A Nation in Making/Chapter 13

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13

The Indian National Congress, 1894-1896

In 1894, the Indian National Congress met at Madras. We chartered a steamer, and the Bengal delegates all went in a body. The steamer party was most useful, for the delegates were thrown together for several days; and, apart from the solidarity of life and thought that this promoted, it helped the discussion of public questions in a friendly and informal way, which is often a more effective, and certainly a less irritating, method of solution than formal debates.

On board the steamer we came to a most important decision affecting the holding of our Provincial Conferences. The Provincial Conferences are offshoots of the Congress, and, as Dr. Mohendralal Sircar observed while presiding over one of them, they are tributary streams which flow on to swell the great volume of the Congress movement. Hitherto our Provincial Conferences used to be held in Calcutta, but the movement was languid and did not seem to gather force or volume. We decided upon a change; and we came to the conclusion that it was desirable to alter the locale of the Provincial Conferences from year to year, and to hold them in different mofussil centres in different years. We resolved to invest the Conferences with the peripatetic character that belonged to the Congress. Babu Baikuntanath Sen of Berhampore, who was one of the delegates present, agreed to invite the Conference to Berhampore in 1895. The change gave a new impetus to the movement; and the Berhampore Conference of 1895, the first of its kind held in a mofussil town. was a great success. Since then the experiment has been repeated with increasing success; and, as I have observed in an early part of these Reminiscences, the Provincial Conferences in point of numbers and enthusiasm reflect the character of the great Congress gatherings.

Mr. Webb, an Irish Member of Parliament, presided over the ​Madras Congress of 1894. I believe that his election as President of the Congress did not meet with the approval of Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea. The latter's view was, and it is held by many, that the President of the Indian National Congress should, save in excep- tional cases, be an Indian.

I moved the Resolution on the Civil Service question. It was, and had been, my practice in the Congress to stick to the two questions in which I felt the deepest interest, namely, the wider employment of our countrymen in the higher offices in the public service, and the establishment of representative institutions. I felt that they lay at the root of all other Indian problems, and their satisfactory settlement would mean the solution of them all. If power were vested in us to legislate, and to control the finances, and to carry on the administration, through and by our own men, in accordance with principles laid down by our representatives, we should have self-government in the truest sense, and possess the amplest facilities for developing our powers and faculties and taking our legitimate place among the nations of the earth. Our goal was not power for the sake of self, but power for the accomplishment of the high destiny assigned to us by an Almighty Providence.

In Madras I was invited to address a students' meeting. I gladly responded to the invitation. The topic was 'Should students discuss or take part in politics?' The subject, owing to recent events, had assumed an importance all its own. It gave rise to an animated discussion in which Pundit Madan Mohan Malavya and Mr. Khaparde took part. Both of them opposed me at the time. That Mr. Khaparde should have expressed the views that he did, seems extraordinary in the light of his subsequent utterances. I expressed the view, and have stuck to it through life with the strength of a growing conviction, that students should certainly discuss politics, and may even, subject to proper control and guidance, take part in political work. I have never wavered in this opinion, even when it was fiercely assailed by high official authority and eminent public men. I have noticed with pleasure, and with pride, that some of those who sang a different tune have come round to my views. When the Calcutta University Institute was started I was asked to join it. At the first anniversary meeting I was invited by the Secretary, the late Mr. Wilson, to move the first Resolution proposing the adoption of the report. I said I would gladly do so, but subject to one condition, namely, that students should be allowed to discuss politics in the Institute. The matter ​was laid before Sir Charles Elliott, and he vetoed it. As a result I did not move the Resolution, nor did I join the Institute. The Institute does not indeed encourage the discussion of political questions, but high officials like Mr. Lyon and Mr. Cumming have from its platform expressed their views upon the great problems of Indian administration and self-government.

The unwisdom of excluding students from the discussion of political questions is being recognized. Some sort of politics, good or bad, they are bound to have; and if you will not teach them the right sort of politics, and by discussion with them lead them to it, you must make up your mind for the wildest vagaries among them, in a matter of vital concern to the student community. In the Unions of Oxford and Cambridge political questions are not tabooed, and political leaders are invited to open discussions. India is not England; but the student mind is the same all the world over; and the discipline of knowledge and of healthy discussion is bound to be as fruitful in the East as in the West.

While I hold this view, I deprecate all demonstrations of rowdy- ism on the part of some of our young men, who have displayed an unpardonable intolerance of views opposed to their own. Tolerance has been the immemorial creed of the Hindu race; and discipline is the soul of student-life. These deviations from ancient practice and the deep-rooted instincts of the Hindu student consti- tute a serious menace to cur orderly political progress. I am afraid that both in our homes and in our educational institutions the bonds of discipline have been relaxed, and a spirit of disorder is gaining ground. I can only hope that it is a temporary phase, a short-lived development, which will pass away with the exciting causes that have given rise to it.

We returned home from Madras by the British India Steam Navigation Company's steamer Rewa. My friend, Mr. B. L. Gupta of the Indian Civil Service, and Miss Muller, who had adopted an Indian student, Mr. Ghose, were our fellow-passengers. Kali Prosanna Kabyavisarad, editor of the Hitabadi, was one of our party, and he used to entertain the European passengers on board with his card-tricks and his feats of jugglery. Visarad, whose versatility was wonderful, was a past master in this art. One of the most genial of men, a brilliant Bengalee writer, a poet of no mean order, a composer of songs of exquisite beauty and pathos, which thrilled the audiences at our Swadeshi meetings, it will be necessary for me to refer to him and his work at greater length later on. I ​was pressed by my fellow-passengers to address them on the subject of the Congress. My Indian friends joined in this request, and I gladly responded to their invitation. I spoke for over half an hour in the saloon, which was crowded with passengers, Captain Hansard, the captain of the steamer, presiding. There were a good many passengers who were not Englishmen; and I concluded my speech with an earnest appeal to them in the following words:

In the year 1895, I was for the first time elected President of the Indian National Congress. The Congress was held that year at Poona, the capital of the Deccan, and an important intellectual centre in the western presidency. Early in November, I received a wire from Mr. Mahadeo Govind Ranade offering me the Presidentship of the Congress. I replied the same day thankfully accepting the offer. In those days there was no eager competition, no canvassing for the honour. The Reception Committee selected the President, and their decision was acquiesced in without demur. If I remember rightly, it was in 1906 that the first signs of a contest for the Presidentship showed themselves. They culminated in the break-up of the Surat Congress in the following year, and the unhappy schism that followed. The contest was synchronous with the development of strong differences of opinion in the Congress camp soon after the Partition of Bengal, and the apparent failure of constitutional methods.

Mr. Ranade was, in regard to all public movements in the western presidency, the power behind the throne. A public servant, loyal to the Government, with that true loyalty, not born of personal motives, or of passing impulses, but having its roots in the highest considerations of expediency and the public good, he was the guide, philosopher and friend of the public men of the western presidency; and all public movements, were they political, social or religious, bore the impress of his masterful personality. I came in contact with him while quite young in my career as a public man. ​When I went to Poona in 1877 in connexion with the Civil Service question I was his guest. I was as much impressed by his great talents and his ardent patriotism, as by the simplicity of his domestic surroundings, and the lovableness and nobility of his personal character.

Having accepted the Presidentship, I applied myself to the task of preparing the presidential speech. It was Herculean work; and on both occasions—for I was honoured twice with this high office—I found it to be so. I had my professorial duties in the College. I was in sole charge of the Bengalee newspaper. I had my municipal work to attend to, for I was then a member of the Calcutta Corpora- tion. I followed a simple plan. I used to return home to Barrack- pore every day by two o'clock in the afternoon, and start writing my speech. I would allow no interruption of any kind to divert me from the steady pursuit of this programme. I would ruthlessly say 'No' to every intruder. Save only once. I remember my friend, Ashutosh Biswas, coming up to me at Barrackpore while I was engaged in this work, to canvass for my vote for a gentleman who stood as a candidate for the Vice-Chairmanship of the Calcutta Corporation. I could refuse nothing to Ashutosh Biswas. I said I could give him only ten minutes, and he did not take more than five.

For two hours every day, and from day to day, I was absorbed in this work, alone in my house, for my family were at the time at Allahabad owing to my boy's illness; and the speech grew until it became, I fear, one of the biggest ever delivered from the presi- dential chair of the Congress. After two hours' hard work at the speech I used to have my regular constitutional walk on the river- side for three-quarters of an hour, when the whole of what I had written would be thought over, repeated and corrected, and the corrections subsequently embodied in the manuscript. This work was continued for six weeks without interruption, with my mind centred on the performance with all the power of concentration of which I was capable. I delivered the whole of my speech without referring to any notes, except perhaps when there was a long string of figures. The delivery took over four hours, and I think I was able, during the whole of that time, to keep up, undiminished and without flagging, the attention of a vast assembly of over five thousand people.

I have often been asked to explain the secret of my being able to make long speeches without reference to a single note, and even to reproduce passages that I have thought over in my mind. Perhaps ​it is an incommunicable secret; the speaker himself hardly knows. Much depends upon the arrangement and upon the construction of the sentences. If the order be natural, logical and consistent, it is an aid to the memory. If the sentences are rhythmical, they imprint themselves on the mind, the cadence helping the memory. Lord Salisbury used to say that his finest sentences, as they occurred to him while preparing his speeches, burnt themselves upon his mind. That I believe is true of all who have practised the art of public speaking. After all, preparation is the great thing. It is indeed the one thing needed. Genius, as Carlyle has truly observed, is an infinite capacity for taking pains. A speech is not worth listening to, John Bright used to say, unless it has been carefully prepared. The great English orator would absent himself sometimes from Cabinet meetings, when preparing his more important speeches. It is constant preparation that fits you for the impromptu debate, that gives you the command of words, the readiness of resource, in a word the mental equipment of the accomplished debater. A successful debater is not necessarily a great orator. The qualifications of the orator are moral rather than intellectual. It is the emotions that inspire the noblest thoughts and invest them with their colour and their distinctive character.

Let no one aspire to be an orator who does not love his country, love her indeed with a true and soul-absorbing love. Country first, all other things next, is the creed of the orator. Unless he has been indoctrinated in it, baptized with the holy fire of love of country, the highest intellectual gifts will not qualify him to be an orator. Aided by them, he may indeed be a fluent debater, an expert in the presentment of his case, a fascinating speaker, able to please, amuse and even to instruct; but without the higher patriotic or religious emotions he will not possess the supreme power of moving men, inspiring them with lofty ideals and the passion for the worship of the good, the true and the beautiful. The equipment of the orator is thus moral, and nothing will help him so much as constant association with the master-minds of humanity, of those who have worked and suffered, who have taught and preached great things, who have lived dedicated lives, consecrated to the service of their country or of their God.

Addressing a body of young men, many, many years ago, on the art of public speaking, I said to them, 'You must live in a high and holy atmosphere fragrant with the breath of the gods. Burke, Mazzini, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohamed, Chaitanya, Ram Mohun ​Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, must be your constant companions. Your souls must be attuned to the pathos and the music of the Bande-Matarama.' All that is best and truest must form a part of the moral composition of the orator. Let him have it—in whatever measure he can, but he must have it—and the words will come gurgling from the fountains of the heart. His intellectual equipment, though important, is subsidiary. The moral takes precedence.

Among the intellectual qualifications to which I attach the utmost importance is the power of concentration. Gladstone possessed it in a pre-eminent degree. It is useful in all walks of life. To the orator, who can always live in the midst of his thoughts, arranging them for impressive presentment, the quality is especially valuable. I have zealously cultivated it through life and have found it a valuable aid to all my efforts. When a boy of only eleven years of age, I remember coming down in a boat to Calcutta from Manirampore near Barrackpore, our ancestral home. My father, my eldest brother, my cousin, the late Dwaraka Nath Banerjee, barrister-at- law, and one or two others were in the boat. They were engaged in a boisterous conversation. I had a lesson to prepare for my class; it was a verse consisting of a dozen lines, which I had to commit to memory. I sat in one corner of the boat, heedless of the talk that was going on, and by the time we reached Calcutta I was ready to repeat the verses. Every faculty grows with cultivation; and now when I am at work I am absolutely absorbed in it, insensible to all distraction, unless I am directly spoken to.

I may here be permitted to relate an incident in this connexion known only to myself and to some members of my family. When Queen Victoria died, I was invited by Lord Curzon, through my esteemed friend, Mr. Greer, then Chairman of the Corporation, to take part in the memorial meeting, which was to be held at the Town Hall. The Viceroy himself was to preside. Permission was given to me to select my own Resolution. The preparation of the speech, which in my opinion was one of the best I ever made, took me about an hour and a half. I sat down the evening before, at a table in one corner of a room about sixteen feet by twelve, at the other end of which were my children, playing and frolicking with all the ardour of children. Their frolics did not at all disturb me. I was absolutely insensible to their prattlings, and when I had finished the preparation of the speech I joined them.

My professorial work greatly helped me in my public speeches, for I had to teach the classics of the English language. Among ​them were the speeches and writings of Burke, Froude, Lord Morley, and others. I thus lived in constant association with the great masters of the English language and in close familiarity with their vocabulary and methods of thought, and to none do I owe a greater debt than to Edmund Burke, whose political philosophy has so largely moulded my own views about government and society. One of the most extraordinary things that the Calcutta University ever did was to interdict the writings of Burke. The ban has now been partly removed. I suppose the idea was, at least in the minds of some, that Burke taught revolutionary doctrines, and a learned counsel in the Dacca Conspiracy Case actually referred to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution in that light, forgetting that the book is the strongest and the most reasoned protest against revolutions of all kinds.

On my way to attend the Congress at Poona I halted for a day at Allahabad and stayed with my son-in-law, Colonel Mukerjee, who was then in medical charge of an Indian regiment, and who is now so well known as the author of A Dying Race. I repeated to him the peroration of my Poona presidential speech. He heard it and said, 'That speech has been twenty years in the making'. The remark struck me as one of extraordinary shrewdness and more or less of general application. It meant that my laborious performance covered a period of time far beyond what was actually taken up by the work. No improvisation is, or can be, productive of any really great effort, for there are no short cuts either in nature or in art. Even when there is improvisation in a great achievement in public speaking, it will often be found to have its roots in laborious efforts in a kindred field of work. The orator has laid by in the chambers of his mind a storehouse of noble thoughts and a fine vocabulary, ready at his command to form varied combina- tions. They move forward in serried procession, for him to pick and choose, or modify, for the deliverance of his message. Nature and his prepossessions predispose him to live and move and have his being in company with the immortals of the earth, breathing an atmosphere fragrant with their breath. His training and equipment are moral rather than intellectual. His heart inspires, his intellect obeys. Carlyle has observed that all great thoughts spring from the heart; and through the heart they work round the brain. It must be so in a special degree in the orator's work; for here heart speaks to heart and is the centre of the emotions which flow out to the audience and overwhelm them. Oratory indeed is reason incandescent ​with passion. It is love of country, love of humanity, decked forth in the fervid light and effulgence of the soul. It is the words that burn and glow and sparkle that alone can set the soul on fire; and it is the heart that touches the tongue with the celestial fire.

The presidential speech at Poona elicited warm encomiums. Sir Herbert Risley, himself an accomplished writer, wired to me to say that he greatly admired its perfect finish. The ovation that I received at Poona and elsewhere made a great impression in Calcutta. That a schoolmaster and an agitator should have been so honoured outside his own province, touched the gods of the official hierarchy. I myself was greatly moved by the cordiality of my reception. I can never forget the scene that took place at the pandal when I had finished my last concluding speech. I was familiar with Congress proceedings, and was ready with a speech that I intended to deliver at the termination of the session. I found that the atmosphere had become electric, seething with an exuber- ance of feeling for which even I was not prepared. I grasped the spirit of the situation; I cast aside the speech that I had prepared, and threw myself heart and soul into the full flood of the emotions that were swaying that vast audience. I was moved and carried away by the surging current. It was no longer a speaker inspiring an audience. It was the audience that moved and inspired the speaker. Truly a galvanic current was established between them and myself, and as I sat down, after my improvised speech (for here there was real improvisation)—as I sat down, the younger section of the audience rushed up the platform and were at my feet, eager to touch them and take the dust off them. For the moment glancing through the great past, the genius of which seemed now to stand revealed to me, I could realize the spirit that moved the ancestors of those young men, to found the greatest Hindu Empire of modern times. The memory of that day will never be effaced. It was one of the proudest in my life.

I returned to Calcutta, breaking journey at Allahabad, where my boy was dangerously ill. My friends, headed by Raja Benoy Krishna Deb Bahadur, had arranged a great demonstration for me at Sealdah railway station. I changed at Hughli and arrived at Sealdah via Naihati. The rush at the station was so great that the Raja fainted away, and it was with the utmost difficulty that I could get to my carriage.

Raja Benoy Krishna was a great friend of mine. My father and his, the late Maharaja Komal Krishna, were schoolfellows, and an ​hereditary bond of friendship subsisted between his family and mine. His brother, Maharaj Kumar Neel Krishna, and he were in one sense my political pupils. They early joined the Indian Association, took an interest in its proceedings, and developed a considerable aptitude for political work. Maharaj Kumar Neel Krishna, whose sincerity of purpose and nobility of character had raised high hopes in the minds of his friends, died early, to the great loss of his country, and the regret of his friends and of those who knew him. Raja Benoy Krishna, with intervals of interruption, followed in his brother's footsteps. He took a leading part in the agitation against the Calcutta Municipal Bill of 1897. He was the founder of the Parisad, or Academy of Bengalee Literature, and of that philanthropic institution known as the Benevolent Society. For me he had always a feeling of genuine kindness and affection. He helped me to start the daily Bengalee, in raising funds for the Ripon College building, and in all undertakings in which I sought his help. With the limitations imposed by his position and the traditions of his family, which rendered opposition to Government a matter of considerable difficulty, he was a valuable member of the Bengalee community, and his death in the prime of life was a grievous loss to me and the many interests with which he was associated.

The Indian National Congress was to be held in Calcutta in 1896, and we had heavy work before us. A Reception Committee was formed with Sir Romesh Chunder Mitter as its Chairman. It was a great thing to have secured the services of the eminent judge, who had now retired. He needed no persuasion, no pressure to join the Congress ranks. His sympathies with us were open and undisguised, though, like the late Mr. Justice Ranade, he was not able while still on the judicial Bench to associate himself closely with the Congress movement or to influence its deliberations. As Chairman of the Reception Committee, Sir Romesh Chunder Mitter made a notable speech. He asked me for some notes, which I gladly supplied him with; but his speech was his own in every sense, bearing in every line the impress of his views and of his personality. One of the most notable declarations made by him (and coming from him it had a value all its own) was that the educated community represented the brain and conscience of the country, and were the legitimate spokesmen of the illiterate masses, the natural custodians of their interests. To hold otherwise, said Sir Romesh Chunder Mitter, would be to presuppose that a foreign administra- tor in the service of the Government knows more about the wants ​of the masses than their educated countrymen. And he went on to add that it was true in all ages that 'those who think must govern those who toil; and could it be' he asked, 'that the natural order of things was reversed in this unfortunate country?' This claim is now practically admitted; and I need not waste words to justify it. But in those days it was still a matter of controversy, and the vigorous pleading of so eminent a man as Sir Romesh Chunder Mitter, who showed no partisan bias even in the advocacy of public interests, was necessary and useful. The trouble now, however, is of a different kind. The Indian public man, in the exuberance of his love for his own views, is apt to mistake his own opinion for that of the country, and his voice for the trumpet-organ of the masses. He too frequently talks of the country, all the while meaning himself and nobody else.

The year 1896 witnessed a further development in the Congress movement. Coming events cast their shadows before, and the industrial upheaval that was soon to find expression in the Swadeshi movement was heralded by a new departure for which the Congress was indebted to the foresight and organizing capacity of Mr. J. Chaudhuri. Mr. J. Chaudhuri may be regarded as the pioneer of the industrial movement in Bengal. He suggested (and I cordially supported his recommendation) that there should be an Industrial Exhibition in connexion with the Congress. The idea was started somewhat late, but we decided to give effect to it; and we did our best in the circumstances and with the resources at our disposal. We appealed to the Government for help, and I personally requested the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Woodburn, to open the exhibi- tion. I represented to him that it was a purely industrial movement, that an Englishman like Mr. Woodroffe, Advocate-General, had joined it, and that the Government might lend it their moral support by His Honour's opening the Exhibition. Such was the official attitude with regard to the Congress movement in those days that Sir John Woodburn did not see his way to complying with our request. He said, 'Mr. Banerjea, after all, your Exhibition is an annexe of the Congress. The political flavour is strong in it. I am sorry I cannot undertake to open your Exhibition.' The function was performed by the Maharaja of Cooch-Behar in a neat little speech.

Ten years later, when the Congress was held in Calcutta, an exhibition, also an annexe of the Congress, and organized on a much larger scale, was opened by Lord Minto, then Viceroy. ​Between 1896 and 1906, in the course of a decade, a marked change in the attitude of official opinion in regard to the Congress had taken place. We have seen how frankly hostile that opinion was to the movement in 1888. In 1890, the Bengal Government had circularized, directing that its officers should not attend the sittings of the Congress in Calcutta even as visitors, and that circular had to be withdrawn at the instance of the Government of India, to which an appeal was made by the Congress authorities. In 1891, when the Congress was held at Nagpore, the Chairman of the Reception Committee had approached Sir Anthony MacDonnell, then Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, to ascertain his attitude with regard to the Congress. Sir Anthony MacDonnell, who was an official out-and-out, but was not devoid of liberal instincts, said to him, 'Mr. ——— I shall not think the better or the worse of anybody who attends the Congress.'

The same Sir Anthony MacDonnell, when the Congress was held in 1899 and he was Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces, would not, as a plague measure, allow the Congress to be held anywhere in or near Lucknow, but located it at a distance of seven or eight miles from the city, amid sugar-cane and rice fields, where the delegates were tormented by flies during the day and by wild boars during the night. Visitors to Lucknow were not excluded from the city, nor segregated in this way. They were allowed access and residence, subject to the ordinary measures of precaution. But for some reason or other the delegates to the National Congress coming from plague-stricken areas could not be dealt with in this way. For safety, physical as well as, we presume, moral, they were excluded, isolated and segregated in this fashion. I lived at Barrackpore, which was not a plague-stricken area, but I had dear and esteemed friends among the delegates and I did not wish to be separated from the general body of my co-workers, but preferred to participate in their hardships and inconveniences. Kali Prosanna Kabyavisarad was suffering from fever; Kali Churn Banerjee was not in the best of health; Ambika Churn Majumder was one of our party. We were all in the same tent, and we tried to make the best of a bad and trying situation.

It is a different atmosphere now. One naturally enquires, what was it that contributed to bring about this change in the official mind and temper? The Congress had not changed its programme. Its ideals and its methods remained the same until its recent adoption of the principles of non-co-operation. It has never allowed ​itself to be sullied by intemperance of thought or language. It has always been conspicuous for dignity and self-restraint. In 1888, when it was fiercely assailed by official critics, as in 1906 when it was honoured by the Viceroy opening its Exhibition, it was the living organ of the legitimate aspirations of the Indian people, voiced by their chosen representatives with moderation and dignity. I again ask, what was it that contributed to the change in the official mind? I have no hesitation in saying that, apart from the general causes which make for what is true, it was the attitude of Lord Morley and his statesmanlike appreciation of the new spirit in India, that helped to clear the official atmosphere and to allay the prejudice in the official mind. The Civil Service is noted for its sense of discipline, its subordination of heart and soul to superior authority. An order issued or a principle laid down, or an opinion expressed by superior authority, is accepted by the rank and file with implicit acquiescence. The efficiency of the machinery of the Civil Service, almost semi-military in its temper and complexion, depends upon this quality. It is also perhaps its weakness. Speaking from his place in the House of Commons on the occasion of the Indian Budget debate in 1906 Mr. Morley said:

In the same vein and perhaps with greater emphasis he spoke of the new spirit in India of which the Congress was the expression. 'Every one', said he, in the same speech from which I have quoted, 'every one—soldiers, travellers and journalists—they all tell us that there is a new spirit in India. Be it so. How could you expect anything else? You have now been educating the people for years with Western ideas and literature. You have already given them facilities for communication with one another. How could you suppose that India could go on just as it was when there was little higher education, when the contact between one part and another was difficult and infrequent? How could you think that all would go on as before? We should be untrue to the traditions of Parliament and to those who have from time to time and ​from generation to generation been the leaders of the Liberal party, if we were to show ourselves afraid of facing and recognizing the new spirit with candour and consideration.'

Views such as these, expressed by the highest Indian authority, coupled with the growing power of Indian public opinion, and the persistent moderation of the Congress leaders, could not but produce a profound influence upon official opinion in India; and the changed attitude was confirmed and strengthened by the whole tenor of Lord Hardinge's administration. In 1911, Lord Hardinge received a Congress deputation which had been refused by Lord Curzon a few years before, and in 1914 Lord Pentland visited the Congress in Madras.