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British Protection or Self Protection
THERE are two superstitions which have driven such deep root into the mind of our people that even where the new spirit is strongest, they still hold their own. One is the habit of appealing to British courts of justice; the other is the reliance upon the British executive for our protection. The frequent recurrence of incidents such as the Mymensingh and Comilla disturbances will have its use if it drives into our minds the truth that in the struggle we have begun we cannot and ought not to expect protection from our natural adversaries. It is perfectly true that one of the main preoccupations of the executive mind has been the maintenance of order and quiet in the country, because a certain kind of tranquillity was essential to the preservation of an alien bureaucratic control. This was the secret of the barbarous system of punishments which make the Indian Penal Code a triumph of civilised savagery; of the license and the blind support allowed by the Magistracy to a phenomenally corrupt and oppressive Police; of the doctrine of no conviction no promotion, which is the gospel of the Anglo-Indian executive, holding it better that a hundred innocent should suffer than one crime be recorded as unpunished. This was the reason of the severity with which turbulent offences have always been repressed, of the iniquitous and oppressive system of punitive Police and of the undeclared but well-understood Police rule that any villager of strong physique, skill with weapons and active habits should be entered in the list of bad characters. By a rigid application of these principles the bureaucracy have succeeded in creating the kind of tranquillity they require. The Romans created a desert and called the result peace; the British in India have destroyed the spirit and manhood of the people and call the result law and order. It is true, on the other hand, that there have been exceptions to the promptness and severity with which turbulence of any kind is usually dealt with; and the most notable is the supine-
Page-215 ness and dilatoriness, habitually shown by the authorities, in dealing with outbreaks of Mahomedan fanaticism and the gingerly fashion in which repression in such cases is enforced. Fear is undoubtedly at the root of this weakness. The bureaucracy are never tired of impressing the irresistible might of British supremacy on the subject populations, but in their own hearts they are aware that that supremacy is insecure and without root in the soil; the general upheaval of any deep-seated and elemental passion in the hearts of the people might easily shatter that supremacy as so many others have been shattered before it. The one passion which in past times has been proved capable of so upheaving the national consciousness in India is religious feeling; and outraged religious feeling is therefore the one thing which the bureaucracy dreads and the slightest sign of which turns their courage into nervousness or panic and their strength into paralysed weakness. The alarm which the Swadeshi movement created was due to this abiding terror; for in the Swadeshi movement, for the first time patriotism became a national religion, the name of the motherland was invested with divine sacredness and her service espoused with religious fervour and enthusiasm. In its alarm Anglo-India turned for help to that turbulent Mahomedan fanaticism which they had so dreaded; hoping to drive out poison by poison, they menaced the insurgent religion of patriotism with the arming of Mahomedan prejudices against what its enemies declared to be an essentially Hindu movement. The first fruits of this policy we have seen at Mymensingh, Serajgunge and Comilla. It was a desperate and dangerous, and might easily prove a fatal, expedient; but with panic-stricken men the fear of the lesser danger is easily swallowed in the terror of the greater. It should not therefore be difficult to see that the demand for official protection in such affairs as the Comilla riots is as unpractical as it is illogical. The object of modern civilised Governments in preserving tranquillity is to protect the citizen not only in the peaceful pursuit of his legitimate occupations but in the public activities and ambitions natural to a free people; the Government exists for the citizen, not the citizen for the Government. But the bureaucracy in India is only half-modem and
Page-216 semi-civilised. In India the individual, — for there is no citizen, — exists for the Government; and the object in preserving tranquillity is not the protection of the citizen but the security of the Government. The security of the individual, such as it is, is only a result and not an object. But the security of the Government, if by Government we understand the present irresponsible bureaucratic control, is directly threatened by the Swadeshi movement; for the declared object of that movement is Swaraj, which means the entire elimination of that control. To ask the bureaucracy, therefore, to protect us in our struggle for Swaraj is to ask it to assists in its own destruction. This plain truth is obviously recognised by the officials of the Shillong Government. The attitude taken up by the Magistrates of Mymensingh and Comilla was identically the same; they saw no necessity for interfering; the Hindus by their Swadeshi agitation had brought the Mahomedan storm upon themselves and must take the consequences. The unexpressed inference is plain enough. The bureaucratic "constitution", under which we are asked to carry on "constitutional" Government, assures us British peace and security only so long as we are not Swadeshi. The moment we become Swadeshi, British peace and security, so far as we are concerned, automatically come to an end, and we are liable to have our heads broken, our men assaulted, our women insulted and our property plundered without there being any call for British authority to interfere. The same logic underlies the imputation of the responsibility for the riot to Babu Bepin Chandra Pal's inflammatory eloquence, which was made, we believe, in both instances and in this last has received the support of the loyalist press. Whom or what did Bepin Babu inflame? Not the Mahomedans to attack the Hindus certainly, — that would be too preposterous a statement for even an Anglo-Indian Magistrate to make, — but all Indians, Hindus and Mahomedans alike, to work enthusiastically for Swadeshi and Swaraj. By raising the cry of Swadeshi and Swaraj, then, we forfeit the protection of the law. Stated so nakedly, the reasoning sounds absurd; but, in the light of certain practical considerations we can perfectly appreciate the standpoint of these bureaucrats. Arguing as philo-
Page-217 sophers, they would be wrong; but arguing as bureaucrats and rulers of a subject people, their position is practical and logical. The establishment of Swaraj means the elimination of the British bureaucrat. Can we ask the British bureaucrat to make it safe and easy for us to eliminate him? Swadeshi is a direct attack on that exploitation of India by the British merchant which is the first and principal reason of the obstinate maintenance of bureaucratic control. The trade came to India as the pioneer of the flag; and the bureaucrat may reasonably fear that if the trade is driven out, the flag will leave in the wake of the trade. With that fear in his mind, even apart from his natural racial sympathies, can we ask him to facilitate the expulsion of the trade? On the contrary, the official representative of the British shop-keeper is morally bound, be he Viceroy, Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary of State or be he a mere common District Magistrate, to put down Swadeshi by the best means in his power. Sir Bampfylde thought violence and intimidation, Gurkha Police and Regulation lathis the very best means; Mr. Morley believes Swadeshi can be more easily smothered with soft pillows than banged to death with a hard cudgel. The means differ; the end is the same. At present the bureaucracy have two strings to their bow — general Morleyism with the aid of the loyalist Mehtaite element among the Parsis and Hindus; and occasional Fullerism with the aid of the Salimullahi Party among the Mahomedans. With the growth of the new spirit and the disappearance of a few antiquated but still commanding personalities, the former will lose its natural support and the latter will be left in possession of the field. But we know by this time that Salimullahism means a repetition of the outbreaks of Mymensingh, Serajgunge and Comilla, and the attitude of the Comilla heaven-born will be the attitude of most heaven-borns wherever these outbreaks recur. It is urgently necessary therefore that we should shake off the superstitious habit of praying for protection to the British authorities and look for help to the only true, political divinity, the national strength which is within ourselves. If we are to do this effectually, we must organise physical education all over the country and train up the rising generation not only in the moral strength and courage for which Swadeshism has given us the mate-
Page-218 rials, but in physical strength and courage and the habit of rising immediately and boldly to the height of even the greatest emergency. That strength we must train in every citizen of the newly-created nation so that for our private protection we may not be at the mercy of a Police efficient only for harassment, whose appearance on the scene after a crime means only a fresh and worse calamity to the peaceful householder; but each household may be a protection to itself and when help is needed, be able to count on its neighbour. And the strength of the individuals we must carefully organise for purposes of national defence, so that there may be no further fear of Comilla tumults or official Gurkha riots disturbing our steady and rapid advance to national freedom. It is high time we abandoned the fat and comfortable selfish middle-class training we give to our youth and make a nearer approach to the physical and moral education of our old Kshatriyas or the Japanese Samurai.
Bande Mataram, March 18, 1907
Says the Englishman: —
It is interesting and to the man with a wicked sense of the ludicrous not unamusing to see the heroism with which various Bengali papers call upon the nations of India to arise, fling out the Feringhee, and establish vast secretariats replete with fat billets in which, secured by the warlike races, sixty million sons of the Lower Provinces will dream and scribble for the benefit of the sixty million. "Motherland" is sadly of opinion that but for the system of education forced upon India, and the presence of Indians in Government Service, foreign dominion in India would be impossible and the "male family members" of its editor's tribe would all be Togos and Kurokis. Bande Mataram has "found out the natural antagonism between a handful of aliens and the oppressed and down-trodden children of the soil", and yearning heroically for the inevitable struggle to come, sniffing the battle afar off snorts, "if the aliens are determined to preserve their own superiority, let them make a fresh attempt and see how
Page-219 events turn out". Other papers look back with regret upon the glorious deeds of the Spartan warriors who, Heraclidae and Bayards all, filled Bengal before the recreant English, in coward fashion seduced the people to the paths of peace. All express ardent longings for the coming of the day of Armageddon when the strong man armed will wake from his poppied sleep and a wave 400 million strong will blot out the white specks who think that they govern India. In the meanwhile, we would commend to the attention of our militant friends of the perfervidly patriot press the moral to be drawn from the little drama in Market Street on Sunday. The lads became possessed of a loaded double-barreled pistol — they may have borrowed it from the armoury of some hopeful patriot. They took it to a tinsmith, and he got playing with it. It went off and a woman was shot in the back. A crowd collected and one man picked up the weapon which went off again and shattered his hand. There was nearly a panic and at length a string was tied to the pistol butt, and it was dragged to the police station. The two boys who had brought the pistol ran away. There is no need to labour the moral, but revolutions are more dangerous than loaded pistols and none can tell who will get badly hurt. All that can be predicted with safety is that the real authors of the trouble will get away early. "The wicked sense of the ludicrous" has become a little too keen in the Englishman. It is no doubt ludicrous that anybody should question the Englishman's natural right to hold down others. It is no doubt ludicrous that two Bengali boys in their teens, only lads according to the Englishman's own version, should not know the use of a loaded double-barreled pistol. It is far more ludicrous that a Bengali crowd should not know what a gun is like when the benign Government has made it penal even for respectable gentlemen to be in possession of that formidable weapon. It is still more ludicrous that the Bengalis should fail to be heroes when the Englishman has advised the Government not to give them any offensive weapon lest their naked valour should suffer. It is ludicrous indeed that the Bengalis do not rise to their full height notwithstanding the faculties which the Englishman's countrymen have provided for them. There is no cowardice in emasculating a man in every way
Page-220 and then twitting him with his symptoms of weakness. The Englishman is making capital out of the Market Street incident. He thinks he has scored a point against the Revolutionists who, when their ignorant crowd get dazed at the going off of a pistol, "call upon the nations of India to arise and fling out the Feringhees". We have been further told that revolutions are more dangerous than loaded pistols; and if the worst comes to happen the real authors of the trouble will get away early. We are glad the Englishman has dissipated our ignorance. Till now, we were under the impression that revolutions were far easier than quill-driving in a Chowringhee office, under the electric fan attended by a thousand liveried servants. We have yet to learn that all Englishmen are Heraclidae and Bayards and there is none amongst them whom even our demoralised crowd would put to shame. Every stick is good enough to beat the dog with; and the Market Street incident has very rightly been pounced upon by the Englishman to pooh-pooh the aspirations of the perfervidly patriotic press. It is rather late in the day to smile the New Spirit away. The perfervid press have by this time learnt that two and two makes four and can be spared the Englishman's enlightenment as to what revolution is like. The Bengalis are quick-witted and only a day's experience, we believe, has befitted the Market Street crowd to take part in a revolution, if the Englishman can bring about any. The real truth is that so many gun-shot incidents are ominous to the Englishman. Bande Mataram, March 21, 1907
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