A Nation in Making/Appendix A

'The election of Babu Surendra Nath Banerjea by the Calcutta Corpora- tion, to a seat on the Bengal Legislative Council, completes happily. the first act of a drama of real life which at one time threatened to evolve in a painful tragedy.

'Mr. Surendra Nath, the greatest of our Indian orators, was many years ago recognized by his tutors in England, which he visited to compete for the Indian Civil Service, as one of the most talented and at the same time amiable and lovable young men with whom they had ever had to deal. He passed the examination with great credit and in due course re- turned to India as a member of the Covenanted Civil Service. All for a time went well. Then, certain charges of rendering untrue returns of the state of his files, with a view to concealing a certain laziness which was alleged to be his leading foible, were considered by the local Government to be of sufficient importance to require investigation by a special official Commission. The special Commission, thus appointed, found that certain irregularities were proved against him, and the Government then and there dismissed him from the service.

'Now in the first place, many then in India, ourselves among the number, who had the opportunity of seeing all the papers, while not dissenting as regards most of the facts that the Commission found to be established, differed altogether as to the interpretation to be placed upon them, and held, and still hold, that Babu Surendra Nath was guilty of nothing more than a certain carelessness and laziness, that might well have been passed over, in a quite young officer, with a mild rebuke, and an exhortation to be more zealous in future. But putting this aside, the judges them- selves—and one of these repeated this to us only last week—considered that even for the faults that they held to have been established, suspension from promotion for a year would have been an adequate punishment, and no one, not even Suredra Nath himself, was more astonished than were these judges when the terrible sentence of expulsion from the service was pronounced against him by the Government.

'To English readers it is necessary to explain that Mr. Surendra Nath was one of the pioneers of the Indians into the Covenanted Civil Service. Almost throughout the bureaucracy, the admission of Indians within their sacred pale was viewed with the utmost jealousy and disapproval, and this summary expulsion of one of the most distinguished of the invaders was utilized as the basis for pacans glorifying the British officials and their foresight in opposing the introduction of Indian colleagues. Virtually, what all the Anglo-Indians said was this, "Oh yes, clever enough, but just as we told you, a d———d set of rogues, utterly unfit for the Civil Service, the noblest, most upright, and most essentially gentlemanly service in the world. ​Here is the crack man of the Indians, and Government has to expel him before he has been three years in the service!"

'How far this widespread feeling had any share in bringing about the monstrous sentence passed upon poor Surendra we cannot say, but certainly it did prevent any fair hearing for his appeals for justice and mercy. He protested and appealed, as did thousands of his countrymen for him, but all in vain.'

'What to those of us who were impartial in the matter seemed to cast a very lurid light on the transaction was this. Not long after the events ahove referred to, an English Covenanted Civilian was found guilty, by the officers appointed to investigate his case, of offences far more grave—involving pecuniary vagaries unparalleled in the modern history of the Service—than any that even his judges thought to be established against Mr. Surendra Nath. Was this officer dismissed the Service? No, he was compelled to refund a sum of money belonging to Government that had somehow found its way into his private accounts, and he was suspended for a period of twelve or fifteen months, thereby suffering a considerable loss of salary for the time, but almost immediately on the expiration of the period of suspension, he, being a relative of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, was jobbed into the favourite, and one of the highest paid, appointments in the province, an appointment to which, even had there been nothing against him, he would not have been entitled either by standing in the Service or ability.

'The establishment of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress has rendered the unpunished perpetration of any similarly atrocious job at the present time almost impossible, but it illustrates the very different modes in which Indians and Europeans have been systematically dealt with by the Indian officials; and the fates of these two officials are thoroughly characteristic examples of the spirit which has for the last quarter of a century pervaded the majority of the bureaucracy.'

'In the meantime how fared it with Surendra Nath? Crushed, utterly. disgraced, and almost a pauper (for nearly all his means had been expended on his visit to England and his education there) had he committed suicide in despair, who could have marvelled? But, like the brave man and dear good fellow that he is, he set himself to the nobler task of fighting out the battle to the last, and living down the injustice that thus clouded his early years, and disproving by his life the mistaken estimate that had been formed of his character.

​'Few in England can realize the almost hopeless character of the struggle, it: India's official-ridden land, of one under the official ban seeking once more to recover a decent position in public life. For years Mr. Surendra Nath fought on like Grant, determined to fight along this line until death or victory crowned his efforts. He founded a school and taught in it; he started a paper and both edited and managed it; he spoke at every popular meeting and established his reputation for those oratorical powers which, inter alia, so endear him to his countrymen. But for long he made little or no progress, though he bravely still kept his head above the waters and swam on in dogged earnestness.

'Truly is it said that all comes to him who knows how to wait. Suddenly for Surendra Nath appeared the Deux ex machina—to cut the knots of the cords of neglect and disgrace in which he was bound—appeared in the shape of the Calcutta High Court, a bench of which clapped him into prison on a charge of contempt of court, in consequence of certain editorial comments of his on their proceedings. Then the tide turned; backed up by a majority of his fellow-citizens, his school widened into the largest independent college in India; his paper, the Bengalee, became gradually acknowledged as one of the very best and most just and moderate papers in the country. Elected to the Calcutta Corporation, his industry, his integrity and uncompromising independence extorted first the admiration and finally won the confidence of even the official Chairman of the Corporation; and now his long years of resolute labour have been fitly crowned by his election by that Corporation as their first representative to the Legislature—a representation to which his magnificent oratory has not a little contributed, though indirectly, to extort from an unwilling and retro- grade Government.

'Surely this story is a noble one, instinct with noble lessons; but best of all is the fact to which all of us privileged to call him friend can testify; that never amidst all his labours, trials, and sufferings has he ever varied in his love for, and loyalty to, Great Britain; never has he spoken bitterly or unreasonably even of those who condemned him. He has ever accepted his troubles as the decree of Fate, an evil fate that it behoved him to fight against—a fate he has fought against and defeated.

'Long may his triumph last! long may he live to enjoy the fruit of his great courage and his manly perseverance! it will not be many years. we hope, before he sits upon the Viceregal Council; and as time runs on a younger generation shall hail him in the British Parliament, where we may hope that his magnificent gift of cratory may avail to awaken the House to some sense of India's wrongs; some fixed and honourable resolution to see justice at last fairly meted out to India's people.