A Nation in Making/Chapter 6

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6

Reactionary Government and its Consequences

In these memoirs I have not always followed the chronological order in developing the incidents of my life. Taking up a particular chapter, I have sometimes found it more convenient to close it and begin a new one, some of the events related being of prior date. The reduction of the age limit for the Indian Civil Service examination was but a part of a reactionary policy in relation to India that was associated with the administration of Lord Salisbury as Conservative Secretary of State for India. India is said to be beyond the pale of party politics. In the opinion of educated India it is a misfortune that it should be so; for we cannot forget it was because India was a potent factor in determining the issues of party politics that Warren Hastings was impeached, and that for the first time, to quote the language of Lord Morley in his Life of Burke, ‘it was definitely proclaimed that Asiatics had their rights and Europeans their obligation under British rule’. The moral result of that impeachment was a striking gain for India. But since then things have changed, and both Liberals and Conservatives have, from the front benches, uttered the shibboleth that India lies outside party considerations. Sir Henry Fowler, when Secretary of State for India, declared from his place in Parliament that every member of Parliament was a member for India. The sentiment was greeted with cheers, it was palpably so noble and so instinct with the consciousness of duty to an unrepresented dependency. In India, however, it evoked a smile of incredulity. For we all know that what is everybody's business is nobody's business, and each year the truth is painfully impressed upon our minds when we read the accounts of the debates on the Indian Budget in the House of Commons and of the empty benches to which the oratory of the speakers is addressed. Both parties have been scrupulously impartial in their attitude of indifference towards India.

​A great deal, indeed, depends upon the personality of the Secretary of State for India. The policy pursued in relation to India is dominated by his personal character and his personal sympathies, and is only partially moulded by the general drift of the policy of the party to which he belongs. Each minister is more or less supreme in his department, subject to the public opinion of the country as reflected in the prevailing tendencies of Parliament. That is our reading of the situation. It was Lord Derby, a Conservative Secretary of State, who gave us the great Proclamation of 1858. It was Sir Stafford Northcote (afterwards Earl Iddesleigh) who founded the State scholarships for the encouragement of Indian students seeking to complete their education in England. It was again a Liberal Secretary of State, the Duke of Argyll, who abolished them. It was a Conservative ministry that laid the beginnings of popular representation by giving us the reformed and expanded Legislative Councils under the Parliamentary Statute of 1892. Latterly, however, the Liberal party have really tried to be more or less true to their principles in the Government of India, and the most notable illustration of this view is afforded by Lord Morley’s Reform Scheme of 1909, the modification of the Partition of Bengal, and the pledge of provincial autonomy given by the Despatch of August 25, 1911.

Lord Salisbury’s regime as Secretary of State for India was distinctly reactionary. He was responsible for sending out to India as Viceroy, Lord Lytton, of whom the Marquis of Hartington (afterwards Duke of Devonshire) said, from his place in Parliament, that he was the very reverse of what an Indian Viceroy should be. His son, however, the present Lord Lytton, Governor of Bengal, is a ruler of a different type. Professing to be a Conservative, he is really an advanced Democrat, with genuine sympathy for Indian aspirations. Many years later, in the nineties of the last century, Lord Salisbury, when Prime Minister, sent out Lord Curzon, and the story of his viceroyalty is one that all the ingenuity of Mr. Lovat Fraser of The Times has failed to whitewash.

But I am, perhaps, anticipating coming events. I have already referred to the reduction of the limit of age for the Indian Civil Service and the agitation to which it gave rise. Lord Salisbury’s Viceroy, Lord Lytton, gagged the Vernacular Press, and disarmed the population of British India. These two measures, the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act provoked widespread agitation, in which I took my humble share.

​In the dark days of the Indian Mutiny, when the British Empire in India was really exposed to serious danger, Lord Canning and his advisers did not think it necessary to disarm the Indian population. The Afghan War in Lord Lytton’s time (which, by the way, was a grievous blunder, the whole policy that dictated it having been undone) caused no serious excitement in India, none at any rate among the Hindu population, and little, or hardly any, among the Mohamedans, except perhaps on the frontiers. The Arms Act was unnecessary in the sense that it was not required as a measure of protection against internal revolt; it was mischievous because it made an irritating and invidious distinction between Europeans and Indians, a distinction that has recently been done away with. It. inaugurated a policy of mistrust and suspicion, utterly undeserved and strongly resented by our people, and it imposed upon us a badge of racial inferiority. We protested against it at the time. We appealed to Mr. Gladstone, and he supported our protest and condemned it and the Vernacular Press Act in his speeches in the Midlothian campaign; but, unhappily, when he became Prime Minister he did us only partial justice—he repealed the Vernacular Press Act, but the Arms Act he left untouched.

The Vernacular Press Act was passed at one and the same sitting of the Imperial Legislative Council in April, 1878. The measure was deemed to be so urgent that the country was not given time to discuss it. The rules of business of the Council were suspended, and it was passed on the very day that it was introduced. In times of excitement bureaucracy is sometimes apt to avoid discussion in the belief that publicity would be fatal to its pre-ordained policy, and that a measure, once passed into law, and embodied in an administrative arrangement, would be regarded as a settled fact, never to be unsettled. Recent events have dissipated the delusion; and our present-day officials have in a variety of ways shown that they have a better conception of the potency of public opinion. The Vernacular Press Act itself has been repealed; the Partition of Bengal, the most settled of settled facts, has been unsettled. When an unpopular measure is passed, the public for the moment submit as to the stroke of an inevitable fate. They bide their time; they gather their forces; they renew the attack, and the idols of the bureaucracy are swept away from their places of worship, and remain only as enduring monuments of administrative unwisdom and the waste of administrative energy and resource.

​The Vernacular Press Act came upon the educated community as a bolt from the blue; but that something of the kind was coming had long been anticipated. To the Delhi Assemblage of 1877 the Press was invited, I attended the Delhi Assemblage as the correspondent of the Hindoo Patriot, then the leading Indian paper in Bengal, under the editorship of that prince of Indian journalists, Kristo Das Pal. I was not connected with the Press at this time in any definite capacity, but, when I was in London in 1874–75, I had acted as the London correspondent of the Hindoo Patriot. To me it was a labour of love, a discipline and a training, and also an opportunity of showing my admiration and gratitude to one to whom I was bound by the ties of personal kindness and public duty. At Delhi I organized a Press Association consisting of all the members of the Indian Press who attended the Assemblage, and we waited in deputation upon the Viceroy with an address. I was the youngest member of the Deputation, but I represented the greatest Indian paper in the country. I stood upon my rights, as there was some difference of opinion as to who should be our spokesman; and to me was accorded the position of the head of the Deputation. I read the address. We had no casket, for we could get none made at Delhi within the time allotted. In the address we made a pointed reference to the report about the coming restrictions on the Press, and we expressed the hope that the liberties so long enjoyed might be continued. The Viceroy, as might have been expected, was reticent and said nothing in reply to this part of the address. We felt that we had done our duty in communicating our hopes and fears, and for the time the matter ended there.

Within less than fifteen months, the Vernacular Press all over India, save that of Madras, was muzzled. In the Council Chamber not a single dissentient voice was raised. Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohon Tagore, who was then a member of the Imperial Legislative Council, had been, so the report went, sent for and spoken to by the Viceroy, and he voted with the Government. The Hindoo Patriot wrote against the measure, but not with the warmth that usually characterized its patriotic utterances. Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohon Tagore was one of the most prominent members of the British Indian Association; and his vote hampered the independent judgement of that body. They could not disavow him, one of their most trusted colleagues. I have no desire to justify the Maharaja’s vote on that occasion. But in judging of a public man acting in circumstances of extreme difficulty we must endeavour to place ​ourselves in his position, and recognise his difficulties and his environment. Be it noted that public opinion was not so strong then as it now is, and that, so recently as during Lord Minto’s Viceroyalty, the Indian members of the Imperial Legislative Council, with two honourable exceptions, supported a Press Act (now repealed), in one sense a far more drastic measure than the Act for which the Maharaja had voted. Nor should the fact be overlooked that the Maharaja, subject to the limitations of his position, was thoroughly patriotic and supported public movements whenever he could. His vote at the Council meeting was no doubt indefensible, but it admits of palliation. In judging of the honoured dead, let us weigh the good with the evil; in his case the good certainly preponderates.

Be that as it may, the educated community in Bengal was roused to a sense of anxiety and alarm at the Vernacular Press Act, and the manner of its enactment. The feeling was deepened by the inaction of the British Indian Association and of some of our leading men. It was fortunate that the Indian Association had been formed five years before, and that there was this organization to voice the sentiments of the middle class. We were resolved to do all that lay in our power to bring about the repeal of the Press Act. I went about personally canvassing our leading men. 1 well remember the discouragement I met with from more than one quarter. A Brahmo leader who shall be nameless said to me, ‘Mr. Lethbridge, the Press Commissioner, has seen me on the subject. We had a long talk. I have a responsible position to maintain; I cannot join you’. Another leading man, whom I saw, said to me, ‘I wish you all success; but we cannot help you’. Such was the cold reception that we met with amongst those upon whose help and co-operation in this matter we felt we had a right to count.

Far different was the attitude of some of our Christian friends, including Dr. K. M. Banerjee and the Rev. Dr. K. S. Macdonald of the Free Church of Scotland. From the very first, they were with us and encouraged and helped us. The Rev. Krishna Mohan Banerjee (better known as K. M. Banerjee) was among the earliest Indian converts to Christianity. A scholar and a man of letters, it was not till late in life that he began to take an active part in politics. He was associated with the Indian League and subsequently became President of the Indian Association. Once thrown into the vortex of public life, he was drawn into its deeper currents. He joined the Corporation and became an active member of that ​body. He was then past sixty; and though growing years had deprived him of the alertness of youth, yet in the keenness of his interest, and in the vigour and outspokenness of his utterances, he exhibited the ardour of the youngest recruit to our ranks. Never was there a man more uncompromising in what he believed to be the truth, and hardly was there such amiability combined with such strength and firmness.

It is this type of character that I am afraid is fast disappearing from our midst. The suavity and old-world manners of our people are becoming rare, while the militant aggressiveness of the West is usurping its place. Dr. Banerjee threw himself heart and soul into the movement, and his association with it and that of the Rev. Dr. Macdonald gave it a non-sectarian and cosmopolitan character. The cry of political movements being seditious had not then been raised; but it was a distinct source of strength and inspiration to us that we had with us these two highly-honoured representatives of the Christian community of Calcutta in what was the first great political demonstration of the middle class community in Bengal.

The Town Hall was secured, and the day of the public meeting was fixed. Here an incident occurred that is worth recording. On the day fixed for the public meeting, information was received in Calcutta that, in view of the possibility of the outbreak of War with Russia, Disraeli, who was then Prime Minister, had directed the despatch of six thousand Indian troops to Malta. As a matter of fact, war did not break out, but this was one of those political fireworks in which the imaginative genius of the semi-Oriental Premier delighted to indulge. The announcement made a great impression in Calcutta. It was the talk of the town and of the Calcutta Bar Library. It was seriously suggested to Mr. Ananda Mohan Bose by his lawyer friends of the Bar Library that the Town Hall mecting should be postponed. A hint was given to him that serious consequences might follow, and a suggestion of a criminal prosecution was made, if we persisted in holding the meeting, in spite of the uncertain situation in Europe. Mr. Ananda Mohan Bose hurried to my house. It was then three in the afternoon; the meeting was to be held at five o’clock. We discussed the matter. I said that it was one of the first great demonstrations of the Indian Association and of the middle class party in Bengal, and that, if it were to be postponed, it would never again be held. The people would lose faith in us, and it would mean the beginning of the end. I added that our constituents were the people. As for the ​consequences, my friend, who was a lawyer, and I agreed that nothing serious need be apprehended, so long as we were moderate and kept within constitutional bounds. We decided to hold the meeting and face the consequences, whatever they might be.

It was one of the most successful meetings ever held in Calcutta. It sounded the death-knell of the Vernacular Press Act, and, what is even more important, it disclosed the growing power of the middle class, who could act with effect for the protection of their interests, even though the wealthier classes were lukewarm, and official influence was openly arrayed against them. It was a lesson that the middle class of Bengal never forgot, and which they have since utilized in many useful directions. It indeed marked a definite and progressive stage in national evolution; and was the creation of the builders of the Indian Association.

The agitation against the Vernacular Press Act was continued. The Indian Association addressed a letter to Mr. Gladstone, expressing their gratitude to him for his support of the liberty of the Press in India. The draft of the letter was mine. The Rev. Dr. K. M. Banerjee revised it. It elicited an autograph reply from the Right Hon. gentleman, which is still preserved among the archives of the Association. When in 1909 I visited the Oxford Union along with other members of the Imperial Press Conference, I was shown a record of the proceedings of the Union in Mr. Gladstone’s own handwriting. He was then Secretary or President of the Union, I forget which. The writing was fine, clear and bold. The letter in the possession of the Indian Association is altogether a different specimen of handwriting, bearing traces of the change that age had wrought.

One of the earliest acts of Lord Ripon’s administration was the repeal of the Vernacular Press Act. It is interesting to notice how same of those who had zealously upheld the measure were now equally zealous in supporting its repeal. The discipline of the Civil Service is one of its notable characteristics. Consistency is no part of its creed. It obeys the lead given by its seniors and elders with scrupulous fidelity. We have had a recent and somewhat notable illustration of this in its attitude in regard to the modification of the Partition of Bengal. The modification of the Partition was strongly resented by the Bengal Civilians. It was felt more or less as a blow aimed at the prestige of the Service. But among those who signed the Despatch of the 25th August, 1911, recommending the modification, was a prominent Bengal Civilian who had identified ​himself with the working of the Partition and with a well-known circular letter, which was one of the earliest indications of the birth of the reactionary policy that followed the Partition. The popular leaders have no quarrel with these tergiversations. But they note them as showing that strong convictions are perhaps a clog to official advancement in India, and those who change as the ruling official mind changes have the best prospects of official preferment.

Lord Ripon’s assumption of the Viceroyalty was a relief to the Indian public. The reactionary administration of Lord Lytton had roused the public from its attitude of indifference and had given a stimulus to public life. In the evolution cf political progress, bad rulers are often a blessing in disguise. They help to stir a community into life, a result that years of agitation would perhaps have failed to achieve. They call into being organized efforts which not only sweep away their bad measures, but create that public life and spirit which survives for all time to come, and is the surest guarantee of future and abiding progress. Lord Lytton was a benefactor, without intending to be one; and, more recently, Lord Curzon was a benefactor in the same sense, but perhaps on a larger scale.

We in India knew little or nothing about Lord Ripon or his antecedents. There were two circumstances that were in his favour. He was the nominee of Mr. Gladstone, who had thoroughly indentified himself with the popular view in India regarding the Vernacular Press Act, and he was a convert to Roman Catholicism and had suffered for his faith, We remembered what The Times wrote of him, when, giving up his great position in the social and public life of England, he deliberately faced the prospect of ruin by embracing the Roman Catholic faith. I was in England at the time and I remember the great stir it caused. I imagine differences of creed gave rise to stronger feelings in those days than they are now apt to evoke. The Times had a leading article in which it prophesied that Lord Ripon was a lost man. But in those days educated India, following the dictum of Cobden, approved what The Times disapproved; and we welcomed Lord Ripon as a ruler who had suffered for the faith that was in him. Events showed that we were fully justified; for one of the very first things that he said on assuming his great office was that he had it in charge from Her Majesty the Queen-Empress to look to the municipal institutions of the country; for there the political education of the people really began.

This declaration of a great policy was an open invitation to those ​who were working for the uplift of their country to co-operate with the Government for its realization. We of the Indian Association at once set to work. We issued a circular letter, and we sent round delegates inviting the rate-payers of our mofussil towns to move the Government for the re-organization of their municipalities upon a popular and elective basis. I myself visited various parts of Bengal, including Bhagalpore, Monghyr (now in Behar), Rajshahi, Bogra and Pabna. Public meetings were held in these places, at which I spoke. Our delegates visited many other centres in the interior. In those days there was no Criminal Investigation Department and the police did not think that it was a part of their duty to dog the footsteps and watch the movements of political workers. Our work was therefore easy; and our countrymen everywhere received us with open arms.

Political work in the mofussil was then a new thing, and the new-born enthusiasm for political progress that we were able to evoke in the most distant parts of the province is one of the most pleasant and enduring reminiscences of my life. Everywhere the Bar lent us firm support, and the zemindars hardly ever failed us. The truth is that political work in those early days was not regarded with suspicion by the official classes; and the people, left to their own impulses and unhampered by the spirit of Non-co-operation, did their duty. Of course, it was impossible to visit every town or to send delegates to every considerable place in Bengal. From such places as we could not visit we obtained written opinions on the subject of Local Self-government. Having thus ascertained the views of the country on the Viceroy’s proposals, we drafted a memorial and convened a public meeting at the Town Hall.

We took advantage of this demonstration to thank the Viceroy for the repeal of the Vernacular Press Act, and to press for the abolition of the Arms Act. I moved the resolution on the subject of Local Self-government, which was in these terms:

It will be seen that the views set forth in this resolution formed the main features of the resolutions on Local Self-government issued by Lord Ripon. They urged (1) the constitution of the local bodies upon a popular and elective basis, (2) the enlargement of their powers, and (3) the election of their chairman by the local bodies themselves. These were the basic principles of the Resolutions of the Government of India. The meeting was held on February 18, 1881; the resolutions of the Government of India were issued in October, 1881, and May, 1882. Here was a conspicuous instance of almost perfect accord between the official and the popular view, and be it noted that it was Lord Ripon who soon after, as Chancellor of the University of Calcutta, declared that the time was fast approaching when popular opinion even in India would become the irresistible and unresisted master of the Government. No Viceroy did more to promote this blessed consummation. The impress of his policy has left its enduring mark upon Indian administration, and more than one Viceroy has essayed to walk in his footsteps.

But the question of Local Self-government formed only a part of the larger movement for the strengthening of public opinion and the enthronement of the popular view. Even before we had taken up the question of Local Self-government, the attention of the Bengal leaders had been drawn to what indeed is the most vital of our problems, namely, representative government for India. The Indian Association had appointed a committee, and I had already placed myself in communication on the subject with Mr. Shaw, late of the Bombay Civil Service, and Sir David Wedderburn.

In this connexion it may not be altogether out of place to notice the steady development of our national aspirations. In the sixties of the last century, and even earlier, the efforts of our national leaders were directed to securing for the people of India an adequate share of the higher offices of trust and responsibility under the Government. The Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 had stirred their ambitions in this direction, and in season and out of season they pressed for the redemption of the pledges contained in that message. In Western India, the movement was led by Mr. Nowroji Furdoonji ​and Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, India’s Grand Old Man. In Bengal, the movement was represented by the British Indian Association, and found ardent advocates in men like Kristo Das Pal, Rajendra Lal Mitter, Romanath Tagore, Degumbar Mitter, and others.

But the ground was now to be shifted. A higher platform appeared in view, and a brighter vision presented itself to the gaze of educated India. There is evolution in all things, even in the slow movements of public life. The efforts of the last few years had stirred a strange and hitherto-unfelt awakening among our people, and had created new hopes and aspirations. It was not enough that we should have our full share of the higher offices, but we aspired to have a voice in the councils of the nation. There was the bureaucracy. For good or evil, it was there. We not only wanted to be members of the bureaucracy and to leaven it with the Indian element, but we looked forward to controlling it, and shaping and guiding its measures, and eventually bringing the entire administration under complete popular domination. It was a new departure hardly noticed at the time, but fraught with immense potentialities. Along with the development of the struggle for place and power to be secured to our countrymen, there came gradually but steadily to the forefront the idea that this was not enough, that it was part, but not even the most vital part, of the programme for the political elevation of our people. The pursuit of high ideals has an elevating effect upon the public mind. Great as is the gain when the object is attained, its indirect results, in the widening of our vision, in the strengthening of our moral fibre, in the all-round impulse that it communicates to national activities, are even more enduring, more pregnant with unseen and undreamt-of possibilities for the future. The demand for representative government was now definitely formulated, and it was but the natural and legitimate product of the public activities that had preceded it.