A Nation in Making/Chapter 26

​26

The Revolutionary Movement in Bengal

In the events of the Midnapore conference and of the Surat Congress following one another in close succession, in the adoption of lawlessness and violence, so conspicuous in the break-up of the Surat Congress, as a method of political warfare, impartial observers could read the beginnings of a new development fraught with peril to the orderly and peaceful evolution of our national life. Here was a portent, the full significance of which soon manifested itself. On the morning of April 1, 1908, all Calcutta was startled to learn that on the previous evening a bomb outrage had been committed at Mozufferpore in Behar, and that the unhappy victims of it were two European ladies, mother and daughter, the wife and sixteen-year old child, of Mr. Pringle Kennedy, a leading pleader of the Mozufferpore Bar.

By a bitter irony of fate Mr. Pringle Kennedy was one of the few Europeans who had identified themselves with the Congress movement, and had on one occasion presided over a session of the Bengal Provincial Conference. The bomb was meant for Mr. Kingsford, District Judge of Mozufferpore, who, as Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, had made himself unpopular by passing heavy sentences on young Bengalee Swadeshi workers. Especially odious had he become by inflicting corporal punishment upon more than one respectable young man. The sentences were believed to be unjust; and it was adding insult to injury to degrade their victims by the infliction of corporal punishment. The insult sank deep into the hearts of some of the young Swadeshi workers; and they vowed revenge. Two young men, Khudiram Bose and Profulla Chakie were charged with the execution of the mandate of the conspirators. Both lost their lives. One was hanged; and the other shot himself when about to be captured. It was a tragedy in the fullest sense—grim, futile and purposeless. It was immediately followed by the ​discovery of the Moraripuker Conspiracy, the trial of the cons- pirators and the heavy punishments inflicted upon the leaders.

Bureaucracy was alarmed, startled at the result of its own blunders. It sought to restore the situation and to ensure the ends of peace, and of law and order, by repressive measures which followed one another in rapid succession, chilling the public life of the country, and stunting its growth and development. The liberty of the Press and of public meetings was curtailed; and an old rusty weapon which had long lain unused in the armoury of the Government was taken down to deal with public workers who had been prominently connected with Swadeshism. Regulation III of 1818 was requisitioned to deport men, some of whom were the leading spirits of the Swadeshi movement, honoured and respected by their countrymen. One morning in December, 1908, people learnt with astonishment that Aswini Kumar Dutt, the leader of the Barisal District, the founder of the Brojomohan College, Krishna Kumar Mittra, one of the foremost members of the Brahmo Samaj, a man held in universal respect by all who knew him, Satis Chunder Chatterjee, Sachindra Prosad Bose, prominent Swadeshi workers, and the wealthy and patriotic Subodh Mullick, had all been deported under Regulation III of 1818.

As regards myself, it was said that the order for deportation was ready, but that it was cancelled at the last moment through the intervention of Sir Edward Baker, who had now become Lieutenant-Governor and who knew me well. Whatever the truth might be, one evening in the first week of December, 1908, as I was about to sit down to dinner, my friend, Moulvi Abul Hossain, one of the most eloquent of our Swadeshi preachers, came rushing to my house at Barrackpore with the report that the C.I.D. officers were coming to arrest me and that I had better get ready. I said, 'All right, let me have my dinner, and you too have yours.' He readily agreed. We had our dinner; and we waited for a couple of hours for the police, but the police never came. So I went to bed, and my friend returned to Calcutta with his mind somewhat at case.

As a matter of fact, I was not deported, while some of my most prominent friends and associates were. Was it ever in contemplation to deport me? I know not. The archives of the Secretariat may some day yield up the secret. While I was a member of the Government, I could have perhaps obtained this information—but I refrained. However that may be, the report of my friend Abul Hossain derived some confirmation from the fact that on the day of his visit, ​when he said I was to be deported, a considerable body of police and European troops had come up to Barrackpore, though it was explained that this was because the Viceroy, Lord Minto, had come to attend the races. But the Viceroy had often been known to attend races at Barrackpore without such a strong muster of troops or of police.

It is very evident from Lord Morley's Recollections that, radical statesman that he was, his whole soul revolted against the policy of deportation without trial, and that he yielded reluctantly to the pressure of circumstances, and to the weight of superior knowledge which the men on the spot claimed and which he could not dispute. He was so much annoyed with some of the members of the Viceroy's Executive Council that he wrote to Lord Minto: 'And, by the way, now that we have got down the rusty sword of 1818, I wish you would deport ——— and ——— (two officials); what do you say? I should defend that operation with verve.' This was said half in earnest and half in jest, but it was sufficiently expressive of Lord Morley's sense of irritation and dislike at the deportations. Who these two officials were, the public will probably never know. But officials of this class will never be wanting so long as officialism is not controlled by the popular will. That, in all countries and in all ages, has been found to be the true panacea for official vagaries.

Human nature and human conditions are not materially different in India. The fur-coat argument is the weapon of the reactionary, though it was not a reactionary who coined the phrase, and it must be allowed that, subject to the strictest scrutiny and the limitations that such scrutiny must impose, Lord Morley's sense of fairness led him to suggest safeguards which, I fear, were not always acted upon. Writing to Lord Minto on December 4, 1908, he said: 'One thing I do beseech you to avoid—a single case of investigation in the absence of the accused. We may argue as much as we like about it, and there may be no substantial injustice in it, but it has an ugly, Continental, Austrian, Russian, look about it.'

Quoting this passage from Lord Morley's Recollections in moving my Resolution on the appointment of an Advisory Committee in the Imperial Legislative Council on March 19, 1918, I asked the hon. member-in-charge of the Home Department of the Government of India if this part of the instructions of Lord Morley were being given effect to in connexion with the investigations relating to prisoners under Regulation III of 1818'. No reply was given; the obvious inference must therefore be that this very necessary ​safeguard was not followed. There was another equally important limitation prescribed by Lord Morley. On August 23, 1908, he said:

It is obvious that here again Lord Morley's instructions were not followed by the authorities out here. Had they been obeyed in spirit and essence, men like Krishna Kumar Mittra, Aswini Kumar Dutt, Satis Chunder Chatterjee, and Sachindra Prosad Bose and some others would not have been deported; for they were all strongly wedded to constitutional methods and never dreamt of doing anything which directly or indirectly was calculated to produce 'violent disorder'. Under the gravest provocation, when attacked by the police, they never thought of retaliation, and submitted to police violence without striking a blow. Here we have again a repetition of the old order of things so often observable in the remissness or the total disregard shown by the servants of the East India Company in carrying out the orders of the Court of Directors. Again and again they were told by the Court of Directors not to add to their ever-expanding dominions; but as often the temptation proved too strong and they violated the express orders of their masters; and their offences were condoned, for they helped to bring larger dividends to the shareholders and larger additions to their territories, and with them to the power and the prestige of the Company.

There are no such temptations now; possibly there are no glaring violations of orders proceeding from the India Office; but the old spirit of officialism impatient to have its own way is, I am afraid, still there. The control of a Secretary of State from a distance of ten thousand miles, despite the present facilities of communication, must be feeble. And the time has come or is in sight when the power and responsibility of the Secretary of State should be transferred to the Government of India, subject to popular control, with the necessary safeguards for Imperial unity.

By instinct and by conviction Lord Morley was opposed to a policy of repression, but was driven to it by the overmastering pressure of circumstances, which, as Minister responsible for the Government of India, he could not resist. But the revolutionary ​movement taught him its own lessons. The people are never inter- ested in revolutions or in movements that are a menace to the public peace. Their whole soul is bound up with law and order. The conclusion was therefore forced upon him that everything was not right in India, that there was something rotten in the State of Denmark, and that there must be conditions in the constitution of the Government and in the administration of the country to account for the development of the revolutionary forces. It was, I believe, acting under this conviction, that Lord Morley set himself to the task of constitutional reforms which would make the Government more acceptable to the leaders of the Indian people.

No matter from whom the Reforms emanated, they found in him a warm champion, insistent in carrying them through, and reminding Lord Minto that they should not be delayed. The zeal of the philosopher-statesman was apparent in his letters to Lord Minto, who, let it be said to his credit, responded with readiness and alacrity to the instructions of his chief. The idea of having an Indian member for the Viceroy's Executive Council, and for the Provincial Executive Councils, and that of the appointment of Indian members to the India Council in London were Lord Morley's own. Friends of India like Ripon shook their heads; and even so sympathetic a sovereign as King Edward was doubtful about an experiment so novel, and so opposed to deep-rooted and tradi- tional official ideas. But Lord Morley was nothing if not strong in his statesmanship, and he never showed this quality of strength more strikingly than in connexion with the Reforms, and his stern attitude in opposing Lord Kitchener as Viceroy of India, a proposal which had ever the support of the King.

The reform measures, known as the Morley-Minto Scheme, were welcomed as a small advance. Nobody in India was under the delusion that they meant very much. Their most important feature was perhaps the power given to non-official members to move resolutions on public questions, thus affording them an opportunity of criticizing the measures and policy of the Government, though without exercising any real control over them. Lord Morley was careful to tell the House of Lords that he was not inaugurating parliamentary institutions in any sense, though he must have realized from what small beginnings parliamentary institutions had their genesis in that great country which was the mother of all Parliaments.

A deputation waited upon the Viceroy for the boon, such as it ​was; and even a Town Hall meeting in Calcutta was suggested. That such a meeting was not held was due to my intervention. I told Sir Edward Baker, who was then Lieutenant-Governor, that I could join it only on the understanding that there would be a resolu- tion against the Partition of Bengal and praying for its modification. This the official inspirers of the meeting would not agree to, and the idea was dropped.

The new Councils came into existence in 1910, and at the very first meeting the Viceroy announced that it was no longer necessary to keep in confinement the political prisoners detained under Regulation III of 1818, that they were not associated with any revolutionary movement, and that they would all be released. The deportation of Krishna Kumar Mittra, Aswini Kumar Dutt and the others was a great political blunder. It served no useful purpose, it did harm; it frightened none; it added to the political uneasiness and excitement. Since then there have been cases of deportation, but nothing like the feeling that was then evoked. When I had an interview with Lord Morley in the India Office in the summer of 1909, I made a strong representation for the release of Babu Krishna Kumar Mittra and Babu Asmini Kumar Dutt. Lord Morley listened, but said nothing. The occasion indeed was inopportune. Sir William Curzon-Wylie had just been murdered, and a strong feeling of indignation was roused in England against all suspected of political intrigue. In quicter times I might have had some chance. of success. In July, 1909, I had none. To the grim tragedy of that month I shall have to refer later; but in the meantime, let me pass on to a personal reminiscence in connexion with the reformed Councils.

Under the Regulations framed under the Parliamentary Statute of 1909, a dismissed servant of the Government was not eligible for election to the Legislative Councils. Dismissal from Government service was thus made a disqualification. Under the former Regulations (under the Statute of 1892) there was no such disqualification, though I believe an attempt was made to introduce it. Thus under the new Regulations I was disqualified for a seat in the Legislative Councils, local and Imperial. It was however, a disqualification that could be removed by the head of the Government. Sir Edward Baker was then Lieutenant-Governor. He knew me well. For years together we were colleagues in public work; and we learnt to like and respect one another. Of his own motion, without any suggestion ​from anybody, he removed my disqualification and sent me a copy of the Government notification.

I was placed in a position of some difficulty. I had repeatedly said that I would not allow myself to be elected to the Councils unless and, until the Partition of Bengal was modified. So far as the reformed Councils were concerned I had often told the leaders of public opinion in Bengal: 'Hands off till the Partition is modi- fied.' Speaking at Sir William Wedderburn's breakfast in West- minster Palace Hotel on June 24, 1909, I said in the presence of Sir Charles Dilke, Sir Henry Cotton, Mr. Hume, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, and others:

It had always struck me that one of the most effective protests that we could make against the Partition of Bengal, which Lord Morley had so often declared with nauseating insistence to be a settled fact, was, for the Bengal leaders to abstain from all participation in the work of the reformed Councils. I knew that such a self-denying ordinance would not be acceptable to all. But I had made my choice and had proclaimed my faith. For me, at any rate, there was no excuse. I had resolved upon making the sacrifice, forgoing a career, in which on a former occasion, I had, in the opinion of my countrymen, done useful work. But it was a far more difficult task to refuse what indeed was an invitation made by a friend, for whom I had great personal respect, and who was moved by a friendly and generous impulse. The invitation of the Governor of a province would have made little or no impression on me. It was the act of a friend who wanted to make the new Reform Scheme a success and who desired that I should contribute to it. To me it would have been a matter of great personal satisfaction to have been a colleague of Sir Edward Baker in the enlarged Legislative Council; for I knew how high-minded he was in all his dealings, how generous to his critics, and how affectionate and kind to his friends.

I felt the difficulty of my position and at last invited some of the leading men of Bengal to a conference to advise me as to what I ​should do. Among them were the late Mr. A. Rasool, Babu Ananda Chunder Roy and Babu Ambika Churn Majumder. Their unanimous opinion was that I should decline, for, if I stood for election to the Bengal Legislative Council, the people of East Bengal would lose all faith in the leaders of West Bengal and the Partition agitation would receive an irreparable blow. The political leaders of East Bengal had abstained from standing for election to the Council of the new province and they naturally expected that we should do the same. I accepted their advice. To me the modification of the Partition of Bengal was the most pressing national concern, eclipsing. all others then before the public.

There was yet another serious ground of objection. Under the Regulations as passed, several prominent leaders of the Moderate party stood disqualified. How could I enter the Council with the ban of disqualification excluding my colleagues? That was the decision of a conference of some of the leaders of the Moderate party. I accepted it and informed Sir Edward Baker that, deeply grateful as I was to him for the kindly consideration which in this as in other matters I had received at his hands, I must respectfully decline to avail myself of the Government notification removing my disqualification and to stand as a candidate for election to the Reformed Council. I may here add that my refusal did not in the slightest degree interfere with the cordiality of my relations with Sir Edward Baker, whose early death I deplore and whose memory I revere.