-61_Facts and Opinions 1-1-1910.htm

Facts and Opinions

Volume I - Jan. 1, 1910 - Number 26

The Perishing Convention

The Convention has met at Lahore and the fact that it could meet at all, has been hailed as a great triumph by the Anglo-Indian Press. But the success of this misbegotten body in avoiding immediate extinction has only served to show the marks of decay in every part of its being, and the loud chorus of eulogies streaming up from Anglo-India will not help to prolong its days. The miserable paucity of its numbers, the absence of great ovations to its leaders, the surroundings of stifling coldness, indifference and disapproval in the midst of which its orators perorated and resolved, have been too striking to be concealed. Even the Statesman, which is anxious to pass off this fiasco as a signal triumph for Moderatism and dwells on the enthusiasm and earnestness in the Bradlaugh Hall, — an enthusiasm and earnestness other reporters were unable to discover, — is obliged to admit the smallness of the circle to which these creditable feelings were confined. To this body calling itself the Indian National Congress how many delegates did the Indian nation send ? The magnificent total of three hundred. From Bengal Sjs. Surendranath, Bhupendranath and A. Chaudhury with less than half-a-dozen followers enriched Lahore with their presence; Madras could muster only twelve; the Central Provinces sent so few that the reporters are ashamed to mention the number. The United Provinces sent, according to the Amrita Bazar Patrika's Correspondent, about thirty; the Bombay number is not mentioned, but even the Statesman does not go beyond eighty; the rest came from the Punjab. Even the Anglo-Indian champion of Conventionism, estimating largely and on the basis of hopes and expectations, cannot raise the total to four hundred. The same paper takes refuge in the "huge concourse" of spectators, but, when it comes to actual facts, the huge concourse melts away into some hundreds of spectators,

an estimate supported by the statement in the Bengalee that there were considerably more spectators than delegates. It is admitted that Bradlaugh Hall which cannot seat more than three thousand was far from being filled, the Statesman observing two wings of the Hall to be quite empty and other accounts reporting the Hall to be half empty. An allowance of some thousand spectators to watch the performances of the gallant three hundred in this Thermopylae of Moderatism, will be as liberal as the facts will allow. Could there be more damning evidence of the unpopularity of this pretentious body of well-to-do oligarchs electing themselves semi-secretly in close electorates of a handful of men and yet daring to call themselves the nation's Congress ? The farce is almost over. The falsity of their pretentions has been shown up signally. The Convention will not dare again to meet in the Punjab; it will not come to Bengal; Nagpur, Amraoti and the Maharashtra are barred to it: and if the attendance from Madras is any sign, it will not be easy for it to command a following or an audience again in the Southern Presidency. What remains to Conventionism ? Bombay city, Gujerat and the United Provinces are still open to them for a season. The abstention of a disgusted nation has passed sentence of death on this parody of the Indian National Congress.

The Convention President's Address

The most remarkable feature of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya's address is not what he said, but what he omitted to say. If the accounts telegraphed can be trusted, he said nothing about self-government, nothing about Swadeshi, — the Boycott, of course, the Convention has boycotted, — nothing about the Bengal deportees, only a few words about the Transvaal. The speech was really a speech about the Reforms and every other great question of Indian politics was ignored or neglected. The attitude of the Convention on the Reforms is marked by that open insincerity which is the hall-mark of Moderate politics. The Convention resolution is made up of two parts, an ecstatic tribute of praise and gratitude to the two Lords Morley and

Minto, for their earnest and "arduous" endeavours, (note the grotesque absurdity of the language), in extending to the people of this country a "fairly liberal" measure of constitutional reform, and a detailed and damning indictment of the measure for restrictions and provisions which are "excessive and unfair", "unjust, invidious and humiliating", "arbitrary and unreasonable", and for the "general distrust" of the educated classes and the "ineffective and unreal" composition of the non-official majority. If there is any meaning in language, the second part of the resolution gives the lie direct to the first. The language used is far stronger than any the Karmayogin has ever permitted itself to employ in its condemnation of the Reforms and, if the condemnation is at all justified by facts, the Reforms are a reactionary and not a progressive piece of legislation. And yet who is the chief mouthpiece of the Convention and the most damaging critic of the Reforms ? A gentleman who has set the seal of approval on Lord Morley's measure by entering the Council of his province as an elected member. Actions speak more strongly than words, and the Government of India care little for criticism in detail so long as they get acceptation of the whole. From the Viceroy down to the obscurest Anglo-Indian scribbler the appeal to the Moderates is to criticise details hereafter, if they choose, but to accept the Reforms, the perpetual division of the two Indian communities, the humiliation of the Hindus, the extrusion of the educated classes from their old leading position, the denial of the only true basis of self-government, — to let, as the Indian Daily News persuasively puts it, bygones be bygones. Anglo-India pats Moderatism on the back and says in effect:

"What if we have kicked you downstairs ? Can't you be a good fellow and sit quietly on the bottom step until we take it in our heads to pull you up a little farther ?" And Moderatism must comply if it wishes to be tolerated.

The Alleged Breach of Faith

The Moderate critics are never tired of harping on the difference between Lord Morley's scheme and the Regulations and alleging

or hinting that promises have been made to the ear which have been broken in the act. The Statesman very naturally resents the implied charge of breach of faith. We do not know what private hopes the Secretary of State may have held out to Mr. Gokhale or Sj. Surendranath Banerji, but, judging from Lord Morley's public utterances, we do not think the charge of a breach of faith can be for a moment sustained. He has never pretended that his reform was the granting of a democratic constitution or the first step towards Parliamentary self-government. On the contrary he distinctly stated that if he had thought his measure to be anything of the kind he would have immediately withdrawn it. All that he promised was a scheme by which Indian public opinion could be more liberally consulted, and there were from the beginning distinct indications that the Government would put its own meaning on the phrase and draw a distinction between Indian opinion and Indian educated opinion. If the Moderates chose to interpret this limited concession as the granting of a constitution and a new Magna Charta, neither Lord Morley nor Lord Minto are to blame for a deliberate and gratuitous self-deception and deception of the people. The complaint that the non-official majority is ineffective and unreal, means simply that it is not a popular majority. We do not think the Government ever promised a popular majority; they promised a non-official majority and they have given it. If the Moderates chose to believe that the Government would go out of its way to make the non-official majority a popular one, they have themselves to thank for this pitiful self-delusion, against which the Nationalists have been warning the country for some time past. The truth is that they have been utterly worsted in their diplomatic relations with British Liberalism and they are now trying to exculpate themselves before the public by throwing the blame on their allies. No English statesman can be condemned for trying to get the best of a diplomatic bargain of this kind; the loser must blame his own folly, not the good faith of the other party. Did not the Bengal Moderates recently propose a similar bargain to the Nationalists in the United Congress Committee's negotiations ? And, if the Nationalist had been fools enough to agree, would they have been

justified afterwards in quarrelling with the good faith of the Moderates merely because they themselves had chosen to enter the Convention on conditions which would have meant hopeless ineffectiveness in that body and political suicide outside ? If infants in diplomacy choose to cherish an obstinate admiration for their own Machiavellian cleverness or mere bookmen who do not understand the A.B.C. of practical politics, elect to play the game with past masters of political statecraft, the result is a foregone conclusion. We have exposed over and over again the hollowness of the pretensions of this measure to figure as a great step forward in Indian administration or the beginning of a new progressive era in Indian politics, but we did not need the publication of the Regulations to open our eyes to this hollowness. Lord Morley's own statements, the nature of things and of humanity and the clauses of the Reform Bill itself were a sufficient guide to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of politics.

The Nasik Murder

The tale of assassinations is evidently not at an end; and it is difficult to believe that they will be until a more normal condition of things has been restored. The sporadic and occasional character of these regrettable incidents is sufficient to prove that they are not the work of a widespread Terrorist organisation, but of individuals or small groups raw in organisation and irresolute in action. The Anglo-Indian superstition of a great Revolutionary organisation like the Russian Revolutionary Committee is a romantic delusion. The facts are entirely inconsistent with it. What we see is that, where there is sporadic repression of a severe kind on the part of the authorities, there is sporadic retaliation on the part of a few youthful conspirators, perfectly random in its aim and objective. The Nasik murder is an act of terrorist reprisal for the dangerously severe sentence passed on the revolutionary versifier Savarkar. It is natural that there should have been many meetings in Maharashtra to denounce the assassination, but such denunciations do not carry

us very far. They have no effect whatever on the minds of the men who are convinced that to slay and be slain is their duty to their country. The disease is one that can only be dealt with by removing its roots, not by denouncing its symptoms. The Anglo-Indian papers find the root in our criticism of Government action and policy and suggest the silencing of the Press as the best means of removing the root. If the Government believe in this antiquated diagnosis, they may certainly try the expedient suggested. Our idea is that it will only drive the roots deeper. We have ourselves, while strongly opposing and criticising the actions and policy of the bureaucracy, abstained from commenting on specific acts of repression, as we had no wish to inflame public feeling; but to silence Nationalism means to help Terrorism. Our view is that the only way to get rid of the disease is to disprove Mr. Gokhale's baneful teaching that violence is the only means of securing independence, to give the people hope in a peaceful and effective means of progress towards that ideal, which is now the openly or secretly cherished ideal of every Indian, and to that end to organise peaceful opposition and progress within the law. If the Government can retrace their steps and remove the ban from lawful passive resistance and self-help and the Nationalist Party, while holding its ultimate political aim, will define its immediate objective within limits which a Radical Government can hereafter consider, we believe politics in India will assume a normal course under normal conditions. We propose to do our part; we will see whether the Government think it worth their while to respond. They ought to be able to understand by this time that Nationalism and not Moderatism is the effective political force in India.

Transvaal and Bengal

There are two crying grievances which have done more than anything else to embitter popular feeling against the authorities and in both cases the populations most directly affected have resorted to passive resistance as the only remedy open to them. The first is the gross and systematic oppression now being prac-

tised on the Indians in the Transvaal, the other the repression of national aspirations towards unity and self-development in Bengal, typified by Partition and Deportation. Nothing can be more inconsistent than the attitude taken by the Moderate Convention towards these two questions. They have telegraphed their sympathy with the heroic passive resistance of the Transvaal Indians; they have shown their sympathy with Bengal by boycotting our boycott. Eighteen thousand rupees were promised for the Transvaal Indians in the one scene of enthusiasm which relieved the depressed dullness of the proceedings, and although we have little hope that this spasmodic activity will be followed up by steady support, it is better than nothing. On the other hand the Bengal questions were left to be moved by Bengalis, the Partition to Sj. Bhupendranath, the Deportations to Mr. A. Chaudhury. A deputation was appointed by the Convention to proceed to lay the question of Partition once more before Lord Morley; and of whom, think you, the deputation is to consist ? Sj. Surendranath Banerji and Sj. Bhupendranath Bose. Not a single Moderate deputy is forthcoming from the whole of India to support Bengal even to this extent in its bitter and arduous struggle. Yet men are not ashamed to go from Bengal as self-elected delegates to a Convention which has disowned and dishonoured Bengal and which Bengal has disowned.