Facts and Opinions

Volume I - Sept. 25, 1909 - Number 14

The Convention President

                The nomination of Sir Pherozshah Mehta as the President of the three men's Convention at Lahore is not an event that is of any direct interest to Nationalists. Just as the three tailors of Tooley Street represented themselves as the British public, so the three egregious mediocrities of the Punjab pose as the people of their province and, in defiance of the great weight of opinion among the leading men and the still stronger force of feeling among the people against the holding of a Convention Congress at Lahore, are inviting the representatives of the Moderate Party to a session of what is still called, even under these discouraging circumstances, the Indian National Congress. It is of small importance to us whom these three gentlemen elect as their President. The nomination was indeed a foregone conclusion. Sir Pherozshah Mehta, having got rid of his Nationalist adversaries, now rules the Convention with as absolute a sway as he ruled the Corporation before the European element combined against him and showed that, servile as Bombay respectability might be to the Corporation lion, it was still more servile to the ruling class. Indirectly, however, the election is of some importance to Bengal owing to the desire of the people of this province for an United Congress. It is no longer a secret that in Bengal Moderate circles the feeling against Sir Pherozshah is almost as strong as it is in the Nationalist Party. It has even been threatened that, if Sir Pherozshah becomes the President, Bengal will not attend the session at Lahore. This has since been qualified by the proviso that Bengal as a province will not attend, although some individuals may overcome their feelings or their scruples. Bengal as a province would in no case attend the sitting of a mutilated Congress. Even the whole Moderate Party were not likely to attend unless their objections on the score of constitutional procedure were properly considered. All that the

threat can mean is that, even of those who would otherwise have gone, most will not attend. This is, after all, a feeble menace. Neither Sj. Surendranath nor Sj. Bhupendranath nor the Chaudhuri brothers are likely to forego attendance, and, for all practical purposes, these gentlemen are the Moderate Party in Bengal. If the Bengal leaders do go to Lahore, they are certain to obey meekly the dictates of Sir Pherozshah Mehta; for there is not one of them who has sufficient strength of character to stand up to the roarings of the Bombay lion. They were in the habit of obeying him even when he had no official authority, and it can well be imagined how the strong, arrogant and overbearing man will demean himself as President, and how utterly impossible it will be even to suggest, either in Subjects Committee or in full meeting, any idea which will not be wholly palatable to the autocrat. Sj. Surendranath Banerji at Hughly advanced the strangely reactionary conception of the President of a Congress or Conference as by right not less absolute than the Czar of all the Russias, bound by no law and no principle and entitled to exact from the Conference or Congress implicit obedience to his most arbitrary and unconstitutional whims and caprices. This absolutist conception is likely to be carried out to the letter at the Lahore Convention. If ever there was any hope that the Lahore session of the Convention might be utilised for bringing about an United Congress, that has now disappeared. The hope was cherished by some, but it was from the first an idle expectation. A firm combination of all, whether Moderates or Nationalists, who are in favour of union, and the holding of a freely elected Congress at Calcutta was all along the only chance of bringing about union.

Presidential Autocracy

The conception of the President as a Russian autocrat and the assembly as the slave of his whims is one which is foreign to free and democratic institutions, and would, if enforced, make all true discussion impossible and put in the hands of the party in possession of the official machinery an irresistible weapon for stifling

the opinions of its opponents. It is a conception against which the Nationalist party have struggled from the beginning and will struggle to the end. The ruling of the President is final on all points of order, but only so long as he governs the proceedings of the body according to the recognised rules of debate. He cannot dictate the exclusion of resolutions or amendments which do not seem to him rational or expedient, but must always base his action on reasons of procedure and not on reasons of state. The moment he asserts his individual caprice or predilection, he lays himself open to an appeal to the whole assembly or even, in very extreme cases, to an impeachment of his action by a vote of censure from the delegates. It has been erroneously alleged that the Speaker of the House of Commons sways the House with an absolute control. The Speaker is as much bound by the rules of the House as any member; he is the repository of the rules and administers an old and recognised procedure, elaborate and rigid in detail, which he cannot transgress, nor has any Speaker been known to transgress it. Some have been suspected of administering the rules, wherever they left discretion to the Speaker, with a partiality for one party, but even this has been rare, and it was always the rules of procedure that were administered, not personal whim or caprice. As the present Speaker pointed out recently in his evidence before a public Commission, there is a recognised means by which the conduct of the Speaker can be called in question by the House. It would be strange if it were otherwise. The framers of the British Constitution, who so jealously guarded every loophole by which autocracy might creep into any part of the system, were not likely to leave such a glaring defect of freedom uncorrected, if it had ever existed.

Mr. Lalmohan Ghose

The death of Mr. Lalmohan Ghose removes from the scene a distinguished figure commemorative of the past rather than representative of any living force in the present. His interventions in politics have for many years past been of great rarity and, since the Calcutta Congress, had entirely ceased. It cannot therefore

be said that his demise leaves a gap in the ranks of our active workers. He was the survivor of a generation talented in politics rather than great, and, among them, he was one of the few who could lay claim to the possession of real genius. That genius was literary, oratorical and forensic rather than political but as these were the gifts which then commanded success in the political arena, he ought to have stood forward far ahead of the mass of his contemporaries. It was the lack of steadiness and persistence common enough in men of brilliant gifts, which kept him back in the race. His brother Mr. Manmohan Ghose, a much less variously and richly gifted intellect but a stronger character, commanded by the possession of these very qualities a much weightier influence and a more highly and widely honoured name. In eloquence we doubt whether any orator of the past or the present generation has possessed the same felicity of style and charm of manner and elocution. Mr. Gokhale has something of the same debating gift, but it is marred by the dryness of his delivery and the colourlessness of his manner. Mr. Lalmohan Ghose possessed the requisite warmth, glow and agreeableness of speech and manner without those defects of excess and exaggeration which sometimes mar Bengali oratory. We hope that his literary remains will be published, specially the translation of the Meghnadbadh, which, from such capable hands, ought to introduce favourably a Bengali masterpiece to a wider than Indian audience.

HOME