A Nation in Making/Chapter 15

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15

The Struggle for Recognition

In January, 1898, my house at Simultolla was completed and I began to take that annual rest (and this was for some time repeated twice a year) to which I attribute much of the health and vigour that I possess at a time of life when so few in India are fit for work. Simultolla is a health resort, 217 miles from Howrah on the Chord line. In 1894, when my son, then a boy of about eight months, was ill, Rai Kedarnath Chatterjee Bahadur, a well-known medical practitioner at Serampore, recommended for him a change to Simultolla. I took his advice and came to the place with the boy and the other members of my family.

At that time there was in the station only one house, which belonged to Babu Sarat Chandra Mitter, who very kindly placed it at my disposal. My brother, who was suffering from malarious fever, accompanied us. The house was insufficient for our accommodation, and we had to remove to Allahabad. I was charmed with the beauty of the scenery and was benefited by the salubrity of the climate. I made up my mind to be on the look-out to secure if possible a site whereon to build a house and make it an annual resort for rest and change.

Nothing in England had impressed me so much as the annual migrations during the summer to the seaside towns and the European Continent; and, while yet a mere youth, I wrote to my father in 1868 noticing this feature of English life and complaining of its absence among our people. Madhupur had not then become a health resort; and our people during the great Durga Puja vacation stayed at home, celebrating the Pujas and enjoying the festivities, but neglecting the golden opportunity that the holidays presented for rest and change. Later on a change to Madhupur and Baidyanath, and sometimes to Darjeeling, grew to be popular, and I had the proud satisfaction of strengthening the popular feeling ​and the popular movement by helping to make Simultolla a health- resort for the middle classes.

In 1897, my friend, the late Babu Hem Chunder Roy, whose early death we all deplore as a loss to his family and the national party, obtained for me a plot of land on the ridge, one of the finest sites at Simultolla. It was part of a plot secured by the late Babu Behari Lal Chatterjee, then practising as a pleader at Baidyanath. He distributed the plot, which covered the whole of the ridge, among his friends, including Sir Rajendra Nath Mookerjee, the late Babu Pulin Behari Sircar, and others. Having got the site, I started the building without loss of time, and it was ready for occupation in January, 1898.

Mine was the first house built and within the last twenty years Simultolla has become a highly popular health resort. Lord Sinha, Sir Rajendra Nath Mookerjee and others have all built houses there, where they occasionally reside. To many it has given health and life. The late Bhabanath Sen, a well-known municipal con- tractor and a leader of the Kayastha community in Calcutta, while in the grip of a deadly malady prolonged his life by residing here for six months every year.

I have always looked forward to my stay at Simultolla with interest and expectancy, and have always been benefited by the change. It is not that I pass my days in idleness, gazing upon the beautiful scenery around or reflecting upon the memories of the past. Here I composed my presidential speech for the Ahmedabad Congress of 1902. Here I wrote more than one-third of these reminiscences. Freed from the distraction of visitors, canvassing for appointments or soliciting advice, I pursue my work amid con- ditions of health and ease which are a comfort and a stimulus. Here I take rest, but enjoy it all the more with the leaven of work. I do not believe in absolute idleness, with the intellect lying fallow or in a condition of comatose torpor. Moderate intellectual work even in times of absolute rest has been with me a physical tonic, a bracing stimulant which has sent the blood coursing through the veins, chasing away all impurities, stimulating the flow of life and the vital energies through the obscurest corners of the physical system. I believe in a rest-cure, diversified by moderate work. I do not believe in hurried peregrinations from place to place, so popular with so many of our health-seekers.

The year 1898 was marked by a grim tragedy, which at the time roused a considerable measure of public attention among the Indian ​community, especially in Bengal. The tragedy to which I refer was the murder of Dr. Suresh Chunder Sircar of Barrackpore. Dr. Suresh Chunder Sircar was a medical man with a large practice. He was held in great esteem for his skill and his kindness to his patients. He had also some European patients. They too recognized his worth and his skill. He had a dispensary near the Barrackpore station. One night in April, 1898, while he was about to leave for home, after finishing his day's work, three European soldiers, more or less the worse for liquor, called at his dispensary. His carriage was ready, and he was about to start. Some words were interchanged; an altercation ensued; and the European soldiers brutally attacked him. He had to be removed to hospital, where he died within twenty-four hours.

After the murderous attack upon the doctor, his assailants ran away, chased by a crowd whom the shouts and the shricks of the doctor had brought to the spot. They ran as fast as their legs could carry them. The excitement of drunkenness had apparently passed away, amid the horrors of the scene which they had helped to create. The doctor lay weltering in a pool of blood, but there were some among the crowd who chased the soldiers. Two of them ran back to the barracks, leaving a helmet behind, which the pursuers picked up; and a third, fortunately. for the ends of justice, took shelter inside a mosque, which was immediately closed from outside. The police were informed and brought in. They caught the man red-handed within the mosque.

The doctor was my family physician, a dear and esteemed friend. I heard the details of the tragedy with grief and indignation. The doctor lay in the hospital close to my house; but in my eager desire to bring the offenders to justice I hurried off, without seeing my dying friend, to Alipore, a distance of sixteen miles, to interview the magistrate with a view to moving him to take prompt action for the punishment of the perpetrators of this dastardly outrage. For cases of this kind, having regard to the temper of European juries in those days, had to be carefully attended to even from the start.

The magistrate was Mr. Charles Allen, an officer of great promise, who, if he had been spared, would probably have risen to the highest offices in the service. He was a personal friend. We had known each other while he was at Chittagong on settlement work. The late poet, Nobin Chunder Sen, who was a Chittagong man and knew him well, spoke of him as one who some day would ​become Lieutenant-Governor. He had called at my house at Barrackpore, a compliment rarely paid in those days to Indian gentlemen by European officers; and we corresponded upon public questions. I gave him the first information about the occurrence, he had not heard of it before; for the doctor was then still alive. I explained to him the facts of the case. He fully shared my indig- nation, and said that he would do his best to bring the culprits to justice. I suggested that Babu Ashutosh Biswas, Public Prosecutor, one of the ablest criminal lawyers of his time, should at once be instructed to take up the case. Mr. Allen agreed. Instructions were issued and Babu Ashutosh came up to Barrackpore to look after the case.

I did not stop there. I sent a message to the newspaper India in London by wire, giving the facts of the case, with the result that a question was asked in Parliament about the matter. I called upon Sir John Woodburn, the Lieutenant-Governor, and spoke to him about the case. He expressed the utmost abhorrence of the crime, and told me that His Excellency the Viceroy (Lord Elgin) was taking an interest in the matter. I gathered from the conversation that a message had come from the Secretary of State, as the result of the interpellation in Parliament.

The case was committed to the High Court Sessions. Mr. Justice Jenkins, who was then a Puisne Judge, presided over the ordinary criminal sessions. But the Chief Justice himself, Sir Francis Maclean, sat to try the case with a special jury, the majority of whom were Europeans. The charges against the accused were those of murder, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and grievous hurt. The jury brought in a unanimous verdict of guilty of grievous hurt, acquitting the prisoners on the more serious charges. What the Chief Justice thought of the verdict might be inferred from the fact that he inflicted upon the prisoners the highest punishment under the law.

Mr. W. S. Caine, Member of Parliament, commenting upon this case, said that all three should have been strung up on a tree. If indeed it was not an act of deliberate murder, it was certainly a case of the infliction of such grievous bodily injuries as were likely to cause death. It is difficult to see how it could be otherwise than a case of culpable homicide. I have not yet met a high European official who has not expressed his unqualified condemnation of these cowardly assaults, which unfortunately are now and then committed by Europeans upon Indians.

​I interested myself in another case of this kind in which one Gurdit Maiti was assaulted by two Europeans, because he happened to be riding a horse while they were standing. He was an old man and died from the injuries inflicted. The subordinate court had let them off with a fine. It was a bad case and needed condign punishment. I wrote in the Bengalee newspaper and I personally moved Sir John Woodburn. An application was made for enhancement of the punishment. One of the accused could not be found as he had left for South Africa to fight in the Boer campaign. The other accused was sentenced to four months' imprisonment as the result of a re-trial. He was employed in the Public Works Department under the Government, and I interested myself after his release, and with success, to get him re-appointed.

The subordinate courts in these cases too often reflect an unhappy racial feeling. But the higher we mount the purer becomes the atmosphere. I thankfully note the fact that there has been a distinct advance in European opinion in this direction, which is bound to grow with time and the development of closer relations between the two communities.

The death of Dr. Suresh Chunder Sircar left his family helpless and penniless. He was the head of the family, its sole bread-winner. He had an extensive, but by no means lucrative, practice, as his patients for the most part belonged to the poorer middle class. His sons were young, one of them studying in a medical school. I approached the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Woodburn, for help. Sir John Woodburn was a man of generous instincts, and he warmly responded to my appeal. He said to me. 'Mr. Banerjea, if the young man (naming Dr. Suresh Chunder Sircar's son) had passed the Matriculation examination, I would have made him a Deputy Magistrate. I am fettered owing to his not possessing suitable qualifications, but I will appoint him a sub-registrar.' He got this appointment, and later on, when the burden of a growing family made his position financially difficult, Sir Edward Baker, who was then Lieutenant-Governor, was good enough at my request to appoint his brother a sub-registrar.

At the Congress of 1898, we had expressed our gratitude to Lord Curzon for his words of sympathy, and our hope that he would follow a policy of progress and confidence in the people. The events of the following year served to dissipate whatever expectations the most optimistic among us might have formed. The reactionary policy of the Viceroy and his disregard of Indian public ​opinion was evidenced by the orders he passed in connexion with the Calcutta Municipal Bill after it had emerged from the Select Committee stage. To those orders I have already referred in a previous part of these reminiscences. They served to officialize the Calcutta Corporation. They were so unexpected that it was widely reported that Sir John Woodburn had threatened to resign. Why he did not, we do not know. They threw Calcutta into the vortex of an agitation that was only surpassed by the anti-Partition demonstrations, which also were due to Lord Curzon's policy. People were rapidly losing confidence in the Viceroy, and the popular sense of mistrust found expression in a Resolution of the Lucknow Congress of 1899, which I had to move. The Resolution was in these terms:

The Calcutta Municipal Bill was a local measure, but it had an all-India interest as it affected the principle of Local Self-government, in the growth and development of which all India felt a concern. It used to be in those days the standing practice of the Congress to take up and discuss provincial questions in which the interest and the feelings of all India had been roused. In discussing the Calcutta Municipal Bill, the Congress did not act in contravention of its traditional practice. Similarly, the Provincial Conferences often included in their programme questions which affected the whole of India. Such a procedure served to keep the public life of the province in touch with that of the rest of India, and contributed to the solidarity and the growth of national life.

There was a peculiar fitness in Mr. R. C. Dutt's presiding at the Congress when the question of the disfranchisement of the Calcutta Corporation was discussed. He was in England when we started the agitation against the Calcutta Municipal Bill. I placed myself in communication with him. It was chiefly through his efforts that the great debate on the Bill in February, 1897, was organized when Mr. Herbert Roberts, now Lord Clywd, pressed for a commission of enquiry, and Sir Henry Fowler, then in opposition, declared that he had discovered no evidence to show that the elected Commissioners had failed in their duty.

​The debate led us to hope that some modification of the Bill would take place. The hope proved illusory. Lord Curzon's influence prevailed; and the Bill was passed into law with all the reactionary provisions that had excited comment and criticism. It was the first of a series of reactionary measures which revealed the policy of an administration that was destined to create widespread unrest and excitement.

At the Lucknow Congress we recorded a resolution urging 'the appointment of an agency in England for the purpose of organizing in concert with the British committee public meetings for the dissemination of information on Indian subjects, and the creation of a fund for the purpose'.

I moved the Resolution and made an appeal for funds. I cannot say that the appeal was successful; nor was indeed any immediate action taken to give effect to this Resolution. The Resolution remained a part of the standing programme of the Congress; but the efforts made to carry it out were spasmodic and not persistent.

In 1900, the Congress was to meet at Lahore. The invitation to Lahore was made by Lala Muralidhar, a veteran worker of the Congress cause. Old Congressmen still remember the wit and humour with which he used to enliven the Congress when his health and strength permitted him to attend its meetings. Though borne down by age and its infirmities, his interest in the Congress movement remained unflagging.

Lala Jaishi Ram extorted from me a promise at Lucknow that I would, before the Congress met at Lahore, visit some of the towns in the Punjab and address public meetings. He thought that was necessary in order to rouse an interest in the Punjab in the Congress cause. It was a call to duty to which 1 gladly responded. I broke my annual Durga Puja holidays, which I was enjoying at Simultolla, and started for the Punjab in October, 1900. Our first meeting was held at Delhi, where Sirdar Guru Chand Singh, barrister-at-law, joined me and accompanied me throughout the tour. I addressed public meetings at Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore and Rawalpindi. At Lahore, at the request of the Reception Committee, I opened the Bradlaugh Hall, which was raised in honour of the memory of the late Mr. Bradlaugh, and where the Congress was to meet. The Hall was subsequently destroyed by fire; but it has since been rebuilt.

While I was at Rawalpindi I heard of the unexpected death of Lala Jaishi Ram. He was, in the words of the late Babu Kali Prosanna Roy, Chairman of the Reception Committee of the ​Lahore Congress, 'the light and life of the Congress movement in this province (the Punjab)'. The burden and responsibility of the Congress arrangements had for the most part devolved upon him; and to his untiring and devoted energy and careful forethought much of the success of the Lahore Congress of 1900 was due. The death of such a man in the very prime of life, before he had emerged from his manhood, was an irreparable loss to the cause and the country, and cast a shadow over the approaching session of the Congress.

It is significant that a Bengalee pleader should have been elected Chairman of the Reception Committee at Lahore. It is evidence, if evidence were needed, of the good feeling between Bengalees and Punjabis. It disproves the calumny that the martial races hold in contempt the people of our province. Babu Kali Prosanna Roy was the Indian leader of the Punjab Bar, and was held in respect by Europeans and Indians alike, for his capacity as a lawyer, his public spirit as a citizen and the thorough probity and integrity of his life, public and private. The general impression at Lahore was that, but for his independence and his association with the Congress movement, which was distasteful to the local authorities, he would have been elevated to the Bench of the Punjab Chief Court.

The idiosyncrasies of the official temper vary in the different provinces. While association with Congress in some provinces was a disqualification for high judicial office, it was not held as such in others; and certainly not in Bombay or in Madras. The President of the Lahore Congress of 1900 was Mr. (afterwards Sir) Narayan Chandravarkar. He had already received his appointment as Judge of the High Court, in succession to the late lamented Mr. Justice Ranade, when he was invited to occupy the presidential chair of the Congress. He consulted the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Sir Lawrence Jenkins, who raised no objection. It was Sir Lawrence Jenkins who, as Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, offered a judgeship to Mr. Ashutosh Chaudhuri, a staunch Congressman, and persuaded him to accept it. Mr. Chandravarkar, after presiding over the Lahore Congress, joined his office as Judge of the Bombay High Court. His appointment as a High Court Judge was well known at the time when the Congress met. I was asked to propose him to the chair; and I said in moving the resolution that the presidential chair of the Congress had proved too often to be the royal road to the High Court Bench.

At the Lahore Congress I moved a resolution regretting the ​practical exclusion of Indians from the higher appointments in the minor Civil Services, namely, the Police, the Customs, the State Railways, the Opium, the Public Works, the Survey, and other departments.

I can never forget the conversation I had with Sir Henry Fowler in the House of Commons in regard to this matter, and the idea had sunk deep in my mind that our exclusion was indefensible from every point of view, and that we had an overwhelmingly strong case. On my return to India, I submitted, as Secretary of the Indian Association, a memorial to Government. The depart- ments of Government, wedded to old-world ideas, move slowly. I cannot say that the result of our efforts was satisfactory, or that we got what we had a right to expect; but the representation had a quickening effect upon the departments. It is slow work to move the Government; but patience is the first and last qualification of public workers.

At the session of the Congress held in Calcutta in 1901 I moved what was substantially the same resolution, urging at the same time that effect should be given to the Resolution of the House of Commons of June 2, 1893, regarding the holding of Simul- taneous Examinations for the Indian Civil Services.

This session of the Congress was the last in which Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea took part. Ill-health compelled him to leave for England early in 1902. Though stricken down by disease, he never lost his interest in the Congress. He stood as the Liberal candidate for Walthamstow; and all accounts say that he had a good chance of being returned. But Providence had willed otherwise. His failing health compelled him to withdraw from the parliamentary contest; and soon after his countrymen learnt with a sense of profound sorrow the news of his death in England.

Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea was one of the leading members of the Calcutta High Court Bar in his time; and, though enjoying a wide and lucrative practice, he took a keen and active interest in the work of the Congress. In his time, it would be no exaggeration to say, he was the leader of the Congress movement in Bengal. He was not an agitator in the ordinary sense - and the word stinks in the nostrils of some of our officials. His association with the move- ment gave it a dignity and an air of responsibility in official eyes which otherwise it would not perhaps have possessed.

It cannot be said that Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea was throughout his life a public man. Immersed in the engrossing work of one of the ​most exacting, and, be it added, one of the most lucrative, of professions, he had not, in his early days, the time nor perhaps the inclination, to turn to public affairs. But the Ilbert Bill controversy was to him, as to many others, an eye-opener, and revealed, in its grim nakedness, our real political status. No self-respecting Indian could sit idle under the fierce light of that revelation. It was a call to a high patriotic duty to those who understood its significance; and Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea enthusiastically responded to the call. He had closely identified himself with the Congress since its birth, and the Bar felt the impulse of his lead in this matter. As a speaker he was perhaps outdistanced by some of his contemporaries; in point of enthusiasm some of his colleagues might be said to have been fired with the warmth of apostolic fervour; but in the calm, clear recognition of the situation, in the adaptation of means for a given end, in wise and statesmanlike counsel and guidance, he was without a peer amongst those whose privilege it was to work with him. His place in the Bar as a public leader to-day remains void. Mirabeau is dead. There is none to fill his chair; and Bengal mourns in silence the loss of one of the worthiest of her sons. The death of such a man was a heavy loss to the country, and especially at a time when Bengal was in the throes of the greatest agitation that convulsed the province since the establishment of British rule.

The year 1906 was a year of heavy misfortune for Bengal and India. W. C. Bonnerjea, Budruddin Tyabji, Ananda Mohan Bose, and Nalin Behari Sircar, followed one another in close succession to that land from whose bourne no traveller returns; and Bengal was then in mourning over the partition of the province.