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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 3rd, 1908 }
The Question of the President
The union of the two parties in the Congress is now in sight. If the Convention Committee which is about to meet at Allahabad, will be guided by the country and not by the single will of one masterful and obstinate personality, the reconciliation of the parties is certain. When this desirable consummation is brought about, the next step will be the formation of a Constitution under which a harmonious working may be possible. We have already formulated what in our opinion should be the principles of the Constitution; the basis should be democratic and not oligarchic, the scope of the Congress should be widened so as to embrace actual work, the aim left indeterminate. It is the function of this body to gather around it the strength of the nation, and no creed should be promulgated which would have the result of excluding any section of the people. Taking these principles as our starting-point we shall proceed to discuss the chief questions which must be settled in order to ensure harmonious working between the two parties. The first issue which will present itself is the choice of a President. In his speech at the Federation Ground, Sj. Bipin Chandra Pal threw out a suggestion which he thought might obviate the difficulties which now attend the choice of a President. The present method of election is wholly unsatisfactory. A Reception Committee formed on the basis of wealth, not of democratic election is the primary authority; and the choice of the President is determined by a three-fourths majority which it is under present circumstances impossible to secure. Failing this impossibility, the All-India Congress Committee proceeds to nominate a President who may be the choice not of the country but of a party, and the
Page – 996 nomination is confirmed by the consent of the Congress which the Moderates declare to be a mere formality of election not implying any right of the delegates to withhold their consent or reverse the decision of the Committee. This method of election is about the most irrational, undemocratic and perversely unconstitutional which can be imagined. The whole value of a democratic constitution lies in the relation of the parts of the commonwealth to each other on the basis of a definite delegation of power by the people to its officials, magistrates or governing bodies. The present system eliminates the sovereignty of the people altogether; it sets up an irresponsible body temporarily created for a different purpose as the primary authority and creates in the All-India Committee a power of final election which makes it independent of the people. Srijut Bipin Chandra proposes to leave the election of the President to the Reception Committee, permitting the anomaly to continue for the sake of peace; but the voice of the people is not to be entirely silent. Inoperative in the election, it finds its opportunity in the criticism of the President's address which is to be open to discussion and amendment like the King's Speech in Parliament. This right of criticism and amendment will act as a check on the party proclivities of the President and tend to bring his speech to the colourless nature of a pronouncement embracing what the whole nation is agreed upon and omitting the points of difference which still divide men's minds. It is possible that an obstinate President might face the disagreeable certainty of a division on his address, in which case the check would not work; but this would be too unlikely a possibility to be a serious drawback to Sj. Bipin Chandra's proposal. The defect in it as a complete solution lies elsewhere. It provides against the misuse of the Presidential chair to deliver a party pronouncement wounding to the susceptibilities of a part of the audience, but it does not provide against the misuse of the Presidential authority to prevent the passing of resolutions disagreeable to the party to which the President for the year happens to belong. This can be done, however, without altering Bipin Babu's suggestion. There are two aspects of the Presidential position. In one he
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is the spokesman of the nation issuing a manifesto on its behalf
with regard to the questions of the day. The Moderate party usually tries to belittle this aspect by the contention that the
President's speech binds no one but himself. If that is so, then he has no right to take up a whole day of the brief time available for
work with utterances and opinions which are of no conceivable importance to the country or the world at large. Either the President's speech is a national manifesto and should be denuded of its party character, or it is a personal expression of opinion and
should be either eliminated altogether or reduced to the brief proportions of an acknowledgement of the honour done to him
in his election, so that the Congress may at once proceed to real business. In that case the President will become a speaker of the
House and nothing more, which he is at present, but only in his second and subordinate capacity. In this secondary capacity he
is master of the deliberations of the Congress and can, if he so wishes, try to rule out of court or declare as lost without division
any proposal or amendment which is displeasing to his party. Indeed, as everybody knows, it is this which has been at the root
of all the bitterness that has gathered round the question and which led to the fracas at Surat. It will not therefore be enough
to provide against the party character of the address, it is still more necessary to provide against the party use of the President's
authority. In the House of Commons the Speaker is a non-party man whose sole business is to interpret impartially the rules of
the House, and, if we are to avoid the repetition of such scenes as took place at Surat, the President of the Congress must be
compelled to assume the same character. The difficulties in the way are two: first, the absence of any well-understood rules of
procedure in the Congress; secondly, the absence of a strong public opinion which would unanimously resent the misuse of
his authority whatever party might be benefited. If the now unwritten procedure of the Congress is reduced to writing and
provision made for the right of delegates to lay their views in due form before the Congress, the first difficulty may be got rid
of, and a very necessary step taken in the democratisation of the Congress. But
the interpretation of the rules is always liable to
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misuse, as all free countries have found, and the only safeguard
against it is a strong sense of the supreme importance of free discussion which will override party feeling and discourage the
temptation to acquiesce in anything which will bring about a party victory. To develop such a feeling will take time. In the
meanwhile such checks should be devised as would both deter the President from misusing his authority and foster the growth
of a public sentiment such as governs the proceedings of free assemblies in free countries. Mr. Tilak at the Surat Congress
appealed to the Congress against the decision of the Chairman of the Reception Committee disallowing his notice for the adjournment of the election of the President. This right which is inherent in every free assembly, ought to be specifically recognized. We cannot find a better means of checking any tendency to abuse authority than the knowledge that an appeal lies against
one's decision to the whole assembly of the delegates, nor any stronger incentive to the growth of the public sentiment we
desire to create than the knowledge that the final responsibility for dishonest party tactics will rest on the whole body of the
delegates. If these precautions are added to the suggestion of Srijut Bipin Chandra the difficulties at present arising out of the
anomalous election of the President will largely disappear. At the same time, the anomaly remains and if we overlook it for
the present for the sake of peace, it should be clearly recognised that the present system can only be a temporary device pending
the growth of a definite electorate in the country which can take over the function of electing the President.
The suggestions we put forward therefore are that the President should be elected by a bare majority of the Reception
Committee or, failing a clear majority in favour of one name over all others combined, by the All-India Congress Committee; that
the President take his seat the moment the Congress sits, before the Chairman of the Reception Committee begins his address
of welcome; that the address of the President after delivery be open to formal discussion, in other words, that the Congress be
asked to accept the address and that the right of amendment be permitted; that the President be governed by definite rules of
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procedure, and that his decision be subject to an appeal to the
whole House.
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The Utility of Ideals
We notice that a correspondent of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, finding himself out of his depth at the Federation Ground Meeting, rather plaintively asks Bipin Babu to come down from the heights of philosophy and talk to the people of Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education. The correspondent seems to us at fault as to the bearings of the present situation. If Bipin Chandra
were an ordinary political leader and the present time an ordinary political epoch, his complaint would have been justified.
But we are in the first stages of a great revolution having its root in ideas, a revolution at least as far-reaching in its consequences
as that which ushered in the nineteenth century, and of that revolution Bipin Chandra is a prophet. To ask such a man to confine himself to particular measures and questions of immediate political interest is as if one were to have asked Mazzini to forget
his great teachings which revivified Italy, and confine himself to the questions of the day in Rome or Sardinia. Swadeshi, Boycott,
National Education are merely aspects, phases, expressions of the great ideas which Bipin Chandra preaches. There is nothing
new to be said about them, they have simply to be carried out. But the ideas which underlie them, the ideas of Indian resurgence, of the spiritualisation of the world through India, of the great awakening of the East and its ideals are of an infinite
application like the ideas of fraternity, liberty, equality which were preached in the French Revolution until every man had
them on his lips and in his heart. The prophet of the movement must repeat these ideas and popularise
them until they are on the lips and in the heart of every man, so that they
may act with the same dynamical force as the ideas of the eighteenth century
acted in France. To say that such teachings are too visionary for the
average Indian mind is to forget that this is the country of Vedanta where
the most ignorant have some idea of abstract
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truths which the European mind is too weak to cope with. If the
movement is to be vitalised, it will not be by preoccupation with details but by the execution of details in the light of the living
truths for which they merely seek to provide suitable conditions of fulfilment.
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Speech at Panti's Math
Aurobindo Ghose proposed the second resolution, which was to
express sympathy for Chidambaram Pillai and other leaders of the Tinnevelly riot at Madras and thanking them for the bravery
they have shown in defending the cause of Swadeshi. He hinted at the oppression of the European merchants backed by the
bureaucracy in putting down the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, which they could not do by any lawful means. He
ended by saying that there is no longer time for speaking or writing for the Motherland, but now is the time when the brain
is to be prepared for devising plans, the body for working hard and the hand for fighting out the country's cause.
Delivered at Panti's Math, Calcutta, on 3 April 1908. Noted down by a police agent
and submitted as evidence in the Alipore Bomb Case (1908
09).
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