A Nation in Making/Chapter 3

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3

My Home-coming and Official Career, 1871-1874

As I had made up my mind to appear at the Final examination of 1871, I had to do two years' work in one year's time. For in those days it was a two years' course for the probationers for the Indian Civil Service, and the subjects of examination, which comprised Indian and English Law and Jurisprudence, Political Economy, and Indian Languages, were arranged with special reference to the time allotted. It was hard work, but I did not grudge it. Having won my point in the controversy with the Civil Service Commissioners, I was in high spirits, and, now that my father was dead, I was anxious to return home as quickly as my business permitted. Fifty-five years have now rolled away, and many things of surpassing interest have happened within that time in my country and to myself. But I still retain a vivid recollection of those laborious days when I could think and dream of nothing else, except of my books and the examinations, and there were occasions when the night passed into the day, and the faint, grey streaks of the dawn were visible, and I was still poring over my books, hardly conscious of Nature's change. Without sleep I appeared at the examination and felt none the worse for it. It was the spirit that overmastered the flesh.

I passed the Final examination of 1871 along with my friends, Romesh Chunder Dutt and Behari Lal Gupta, and together we started for home in August, 1871. Previous to our starting we had sketched out a scheme of a tour through some of the European countries, and we carried it out with almost military precision. We visited Paris, went up the Rhine, ascended the heights of St. Gothard, saw the beautiful mountains and lakes of Switzerland, passed through Italy, staying for a few days at Venice, and went on board the P. & O. steamer at Brindisi.

An incident happened at Versailles which is worth recording and which shows that the police can be foolish not only in Calcutta but ​also elsewhere, and in many places far more enlightened than Calcutta. From Paris we had gone on a day's visit to Versailles, the old capital of the Bourbons. We were returning in the evening, and had come to the railway station to take the train to Paris. We were waiting, three of us, for the train. Paris, which is the resort of the world, is more cosmopolitan than many European towns, but the Versailles police had probably never before seen Indians, especially in the Indian garb in which we were all dressed. Their fears and suspicions were roused at the sight of strangers attired in a strange costume and speaking a strange language. They took us to be Prussian spies! Frenchmen at the time were in a state of unusual excitement. The Franco-Prussian War had ended disastrously only a year before. Paris had just passed through the revolt of the Communists, many of whom were then on their trial. As we were walking up and down the platform, a French policeman approached us and asked us to follow him to the police-station. We protested, but we thought that discretion was the better part of valour, and we followed him to where he led us. We were taken to a room where a police officer was asleep. He got up, rubbed his eyes, looked at us (I think he was not quite sober) and asked us to produce our passports. We did so, but the man was not satisfied. How was he to know that we were the identical persons named in the passports? I produced a letter addressed to me, which I had in my pocket, and it tallied with my name in the passport. But even then his suspicions were not removed. He had a talk in French, which we did not understand, with the man who had arrested us, and he was evidently satisfied that we were after all Prussian spies.

The trouble was largely due to misunderstanding, as it is all the world over. We did not understand French and the policemen did not know English. My friends had taken some lessons in French, and they essayed to speak a few words in that language. The effort only served to deepen the suspicion of the police commissaire. He thought we were shamming, and that we knew a great deal more of the language than we pretended.

The discussion lasted nearly half an hour and at the end of it we were ordered to walk across the road to what apparently was the police lock-up. A door which opened into a room was unlocked and we were ushered inside. There was a drunken man confined in the room. He was taken elsewhere and accommodation was made for us. The policeman left us, having locked the door.

​It was a small room with a wooden bed, and we lay shut up in it from ten o'clock at night till nine o'clock the following morning. The plank bed was hardly sufficient for three of us to lie down upon. My friends talked away the whole night. There were insects in the plank bed which tormented them, as they afterwards told me. But as for me, wrapped in the gentle embraces of sleep, I was insensible to their attentions. They assailed me, I imagine, the whole night, but they failed to disturb my slumbers.

On the following morning a policeman unlocked the door and took us to the office where we had been examined the previous night. The first thing that we insisted on was that we must have some one who understood and could speak English. An English-speaking police officer was accordingly brought in. He grasped the whole situation in a minute and apologized to us for the trouble and insult to which we had been subjected. He took us to the police prefect, a cultured Frenchman who spoke English well, and he was even more profuse in his apologies. The trial of the Communist prisoners was then going on and was exciting European interest. People from different countries had come to witness the proceedings. Our prefect politely offered us tickets of admission to the court. We thanked him, but declined the tickets. We thought we had had enough of France. We straightway hurried to the station and before nightfall we were leaving French territory for a more hospitable country. The incident shows the dark and often unfounded suspicions which pervade the police mind even in the great centres of European civilization.

Our tour through Europe was necessarily a hurried one. Having been away from home so long, we wanted to be in Calcutta during the Durga Pujas, our great national festival, which usually takes place about the end of September or early in October. Venice impressed me as a unique city, both in its physical and historic aspects. Its streets are the inlets of the sea; and its palaces frown upon them. Historic memories crowded upon me as I gazed upon the palace of the Doges, the Prison and the Bridge of Sighs. The Prison which Napoleon wanted to burn down was reminiscent of the dark ages and of the cruel treatment accorded to prisoners in those days. From Venice we proceeded to Brindisi, where we went on board an Italian steamer and arrived at Bombay. We came straight to Calcutta, breaking journey at Allahabad, where Babu Nilcomol Mitter, then the leader of the Indian community, gave us a reception, at which, on behalf of my friends and myself, I made ​a speech, the first I believe that I ever made in my life. At the railway station at Howrah, Keshub Chunder Sen and other friends met us.

I went straight home and met my widowed mother, how changed from what.she was when I saw her last on the day preceding my visit to England! The sorrows and privations of Hindu widowhood had evidently told upon her body and mind.

All three of us (Romesh Chunder Dutt, Behari Lal Gupta and myself) stayed in our homes, and the Hindoo Patriot, the leading Hindu journal of the time, edited by Kristo Das Pal, announced that we had been received back into the bosom of our homes and Hindu society. It was a bold step for my mother and my brothers to have given me a place in a Brahmin family, and to have eaten and drunk and lived with me. My father was by no means orthodox in his ways, and his transgressions against strict orthodoxy were numerous and grave; but a visit to England was not one of them. Forbidden food and drink he used to take with an ostentation that shocked my grandfather. But Hindu society said nothing, winked at it, forgot and forgave.

A visit to England, however, was a new form of heterodoxy to which our society had not yet become accustomed. The Anglicized habits of some of those who had come back from England added to the general alarm. The leaders indeed applauded the courage of the members of my family in taking me back into the old home, but the whole attitude of Hindu society, of the rank and file, was one of unqualified disapproval. My family was practically outcasted. We were among the highest of Brahmins; but those who used to eat and drink with us on ceremonial occasions stopped all intercourse and refused to invite us. There were some who, jealous of my father’s fame and of my recent success, took advantage of this opportunity to settle old scores. These party and caste squabbles often afforded an admirable opportunity for the satisfaction of private grudges, and I have known of some cases within the last year or two where personal spite stimulated a sense of outraged religion.

I am now talking of a state of things which prevailed little less than half a century ago. But in the meantime a silent and stupendous change has taken place. A sea-voyage or a visit to Europe no longer involves the loss of caste. Among the Brahmins, especially in the mofussil, there may be some squeamishness in the matter; but among other castes, a man may visit any part of the ​world he likes, cross the seas as often as he pleases, and yet retain his social status as a member of the caste. That the Brahmins will soon be on a line with the other castes does not admit of a doubt; it is only a question of time. There are those who are never tired of telling us that East is East, that it is unchanged and unchanging, and that Hindu society is immobile. It is nothing of the sort. It is moving, slowly it may be, but steadily, and is responsive to the world-forces. The Hindu of to-day is very different from the Hindu as I saw him fifty years ago, and fifty years hence the difference between the old and the new will be even more marked. The car of progress, as it moves forward, gathers forces which impart to. it an impetus all their own. There comes a time when with the added momentum it rolls forward in its triumphant career in geometrical progression. Our political activities are reacting upon our social system, and the upward movement, with occasional aberrations, is visible along the entire line.

I arrived in Calcutta about the end of September, 1871. We had a reception given to us at the Seven Tanks Garden by the public of Calcutta. It was organized by Keshub Chunder Sen, Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar and Kissory Chand Mitter. Satyendra Nath Tagore was the first Indian Civilian. We were the second batch. Satyendra Nath Tagore was a Bombay Civilian. We had been appointed to the Bengal Presidency, and the success of three of us in one and the same year had created a profound impression upon Indian public opinion. The whole of Indian Calcutta was present at the function, and we were the cynosure of all eyes. The Seven Tanks and Belgachia Gardens were in those days the favourite centres of public functions organized by the Bengalee community. The Malliks and the Paikpara Rajas, who were the proprietors of these villas, were among the wealthiest and most trusted leaders of the community. Others have now come forward, and the representatives of the middle class have taken their legitimate place in guiding the public thought and activities of Bengal.

I stayed in Calcutta after my return from England for about a month. I was posted to Sylhet as Assistant Magistrate and joined my appointment on November 22, 1871. Sylhet was in those days a part of Bengal. In 1874 it was separated from Bengal and included in the new province of Assam, and ever since it has remained a part of Assam, although it is a Bengalee-speaking district. It took me fully a week to reach Sylhet from Calcutta. It is now only a day’s journey. Mr. H. C. Sutherland was Magistrate ​of Sylhet and was my immediate superior. I was supposed to be a sort of apprentice to him, and learn my work from him. He was an Anglo-Indian and not very popular, as I soon discovered. He gave me as much work as I could manage to get through, and he treated me at first with cordiality and with a sense of lofty patronage, of which he liked to make a display.

I rapidly passed the departmental examinations and obtained the powers of a first-class Magistrate. My success was the cause of my official ruin. At any rate I thought it largely contributed to it. Mr. Posford, who was my senior as Assistant Magistrate, and myself appeared together at the departmental examination. I passed; he failed. He was my senior by two years. He was a European and I was an Indian. My success and his failure were necessarily, in a small place like Sylhet, the subject of local gossip and comment. Mr. Sutherland, although an Anglo-Indian, was imbued with a strong racial feeling, which was accentuated by his position as a member of the Indian Civil Service. He did not like it that I should have passed and that Mr. Posford should have failed. The contrast seemed in his eyes to be derogatory to the prestige of the ruling race. I do not know what the practice is to-day; but in 1873, the passing of the departmental examinations was followed by promotion and increase of pay. I was invested with first-class powers, and got the usual increment to my salary. Mr. Sutherland wrote to the Government and had Mr. Posford exempted from further departmental examinations.

At this time, Mr. Anderson was appointed Joint Magistrate of Sylhet. He and I became great friends. He and Mr. Sutherland did not get on at all well. I was new to these little local jealousies and strifes, and in my simplicity I continued to be very friendly with the Andersons. All this led to an alienation between the Magistrate and myself and the suspension of all friendly and personal relations. My troubles now began. Hardly a day passed in which I was not called upon to give an explanation about some case or other. A superior officer can always make things very hot for a subordinate if he wants to; and from the time that these unpleasant relations commenced, my position became extremely uncomfortable, if not absolutely intolerable.

At last the climax was reached in connexion with a theft case in which one Judisthir was the accused. The man was charged with the theft of a boat. The case was originally on the file of Mr. Posford, but was transferred to me. Owing to my heavy work ​it had to be postponed from time to time. On December 31, 1872, an order was passed (and it bore my initials) that the accused should be entered in the Ferari list, the list of absconding prisoners. As a matter of fact the man had not absconded, and the object of the order was to avoid giving an explanation for the long pendency of the case. It was an artifice that was sometimes resorted to by the ministerial officers to save themselves from censure. In the case of a very young and inexperienced officer like myself, delay in the disposal of cases would be regarded by the superior authorities as a fault of the Peshkar (or ministerial servant) rather than of the officer, whom he is expected to guide and lead in matters of office procedure. I signed the order along with a heap of other papers. My attention was not drawn to it; nor did I know it or understand the significance of the order. When called upon to give an explanation about another case I inadvertently offered an explanation about this. If I had knowingly signed the order and knew its significance, such a mistake would have been impossible; for then I would have at once remembered that, the man’s name being in the Ferari list, no explanation could possibly be required. The Magistrate called for the records, and asked me for a full explanation, which I gave. He wrote to the District Judge, who addressed the High Court, and the Government was moved. A Commission was appointed under Act xxxix of 1850 to enquire into the whole matter.

The Commission consisted of three European officers, Mr. H. T. Prinsep, who afterwards rose to be a Judge of the High Court, Mr. H. J. Reynolds, who subsequently became a member of the Board of Revenue, and Major Holroyd of the Assam Commission. There were fourteen charges, but substantially they resolved themselves into two, namely, that I had dishonestly entered Judisthir’s name in the Ferari list, knowing that he was not an absconding prisoner, and, secondly, that, when called for an explanation, I had falsely pleaded ignorance and said that I knew nothing at all about it. There was a further charge, that I had dishonestly disposed of the case about Judisthir and acquitted him to avoid an explanation.

I prayed for the hearing of the case in Calcutta, and, further, that I should be provided by Government with counsel for my defence. Both the prayers were rejected. I was defended by Mr. Montriou, and the Commission permitted me personally to put in a few arguments at the end of the trial. Some of my friends had suggested that Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea, who was then rising to the position which ​he subsequently occupied at the Bar, should be engaged as my counsel. But it was thought advisable, in view of the feeling which had been evoked among the officials, that an England-returned Bengalee barrister. should not defend an England-returned Bengalee Civilian.

The Commissioners found me guilty of the charges, but they made no recommendation. I returned to Calcutta from Sylhet and obtained a copy of the report, without, however, the recommendations of the Government of India, which, as I subsequently found, were for my dismissal from the Service with a compassionate allowance of Rs. 50 a month.

My case excited very strong feeling in the Indian community, and the general belief amongst my countrymen was that, if I were not an Indian, I would not have been put to all this trouble, and that the head and front of my offence was that I had entered the sacred preserves of the Indian Civil Service, which so far had been jealously guarded against invasion by the children of the soil. Many years afterwards a Lieutenant-Governor told me that it was a wicked proceeding. Sir Edward Baker, another Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, who knew me well, said in a conversation with Mr. Gokhale, which was repeated to me by the latter: ‘I have a soft corner in my heart for Surendranath. We have done him a grievous wrong; but he bears no malice.’ Mr. Hume, the father of the Indian National Congress, writing in India in 1893, uses language which reflects the feeling of educated India.^[1]

It is worthy of notice that in 1882, eight years after my dismissal, I was appointed an Honorary Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta and a Justice of the Peace invested with power of imprisonment extending to two years, and of inflicting fines which might amount to one thousand rupees. Evidently those who trusted me with these pienary powers (and they are the highest which a magistrate under the Indian Law can exercise) thought that either I was innocent of the charges upon which I had been removed from the Indian Civil Service, or that I had outgrown my former self and changed my character within the brief period of eight years. I leave it to the reader to judge which of the two inferences is the more rational.

I may here add (though I am anticipating events by several years) that under the rules for the election of members to the ​Legislative Councils, framed under the Parliamentary Statute of 1910, I was disqualified for election by reason of my dismissal. The disqualification was removed by the Government of Bengal, and subsequently by the Government of India, when I stood as a candidate for election to the Imperial Legislative Council.