No More Learning

Cotton, New India, p. 4.
• Max Müller, op. cit. 11, 167.


## p. 540 (#580) ############################################

540
CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
which evolved an eclectic faith, this new society based its creed on the
Vedas, and claimed that these alone were the revealed scriptures and
that they contained mystical references to all knowledge, even to the
discoveries of modern science. Mme Blavatsky, the founder of the
Theosophical Society, had been affected by Buddhism, and used this
new doctrine in developing her cult. While the Brahmo Samaj was
mainly confined to Bengal, and the Arya Samaj to Western and
Northern India, theosophy attracted individuals in all parts of India,
and had its established centre near Madras. None of these spiritual
movements had any direct political aims, but they brought together
men who were seeking fresh interpretation of the old faiths, and who
naturally passed thence into affairs of state. In 1883 the Bengal group of
young political workers organised a national fund and held their first
national conference attended by delegates from the principal towns.
They were doubtless closely following affairs in Ireland, where the
Irish National League had taken the place of the defunct land league
in the previous October. A year later a small meeting in Madras,
chiefly composed of delegates to the annual convention of the Theo-
sophical Societ, , decided to organise committees to gather adherents
for an Indian national union, and meet again for political discussions.
In 1885 the national conference met again at Calcutta, with delegates
from Northern India as well as from Bengal, and simultaneously the
national union held a series of meetings at Poona which constituted
the first Indian National Congress, and absorbed the earlier institu-
tion. The promoters of both these gatherings made representative
government their main objective, and announced their hopes that
the conferences would develop into Indian parliaments. A congress
resolution asked for a considerable proportion of elected members in
the existing councils, for the creation of new councils in the North-
Western Provinces and Oudh (now the United Provinces) and in the
Panjab, for the right to discuss the budget and to put interpellations
on all branches of the administration, and for the formation of a
standing committee of the House of Commons to consider protests by
legislative councils if they were overruled by the executive. The
congress also desired to abolish the council of the secretary of state,
to have simultaneous examinations in India and England to admit
candidates for the Indian Civil Service, the age being raised, and to
limit military expenditure. It deprecated the annexation of Upper
Burma on the score of expense, and suggested that, if annexation took
place, the whole of Burma should be administered separately from
India, as a crown colony.
The meeting stimulated further political activity and organisation,
and was repeated annually. 'An attempt was made to give it a repre-
sentative character, but for some years the delegates could be chosen
1 Encycl. Brit. 11th ed. xxvi, 789.
: Annie Besant, How India wrought for freedom, p. 1.
>


## p. 541 (#581) ############################################

MUSLIMS AND THE CONGRESS
541
by any association of any kind or indeed at any public meeting con-
vened by anybody. A few Europeans became members, but their
example has not had many followers. Muslims joined only in small
numbers, and their sympathy as a community with the congress was
weakened by a lecture delivered at Lucknow by the late Sir Sayyid
Ahmad in December, 1887, while the congress was meeting in
Madras. " Sir Sayyid, after a long career in the judicial service of the
United Provinces, had devoted himself to promoting the study of
English by Muslims, and had been a nominated member of the
imperial legislative council. He was entirely free from religious pre-
judice, and had indeed exerted himself to reduce it, but he main-
tained that, in the conditions then existing in India, compliance with
the demands made by the congress would injure the state. Competitive
examinations, though suitable in English conditions, would in India
lead to the selection of officials whose origin would make them in-
acceptable to the strongly conservative Indian with his pride in
ancestry. Diversity of race and tradition created another problem,
and domination by the Bengalis, who were likely to gain most of the
posts, would not be submitted to by Muslims and Rajputs with their
more warlike traditions. The second congress in 1886 had elaborated
the previous scheme for representation in legislative councils, asking
that not less than half the members should be elected, and not more
than a quarter nominated non-officials. Sir Sayyid pointed out that
in any ordinary system the Muslims would be in a minority, and, even
if special representation were given to them, their backwardness in
education and their comparative poverty would place them at a
disadvantage. He asserted the loyalty of the Indian people and the
comparative insignificance of those who wished for political power,
and he questioned the authority of the congress to criticise military
expenditure. In a later address he shrewdly doubted the willingness
of Indians to tax themselves even if they had the power. Although
the third congress elected a Muslim gentleman from Bombay as
president, Sir Sayyid's advice was followed by most Muslims for
twenty years, and was not appreciably affected by a resolution of the
fourth congress that resolutions should not be introduced for dis-
cussion if one community strongly objected, or be passed if such
objection became apparent during discussion.
A change in viceroys, Lord Dufferin having ucceeded Lord Ripon
at the end of 1884, meant no reversal of the ge. eral policy of meeting
reasonabledemands with a liberality confined on. ybyrestrictions which
those best fitted to judge held necessary in the view of all interests.
Lord Dufferin had previous experience in the near East of the ways
of Eastern autocracy, and in Canada of the position of a constitutional
governor-general in a dominion feeling its way to responsible govern-
ment. His natural inclination to liberal measures was tempered by
1 Sir Sayyid Ahmad, On the present state of Indian politics, Allahabad, 1888, p. 1.
a


## p. 542 (#582) ############################################

542
CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
the dangers of academic idealism impressed on him as an Irish land-
lord, who had managed his own estates. Only a year before he went
to India he had drawn up a scheme for associating the people more
closely with the government in Egypt, which was in force for twenty
years, 2 and has been copied by several constitution makers for India.
After two years' study of Indian conditions he recorded a minute
(1886) which exhibits his insight into the real desires of the forward
party, and his sagacity regarding the method for meeting them. He
desired to make a careful examination of the demands,
2
. . . to give quickly and with a good grace whatever it may be possible or desirable
to accord; to announce that the concessions must be accepted as a final settlement
of the Indian system for the next ten or fifteen years; and to forbid mass meetings
and incendiary speechifying. "
Soon after his arrival he had felt the desirability of reform in the
legislative councils, and he now advocated changes which would give
the viceroy the advantage of relying more largely upon the experience
and counsels of Indian coadjutors, while the possibility of their having
a party behind them would relieve the Government of India from its
existing isolation.
Another period of two years passed before definite proposals were
sent home (November, 1888), in a dispatch accompanied by a minute
of Lord Dufferin. He had described in 1886 the risks to be incurred
byintroducing a representative element into the Government of India,
but was prepared to liberalise at all events the provincial legislative
councils, one of which, in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, was
created in that year. Supported by a committee of his executive
council Lord Dufferin described his scheme as
a plan for the enlargement of our provincial councils, for the enhancement of
their status, the multiplication of their functions, the partial introduction into
them of the elective principle, and the liberalisation of their general character
as political institutions.
At the same time he deprecated the inference that the Government of
India were contemplating, in the provinces, an approach to English
parliamentary government and an English constitutional system. The
Indian executive was directly responsible to the sovereign and to the
British parliament and must remain so while Great Britain continued
to be the paramount administrative power in India. Describing the
British system of responsible government, he pointed out that it
could not be introduced into an Indian province because the
governor, if a vote was carried against him in his legislative council,
could not "call upon the dissentients to take the place of his own
1 Sir A. Lyall, Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, p. 43.
• Idem, p. 48.
3 Idem, p. 151.
• Montagu-Chelmsford Report, paras. 67-8.


## p. 543 (#583) ############################################

DUFFERIN'S PROPOSALS
543
official advisers, who are nominated by the queen-empress on the
advice of the secretary of state”. In proposing to liberalise the
government, therefore, he insisted on the necessity of leaving "in
the hands of each provincial government the ultimate decision upon
all important questions and the paramount control of its own policy",
by arranging that nominated members of legislative councils should
outnumber the elected members, and that the governor could over-
rule his council when he felt it necessary to do so. He foresaw that
even with these limited powers the elected members would be able to
influence the policy of the government, and he felt that their presence
in the council would be beneficial by enlarging the field of public
discussion, while they would consider themselves “responsible to
enlightened and increasing sections of their own countrymen”.
The Conservative government in England declined to agree to any
system of election on the ground that “it would be unwise to introduce
a fundamental change of this description without much more eyidence
in its favour than was forthcoming". 1 Lord Lansdowne, who had
now succeeded Lord Dufferin, supported his recommendation, and
asked that at least the Government of India might be empowered to
make rules for the appointment of additional members by nomination
or otherwise, to include election where conditions justified its use.
A bill was prepared in 1889, but not introduced till February, 1890
(House of Lords). From the papers which were simultaneously
presented all reference to a system of election was completely
excluded, and the only portions of Lord Dufferin's minute, a state
paper of the highest value, which appeared in them were his recom-
mendations that the annual budget should be presented and dis-
cussed, and that non-official members should be allowed to ask
questions. Lord Cross accepted these and was also prepared to in-
crease considerably the number of nominated members in the councils,
and the bill provided for all these matters. While the proposals met
with no opposition in the House of Lords, the government was strongly
pressed to allow some method of election, and to publish in full the
dispatches and minutes. Lord Ripon asserted that Lord Dufferin's
minute had been surreptitiously printed in India, and it was known
that he favoured election. Lord Northbrook spoke eloquently in
favour of it, while at the same time deprecating any approach to the
British system: “India is a long way from having what is called a
responsible government, namely an administration composed of men
who possess a majority in the representative assembly”. He was not
opposed to a body like the congress, though he admitted that certain
1 Montagu-Chelmsford Report, para. 69.
2 Cd. 5950 of 1890.
• Lord Mayo had proposed this for provincial councils twenty years earlier, but without
success, vide Mr Curzon, Hansard, 28 March, 1892, p. 60.
• Another clause was added to give provincial councils powers of modifying laws passed
by the imperial equncil after 1861. See Lord Herschell in Hansard, 13 March, 1890,
• Hansard, 6 March, 1890, p. 63.
p. 669.


## p. 544 (#584) ############################################

544
CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
>
members were circulating papers which might be dangerous, and he
deprecated the scheme of election which it had advocated. All those
who supported him were agreed that details must be worked out in
India owing to the complexity and variety of Indian conditions, and
there was a disposition to avoid motions on the budget as leading to
irresponsible discussion. Lord Salisbury laid stress on the deep re-
sponsibility on any government that introduced the elective principle
as an effective agent in the government of India. He was careful to
make no rash prophecy about the future and said: “It may be--I do
not desire to question it--that it is to be the ultimate destiny of India". 1
But he pointed out that the idea was foreign to the East and its
adoption had so far produced no tangible results in Turkey or Egypt.
Representative government appeared to him admirable only when all
those who were represented desired much the same thing and had
interests which were tolerably analogous. Echoing perhaps the
addresses of Sir Sayyid Ahmad, he laid stress on the radical and acrid
differences between Hindu and Muhammadan, and he poured ridi-
cule on the idea that a constituency for representing virile communities
like Panjabis and Rajputs or even the ryots could be found in a body
elected for making streets and drains. He held that the chief need
was for a fuller representation of all interests.
Though the bill quickly passed through the House of Lords, it was
never taken up in the Commons. Irish affairs, while they had been an
incentive to the Indian politicians and their supporters in England,
proved a deterrent to the government. Mr Bradlaugh had already
introduced one Home Rule bill for India, at the request of the Indian
National Congress of 1889. It provided an elaborate scheme of
electoral colleges, with proportional representation, and a large
number of elected members. After the withdrawal (5 August, 1890)
of the government measure, he produced a more modest bill, leaving
details to be settled by rules. Mr Balfour's Land Purchase Bill for
Ireland was occupying public time, and, though the Indian Councils
bill was revived early in 1891, the certainty of great pressure to make
it more liberal deterred the government, and it was again dropped
after several postponements, causing great disappointment in India.
The president of the congress meeting of that year explained the
dropping of the bill as due to the death of Mr Bradlaugh.
With the break-up of the Parnellite party and the death of its leader,
preoccupation with the affairs of Ireland was less intense, and a fresh
bill passed the House of Lords in February, 1892, with little comment,
as it contained a clause wide enough to permit some degree of an
elective principle, though not prescribing it. Lord Northbrook indeed
said that he preferred to describe his object as “representation”
rather than "election”, which Lord Kimberley had advocated.
Commenting on this Lord Salisbury agreed with the former. ?
1 Hansard, 6 March, 1890, p. 98.
• Idem, 15 February, 1892, p. 117.


## p. 545 (#585) ############################################

THE ACT OF 1892
545
Speaking with less derision of the local bodies, he said that the govern-
ment wished to popularise them and to bring them into harmony
with
the dominant sentiment of the Indian people, and added:'
But we must be careful lest, by the application of occidental machinery, we bring
into power not the strong, natural, vigorous, effective elements of Indian society,
but the more artificial and weakly elements, which -
we ourselves have made and
have brought into prominence. It would be a great evil if, in any system of
government which we gradually develop, the really strong portions of Indian
society did not obtain that share in the government to which their natural position
among their own people traditionally entitles them.
By a strange coincidence it fell to Mr G. N. Curzon to conduct this
bill through the House of Commons, as under-secretary of state, and
a quarter of a century later to draw up the final draft of a pronounce-
ment which led to the tentative introduction of responsible govern-
ment in Indian provinces. Like other spokesmen of the government,
he described the bill as in no sense creating a parliamentary system. "
No objection was raised to the proposals for discussion of the budget,
and the right to put questions. The chief controversy was on the
matter of election, and an amendment was moved by Mr Schwann to
declare that no system would be satisfactory which did not embody
this. In committee he elaborated details which would have had the
effect of fixing the number of elected members at between one-third
and a half of the total membership, with election by ballot and not
less than 2 per cent. of the population enfranchised. Though the
government was not prepared to bind itself to such a definite scheme,
it was clearly understood that the rules to be framed would recognise
the principle of election. Sir R. Temple, who had had a wide official
experience in India and had been governor of Bombay, suggested
that the sixteen additional members of the viceroy's council should
be chosen by the towns in which an elective system was in force for
municipal purposes, and Mr Curzon indicated as bodies which
would be suitable as constituencies the British Indian Association
(which Lord Ripon had already used to suggest additional members
for the discussion on the Bengal Tenancy Act), the chambers of com-
merce, the corporations of great cities, universities and various great
religious associations. Mr Gladstone was satisfied that it was intended
to have selectio after election and deprecated a division on
Mr Schwann's propu sal to prescribe this in the bill, as it was not the
business of parliament to devise machinery for the purposes of Indian
government, though it was right to give those who represented Her
Majesty in India ample information as to what parliament believed
to be the sound principles of government. The premature claims of
the congress to be accepted as representative were criticised by
Mr Curzon in picturesque and illuminating fashion:
1 Hansard, 28 March, 1892, p. 57.
* Idem, 28 March, 1892, p. 68.
,
• Idem, pp. 1301 $99.
• Idem, p. 98.
• Idem, p. 80.
35
OHI V


## p. 546 (#586) ############################################

546 CONGRESS AND EARLY POLITICAL LITERATURE
You can as little judge of the feelings and inspiration of the people of India
from the plans and proposals of the congress party as you can judge of the physical
configuration of a country which is wrapped in the mists of early morning, but
a few of whose topmost peaks have been touched by the rising sun.
Sir Richard Temple, with a more intimate knowledge of individual
members, gave a warning against entrusting more political powers to
them until they showed "greater moderation, greater sobriety of
thought, greater robustness of intelligence, greater self-control-all
which qualities build up the national character. . . ".
The bill having been passed without amendment (26 May, 1892),
the Government of India were informed that parliament intended
that:
where corporations have been established with definite powers, upon a recognised
administrative basis, or where associations have been formed upon a substantial
community of legitimate interests, professional, commercial or territorial, the
governor-general and the local governors might find convenience and advantage
in consulting from time to time such bodies, and in entertaining at their discretion
an expression of their views and recommendations with regard to the selection
of members in whose qualifications they might be disposed to confide. '
The possible number of additional members was increased under
the act from
twelve to sixteen in the imperial council, was more than
doubled in Bombay and Madras, and was raised by 70 per cent. in
Bengal and the North-Western Provinces and Oudh. By the regula-
tions it was provided that some of these should be nominated after
recommendation by certain bodies. Of the ten non-official members of
the imperial council, four were to be chosen by the non-official addi-
tional members of the councils in Madras, Bombay, Bengal and the
North-Western Provinces and Oudh, and one by the Calcutta Chamber
of Commerce, the remaining seats being reserved for the appointment
of experts on special subjects of legislation and the proper representa-
tion by nomination of different classes of the community. For the
provincial councils the method of selection varied according to local
conditions. Each of the three presidency cities (Madras, Bombay and
Calcutta) nominated a member, and there were representatives of
the trading associations and senates of universities. Representatives
of the district boards and smaller municipal boards met in an electoral
college to select other nominees. The scale of representatives of
municipal boards was based on the income of the municipality in
Bengal and on the population in Bombay, while in the North-Western
Provinces and Oudh each municipal board sent only one representa-
tive to the electoral college. Thus in Bengal the influence of the towns
outweighed that of the countryside. In Bombay the bigger land-
owners also had a right of nomination.
1 Montagu-Chelmsford Report, para. 69.
· Cd. 86 of 1894.


## p. 547 (#587) ############################################

ELECTORAL SYSTEM
547
Although the act was criticised by the congress of 1892 for not
containing an explicit recognition of the right to elect, the regulations
made under it had the practical effect of instituting an elective
system, and the other changes it made indicated that the councils
were no longer to remain, as they had been under the act of 1861,
bodies which met only when legislative business was on hand. In the
thirty years which had elapsed since they were constituted it had been
possible only on sixteen occasions to discuss financial matters, while
now the budget was to be presented annually whether taxation was
being altered or not. And the right to put questions was a definite
enlargement of the powers of members.


## p. 548 (#588) ############################################

CHAPTER XXX
THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
On 5 August, 1832, Mountstuart Elphinstone predicted to a select
N
committee of the House of Commons that if the Indian press were
free we should, as time went on, find ourselves in such a predicament
as no state had ever yet experienced.
“In other countries”, he said, “the use of the press has extended along with
the improvement of the country and the intelligence of the people; but in India
we shall have to contend at once with the more refined theories of Europe and
with the prejudices and fanaticism of Asia, both rendered doubly formidable by
the imperfect education of those to whom every appeal will be addressed. ”
Similar views had been expressed by Munro and Malcolm. " A free
press, Munro thought, would inevitably generate "insurrection and
anarchy". But such warnings were disregarded by Charles Metcalfe
in 1835, when, as acting governor-general, he removed all press restric-
tions on the ground that whatever the consequences might be, this step
was requisite for the spread in India of Western knowledge and civi-
lisation. Twenty-one years later, after the licence enjoyed byindigenous
newspapers had liberally contributed to the causes of the Mutiny,
Lord Canning imposed temporary restrictions, which remained in
operation for a year. In 1878 Lord Lytton's government, holding that
the seditious tone of the vernacular newspapers compelled some cur-
tailment of the "exceptional tolerance” accorded to journalists, and
that freedom of the press was rather a privilege to be worthily earned
and rationally enjoyed than “a fetish to be worshipped”, passed a
Vernacular Press Act which was severely criticised in England and
repealed by his successor in 1882. In 1883, when the Ilbert bill
controversy was raging in Bengal, Sir Alfred Lyall, lieutenant-governor
of the North-Western Provinces, observed that the tone of the native
press in that province was daily growing more vicious and insulting
and might end by “leavening the mass” to a greater degree than was
fancied. He was constantly speculating as to how far it could possibly
“be despised as impotent and absurd”. 3
It is clear that from early days the congress included two parties of
Hindus. There were the Western-educated followers of Gladstonian
liberalism," loyal to British rule but anxious to press on politically,
who drew much inspiration from English literature and history and
gathered strength from their power to appeal to English democratic
sympathies. There were also reactionary and irreconcilable Hindus,
1 Malcolm, Political History of India, 11, App. vi.
? See Lord Canning's speech to his legislative council, 13 June, 1857, quoted ap.
Donogh, Law of Sedition, pp. 182–3.
• Durand, Life of Lyall, p. 283.
Idem, p. 305.


## p. 549 (#589) ############################################

REACTIONARY HINDUISM
549
who regarded the memories of Muslim supremacy and the intrusions
of British rule and Western culture with rooted aversion. Prudential
considerations, the respect generally enjoyed by the government, its
ability to guard the country from the obvious menace of Russian
invasion and from the feuds of India's numerous factions1 dictated
caution; but the will to strike was there and found a vent in bitter and
slanderous passages in congress publications. To Hume these were
justifiable weapons in a “war of propaganda”. : To the government
8
they seemed unworthy of serious notice. But to the great Muslim
leader, Sir Sayyid Ahmad, the congress publications represented a
grave danger. He impressed on his co-religionists that the promoters
of the movement desired that the government of India should be
English in name but their own in fact, and that if the agitation spread
from the unwarlike to the warlike classes, it would go beyond writing
and talking and would lead to bloodshed. If the Muslims joined in
“unreasonable schemes” which were disastrous for the country and
themselves, the viceroy would realise that “a Mohammedan agitation
was not the same as a Bengali agitation”. 4 and would be bound to
take strong measures. He implored the Muslims to have nothing to
do with the congress.
The congress, however, gathered a few Muslim adherents, as time
went on; and gradually its extreme section discovered a leader. In
the meantime the death of a Hindu child-wife in Calcutta led to the
prosecution of her husband for culpable homicide and to the passing
in 1891 of an Age of Consent Act which prohibited cohabitation before
a wife reached the age of twelve. This legislation produced violent
excitement among the Hindus of Calcutta, who complained that their
religion was in danger; and articles in the Bangabasi newspaper pub-
lished there led to the prosecution of the editor, manager and printer
for sedition. But reactionary Hinduism found its chief exponent in
Bombay.
The Konkanasth or Chitpavan Brahmans of Western India have
always been remarkable for ability. It was under a Chitpavan
dynasty that the Maratha empire had reached its highest point and
afterwards declined to its fall. Chitpavans had adapted themselves
to calmer times and were prominent at the bar, in education and in
government service; but some there were who mourned the fallen
glories of the Peshwas; and prominent among these was Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, educationist and journalist. Elected to the subjects
committee of the congress of 1889, he soon established a leading
position. His determined character, his Sanskrit learning, his mastery
1 Durand, Life of Lyall, p. 300.
* See, for instance, certain passages in the Report of the congress meetings in 1890.
• Wedderburn, A. O. Hume, pp. 68, 76-7:
• Sir Sayyid Ahmad, on the present state of Indian Politics, p. 18.
See Donogh, op. cit. chapter iv; also Mitra's article in the Fortnightly, xcv, 147;
Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, pp. 397-8.


## p. 550 (#590) ############################################

550
THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
.
of English and Marathi, his rough eloquence, attracted followers. He
appealed to reactionaries by bitterly opposing the Age of Consent Bill,
and in his vernacular journal the Kesari (Lion) bitterly denounced all
Hindu supporters of that measure as traitors and renegades. He
carried anti-foreign propaganda far and wide among Hindu school-
boys and students, and started gymnastic societies. His object was
to stimulate hostility to “mlencchas” (foreigners), Muhammadan and
British. He took a leading part in directing a movement for repairing
the tomb of Sivaji, who first united Marathas against Muslim rule,
and for holding festivals in Sivaji's honour. A famine in 1896, and
the subsequent arrival in Bombay of bubonic plague, afforded an
opportunity for anti-government agitation. When calamities come,
the masses incline to blame their rulers; and anxious to arrest the
ravages of the plague, the provincial government prescribed methods
of segregation which were repugnant to popular habits. House-to-
house inspections were ordered; and British soldiers were employed
in Poona as search-parties for infectious cases. Bitter diatribes ap-
.
peared in the vernacular press; and on 4 May, 1897, in the columns
of the Kesari Tilak charged the soldiers with various excesses and
imputed deliberately oppressive intentions to the government and its
officers. On 15 June he published two remarkable articles. The first
represented Sivaji as wakened from his long sleep and horrified at the
state of his realm. He had established “swaraj” (his own kingdom).
But now foreigners were taking away the wealth of the country;
plenty and health had fled; famine and epidemic disease stalked
through the land. Brahmans were imprisoned; but white men escaped
justice. Women were dragged out of railway carriages. He had pro-
tected the English when they were traders, and it was for them to
show their gratitude by making his subjects happy. Another article
gave an account of the killing by Sivaji of Afzal Khan, a Muslim
general, and expressed the opinion that great men were above the
common principles of morality. Sivaji had committed no sin in killing
Afzal Khan
for the good of others. If thieves enter our home and we have not sufficient
strength to drive them out, we should, without hesitation, shut them up and
burn them alive. God has not conferred on mlencchas the grant inscribed on copper
plate of the kingdom of Hindostan. . . . Do not circumscribe your vision like a frog
in a well. Get out of the Penal Code, enter into the extremely high atmosphere
of the Bhagwat-Gita,' and then consider the actions of great inen.
Shortly after the appearance of these effusions W. C. Rand of the
Indian Civil Service, officer in charge of plague preventive operations,
and Lieutenant Ayerst, on plague duty, were assassinated in Poona
by two young Chitpavan Brahmans named Chapekar. The murderers
were arrested, tried, convicted and executed. They had founded an
association for physical and military training which they called the
1 “The Lord's Song" in the sixth book of the Mahabharata.


## p. 551 (#591) ############################################

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN BENGAL
551
.
.
“Society for the removal of obstacles to the Hindu religion”. Two
others of the associates murdered two informers, but were themselves
arrested, tried and executed. Tilak was prosecuted for exciting dis-
affection to the government by means of the Kesari articles of 15 June,
and was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment,
six months of which were subsequently remitted. The Keşari, however,
continued to circulate. Its financial success attracted emulation, and
its tone was caught by other journalists. At the congress of 1897
Surendranath Banerjee from Bengal expressed these sentiments: “For
Mr Tilak my heart is full of sympathy. My feelings go forth to him
in his prison-house. A nation is in tears". Nowhere did Tilak's
methods and organisations attract more attention than in Bengal.
His influence is plainly to be seen in the accompaniments of the
subsequent revolutionary movement in that province. His example
in brigading school-boys and students in gymnastic societies for pur-
poses of political agitation was followed there. Endeavours were even
made to introduce into Bengal, the very province which in pre-British
days had been scourged by Maratha raids, the singularly inappro-
priate cult of Sivaji. On his return from incarceration Tilak found
his position unimpaired, but for some years he remained quiet. The
circulation of the Kesari increased. He was biding his time.
Lord Curzon's Partition of 1905, which split Bengal proper into
two and gave the Muhammadans numerical preponderance in the
eastern province, although expedient from an administrative point of
view, was strongly opposed by Hindu politicians and lawyers and
came at a peculiarly unfortunate time. In 1902–3 revolution had been
preached secretly among the bhadraloki (respectable classes) by a
small band of conspirators. But although religious revivalists had
been at work among Hindus for some years, and Swami Vivekananda,
a Bengali who had visited the Chicago conference of religions as a
representative of Hinduism, had preached nationalism with religious
tendencies, revolutionary doctrines intermingled with appeals to the
Hindu religion at first made no progress. Their opportunity came
later with the combined effects of the resounding victories of Japan
over Russia, the belief of the political class that Lord Curzon's educa-
tional reforms were designed to cramp the expansion of their influence,
and Hindu resentment of the partition of Bengal. The anti-partition
agitation with its vehement invective, its appeals to Hindu sentiment,
its cry that Bengal as motherland, once rich and famous, had been
torn in two despite the protests of her children, its proposals for
enforcing a punitive boycott of foreign goods and supplanting them
entirely by "swadeshi” indigenous products, its enlistment of students
and school-boys in picketing operations, gave ample cover for the
sedulous preaching of revolutionary doctrines. In Eastern Bengal, the
principal theatre of disturbances, the boycott with its accompani-
1 See p. 251, supra.


## p. 552 (#592) ############################################

552
THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
>
ments of intimidation and terrorism, was vigorously opposed by the
Muhammadans and riots became more and more frequent. In both
Bengals it was constantly proclaimed that the government was setting
the Muhammadans against the Hindus. Hindu political sentiment
reached an unprecedented height of bitterness, and found ample outlet
in the press which it mainly controlled. Under cover of a storm of
passion, the revolutionists organised secret societies, collected arms,
and manufactured bombs. But their main objective was the“ building
up” of popular opinion, the creation of a general atmosphere favour-
able to their schemes. They published newspapers and leaflets which
preached violence and omitted no calumny which could vilify the
British race. To get rid of the European was a religious duty. India
whose civilisation had been tarnished and corrupted first by Muslim
and then by British cruelty and oppression, would then recover her
ancient glory. Such exhortations were frequently supported by gross
perversions of history. For their initiates the conspirators, borrowing
ideas from Asia and Europe, prescribed a mixture of textbooks, the
Bhagavad Gita, the lives of Mazzini and Garibaldi, Russian methods
of revolutionary violence, military manuals and books on explosives.
The achievements of Japan were reiterated; the importance of
spreading propaganda among the Indian troops was emphasised; the
necessary funds if not obtainable from voluntary subscription, must
be extorted from “miserly or luxurious members of society”. Such
doctrines spread rapidly among the Hindu youths and the discon-
tented teachers who thronged the far-flung, ill-managed, schools and
colleges of Bengal, among the numerous lawyers who found them-
selves idle and unhappy, among many young men who were dis-
satisfied with the meagre fruits of years of laborious study. It was not
long before they began to bear fruit in a network of underground
conspiracies, in a long, intermittent series of calculated crimes, of
bomb outrages, of “political dacoities”, gang robberies practised on
helpless people in remote villages for the purpose of augmenting revo-
lutionary funds, of secret murders, of assassinations of Indian police
officers; and gradually an atmosphere of terrorism began to spread
over parts of Bengal. On 6 December, 1907, the train on which
Sir Andrew Fraser, the lieutenant-governor, was travelling, was
derailed by a bomb near Midnapur. On the 23rd of the same month,
Mr Allen, formerly district magistrate at Dacca, was shot in the back,
though not fatally, at a railway station. On 30 April, 1908, at
Muzaffarpur in Bihar, a bomb was thrown into a carriage in which
two ladies, Mrs and Miss Kennedy, were driving. Both were killed.
The bomb was intended for Mr Kingsford, a judge who had incurred
thu displeasure of the revolutionaries. The murderers, two young
Hindus, were arrested within two days of the commission of their
crime. One, a student, confessed in court and was hanged. The other
shot himself dead on arrest.


## p. 553 (#593) ############################################

FERMENT ELSEWHERE
553
In the meantime revolutionary conspiracy had been active in other
provinces.
Early in 1907 it became evident that the ferment in Bengal was
bearing fruit in the Panjab. The situation there at the end of April was
described in a minute by the lieutenant-governor, Sir Denzil Ibbetson.
Educated extremist agitators, he wrote, were openly and sedulously
preaching an active anti-English propaganda in certain towns. In
Lahore the propaganda was virulent and had resulted “in a more or
less general state of serious unrest". On two occasions Europeans had
been insulted as such. Endeavours were being made to inflame the
passions of the Sikhs by exploiting unpopular agrarian legislation.
The police were being pilloried as traitors to their fellow-countrymen
and were advised to quit the service of the government. Similar
invitations were being addressed to Indian soldiers. Some of the con-
spirators looked to driving the British out of the country, or at any
rate from power, either by force or by the passive resistance of the
people as a whole. The method for bringing the government to a
standstill would be the working up of the bitterest racial hatred. The
situation urgently required remedy.
Riots occurred at Lahore and Rawulpindi; and the principal
agitators, Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh, were arrested and deported
under a regulation of 1818. 1 The unpopular agrarian legislation was
vetoed by the central government and trouble subsided; but the
suggestion that the root of the trouble was agrarian was negatived by
the secretary of state, John Morley, who said on 6 June, 1907, in the
House of Commons that of twenty-eight meetings convened by the
Panjab agitators between 1 March and 1 May, twenty-three were
"purely political”. All was quiet for a time till in 1909 a stream of
seditious literature issuing from Lahore necessitated further preventive
measures. In November, 1907, Lord Minto informed his legislative
council that not only had “disgraceful overtures” been made to the
Indian troops, but that seeds of sedition had been scattered even
among the "hills of the frontier tribes" 2
In Madras disturbances followed after a series of public lectures
delivered by an itinerant Bengal agitator, Mr Bipin Chandra Pal,
who declared that the British administration was based on “maya
(illusion), and after many inflammatory harangues of a local politician
Chidambaram Pillai. In the United and Central Provinces, which
under the firm and experienced administration of Sir John Hewett
and Sir Reginald Craddock presented an unpromising field for open
disturbance, there were seditious newspapers and secret burrowing:
In London an “India House” had been opened by Shyamaji
Krishnavarma, son of a Kathiawar merchant, who published a
1 Defined by Lord Morley as an emergency power which may be lawfully applied if
an emergency presents itself”. Indian Speeches, pp. 145-7.
: Lord Morley, op. cit. p. 57.


## p. 554 (#594) ############################################

554
THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
paper called The Indian Sociologist. This “India House” soon became
notorious as a centre of a secret conspiracy; and its activities, tolerated
for years, culminated in the murders of Sir William Curzon Wyllie
and Dr Lalkaka at the Imperial Institute on 1 July, 1909.
The congress of 1905 supported the boycott in Bengal. The president
was Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a Chitpavan Brahman who had acquired
considerable reputation as a politician, an educationist and a member
of the imperial legislative council. He complained that Lord Curzon,
like Aurangzib, had caused bitter exasperation by a policy of distrust
and repression. Lala Lajpat Rai, a Lahore lawyer who subsequently
became prominent in the Panjab disturbances of 1907, congratulated
Bengal on a splendid opportunity of heralding a new political future
for India. At the congress of 1906 the president was Dadabhai
Naoroji, a Parsi and a veteran politician who had sat in the British
parliament. The boycott was justified and revocation of the partition
was demanded. But in fact a split was only avoided by the adoption of
“swaraj” as the goal of congress ambitions. To the soberer spirits, the
Moderates, this meant the establishment of a full parliamentary system.
To the irreconcilables, the Extremists, it signified absolute independ-
ence. It was Anglicised as the extension to India of the system of
government which obtained in the self-governing British colonies.
Appearances had been saved, but only just saved; and the Moderates
were very uneasy, as some at least were aware that, behind all the
whirlwind of passion in Bengal, revolutionists were busily organising.
As yet the government had shown no sign of perception of this funda-
mental fact. The exercise of its ordinary statutory powers failed to
check the unprecedented incendiarism which was going on; and it was
not until the Indian Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act was
passed in June, 1908, that the most inflammatory of all the Calcutta
newspapers, the Jugantar (new era), was suppressed. The sanction of
the secretary of state to a measure of this particular kind was long in
coming. He justified it in these words:
An incendiary article is part and parcel of the murderous act. You may put
picric acid in the ink and pen, just as much as in any steel bomb. . . . To talk of
public discussion in connection with mischief of that kind is really pushing matters
too far. 3
Why then, it will be asked, was the preventive action that was so
urgently needed postponed until two innocent English ladies had
paid the penalty for prolonged tolerance of all this "mischief”? The
explanation is simple. The whole agitation was persistently minimised
by its friends in England; and “freedom of the press” is an English
naxim.
Throughout 1907 Moderate alarm increased. But some of the older
1 Report of the Sedition Committee, paras. 5-7, 10-12.
: Cf. Ronaldshay, Life of Curzon, II, 192, 390.
• Lord Morley, op. cit. p. 73. Cf. Chirol, Indian Unrest, p. 98.


## p. 555 (#595) ############################################

CONGRESS SPLIT
555
men yielded to the growing frenzy for fear of being elbowed out by
their juniors, others were genuinely impatient of the tardiness of
constitutional reforms, and had not the tide been firmly stemmed by
such men as Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta, also a Bombay congress
man, who now refused emphatically to be dragged along at the heels
of their intemperate colleagues, the Extremists would have captured
the congress. As it was, when the time approached for holding the
1907 congress at Nagpur in the Central Provinces, the place of
meeting was altered, as a preliminary gathering of the reception
committee was broken up by a gang of Extremists.
When the congress
gathered at Surat, the Extremists tried to achieve domination by force
but were stoutly resisted; and dissolving in riotous scenes, the congress
severed itself from them. The Moderate leaders were Gokhale and
Pherozeshah Mehta from Bombay and Surendranath Banerjee from
Bengal. The last-named had long led the anti-partition agitation; he
had exerted himself to "give a religious turn" to the boycott move-
ment, and to enlist the participation of students and school-boys; but
now, finding the pace too fast, he began to retrace his steps. The most
prominent irreconcilables were Tilak from Bombay and Arabindo
Ghose from Bengal. The Moderates remained in command of the
congress executive until in 1916, after the death of Gokhale, when
the shadow of the war was lengthening over India, they joined with
the Extremists in the December meetings of that year.
Despite his exclusion from the congress, Tilak's prestige stood high
in the Deccan in the early months of 1908. He commanded the
allegiance of many barristers, pleaders, schoolmasters and others. His
propaganda was filtering down to mill-hands in cities, who, gathered
together in huge tenements, by their density as well as by their
ignorance, provide a peculiarly accessible field to political agitators.
It was also penetrating to the headmen of villages. A movement had
been started for the creation of “national schools”, independent of
state support and supervision, where revolutionary ideas could be
circulated without let or hindrance; and politics were intermingled
with temperance movements outwardly unimpeachable but in this
case subordinated to the promotion of racial hatred. On 11 May,
1908, the resultant situation was thus described by Sir George Clarke,
governor of Bombay:1“A large number of half-educated Indians, who
can read and write English and have the smattering of knowledge
which is useless for any practical purpose, but is always apt to be
dangerous, seem to have become permanently hostile. These people,
inspired by a few men of much higher calibre, run the seditious
section of the press and work in schools, as public speakers, as travelling
missionaries, and as distributors of placards and pamphlets”. ? On
12 May and on 9 June, 1908, Tilak published articles in the Kesari
Now Lord Sydenham, G. C. S. I.
Lord Sydenham, My Working Life, p. 222.


## p. 556 (#596) ############################################

556
THE RISE OF AN EXTREMIST PARTY
representing that the Muzaffarpur murders resulted from oppression
and the refusal of swaraj. The bomb was the answer. “Bombs explode
when the repressive action of government becomes unbearable. "
Tilak was prosecuted for attempting to bring the British government
into hatred and contempt, and for endeavouring to provoke enmity
and ill-will between different classes of His Majesty's subjects. He
was tried by an Indian (Parsi) judge of the High Court and a jury
which contained two Indians. He was convicted and sentenced to
six years' transportation, afterwards commuted on account of his age
and health to simple imprisonment at Mandalay. The character of
his offence was thus described by the judge:
You are a man of undoubted talents and of great power and influence. Had
those talents and that influence been used for the good of your country, you would
have been instrumental in bringing about a great deal of happiness for those very
people whose cause you espouse. Ten years ago you were convicted. The court
dealt most leniently with you then and the crown dealt still more leniently. After
you had undergone your imprisonment for a year, six months of it were remitted
on conditions which you accepted. . . . It seems to me that it must be a diseased
mind, a most perverted mind, that can think that the articles that you have
written are legitimate articles to write in political agitation. They are seething
with sedition; they preach violence; they speak of murders with approval; and
the cowardly and atrocious act of committing murders by bomb not only seems
to meet your approval, but you hail the advent of the bomb in India as if some-
thing had come to India for its good. . . . Your hatred of the ruling class has not
disappeared during these ten years, and these articles deliberately and defiantly
written week after week—not written as you say on the spur of the moment but
a fortnight after the cruel and cowardly outrages committed on English women-
persistently and defiantly refer to a bomb as if it was one of the instruments of
political warfare.