|
Facts and Opinions Volume I - Jan. 8, 1910 - Number 27 Sir Edward Baker's Admissions
Of all the present rulers of India Sir Edward Baker is the only one who really puts any value on public opinion. He has committed indiscretions of a startling character, he has loyally carried out a policy with which he can have no heartfelt sympathy, but his anxiety to conciliate public opinion even under these adverse circumstances betrays the uneasiness of a man who knows the force of that power even in a subject country and feels that the ruling class are not going the best way to carry that opinion with them. While all the other provincial Governors have confined their inaugural speeches to the most empty platitudes, he alone has sought to speak as a man would who feels the difficulties of a perplexing situation. But we do not think he has helped the Government by his speech. It is in fact a series of damaging admissions. He admits that the exclusion of the Calcutta men by the restrictions attending Municipal election is deliberate, and he cannot be ignorant that this means the exclusion of the leading brains and the most influential personalities in the country. He admits that the Government have taken care to preclude the chance of being face to face with a numerically strong and robust opposition in the Council. If so, the Councils are not a mirror of the political forces in the country, not a free popular assembly, but a carefully limited council of notables friendly to the existing state of things. Whether the Government are to blame or not for guarding their interests by this manipulation of electorates, is quite another question. All we say is that they have so guarded themselves and, as a result, these Councils may be the kind of advisory body the Government want, they are not the popular assemblies, mirrors of public opinion and instruments of rapid political development, which the people want. Sir Edward Baker says that no Government can be expected to run the risk of putting itself into a permanent
Page – 341 minority, — such a state of things cannot be allowed for a day. We quite agree. That is what we have been telling the people for a very long time. Unfortunately, very different hopes and expectations were raised in the minds of Moderate politicians and communicated by them to the people at large. If the eulogies of the Reform Scheme and the benevolent intentions of Government had been couched in less glowing language, with less of misleading fervour, the present disappointment, irritation and revolt would have been avoided. It is much the best thing for a Government circumstanced like ours to be quite frank and say from the beginning, "This much we mean to give; farther you must not expect us to go."
The point which Sir Edward Baker, in common with all Anglo-Indian publicists, makes of the distinction between Calcutta and the Mofussil, is quite justifiable if the Councils are to be only a superior edition of the local Municipalities out of all relation with the political actualities of the country. It is an indisputable fact that a great deal of the best in the life of Bengal gravitates towards the capital and the Partition of Bengal has made no difference in this powerful tendency. Calcutta is to Bengal what Paris is to France. It is from Calcutta that Bengal takes its opinions, its inspirations, its leaders, its tone, its programme of action. One very important reason for this almost inalienable leadership is the greater independence which men enjoy in Calcutta, another is the higher organisation of life, resources, activity in this great centre of humanly. So long as these causes exist, the supremacy of Calcutta will remain. The object of the electoral rules is to destroy the supremacy of the Calcutta men, whose independence and freedom of speech and action are distasteful to the instincts of the dominant bureaucrat. The attempt to decentralise the political life of Bengal is not new. In the earlier days of the new movement the Nationalist leaders made strenuous appeals to [the Mofussil centres to] liberate themselves from Calcutta domination and become equal partners in a better
Page – 342 organised provincial activity. They thought it possible then because, in the first surge of the movement, the Mofussil centres in East Bengal had developed a young political vitality and independence far in excess of the old vitality and independence of Calcutta. But even in these favourable circumstances it was found that, though the districts far outran the capital in the swiftness and thoroughness of their activity, they always waited for an intellectual initiative and sanction from the leaders in Calcutta. Barisal under Sj. Aswini Kumar Dutta was the exception. What the people themselves could not accomplish under the most favourable circumstances, the Government is not likely to effect merely by excluding the Calcutta leaders from the Council. The very conditions of the problem forbid it. They can only disturb the present equilibrium by making political life in the Mofussil as free and well-organised as the life of Calcutta. By their own action they have destroyed such freedom and organisation as had been created. Nor can they make their Councils the instrument of so vital a change unless they also make them the centre of the political life of Bengal. This they can only do by a large literate electorate, free elections and effectiveness of the popular vote. But, at present, that is not what the bureaucrats desire. They do not desire a free and vigorous political life evenly distributed throughout the country, — that is the Nationalist ideal. They desire to foster a faint political life confined to the dignified and subservient elements in the country while killing the independent popular life, which finds its centre in this city, by an official boycott. They forget that artificial means are helpless against natural forces.
Sir Edward complains strongly of the attribution of motives to the Government in the matter of the non-official majority. He argues in effect that the non-official majority cannot be described as unreal or a sham merely because the electorates are so arranged as to return a majority of men favourable to Government. The majority is a non-official majority, but it is not a popu-
Page – 343 lar majority. Sir Edward answers that it was never intended to be a popular majority. It was meant only to represent the "honest" public opinion which is capable in most things of seeing eye to eye with the Government; all the rest of public opinion is not honest and therefore unfit for representation. A most delightful specimen of bureaucratic logic ! The plain question rising above all sophisms is this, is the Government aware or is it not that the great body of educated opinion in India demand a change in the system of Government involving popular control in the administration, a change which Lord Morley, with all Anglo-India to echo him, has declared impossible ? If the Government doubts it, dare they take a plebiscite of literate opinion on the question ? They dare not, because they know what the result will be. Is not this knowledge the reason for so manipulating the electorates that they shall mainly represent special interests easily influenced by the Government and not the mass of the literate population ? We do not charge the Government with a breach of faith or a departure from their original promises. We do say that the Reforms are purely a diplomatic move to strengthen the Government and weaken the popular interest. Sir Edward stigmatises the popular sentiment which sees an opposition of interest all along the line between the bureaucracy and the people, as dishonest and unfit for self-government. What of the very fundamental opposition of interest we have pointed out ? It is easy to fling epithets; it is not so easy to disprove facts. We do not wish to be unfair to anyone and we acknowledge that Sir Edward Baker has shown a liberality of purpose far superior to that of any other provincial ruler. If there were a chance of any of the Councils being a genuine popular assembly. Sir Edward's creation would have the best chance. But it is not that and cannot be. If he is satisfied with its present composition, his admiration is not shared by the people of this country. He says in effect that it is quite as dignified as any previous Council. We agree, even more so. But it is not dignity to which popular sentiment is advancing, it is democracy. If the Councils do not provide a channel for the advance of that sentiment, it will seek other means of self-accomplishment.
Page – 344
The amazing lecture given by the Satrap of the Punjab to the Maharaja of Darbhanga and the other gentlemen who were ill-advised enough to approach him with their expressions of loyalty and of abhorrence at the Nasik murder, is a sample of the kind of thing Moderate politicians may expect when they approach the bureaucracy with their "co-operation". What it is precisely that the various Satraps want of their long-suffering allies, we cannot conjecture. Some seem to want, like Sir George Clarke, the entire cessation of political agitation, because the political agitator is the spiritual grand-uncle of the political assassin. Others seem to want the entire Indian community to leave their ordinary avocations and turn detectives, in order to supply the deficiencies of that costly police force through which the bureaucracy governs the country. But Sir Louis Dane's diatribe seems difficult to account for except on the supposition that he is a disciple of Hare Street and believes that the whole population of India, from the Maharaja of Darbhanga to the grocer and the shoemaker, know the personality, intentions, plans and secret operations of the Terrorists and conceal them from the Government out of innate cussedness or invincible sympathy with the assassins. It is difficult to have patience with the insensate folly which persists in these delusions and, by lumping all political agitation into one category, does its best to bring about the calamity which it imagines. The fewer rulers like Sir Louis there are in this country, the better for the nation and the Government; for they are the best allies that Terrorism has.
Once more rumours of deportation are rife, proceeding this time from those pillars of authority, the police. It seems that these gentlemen have bruited it abroad that twenty-four men prominent and unprominent are within the next six or seven days to be deported from Bengal, and so successfully has the noise of the
Page – 345 coming coup d'etat been circulated that the rumour of it comes to us from a distant corner of Behar. It appears that the name of Sj. Aurobindo Ghose crowns the police list of those who are to be spirited away to the bureaucratic Bastilles. The offence for which this inclusion is made, is, apparently, that he criticises the Government, by which we presume it is meant that he publicly opposes the Reforms. It is difficult to judge how much value is to be attached to the rumour, but we presume that at least a proposal has been made. If we are not mistaken, this will make the third time that the deportation of the Nationalist leader has been proposed by the persistence of the police. The third time is supposed to be lucky, and let us hope it will be the last. The Government ought to make up its mind one way or the other, and the country should know, whether they will or will not tolerate opposition within the law; and this will decide it. Meanwhile, why does the thunderbolt linger ? Or is there again a hitch in London ?
Page – 346 |