A Nation in Making/Chapter 28

​28

The Anti-partition Movement

In 1910, Lord Hardinge was appointed Viceroy in succession to Lord Minto. I met Lord Minto several times and had fairly long interviews with him. He was an English gentleman of a fine type. Fairly liberal in his sentiments, but I fear without any large power of initiative, his name will be remembered in Indian history as the joint author of the Morley-Minto Scheme; though Lord Morley's Recollections leave no doubt as to where the driving power lay. India owes to Lord Minto the system of communal representation for the Legislative Councils, from the meshes of which it will take her many long years to emerge. I had in one of my interviews a long conversation with him about the Partition of Bengal. He was frank and outspoken, but obdurate in his adhesion to the 'settled fact'. He said, 'Mr. Banerjea, if my country was divided in the way your province has been, I should feel just as you do.' He spoke his mind out, but he was powerless to help us in any way. When we formally waited upon him in deputation as members of the Indian Association with a request that the Partition should be modified, he repeated Lord Morley's formula and told us in reply that the Partition was a 'settled fact'.

Some of our friends in India thought that we should not have put forward the request for its modification, in view of the repeated pronouncements of the Secretary of State. Our friends in England, including Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea, who was then in London, were of a different opinion. Their view was that, having regard to the all-important character of the Partition question, it was our plain duty to give it a prominent place in an address to the Viceroy. To have omitted all reference to it on an occasion so important was to have relegated it to a secondary place among the public questions of the day. In any case, it was clear that Lord Minto would do nothing to modify the Partition. We thought it possible, though our experience of the past was not very encouraging, that Lord Hardinge might take a more favourable view.

Lord Hardinge came out to India as a comparative stranger. He ​was not in the ranks of English public life; diplomacy was his profession. The Indian public received the announcement of his appointment with mixed feelings. But, before twelve months had elapsed, we realized that he would take his place in the front rank of Indian Viceroys, by the side of Bentinck, Canning and Ripon.

A new Viceroy having assumed the reins of Government, we resolved to place him in possession of all the facts and the attitude of the Indian public in regard to the Partition question. We accordingly announced a public meeting to be held in the Town Hall of Calcutta early in January to consider it. Within a day or two of the announcement I received an urgent letter from Government House inviting me to see His Excellency the Viceroy the day after. I had never before been so summoned; but I guessed the purpose of the invitation. I thought it was the proposed Town Hall meeting about which His Excellency wished to have information. I was right in my anticipation. After the usual greetings, Lord Hardinge wanted to know why we had called the meeting. I said in reply, 'In order to acquaint your Excellency with the situation in Bengal relating to the Partition.' His Excellency's answer was: 'But that can be done by a memorial without a public meeting.' I said, 'If your Excellency would look into the memorial personally and consult our leaders, the district leaders, there would be no reason for holding the public meeting.' His Excellency said he would do that and consult his officers. I said, 'My Lord, the officers of Government have again and again been consulted, and they have given their opinions. It is our leaders whose opinions should now be asked.' Lord Hardinge very kindly agreed; and the public meeting at the Town Hall was not held.

I drew up a memorial largely assisted by my esteemed friend, Babu Ambika Churn Majumder, the Grand Old Man of Faridpore. and sent it to the district leaders for signature by influential and representative men. My request was that the memorial was to be regarded as absolutely confidential, so that the other side under official inspirations might not set up a counter-agitation. My instructions were faithfully observed. The contents of the document never leaked out. In the district of Rajshahi, however, the District Superintendent of Police came to know that there was an anti-Partition memorial, which was being signed, and he wanted to have a copy of it. My friend, Babu Kissory Mohan Chowdhury, who was entrusted with the signature of the memorial in the district, asked for my instructions. I replied telling him that the document was ​confidential and was not to be shown to any one except the actual signatories.

We submitted this memorial, signed by representative men in eighteen out of the twenty-five districts of Bengal, about the end of June, 1911, and the Despatch of the Government of India recom- mending the modification of the Partition of Bengal was dated August 25, 1911; and some of the arguments that we urged in the memorial were accepted by the Government as valid reasons for the modification of the Partition, and were emphasized in the Despatch.

The Partition was modified on December 12, 1911, by the announcement made by His Majesty at Delhi. I had heard about it a week before; but from the general public and from the newspaper Press it was kept a secret. Indeed, the officials and others most interested knew nothing at all about it until the actual announce- ment was made, and some of them were staggered at the news. Among them was the late Nawab Salimulla of Dacca, who was the Government's right-hand man in supporting the Partition and secur- ing the assent of the Mohamedan community of East Bengal. He got a G.C.I.E. as a solace, but to the last he remained unconvinced and unreconciled. As a gentleman, the Nawab was without an equal. As a politician, he was narrow, but shrewd, with a fund of common sense that made him a tower of strength to his supporters and the Government.

In the meantime expectation ran high in Calcutta. All eyes were centred on the Durbar at Delhi. Some announcement was expected. The King had come out to India; the King was expected to do something beneficent and to appease the excitement and unrest in Bengal. Nothing definite was indeed known. But hope builds a pyramid upon a point. The Bengalee office was crowded with ex- pectant visitors throughout the day, anxious to know the news from Delhi. The hours rolled by. Disappointment was visible on the countenances of the assembled visitors. It was late in the afternoon; but there was no news about the Partition. Late in the day, the Associated Press sent a message from Delhi, but it contained not a word about the Partition. There were friends sitting near me in my editorial room, eager and anxious, but growing despondent at the absence of all reference to the Partition in the last message from Delhi. I dictated an article, which was to appear the day after, expressing profound dissatisfaction at the Partition not being ​modified, at the same time urging our people not to lose heart, but to continue the agitation.

Having dictated the article and revised it, I went downstairs, preparing to leave office, when I was summoned back to the telephone and heard the news that the Partition had been modified. There was quite a crowd at the Bengalee office at the time. The news spread like wildfire. People came in throngs to the office. A huge gathering had assembled in College Square, and I was seized by my friends, put into a carriage, and literally carried by force to College Square. There I witnessed a wild scene of excitement. It was quite dark—there were no lights—we could not see one another, but we could hear voices shouting with joy and occasionally interjecting questions. A voice from crowd cried out, "What do you think of the transfer of the capital to Delhi?' I said at once, 'We are not likely to lose very much by it.' Subsequent events have demonstrated that I was substantially right in my impromptu answer.

I returned home from the meeting happy at the thought that for six long years my friends and myself had not worked in vain, and that our efforts to restore to the Bengalee-speaking population their ancient union and solidarity were crowned with success. The secret is told in less than half-a-dozen words. We were persistent, we were confident of success; we religiously avoided unconstitutional methods and the wild hysterics that breed and stimulate them. Even when attacked by the police, we did not retaliate. We shouted Bande-Mataram at each stroke of the police lathi, and then appealed to the constituted courts of law for redress. Passive resistance we practised. Soul-force we believed in; but we never were under the delusion that it could be employed to any useful or national purpose, except by men trained in the practice of self-restraint and the discipline of public life. It is the acceptance of naked principles, without reference to the circumstances of their application, which is responsible for many of the deplorable events that have darkened the pages of recent Indian history.

It is a pity that the Partition of Bengal was not modified in 1906, when Mr. John Morley denounced it from his place in the House of Commons as a measure which went wholly and decisively against the wishes of the majority of the people concerned', at the same declaring it to be 'a settled fact'. A pronouncement in which the conclusion was so wholly inconsistent with the premises only served to add to the irritation and intensify the agitation. The Partition and the policy that was adopted to support it were the root ​cause of the anarchical movement in Bengal, and I have no doubt in my mind that, if it had been modified just when the agitation was assuming a serious aspect and the whole country was seething with excitement, the history of Bengal, and possibly of India, would have been differently written, and our province would have been spared the taint of anarchism. Here again the psychological moment was allowed to pass by, and the modification came when it was overdue. The words, 'too late' were once more written on every line of British policy.

I cannot pass from the subject without referring to some of the prominent persons who took part in the anti-Partition and Swadeshi movement and shared its troubles and risks. Some of them are now dead. Among these may be mentioned Mr. Ananda Mohan Bose, Maharaja Surya Kanto Acharya Chowdhury of Mymensingh, Babu Ambika Churn Majumder and Mr. Bhupendra Nath Basu. Of Ananda Mohan Bose and Bhupendra Nath Basu I have written elsewhere and in another connexion. Maharaja Surya Kanto Acharya Chowdhury, before the anti-Partition controversy. took little or no interest in politics. He was a man of wealth, and shikar was the pleasure and the passion of his life. He took to it far more seriously than many people take to their business. By nature he was an enthusiast, and, when his feelings were roused, he spared neither money nor pains to attain his object. For a man in his position, in those days, to stand up against the Government, in regard to a measure upon which it had set its heart, needed no little courage and strength of purpose. It was a much more serious affair than voting against Government in the Legislative Council. Lord Curzon undertook a tour in the eastern districts, and at Mymensingh, the Maharaja's headquarters, he became his guest. The Viceroy was treated with princely hospitality: but the Maharaja never flinched in maintaining an attitude of unbending opposition to the Partition of Bengal and frankly expressing his opinion to the Viceroy. That attitude was maintained by him throughout the whole of the controversy, and even in the darkest days of repression, when the leaders of the anti-Partition movement were, in the eyes of the authorities, so many political suspects.

I well remember his attending the first boycott meeting on August 7, 1905, dressed in the roughest Swadeshi garb, which alone was then available. It was in his house in Lower Circular Road that many of our meetings were held and many of the most momentous decisions taken. He died just on the eve of the deportations in ​Bengal, and there was some apprehension, not perhaps well-founded, that if he had lived he would have shared the fate of many of his friends and co-workers. His death has left a gap among the zemindars of East Bengal which has not been filled. For courage, virility and strength of purpose, he stood head and shoulders above the men of his class, and left behind him an enduring example for imitation and guidance.

Babu Aswini Kumar Dutt of Barisal was another leader of East Bengal who came into prominence. He was a schoolmaster and proprietor of the Brojomohan College at Barisal. It was founded in honour of his father, as a memorial of filial piety, but it was Aswini Kumar Dutt's devotion and organizing powers that made it one of the most successful educational institutions in East Bengal or in the whole of province. Aided by Babu Satis Chunder Chatterjee, a colleague of his in the Brojomohan College, he organized the whole district for the Swadeshi movement. These organizations rendered splendid service; and when famine broke out in Barisal Mr. Dutt was able to afford substantial help to the sufferers. The relief of the famine-stricken and the spread of the Swadeshi cause went hand in hand.

Those were days of conflict and controversy between the officials and the representatives of the people; and Aswini Kumar Dutt and his friends in Barisal felt the full weight of official displeasure and all that it implied. In 1908, Mr. Dutt and his friend and lieutenant, Mr. Satis Chunder Chatterjee, were deported without a trial. The reasons for their deportation will possibly remain a state secret for many long years. But, apart from the general reasons that make deportations without trial repugnant to the ordinary canons of law and justice, it seemed extraordinary that men like Aswini Kumar Dutt and Satis Chunder Chatterjee, who never harboured an un- constitutional idea or uttered an unconstitutional sentiment in their lives, should have been dealt with in this way under an old and forgotten regulation, intended to be employed against quasi-rebels. The general impression at the time was that the authorities wanted to put down Swadeshism, and they sought to strike terror among Swadeshi workers by this extraordinary procedure adopted against some of their most prominent leaders. But repression did not kill Swadeshism. Its decline was largely due to the failure of many Swadeshi enterprises, and the removal of the root cause by the modification of the Partition.

Babu Ananda Chunder Roy of Dacca must now claim attention ​as one of the outstanding figures of the anti-Partition movement. The undisputed leader of the Dacca Bar, Ananda Chunder Roy occupied a position of unrivalled influence among the Hindu leaders of that city; and the whole of that influence he exerted, and with conspicuous success, for the promotion of the Swadeshi movement and the modification of the Partition. It is no mean testimony to his public spirit and that of the Hindu citizens of Dacca that, for the sake of maintaining the solidarity of the Bengalee-speaking popula- tion, they strenuously opposed a scheme that would have made their city the capital of a new province, with all its attendant advan- tages. Ananda Chunder Roy was one of the stalwarts of the anti- Partition movement, and never faltered in his opposition to the Partition. In the same category must be placed Anath Bandhu Guha of Mymensingh. As head of the Mymensingh Bar, he wielded great influence. In those days to be a popular leader was to incur the displeasure of the authorities. Anath Bandhu Guha was in their bad books. He was not indeed deported. I believe he narrowly escaped it; but he was bound down to keep the peace under section 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It was a gross insult to a man of his position. But with him it was not merely a sentimental grievance, for he suffered from it, as under the rules then in force he was disqualified for election to the local Legislative Council. When he applied for the removal of the disqualification, the Local Government, which had the power to remove it, rejected the application. Fortunately this rule and several others of the same character have been done away with on the recommendation of the Southborough Committee, and the range of executive discretion has been curtailed.

Last but not least among the distinguished men who identified themselves with the anti-Partition and Swadeshi movement and supported it throughout was Ambika Churn Majumder. He was rightly called the Grand Old Man of Faridpore (his native district) and of East Bengal. In intellectual eminence, in the possession of the gift of eloquence, and in unflinching love and devotion to the motherland, he stood in the forefront among the leaders of Bengal. He began life as a schoolmaster. He was my colleague in the Metropolitan Institution of Pundit Vidyasagar; but he early took to politics, and his interest in it was never-failing. He was associated with the Congress almost from its birth and was the President of one of the most memorable Congresses ever held, that of 1916, which adopted the Lucknow Convention and sealed the union ​between Hindus and Mohamedans in their efforts to secure their. conmmon political advancement.

Ambika Churn Majumder felt so strongly about the Partition that he once told me that, if the Partition was not modified, he would sell off his ancestral property in the new province and settle in West Bengal, and he seriously asked me to purchase some landed property for him in the 24-Parganas. He controlled the Swadeshi and anti-Partition movement in the district of Faridpore, and was always ready with his advice and active assistance when- ever required. So great was his influence that on one occasion, in the height of the anti-Partition agitation, when the Lieutenant- Governor arrived at Faridpore, he found the railway station denuded of coolies, and the subordinate police had to carry the luggage of the ruler of the province.

It has been said by a great writer that the public affections are but an expansion of the domestic feelings, and that patriotism has its roots amid the sanctities of the home and the tranquil surroundings of village life. Faridpore, his native district, will remember Ambika Churn Majumder as one of its greatest benefactors. He was for years the Chairman of the Faridpore Municipality, and the town of Faridpore owes its waterworks largely to his initiative and to his administrative vigour and efficiency. The Faridpore College, which has recently been established, is another monument of his public spirit, his capacity for solid achievement, and his unflinching love for the people among whom he was born and lived. Prostrated by disease, suffering from bereavements, which darkened his home, his interest in public work remained unabated, and from time to time, as occasion required, the Grand Old Man spoke out with the decisive emphasis of his younger days. In the schism that took place between the two wings of the Nationalist party over the Reform Scheme, Ambika Churn Majumder never hesitated, never wavered, but threw in his lot, with characteristic ardour, with his friends of the Moderate party with whom he had worked through life.