The Political Future of India Part 14

There have, moreover, been 59 prosecutions under the Arms and Explosives Acts which have resulted in convictions of 58 persons."

We wish the committee had also supplemented this information by a complete record of the punishments that were imposed on persons convicted of revolutionary crime in the ten years from 1906 to 1917. We are sure such a statement would have been most informing and illuminating. It would have conclusively established the soundness of the half-hearted finding that "the convictions ... did not have as much effect as might have been expected in repressing crime." In fact they had no effect. They only added fuel to the fire.

(8) That persons involved in revolutionary crime belonged to all castes and occupations and the vast bulk of them were non-Brahmins. They were of all ages, from 10-15 to over 45, the majority being under 25. The committee has in an appendix (p. 93) given three tables of statistics as to age, caste, occupation or profession of persons convicted in Bengal of revolutionary crimes or killed in commission of such crimes during the years 1907-1917. This clause is based on these statistics.

We are afraid, however, that these statistics do not afford quite a correct index of the age, caste, occupation and position of all the people in Bengal that were and are sympathetically interested in the revolutionary movement of Bengal.

In investigating reasons for failure of ordinary machinery for the prevention, detection and punishment of crime in Bengal, the committee has a.s.signed six reasons: (_a_) want of evidence, (_b_) paucity of police, (_c_) facilities enjoyed by criminals, (_d_) difficulty in proof of possession of arms, etc., (_e_) distrust of evidence, (_f_) the uselessness, in general, of confession made to the Police. These reasons, however, do not represent the whole truth. Some of the most daring crimes were committed in broad daylight, in much frequented streets of the metropolis and in the presence of numerous people.

Moreover, the Government did not depend on ordinary law. Measure after measure was enacted to expedite and facilitate convictions.

Extraordinary provisions were made to meet all the difficulties pointed out by the committee and extraordinary sentences were given in the case of conviction. Yet the Government failed either to extirpate the movement or to check it effectively or to bring the majority of offenders to book.

The members of the committee have frankly admitted: "That we do not expect very much from punitive measures. The conviction of offenders will never check such a movement as that which grew up in Bengal unless the leaders can be convicted at the outset." They pin their faith on "preventive" measures recommended by them. It was perhaps not within their scope to say that the most effective preventive measure was the removal of the political and economic causes that had generated the movement. The committee has studiously avoided discussing that important point, but now and then they have incidentally furnished the real clue to the situation. Discussing the "accessibility of Bengal schools and colleges to Revolutionary influences," they quote a pa.s.sage from one of the reports of the Director of Public Instruction in Bengal. We copy below the whole of this paragraph, as, to us, it seems to be very pertinent to the issue.

"_Accessibility of Bengal Schools and Colleges to Revolutionary Influences._--Abundant evidence has compelled us to the conclusion that the secondary English schools, and in a less degree the colleges, of Bengal have been regarded by the revolutionaries as their most fruitful recruiting centres. Dispersed as these schools are far and wide throughout the Province, sometimes cl.u.s.tering in a town, sometimes isolated in the far-away villages of the eastern water-country, they form natural objects for attack; and as is apparent from the reports of the Department of Public Instruction, they have been attacked for years with no small degree of success. In these reports the Director has from time to time noticed such matters as the circulation of seditious leaflets, the number of students implicated in conspiracy cases and the apathy of parents and guardians. But perhaps his most instructive pa.s.sages are the following, in which he sets out the whole situation in regard to secondary English schools. 'The number of these schools,' he wrote, 'is rapidly increasing, and the cry is for more and more. It is a demand for tickets in a lottery, the prizes of which are posts in Government service and employment in certain professions. _The bhadralok have nothing to look to but these posts_, while those who desire to rise from a lower social or economic station have their eyes on the same goal.

_The middle cla.s.ses in Bengal are generally poor, and the increased stress of compet.i.tion and the tendency for the average earnings of certain careers to decrease_--a tendency which is bound to follow on the increased demand to enter them, _coupled with the rise in the cost of living and the inevitable raising in the standard of comfort--all these features continue to make the struggle to exist in these cla.s.ses keener_. Hence the need to raise educational standards, to make school life a greater influence for good and the course of instruction more thorough and more comprehensive. A need which becomes more and more imperative as life in India becomes more complicated and more exacting is confronted by a determined though perfectly natural opposition to the raising of fees.... _Probably the worst feature of the situation is the low wages and the complete absence of prospects which are the fate of teachers in the secondary schools...._ It is easy to blame the parents for blindness to their sons' true good, but the matriculation examination is the thing that seems to matter, so that if his boy pa.s.ses the annual promotion examinations and is duly presented at that examination at the earliest possible date, the average parent has no criticism to offer. This is perfectly natural, but the future of Bengal depends to a not inconsiderable extent on the work done in its secondary schools, and more is required of these inst.i.tutions than an ability to pa.s.s a certain proportion of boys through the Calcutta University Matriculation examination.... The present condition of secondary schools is undoubtedly prejudicing the development of the presidency and is by no means a negligible feature in the existing state of general disturbance. It is customary to trace the genesis of much sedition and crime to the back streets and lanes of Calcutta and Dacca, where the organizers of anarchic conspiracies seek their agents from among University students.

This view is correct as far as it goes, but it is in the high schools, with their underpaid and discontented teachers, their crowded, dark and ill-ventilated cla.s.srooms, and their soul-destroying process of unceasing cram, that the seeds of discontent and fanaticism are sown." [The italics are ours.]

Yet for years nothing was done to improve education, to make it practical and creative and productive. In fact nothing has been done up till now.

Let the reader read with this the report of the Indian Industrial Commission recently issued under the authority of the Government of India and he will at once find the true causes which underlie the revolutionary movement in India. These causes are not in any way peculiar to Bengal or to the Punjab; they are common to the whole of India, but they have found a fruitful soil in these provinces on account of the rather intense natures of the people of these two provinces. The Bengali is an intensely patriotic and emotional being, very sensitive and very resentful; the Punjabee is intensely virile, pa.s.sionate and plucky, having developed a strong, forceful character by centuries of resistance to all kind of invasions and attacks. Of the Punjab, however, we will speak later on. For the present we are concerned with Bengal only. The amazing phenomenon mentioned by the committee on p. 20 and referred to by us before is easily explained by the facts hinted in the Directors' report quoted above. And this notwithstanding the fact that in the matter of Government patronage Bengal has been the most favored province in India, throughout the period of British rule. To the Bengalis have gone all the first appointments to offices that were thrown open to the natives of the soil. They have been the recipients of the highest honors from the Government. Bengal is virtually the only province permanently settled where the Government cannot add to the Land tax fixed in 1793. The Bengalis are the people who spread over India, with every territorial extension of the British Raj. They have been the pampered and favored children of the Government and for very good reasons, too. They are the best educated and the most intelligent of all the Indian peoples. They know how to adapt themselves to all conditions and circ.u.mstances, they know how to enjoy and also how to suffer. They have subtle brains and supple bodies. The British Government could not do without them. It cannot do without them even now. Yet it was this most loyal and most dutiful, this most westernized and the best educated cla.s.s which laid the foundations of the revolutionary movement and has been carrying it on _successfully_ in face of all the forces of such a mighty Government as that of the British in India. What is the reason?

It is the utter economic helplessness of the younger generation, aided by a sense of extreme humiliation and degradation. The Government never earnestly applied itself to the solution of the problem. They did nothing to reduce poverty and make education practical. Every time the budget was discussed the Indian members pressed for increased expenditure on education. All their proposals and motions were rejected by the standing official majorities backed by the whole force of non-official Europeans including the missionaries. The Government thus deliberately sowed the wind. Is there any wonder that it is now reaping the whirlwind?

The cause is economic; the remedy must be economic. Make education practical, foster industries, open all Government careers to the sons of the soil, reduce the cost on the military and civil services, let the people determine the fiscal policy of the country and the revolutionary movement will subside. Die it will not, so long as there is foreign domination and foreign exploitation. Even after India has attained Home Rule it will not die. It has come to stay. India is a part of the world and revolution is in the air all the world over. The effort to kill it by repression and suppression is futile, unwise and stupid.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The beginnings of British rule in India were made in 1757 A.D.

[2] Since enacted.

XIII

THE PUNJAB

We may now consider the case of the Punjab. Lord Morley's verdict notwithstanding, it is abundantly clear that the troubles of 1907, with which the history of unrest in the Punjab begins, were princ.i.p.ally agrarian in their origin. Lord Morley's speech in the House of Commons (in 1907) as to the root of the trouble was based on reports supplied to him by the Government of the Punjab and we know from personal knowledge how unreliable many of these reports are. We may here ill.u.s.trate this point by a few extracts from these doc.u.ments.

(1) Lord Morley stated that: "There were twenty-eight meetings known to have been held by the leading agitators in the Punjab between 1st March and 1st May. Of these five only related, even ostensibly, to agricultural grievances; the remaining twenty-three were all purely political."

The number of meetings held from March 1 to May 1, 1907 was, at the lowest calculation, at least double of 28, or perhaps treble, and _most of them_ related "even ostensibly to agricultural grievances"; the number of purely political meetings could not have exceeded ten or twelve.

(2) On p. 61 the committee writes that "Chatarji's father too had ordered him home on discovering that he was staying with Hardayal in the house of Lajpat Rai." The whole of this statement is absolutely false. I am prepared to swear and to prove that Chatarji did not stay in my house even for a single night. He came there a few times with Hardayal.

Hardayal was at that time living in a house he had rented for himself in the native city about one mile from my place which is in the Civil Station on the Lower Mall.

On the same page the committee has approvingly quoted a sentence from the judgment of the Sessions Judge in the Delhi Conspiracy Case.

Speaking of Amir Chand, one of the accused in that case who was sentenced to death, the Sessions Judge describes him as "one who spent his life in furthering murderous schemes which he was too timid to carry out himself." Now I happen to have known this man for about 20 years before his conviction. I have no doubt that he was rightly convicted in this case but I have no doubt also that this description of him by the Sessions Judge was absolutely wrong. Up till 1910 the man had led an absolutely harmless life, helping students in their studies and otherwise rendering a.s.sistance, according to his means, to other needy people. No one ever credited him with violent views. His revolutionary career began in 1908. Before that he could not and would not have tolerated even the killing of an ant, much less that of human beings.

In governments by bureaucracies one of the standing formulas of official etiquette is never to question the findings of facts arrived at by your superiors or predecessors. This naturally leads to the perpetuation of mistakes. A wrong conclusion once accepted continues to be good for all times to come. The Rowlatt Committee has studiously acted on that formula throughout its present inquiry. They have invariably accepted the findings of executive and judicial authorities preceding them about the incidents that happened since 1907, without making any independent inquiry of their own. Hence their opinion about the original or the princ.i.p.al cause of the unrest of 1907 in the Punjab is not ent.i.tled to greater weight than that of the Punjab officials whose mishandling of the affairs of the province produced the unrest. One ounce of fact, however, is of greater weight in the determination of issues than even a hundred theories. The fact that the Government of India _had_ to veto the Punjab Government's Land Colonies Act in order to allay the unrest proves conclusively that the unrest was due to agrarian trouble.

The unrest of 1907 subsided after the repeal of the land legislation of 1907, but the legacy it left is still operative.

The Sikhs and the Mussulmans of the Punjab, as well as the military cla.s.ses among the Hindus, the Rajputs and the Jats, are the most virile portions of the population. They have fought the battles of the Empire.

In the interests of the Empire they have travelled far and wide. Yet we find that educationally, as well as economically, they have suffered most. They have the largest numbers of illiterates among them. They are the least developed and the least progressive of all the cla.s.ses in the Punjab. They are heavily in debt. The Government has occasionally recognised it and has tried to satisfy them by preferential treatment in the filling of Government posts, or in the bestowal of t.i.tles or in nominating their supposed leaders to Legislative Councils. These ridiculous palliative measures, however, have failed in their objective.

The cla.s.ses disaffected do not get any satisfaction by these palliative measures. They need opportunities of education and economic betterment.

These could not be provided without making education general and without a more equitable distribution of land among the agricultural cla.s.ses and the inauguration of industries other than agriculture. This the Government never cared to do. The Sikhs and the Mussulmans naturally directed their attention to emigration.

The opportunities they found in other parts of the Empire whetted their appet.i.tes. They compared the conditions abroad with conditions at home and drew their own conclusions. Having helped in the expansion and development of the Empire they thought they were ent.i.tled to benefit therefrom. They demanded fair treatment. Instead they found the doors shut upon them. Even those that had been admitted were made to feel the humiliation of their position. Deliberate, active, concerted measures were taken to drive them away or to make life for them intolerable.

Their wives and children were refused admittance and various pretexts were invented to keep them out or to drive them away. The revolutionary movement in the Punjab amounted to nothing until it was reinforced by the return of the Sikh members of the Ghadr party during the war. The Committee has failed to answer the question: Why did the Sikhs of Vancouver and California readily fall in with the schemes of Hardayal and Barkat Ullah, the alleged founders of the revolutionary party of California? These latter had nothing in common with the Sikhs. In language and religion, by habits and a.s.sociations, they were poles apart from each other. Why did then Hardayal's propaganda find such a ready soil among the Sikhs of Vancouver B. C. We quote from the report:

"The doctrines which he preached and circulated had reached the Sikhs and other Indians resident in British Columbia. At a meeting in Vancouver in December, 1913, a poem from the Ghadr newspaper was read, in which the Hindus were urged to expel the British from India. The main grievance of the Vancouver Indians was the Canadian immigration law under which every intending Asiatic immigrant, with a few particular exceptions, has to satisfy the Canadian authorities that he is in possession of 200 dollars and has travelled by a _continuous_[1] journey on a through ticket from his native country to Canada. In 1913 three Sikh delegates visited the Punjab. They had come from America and were members of the Ghadr party who had come to reconnoitre the position. Their real purpose was recognised after their departure. They addressed meetings at various towns on the subject of the grievances of Indians in Canada and caused resolutions of protest to be pa.s.sed in which all communities joined."

Again, tracing the origin of the Budge-Budge riot, the Committee remarks:

"The central figure in the narrative is a certain Gurdit Singh, a Sikh of the Amritsar district in the Punjab, who had emigrated from India 15 years before, and had for some time carried on business as a contractor in Singapore and the Malay States. There is reason to believe that he returned to this country about 1909.

He was certainly absent from Singapore for a s.p.a.ce; and when he returned there, going on to Hong Kong, he interested himself in chartering a ship for the conveyance of Punjabis to Canada.

Punjabis, and especially Sikhs, frequently seek employment in the Far East, and have for some time been tempted by the higher wages procurable in Canada. But their admission to that country is to some extent impeded by the immigration laws which we have described already.

"There were already in Canada about 4,000 Indians, chiefly Punjabis. Some of these were revolutionists of the Hardayal school, some were loyal, and some had migrated from the United States on account of labour differences there. The Committee of Enquiry, which subsequently investigated the whole affair, considered that Gurdit Singh's action had been much influenced by advice and encouragement received from Indian residents in Canada.

At any rate, after failing to secure a ship at Calcutta, he chartered a j.a.panese vessel named the _Komagata Maru_ through a German agent at Hong Kong. He issued tickets and took in pa.s.sengers at that post, at Shanghai, at Moji and at Yokohama. He certainly knew what the Canadian law was, but perhaps hoped to evade it by means of some appeal to the courts or by exercising political pressure. It is equally certain that many of his pa.s.sengers had no clear comprehension of their prospects. The Tribunal that subsequently tried the first batch of Lah.o.r.e conspirators held that probably Gurdit Singh's main object was to cause an inflammatory episode, as one of the witnesses stated that Gurdit Singh told his followers that should they be refused admission, they would return to India to expel the British. On April the 4th, 1914, the _Komagata Maru_ sailed from Hong Kong. On the 23rd of May the _Komagata Maru_ arrived at Vancouver with 351 Sikhs and 21 Punjabi Muhammadans on board. The local authorities refused to allow landing except in a very few cases, as the immigrants had not complied with the requirements of the law.

Protests were made, and, while negotiations were proceeding, a balance of 22,000 dollars still due for the hire of the ship was paid by Vancouver Indians, and the charter was transferred to two prominent malcontents.... A body of police was sent to enforce the orders of the Canadian Government that the vessel should leave; but with the a.s.sistance of firearms, the police were beaten off, and it was only when a Government vessel was requisitioned with armed force that the _Komagata Maru_ pa.s.sengers, who had prevented their Captain from weighing anchor or getting up steam, were brought to terms. On the 23rd of July they started on their return journey with an ample stock of provisions allowed them by the Canadian Government. _They were by this time in a very bad temper as many had staked all their possessions on this venture, and had started in the full belief that the British Government would a.s.sure and guarantee their admission to a land of plenty._ This temper had been greatly aggravated by direct revolutionary influences....

"During the return voyage the War broke out. On hearing at Yokohama that his ship's company would not be allowed to land at Hong Kong, Gurdit Singh replied that they were perfectly willing to go to any port in India if provisions were supplied. The British Consul at Yokohama declined to meet his demands, which were exorbitant; but the consul at Kobe was more compliant, and after telegraphic communication between j.a.pan and India, the _Komagata Maru_ started for Calcutta. At neither Hong Kong nor Singapore were the pa.s.sengers allowed to land. This added to their annoyance, as, according to the findings of the Committee, many had not wished to return to India at all."

The Committee found that most of the pa.s.sengers were disposed to blame the Government of India for all their misfortunes. "It is well known," states the Report, "that the average Indian makes no distinction between the Government of the United Kingdom, that of Canada, and that of British India, or that of any colony. To him these authorities are all one and the same. And this view of the whole _Komagata Maru_ business was by no means confined to the pa.s.sengers on the ship. It inspired some Sikhs of the Punjab with the idea that the Government was biased against them; and it strengthened the hands of the Ghadr revolutionaries who were urging Sikhs abroad to return to India and join the mutiny which, they a.s.serted, was about to begin. Numbers of emigrants listened to such calls and hastened back to India from Canada, the United States, the Philippines, Hong Kong and China." [The italics are ours.]

We have given this extract to show the real cause of the growth of the revolutionary movement among the Sikhs. Let the reader omit, if he can, for a moment, all references to active revolutionary propaganda and he will find that the underlying cause of this trouble was _economic_. Why did the Sikhs want to emigrate to Canada? Why did they stake all their possessions on the venture? Why were they unwilling to return to India at all? Because the economic conditions at home were so bad and the prospects abroad so good. At home their lands were not sufficient to absorb all their energies, the income was not sufficient to keep body and soul together and, in a majority of cases, what they made from land was hardly more than sufficient to pay Land Revenue to the Government and interest to the money-lender. There was nothing to bind them to their homes except the love of home land and the domestic ties. These melted away in the presence of dire necessity. In extreme need they left their homes to make more money to be able to pay their debts, to redeem their lands, if possible to purchase more land and to make life bearable and tolerable. When they came in the open world they found insurmountable barriers between them and plenty. They had helped in making the empire; the empire had enough land for all her sons and daughters; men were urgently needed to bring land into cultivation and otherwise to develop the empire; men of other races and colours were not only welcome but were being induced to come and settle by offers of all kinds. They, and they alone, were unwelcome and barred.

Add to this the att.i.tude and the record of the Punjab Government towards political agitation and political agitators, to use their own favorite expressions. The Punjab Government was the first to resuscitate the old Regulation III of 1818 for the purpose of scotching a legitimate agitation against an obnoxious legislative measure. A wise and sagacious Government would have dropped the legislation which it was eventually found necessary to veto to maintain peace. The deportations drove the seeds of unrest deeper. The other contributory causes may be thus summed up:

(1) The Punjab Government has been the most relentless of all local governments in India in suppressing freedom of speech and press.

(2) The Punjab Government at one time was very foolishly zealous in persecuting the Arya Samajists and in making a mountain out of a molehill about the letters found in the possession of Parmanand.

(3) The sentences which the Punjab Courts have pa.s.sed in cases of seditious libel are marked by such brutality as to make them notably unique in the history of criminal administration in India.

(4) The strangulation of all open political life by direct and indirect repression led to the adoption of secret methods.

(5) The sentences pa.s.sed in the Delhi Conspiracy case were much more severe than those given in Bengal in similar cases. In this case four men were hanged, two of them only because of membership in the secret conspiracy and not for actual partic.i.p.ation in the outrage that was the subject of the charge, and two others were sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment each.

(6) The Budge-Budge riot and the considerable loss of life that resulted therefrom was another case of stupid management and utter incapacity to handle a delicate situation.

(7) For the Lah.o.r.e Conspiracy 28 persons were hanged, and about 90 sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and transportation for life. But for the interference of Lord Hardinge the hangings would have exceeded 50. In addition some mutinous soldiers of two regiments were tried by Court Martial and a few murderous robbers and train-wreckers were dealt with by the ordinary courts. The reader may well compare this with the record of convictions relating to Bengal.

Now, we have not the slightest intention of justifying the conduct of those who conspired to overthrow the Government by force, or who committed murders, robberies or other offences in the furtherance of that design. In our judgment only madmen, ignorant of the conditions of their country, could have been guilty of such crimes. Nor are we inclined to blame the Government much for the sharp steps they took to preserve order and maintain their authority during the war. But, after all has been said, we must reiterate that the underlying causes were economic and were the direct result of Government policy.

FOOTNOTES: