A Nation in Making/Chapter 29

​29

Work in the Imperial Council

The partition of Bengal having been modified, my objection to joining the Legislative Councils was removed. Early in 1913, I stood as a candidate for election to the Bengal as well as the Imperial Legislative Council. I was elected for both at the head of the poll, but with me it was not all plain sailing. There was a load of prejudice against which I had to contend. I had just finished the anti-Partition campaign. It was a hard tussle; and I had made many enemies. I had to say many unpleasant things, and they were now to be brought up against me in the attempt that was made to disqualify me for election to the Imperial Legislative Council. My disqualification for the Bengal Council had indeed been removed by Sir Edward Baker, the Lieutenant-Governor; my disqualification for the higher Council on the ground of my dismissal from the Civil Service some forty years ago still remained. Lord Hardinge was then lying ill at Dehra Dun, suffering from the effects of the dastardly attempt upon his life; and Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson, the senior member of the Executive Council, was in charge of the Government. He was known to be a man of liberal views; and he and his civilian colleagues had to deal with the question of my disqualification. An enquiry was started, and several volumes of the Bengalee newspaper were requisitioned from the Imperial Library in Calcutta, and carefully examined in order to discover if any element of sedition could be traced in its columns.

In the meantime, Lord Carmichael, Governor of Bengal, was growing impatient at the delay in the elections, and my friends, among whom were some Europeans in high official positions, were growing apprehensive lest the Government of India should provoke an agitation by disqualifying me. Such a decision would on the face of it be absurd; for, if I was good enough for the Bengal Legislative Council, surely I was good enough for the Imperial Council. Everybody, including Lord Carmichael himself, felt that it would be a grievous blunder. Happily, good sense prevailed in the counsels of the Government, and a blunder was averted. Almost at the first ​interview I had with Lord Hardinge after my election, he said to me, 'Mr. Banerjea, you owe your position in my Council to me.' I thanked His Excellency, but did not go deeper into the matter, as it might look like an attempt to ferret out official secrets.

I became a member of the Imperial Legislative Council in February, 1913, and in the following month I moved a Resolution recommending the separation of the judicial and executive func- tions in the administration of criminal justice. There was nothing original in the Resolution. The subject had for a long time been before the public. The most prominent Indian public worker, who took a special interest in it, and with whose name the genesis of the public agitation on this subject will be associated, was the late Mr. Monomohan Ghose. The most distinguished criminal lawyer of his generation in India, he was deeply impressed with the evils arising from this combination of judicial and executive functions. Mr. Monomohan Ghose got up a representation, which was sub- mitted to the Secretary of State for India, signed by Lord Hobhouse, Sir Richard Garthi, late Chief Justice of Bengal, Sir Raymond West, late Judge of the Bombay High Court, Mr. Herbert Reynolds, late Member of the Board of Revenue, Bengal, and others, pointing out the evils of the system and calling for its reform. The late Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt formulated a scheme for the introduction of the reform in Bengal.

In 1908, Sir Harvey Adamson, then Home Member, had declared from his place in the Imperial Legislative Council that the Govern- ment of India had definitely decided to introduce the reform in a cautious and tentative way. Five years had elapsed since this declaration, but nothing had been done. My Resolution therefore was clearly opportune. It is worthy of remark that every non-official Indian member supported it. It was negatived by the vote of the official majority. But it was obvious that there were officials who favoured my motion; and after the debate was over, Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson, who presided in the absence of the Viceroy, came up to where I sat, and said, 'Mr. Banerjea, if I had had two votes, an official and a personal one, I should have given the personal vote in your favour.'

The Resolution, I understand, though negatived, formed the subject of a despatch to the Secretary of State by the Government of India, who, according to my information, supported the proposal. But as it involved considerations of finance it had to run the gauntlet ​of the India Council, which rejected it. However that may be, the system is doomed. The Government of Bengal under the Reforms has formulated a scheme for the separation. The matter is under consideration. Finance, as usual, stands in the way.

Among other matters in regard to which I moved Resolutions were the question of the Press Act, Education, the recommendations of the Decentralization Commission relating to the expansion of Local Self-government, the appointment of an advisory committee to deal with internees, and finally the Reform proposals contained in the Montagu-Chelmsford Scheme. I pressed for a modification of the Press Act, not for its repeal; for I knew that as a matter of practical politics its repeal was out of the question. I urged that the safeguards which had been promised by the Government should be made operative and not rendered illusory, as they were declared to be by the Chief Justice, Sir Lawrence Jenkins, in the Comrade case. The voting on the non-official Indian side was practically unanimous; but there was again the official majority, and the motion was defeated. I had expected no better result, but I thought that it was possible that, as the result of the debate, the administration of the Press Act would follow more popular and conciliatory lines. I cannot say that that hope was realized. The complaints against the administration of the Press Act continued as loud and as persistent after the debate as before; the influence of the solid phalanx of the non-official Indian minority was powerless to modify the policy of the Government.

The Morley-Minto Councils were constituted as advisory bodies; and to the last they retained this character, even when the unanimity of Indian public opinion was expressed with unequivocal emphasis. Only on two occasions do I remember the official vote yielding to the pressure of non-official opinion. One was when a Resolution was moved for the postponement of a Bill relating to the organization of the presidency banks; the other was for the appointment of a committee to enquire into the complaints of postal and telegraph clerks and subordinates. But these were not proposals involving important questions of principle or policy.

The reform of the Calcutta University looms largely in the public view. We have before us a great measure of reform recommended by what is known as the 'Sadler Commission'. It involves far- reaching changes and heavy outlay. There was one little change in the existing constitution of the Calcutta University which I ventured to suggest from my place in the Imperial Legislative Council, in a ​Resolution I moved in March, 1916. I recommended that the University should be autonomous and that the Chancellor should be the Governor of the province, instead of the Viceroy, the Calcutta University being thus placed upon the same footing as the sister universities of Madras and Bombay in respect of its relations with the head of the local Government. The Resolution was accepted by Sir Sankaran Nair on behalf of the Government.

As Education Minister, Sir Sankaran Nair was a success, at any rate from the Indian standpoint. From the judicial bench he was transferred to the Executive Council of the Viceroy. He had no practical familiarity with educational problems or those of Local Self-government. But in dealing with them he shewed capacity, judgment and firmness. Once again he has proved the truth that our best men, taken from whatever positions they fill in life, are equal to the highest executive offices. That has been the experience of all free countries. It has been repeated in India. Sir Sankaran was not an educationist, but to him we owe the Behar University Act, which breaks new ground and is one of the most advanced of its kind. Sir Sankaran Nair resigned owing to differences with his colleagues in regard to the Punjab disturbances. Whatever the merits of the controversy may have been, his resignation was evidence of the readiness of Indians in high office to retire from it for the sake of principle. Lord Sinha, when Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, is reported to have resigned over the Press Bill in Lord Minto's time, and withdrawn his resignation only in order not to add to the difficulties of a situation created by the assassination of a Deputy Superintendent of Police. In the case of several whom I knew, the acceptance of office as a member of the Executive Council was a real sacrifice.

But while I was congratulating myself on having done a service to my university, some of those who were my colleagues were up in arms against me. They held a meeting of the Committee of the Indian Association, and I narrowly escaped censure by the adjournment of the motion, which was never taken up. And now the reform that I had pressed for, and for which I was blamed by my colleagues, is an accomplished fact. The Governor of Bengal is now the Chancellor of the University of Calcutta and the University is none the worse for it.

Such are the rewards of public life in India; but it was only a foretaste of what was to come, when no language was sufficiently strong to condemn one, the head and front of whose offence was ​that he had preferred duty to the vanishing fumes of an evanescent popularity. The opposition to my motion among my friends of the Indian Association was partly sentimental and partly based upon practical grounds. They did not like the withdrawal of the Viceroy from the Chancellorship. That was a point of dignity. Further, the Government of India had made large grants to the Calcutta University, and they apprehended that the flow of beneficence from the Central Government would receive a check from the discontinuance of the Viceroy's personal relationship with the University. The question of dignity never troubled me. The financial consideration was more weighty, but it was bound to be short-lived, as no exceptional treatment in administration can long endure.

In the cause of Local Self-government I have always felt very great interest. I agitated for it as an instrument of political advancement even before the Resolution of Lord Ripon of October, 1881; and ever since its inauguration I had been associated with its practical working. I felt that it was my duty to take advantage of my presence in the Imperial Legislative Council to press for its further expansion. There was no denying the fact that its growth was dwarfed by official neglect and apathy. It really meant the withdrawal of power from the bureaucracy; and bureaucracy all over the world is so enamoured of power that it resents its curtailment. As Lord Morley pointed out in one of his despatches that as there was little of real power vested in the popular members of the local bodies, they felt little or no interest in their work. In March, 1914, I moved a Resolution recommending that the Presidents of District and Local Boards be elected and that a Local Government Board should be created in each province. The Resolution was opposed by Government and was lost, as might have been expected. But I have the satisfaction of feeling that official opinion has within the last few years steadily advanced towards the acceptance of my views. The Government of India, by their Resolution of May 18, 1918, urged Local Governments to arrange for the election of the Chairmen for the rural boards wherever possible; and in Bengal, all District and Local Boards have since been allowed this right. As Minister of Local Self-government, it was my privilege to have helped this movement forward. In 1919, when I was in England as a member of the Moderate Deputation, I was appointed by the Secretary of State as a member of a Committee to enquire into the institutions of Local Self-government in the United Kingdom as regards their ​applicability to Indian conditions. I was convinced of the desirability of establishing in each province a Local Government Board, so far as practicable on the English model, for the co-ordination and further development of the activities of our local bodies; and I urged this view in my Report. I understand that in the main it has been accepted by the Governments of Assam and the Central Provinces, but has been objected to by the Bengal and other Governments.

In the reformed Bengal Council the question was raised by Mr. D. C. Ghose. My sympathies as Minister of Local Self-govern- ment were all with him; but financial difficulties blocked the way. Perhaps in happier times and under the pressure of a steadily progressive public opinion, we may have in Bengal a Government Board, more or less modelled upon the parent local institution in England, ensuring to our system of Local Self-government the stimulus, the concentration of effort and the co-ordination of methods, so essential to success.

Popular assemblies in all countries, subject of course to varying conditions and ever-changing limitations, have been the bulwark of popular rights. They are sometimes apt to go to extremes, and, overlooking the difficulties of Government, to ignore responsibilities of which no Government can divest itself. Nevertheless their guidance is valuable. It is through popular assemblies that popular opinion even in its extreme forms reaches the ears of Government, whose mission is that of the peacemaker, dispensing justice to all interests, making the welfare and the safety of the State its supreme concern. In Bengal in 1918 many persons were interned under an Act similar to that in operation in England at that time. Great as was the excitement, it was aggravated by mistakes inseparable from a procedure that encouraged secrecy and eschewed publicity, the strongest safeguard for the righteous dispensation of justice. An extraordinary mistake—and it was not the only one—was committed in what is known as the Sindhubala case. There were two sindhubalas in the Bankura District. Only one of them was wanted. The police authorities cut the Gordian knot by arresting both and marching them to prison through the public streets, although they were purdanashin ladies, who by the custom of the country were not to appear in public. But the climax was reached when, after twelve or thirteen days' detention in jail, they were both released; because forsooth there was not a scrap of evidence against them: It was a real tragedy in public affairs. There could hardly be a more grievous blunder. The policemen concerned were neither ​better nor worse than the class to which they belonged. They were in this case the victims of a discarded and obsolete system that reminded one of the days of the Star Chamber, and made secrecy the pivot of the whole machinery. Bengal was seething with excitement. That respectable women should have been insulted and humiliated, treated as malefactors, and that their status and position should have afforded them no protection, and all under the cover of a law that shut out the light of publicity, threw Bengal into a paroxysm of rage and indignation. I felt that here was an occasion when from my place in the Council I should voice the public sentiment of my province. I moved for the appointment of an Advisory Committee to deal with all cases of internment and deportation under Regulation III of 1818 and cognate laws. The terms of the Resolution were as follows:

Before the motion came on for debate, I had the opportunity of discussing it with the Home Member, Sir William Vincent. This was helpful to me, and I think it was useful to the Government. We could ascertain the points of agreement and the points of difference; and then, if necessary, fly at each other's throats. The reply of the Home Member was, of course, a defence of the Government, but it was also conceived in a vein of sympathy. In substance he accepted my Resolution and agreed to the appointment of an Advisory Committee. The concession was welcomed by the Indian Press, which was steadily developing Extremist leanings. Mr. Justice Beachcroft and the late Sir Narayan Chandravarkar were appointed members of the Committee; and in Bengal, I understood, six out of one hundred détenus were recommended for release by the Committee. The appointment of the Committee and its labours had a mollifying effect on public opinion. It did not indeed reconcile public ​opinion to the internments but it made them rather less unaccept- able than before.

Here it may not be out of place to refer to the debate that took place in the Imperial Legislative Council, in connexion with the Rowlatt Act. It was a coercive measure that was a departure from the ordinary criminal law of the land, and evoked wide-spread opposition, which found its echo in the Council Chamber. Mr. Srini- vasa Shastri, Dr. Tej Bahadur Sapru and myself were invited to an informal conference to discuss the matter with the Home Member, Sir William Vincent. We were all opposed to the Bill. Sir William agreed to make it temporary, but still we could not see our way to supporting it. In the Council I strongly opposed the Bill and warned the Government of the serious step it was about to take and of the intense agitation which it was bound to provoke. But our protest was of no avail. The Bill was passed into law; but it remained a dead letter, its provisions never being given effect. Our prophecy, however, was literally fulfilled. The Rowlatt Act was the parent of the Non-Co-operation movement.

The despatch of August 25, 1911, was a memorable one. It was a landmark in our annals. It recommended the modification of the Partition of Bengal, but it did something more. It promised the boon of provincial autonomy; and in all our subsequent Provincial Conferences special emphasis was laid on this pledge, and its speedy fulfilment was urged. In the Legislative Council I raised this point. The discussion was about the budget, and I pressed for the financial independence of the provinces as a part of the scheme of provincial autonomy. The view was challenged by Sir William Meyer, the Finance Minister, who said that I was 'an impatient idealist'. I retorted by replying that I certainly was an idealist, but not of the impatient or of the unpractical order, and that many of my ideals had been fulfilled, or were on the high road to consummation. In a conversation with Lord Hardinge, who was then Viceroy and was the author of the despatch, he said, 'Mr. Banerjea, you will have provincial autonomy in ten years' time.' We had indeed the begin- nings of it much earlier.

In the elections of 1916, I lost my seat in the Imperial Legislative Council. Mr. Bhupendra Nath Basu and Mr. Sitanath Roy were the successful candidates. I reverted once again to the normal public life, outside the Council, that had been mine for the last forty years. The war had broken out in 1914, and an appeal was made for recruitment to the people of Bengal. I went about from ​town to town urging my countrymen of the better classes to enlist as soldiers and fight for the Empire, which was in danger. I addressed more than thirty meetings in different parts of the province. The keynote of my address was that self-government, which was the goal of our political aspirations, connoted self-defence, and that, if we sought the privileges of Imperial citizenship, we must bear its burdens and responsibilities. and the foremost among them was to fight for the defence of the Empire. The appeal went home, and in not one of the numerous meetings that were held was there a single dissentient voice heard. Non-Co-operation had not yet reared its head; and there was not the faintest trace of those developments in the political situation that now attract so large a measure of public attention.

To me, these recruitment meetings were a novel experience. I found myself for the first time in my public life standing side by side, and on the same platform, with high Government officials, pleading for a common cause, and receiving from them the courtesy for which I was hardly prepared. We were able to raise something over six thousand recruits, mostly from among the respectable classes in Bengal. The quality of the recruits, it is said, did not always come up to the mark; but it has to be borne in mind that this was altogether a novel experiment, and that for a hundred and fifty years Bengal had been a stranger to the art and the practice of soldiering. It is within my personal knowledge that many of the young men showed great enthusiasm, and that in some cases they defied even the sanctity of parental authority in order to satisfy their soldierly aspirations. Bengal is after all not such an unpromising field for recruitment, if one goes about it the right way. It is therefore with a sense of keen regret and disappointment that one notices the poor response that Bengal has made to the call for enlistment in the Territorial Army. It was a movement in which the leaders of Indian public opinion, including those of Bengal, took a keen interest. I claim to have had a hand in expediting through the Legislative Council the Act creating the Indian Territorial Army. The failure in Bengal is largely due to the spirit that Non-Co-operation has evoked among the classes from whom the Territorial force is to be recruited. With the subsidence of Non-Co- operation I expect better days for the movement.

Indeed, within the last few months, a great change has taken place in the political situation. The cult of Non-Co-operation, which dominated the political horizon, to-day stands suspended. Its ​constituent features, with one exception, have been dropped. All the boycotts, save that of foreign cloth, have been withdrawn. The fact is an open proclamation of its failure on the part of the leaders of the movement. A victorious general rushing to an assured triumph, with the monuments of his success strewn around him, would never think of abandoning, suspending or modifying his programme. It is a confession of failure, which no plea, however plausible and however closely it may be linked with a great name, can obscure. By all impartial spectators its doom was indeed foreseen and was felt to be inevitable. As far as the great leaders were concerned, Non-Co-operation had its roots in an intense and consuming love of country, coupled with hatred of the British Government, and all associated with it in the administration of the country. But as regards the non-co-operating 'masses, hatred of the British Govern- ment, its officials, and Englishmen in general, was the inspiring impulse. And when a sentiment is firmly rooted in the public mind grows and expands. And from a hatred of the Government to that of political and religious opponents and of other castes and creeds, the transition was rapid and irresistible. Mr. Gandhi is my authority for it. He said that 'it was apparent that Non-Co-operation could not, in the present state of things, be presented by the nation as a national programme', for, said he, 'they were non-co-operating among themselves by carrying on a programme of hatred and violence amongst themselves.' It is this sentiment of hatred fostered amongst the masses, directed in the first instance against the British Government, that came, by a natural process of growth, to be ex- tended to all others who worshipped in a different temple, culminat- ing in those communal and caste feuds that have darkened our recent history. I cannot help thinking that these leaders were play- ing with fire, and they have intensified a feeling already latent, that in its development has been attended with disastrous results. Of course, we all admire the supreme solicitude and the earnest efforts of Mr. Gandhi to secure Hindu-Moslem unity. But, in judging of the communal strifes, which we all deplore, let us not, for the sake of historic justice, forget the part the Non-Co-operation movement had in fostering and promoting it.