from passing a resolution in its favour; for
by this rule several District Conferences, including the Bhola Conference,
presided over by Srijut Ambica Charan Mazumdar, have forfeited their right to be
considered branches of the Congress organisation. But we will let that too go,
for it was not to pass a resolution on unqualified Swaraj that a second
Conference was held. The secession took place because of the arbitrary conduct
of the President supported by his party in evading the right of the whole body
of delegates to express its opinion effectively on disputed matters and because
Page-641
of
the use made by him of his alliance with the Police to support his arbitrary
authority.
The emergence of two distinct parties in Indian politics has altered the
whole nature of our political problems and our political activity and it is
absolutely necessary that the constitution, methods and procedure of the
Congress and the subordinate bodies should be constructed accordingly. Formerly
it mattered nothing how the Congress was conducted, because there was no overt
difference of opinion and whatever the Congress chiefs did or thought good was
accepted without question or murmur. If there were dissentients they were easily
silenced. But now there are two distinct parties with different ideals,
different methods of work, a different spirit and standpoint, each struggling to
get the ear of the country and the control of our public activities. It is clear
that if these two parties are to live together in the Congress, there must be
some procedure which both can recognise as just, some means of determining their
relative strength and giving each a means of influencing the course of Congress
work in proportion to its strength. This can be done by constituting the
Subjects Committee so that each party shall be represented according to the
strength it can muster or by allowing each section of the delegates to choose by
vote its own representatives; the representatives of both sides can come to an
agreement in Committee on disputed points and where agreement is impossible, the
majority of votes will decide the matter, subject always to an inalienable right
of appeal by amendment to the whole body of delegates. With such rules of
procedure there would be no reason why two parties should not exist side by side
and the deliberations of the Congress and Conferences be conducted with decorum,
order and dignity. But if one side refuses to acknowledge the existence of the
other, if it tries, when it cannot ignore it, to put it down by bullying or by
the personal authority of its own leaders, and when even that is not possible by
what it calls a combination of tact and firmness but the other side calls a
mixture of trickery and arbitrariness, when it keeps procedure vague and
disregards the rules common to all public assemblies, then to live together
seems almost impossible. This is the reason why the fight over the nomination of
the President is so unneces-
Page-642
sarily
bitter. One side feels that it cannot allow the election of a Nationalist
President because that would mean official recognition of the right of the other
to share in influencing and guiding the Congress work. The other side feels that
a Moderate
President will simply be an instrument for Moderate tactics, not an impartial
speaker of the House. He will rule Nationalist proposals and amendments out of
order, refuse to take the sense of the House when called upon and by other
arbitrary exercise of his authority serve his party. The rowdiness of which the
Moderates complain is simply the clamorous persistence which is the sole means
left to the other party to compel justice and a hearing. All this the
Nationalists have again and again endured in the hope that by sheer persistence
they might get their existence recognised and such rules formulated as would
permit of differences being automatically settled. But when the Moderate goes so
far as to call in a third party to weigh down the balance in his favour, and
that third party the common enemy, the bureaucrat and his police, the limit of
sufferance is over-passed and nothing is left but to separate before difference
of opinion degenerates into civil war. This was the stage which by the grace of
Mr. K. B. Dutt was reached at Midnapur. We bring no charge against the Calcutta
leaders except that of supporting a man instead of considering the interests of
the country; we prefer to believe that they had nothing to do with the underhand
methods of their local lieutenant; but the support they rendered him made him
impervious to reason and left the Nati6nalists no resource but secession. The
Nationalist Conference, the Nationalist organisation is now an accomplished
fact. If the local Moderates come to their senses, a modus vivendi may in
future be found, but in any case our Conference and Association will remain and
work. Midnapur has taken the initiative in giving Nationalism an organised shape
and form.
Bande
Mataram, December 14, 1907
Page-643
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