A Nation in Making/Chapter 24

​24

After the Barisal Conference

The Swadeshi vow deserves a word of mention. It played an important part in the Swadeshi movement. The inspiration for the vow came from me. I was its author. The idea struck me while I was addressing a Swadeshi meeting in a village close to Magra on the East Indian Railway line. The meeting was held in the courtyard of a Hindu temple, with the image of the god right in front of me. The atmosphere of the place was religious. Swadeshism had evoked the fervour of a religious movement. It had become part of our Dharma. Priests refused to officiate at ceremonies where foreign goods found a place. Foreign articles of clothing and of food, foreign sugar and salt, were eschewed with almost religious scrupulousness. The sentiment of religion is with us so all-pervading as to colour and dominate our activities even beyond its legitimate sphere. The Swadeshi sentiment had thus come to assume a religious hue. As I spoke and had my eyes fixed upon the temple and the image, and my mind was full of the associations of the place, in a moment of sudden impulse I appealed to the audience to stand up and to take a solemn vow in the presence of the god of their worship. I administered the vow, and the whole audience, standing, repeated the words after me. The words were in Bengalee and the speech was in Bengalee; the vow may be translated as follows:

I had never before thought of this vow. It was a sudden inspiration prompted by the surroundings of the place; and the effect, may be better imagined than described, when a vast audience of, say, ten or fifteen thousand people rose up with one impulse, and repeated in one voice the solemn words of the vow. For a time ​our critics said nothing; but soon the profound impression it created became apparent, and they thundered forth their anathemas. We noted them, but heeded them not, and pursued the even tenor of our ways.

A Literary Conference was to have been held at Barisal on the following day. Dr. Rabindranath Tagore had come down from Calcutta to attend it. It was, however, abandoned, and he left for Calcutta with Mr. Bhupendra Nath Basu. On the following day I was invited to Rahamatpore, a place a few miles from Barisal, to address a Swadeshi and anti-Partition meeting. Our hosts were the Chakravarti Zemindars of the place; an ancient family who had thoroughly identified themselves with the Swadeshi movement. We were treated to a sumptuous breakfast. Caste objections were forgotten even in this out-of-the-way village in the fervour of our Swadeshi feeling, and we sat down to breakfast together, although I was an England-returned Bengalee.

The meeting was held after breakfast. When we had finished the police came in. They came in ticka gharries filled with regulation lathis; but they were a trifle too late. They came after the fair was over. They had no arrests to make, no meeting to report. In the meantime sensational rumours had been spread at Barisal about the movements of the police, and it was reported that they had gone down to Rahamatpore to arrest us. My relative, Mr. Behari Lal Roy, was alarmed, and he hastened to Rahamatpore to ascertain the situation and help us, if necessary. We met him on our way back near Lakutia, his ancestral home. He was delighted to meet us unhurt and with whole skins. He shewed us over his ancestral seat and grounds, the Samadhi, the funeral monuments of his father and brother; and we returned to Barisal with him, rejoicing that we had been able to do the day's work and elude the vigilance of Mr. Emerson and his police.

Thus closed one of the most stirring chapters of my somewhat eventful life. An English lady, when speaking to me about it, said, 'The authorities prepared a trap for you at Barisal. You got out of it. They fell into your trap. The moral victory was yours.' And she was an impartial spectator, standing wholly detached from the passions of the hour, and could take a true perspective of the situation.

After resting for a day we left for Calcutta. The return journey was one never to be forgotten. At every station where the steamer or the train touched crowds of people had gathered to see me and ​to take the dust of my feet. For me there was no sleep or rest during the twenty-four hours of the journey, and, when I arrived at the terminus at Sealdah before daybreak, I found that a huge crowd had assembled to welcome us. The boys of the Anti-Circular Society, with their honoured President Babu Krishna Kumar Mittra, were in the same train.

We were all taken to College Square, where, in those early hours of the morning, before Calcutta had risen from its sleep, thousands had gathered to see us and to hear us. There are always moments in the lives of men that are worth living for. For me this was one of such moments. My voice was hoarse with the speeches I had had to make so often during the past twenty-four hours. But, overborne by the enthusiasm of the hour, I again spoke, exhorting the audience to stick to the Swadeshi vow and to carry on the agitation against the Partition with unflinching determination, in the certain confidence that it was bound to be undone or modified.

Among the speakers on that occasion was that devoted man, Liyakat Hossain. He said that he had fasted the whole day when he heard of my arrest. Liyakat Hossain is a singular personality. He had suffered imprisonment for sedition. He was shadowed by the police; his public activities were often restrained by official authority. One may or may not agree with him, but he is dauntless and unflinching, unbending in his honesty of purpose. I fear the officials look upon him as a dangerous fanatic. But for sincerity of purpose, single-minded devotion to the interests of his country, and fearless courage in serving them, he has few peers. He is not a Bengalee; he comes from Behar and does not speak our language; but Bengal is the land of his adoption and the Bengalees are the people of his love. I have not always been able to see eye to eye with him in regard to some of his views and methods, but he stood forth as a champion worker in the Swadeshi cause; and for him there has always been a soft corner in my heart.

Before I take leave of this part of my reminiscences I must say a word or two about Mr. A. Rasool, the President of the Barisal Conference. Alas! death has snatched him away in his prime, on the eve of his celebrating the most notable event of his domestic life, the marriage of his only daughter. He died suddenly of heart failure, in the midst of a promising career of great public usefulness, to the infinite regret of his friends and admirers and the heavy loss of his country. Mr. Rasool was a Bengalee Mohamedan and came from the district of Comilla in East Bengal. He was a graduate of ​Oxford University and was a member of the Calcutta High Court Bar. He was one of the very few Mohamedans who opposed the Partition of Bengal, after it had become an accomplished and a settled fact. He was always an unflinching advocate of the union between Hindus and Mohamedans for political purposes, and he regarded the Partition as a national calamity, in the sense that it would alienate Hindus and Mohamedans, interfere with the solidarity of the Bengalee-speaking population, and weaken their political influence. At one time, on account of these views, great was his unpopularity among his co-religionists. He outlived it all and had the satisfaction of witnessing the triumph of the opinions that he professed and unflinchingly advocated; and he lived to become a recognized leader of the great community to which he belonged. Mr. Rasool was never very strong, and the anxieties and cares of the most eventful conference ever held in Bengal were a great strain upon him; but he bore them all, sustained by the patriotic fervour that distinguished his public career.

The proceedings of the authorities in connexion with the Barisal Conference created a sense of indignation among the educated community not only in Bengal but also outside our province. In Madras a crowded and influential public meeting was held. Over ten thousand people assembled in the open air on the Esplanade. 'Long before the hour fixed for the meeting', says the report, 'people began to come in streams, shouting Bande-Mataram.' Bad rulers serve a useful purpose in the evolution of nations. They stir up the sleeping lion from his torper; they stimulate public spirit and foster national unity. The recognized leaders of the people took part in the proceedings, and, on the motion of the Hon. Nawab Syed Mohamed Bahadur, seconded by Dr. Nair, the meeting recorded a resolution protesting against the high-handed proccedings of the Barisal authorities as 'a flagrant infringement of the liberties of British subjects, and a subversion of the principles of constitutional government'. A cablegram was sent to the Secretary of State for India by the meeting, calling his immediate attention 'to the arrest of a great popular leader and the dispersal by the police force of an annual conference of several thousand members, and praying for sympathetic orders for allaying excitement and the restoration of public faith in British freedom and the rights of citizenship, and the punishment of the officers responsible'.

But the centre of the storm was in Calcutta, where it raged with cyclonic force. College Square had its meetings almost daily. The ​mofussil were not slow in following the lead of Calcutta. Indeed, the reports of the proceedings of the Barisal police flew like wildfire and deeply stirred popular feeling. Men indifferent to public movements took the Swadeshi vow and practised it in their daily lives. Recluses buried amid their books emerged from their seclusion and eagerly joined the Swadeshi and anti-Partition demonstrations. A monster meeting, second only to that of the 16th October, was held at the house of Rai Pashupatinath Bose. It was an open-air demonstration and the spacious courtyard was filled to suffocation. Rai Narendranath Sen, the most moderate among the political leaders of Bengal, was called to the chair. He described the Barisal incident as 'hardly having any parallel in the history of British India. The Press and the platform' he said, 'are the safety-valves of popular discontent,' and he added that 'whenever they have been sought to be suppressed, anarchy has intervened.' The words were prophetic, as subsequent events have shown.

The anarchical or the revolutionary movement—the terms are somewhat loosely used as synonymous—soon after made its first appearance in Bengal. It was the culminating expression of the widespread discontent caused by the Partition of Bengal and deepened by the policy associated with it, of which the unprovoked assault on the delegates by the police and the dispersal of the Conference were the most notable illustrations. The Partition of Bengal was not only an administrative measure, but it was the symbol of a new policy unknown to the traditions of British rule. It was followed by repression. Swadeshi workers or preachers were often prosecuted or persecuted; public meetings in public places were prohibited; military police were stationed in quiet centres of population, and they committed assaults upon peaceful citizens. Many of the residents of Banaripara, in the district of Barisal, where Gurkha soldiers were stationed, seriously thought of migrating from the place. Respectable people were falsely charged with sedition for issuing Swadeshi circulars, and Babu Aswini Kumar Dutt, the recognized leader of the Barisal district, was one of them.

The climax was reached when the police assaulted the delegates and dispersed the Conference at Barisal. The anarchical movement followed immediately. The public feeling was one of wild excitement. The young in all countries are the most impressionable. In Bengal, recent events had shaken their faith in constitutional methods and had driven them to the verge of despair. An incident within my own experience enables me to fix the time of the genesis ​of what may be called the Revolutionary Movement. I have no hesitation in saying that the Partition of Bengal and the policy that followed it were the root causes of the movement in our province, though no doubt they were strengthened by economic conditions. It was the dispersal of the Barisal Conference with all its attendant circumstances of lawlessness and violence that brought it to a head. I am confirmed in this view by the facts to which I shall presently refer.

One evening a few months after the Barisal affair, two young men called at my residence at Barrackpore and wanted to have a private interview with me. As I entered the room and took my seat, they said that it was an exceedingly delicate and difficult matter, and they wanted the doors to be closed. Three of us were now closeted in the room, and one of the young men who, it appeared, was a medical student, began the conversation. He said, 'We have come to ask your advice upon a matter of the utmost importance. We have formed a plan to shoot Sir Bampfylde Fuller; and we are going to—to-night for this purpose. What do you say about it?' Not being prepared for it, and the proposal being so unusual, I was a little staggered. I said, 'Why do you want to shoot Sir Bampfylde Fuller? What has he done?' The young man replied with evident emotion, 'His Gurkhas stationed at Banaripara have been outraging some of our women, and we want to take revenge upon him.' I said, 'You are bound to be caught and hanged.' They said, 'We will take our chance and if need be suffer for the honour of our women.'

No position, one might well imagine, could be more difficult than mine. Here were two young men, determined to avenge the honour of their women in the belief that the law would give them no remedy, and they had to be dissuaded from their purpose. At that time, fortunately for me, there was a strong rumour, which I believed to be well-founded, that Sir Bampfylde Fuller had resigned. I said to them, 'Do you know that Sir Bampfylde Fuller has resigned? What is the good of shooting a dead man? On the other hand, your attempt would be attended with imminent risk to the public interest. We all want to get rid of him as Lieutenant- Governor. If your attempt fails—and you cannot be sure that it will succeed—his resignation is bound to be withdrawn, and he will continue in office. Do you want to do this disservice to your country?'.

That was a settler. The young men at once agreed to drop the ​idea and abandon the proposal. I clinched the matter by saying that they must swear to do so by laying their hands on my Brahminical feet. They readily responded to my appeal, and I heaved a sigh of relief. There was yet a difficulty. They said they must go to the place at once by the night train and stop the arrangements. But they had no money with them. I readily advanced the money they wanted. I did not know who they were; up till now I do not know who they are, for I never asked their names. But I felt I could trust them, and, sure enough, the money was refunded to me through the post office.

The incident indicated the ideas that were in the air, the deeper undercurrents that were moving, it might be unconsciously, some of the young men of Bengal. With anarchism no one can have any sympathy. Murder is murder, no matter by what name the deed is sought to be palliated, or by what motives excused. But let not the historian of the future lose sight of the atmosphere of mistrust, of hopelessness and helplessness, created by the acts of an administration which no British historian can refer to without a blush on his countenance.

Soon after the incidents which I have described at some length came the attempt to blow up Sir Andrew Fraser's train at Nursinggarh near Midnapore. Sir Andrew Fraser was Lieutenant-Governor and was one of the authors of the Partition of Bengal, and that alone made him one of the most unpopular among our rulers within living memory. He had never before held any office in Bengal. His administrative experience was confined to the Central Provinces. He was President of the Police Commission before he became Lieutenant-Governor and his recommendations excited severe criticism. He came to Bengal with no prepossessions in his favour. His administration of the province created a violent prejudice against him. The popular impression was that he came with a mandate to partition Bengal, and he naturally suffered as the chosen instrument for carrying out one of the most unpopular measures under British rule.

About the same time, almost on the same day, that this attempt was made, the District Conference that met at Midnapore was sought to be wrecked, and by some of those men upon whom there was a strong suspicion of being associated with the anarchical movement. Mr. K. B. Dutt, the President of the Conference and the recognized leader of the Midnapore District at the time, was repeatedly interrupted in the course of his speech. I was invited as ​a guest and was surprised to witness a spectacle so unusual. Through the joint efforts of Mr. Dutt and of myself, aided by the good sense of the audience, we succeeded at last in restoring order and resuming the business of the Conference. But what happened was to me a revelation, and it was the augury, the precursor of a similar scene enacted on a larger scale in the Surat Congress held a month later. The forces of disorder had been let loose, and by the authorities themselves, in a great and newly constituted province. The popular faith in constitutional methods was shaken; and young and ardent spirits, writhing under disappointment, but eager to serve their country, were led into the dangerous paths of lawlessness and violence, unrestrained by the voice of their elders.

It was in an atmosphere almost electric in its character that the Indian National Congress met at Surat in December, 1907. The venue of the Congress had to be changed from Nagpore to Surat, owing to demonstrations of rowdyism, which in the opinion of the Bombay leaders of the Congress rendered it undesirable to hold the Congress at Nagpore. But the disease was there, deep-rooted, having drawn its virus from the unhappy proceedings of the authorities in East Bengal. As I rose to speak there were signs of opposition from the body of the hall. As a past President of the Congress, it was my duty to propose Sir Rash Behari Ghose as President. I had often before performed this duty with the general concurrence and approval of the Congress. It was not to be so this time. The events of the Midnapore Conference, in which I had a hand as the pacifier, were remembered, and repeated attempts were made to prevent me from proceeding with my speech. This was with me an unusual experience; for my appearance on a Congress platform as a speaker was usually the signal for hushed silence after the first signs of applause had subsided.

There was a strong party in favour of the election of Mr. Tilak as President, and they would not have Sir Rash Behari Ghose to preside over the Congress. Rather that the Congress should be broken up than that Sir Rash Behari should preside. That was the feeling of this party, and the Congress was broken up. Chairs and shoes and slippers were flung at the leaders, the platform was rushed—I remained on the platform, with some of my friends forming a guard around me. I was led along with Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and others to the tent behind, and the police cleared the pandal. Thus closed a memorable chapter in the history of the Congress, to be followed by a new departure.

​The Bengal delegates felt shocked and humiliated at the insulting. treatment meted out to me. In less than an hour they held a meeting and recorded a vote of confidence in me. Nor were the all-India delegates idle. A meeting was held, and after a prolonged deliberation a constitution was drawn up, and its first article came to be subsequently known as the Creed of the Congress. It laid down that self-government within the Empire was the goal of the Congress; and that it was to be attained by purely constitutional means. It was obligatory upon every one to sign this creed before he could become a member of the Congress. For a long time those who had seceded from the Congress declined to sign it; but later on better counsels prevailed, and all wings of the Indian Nationalist party were reunited at the Lucknow Congress in 1916, when also an entente between Hindus and Mohamedans was established, and a scheme of constitutional reform was formulated and accepted at a joint Conference of Hindu and Mohamedan leaders, over which I presided.