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Facts and Opinions Volume I - Dec. 4, 1909 – Number 22 The Lieutenant-Governor’s Mercy
The outcry of the Moderates against the exclusion of their best men has led to certain concessions by which apparently the Government hope to minimise or obviate the formidable opposition that is slowly gathering head against the new Councils. These concessions remove not a single objectionable principle from the Bill. They are evidently designed to facilitate the admission into the Council of the two men in Bengal whose opposition may prove most harmful to the chances of the exceedingly skilful Chinese puzzle called the Councils Regulations, by which the consummate tacticians of Simla hope to preserve full control for the authorities while earning the credit of a liberal and popular reform. The modification by which men who have served three years on a Municipality become eligible even if they are no longer on any such body at the time of election, seems specially designed to admit Sj. Bhupendranath Bose who, with all the other well-known men of Bengal, was excluded by the careful provisions of the Scheme. But to have placated Sj. Bhupendranath and at the same time disqualified the greater Moderate leader would obviously have been an infructuous concession. Accordingly, we are now given to understand that the Lieutenant-Governor has been pleased to intimate to the most powerful man in Bengal that, if he stands for election, the disqualification under which he has been placed, will be waived as a special concession in his favour ! We do not know what were the feelings of Sj. Surendranath when he was informed that this back-door had been opened to him by the indulgence of the bureaucracy to its dismissed servant. But to us the permission seems to be more humiliating and injurious than the original exclusion, — to Bengal, if not to Surendranath personally. As things stand, he cannot make use of the concession without forfeiting his already much-imperilled popularity and putting him-
Page – 290 self uselessly into a ridiculous and undignified position. If he stood now, the whole country would believe that his dissatisfaction with the Reforms was due to his personal exclusion and not to the vicious principles of the Scheme. He would enter not in his own right, but by the grace and mercy of the bureaucracy of whom he has been the lifelong opponent. And to what end ? To stand isolated or with a handful of ineffective votes against a solid phalanx of officials, Government nominees, Europeans, Mahomedans and lukewarm waverers or reactionaries. Sj. Surendranath gains nothing for himself or the country by entering the Councils on these shameful terms; he gains everything by holding aloof and standing out for better conditions.
The Indian Daily News nowadays plays the Statesman‘s abandoned role of the Friend of India. This journal has been recently harping on the necessity of the reform of the Municipalities and throwing out suggestions of the lines on which those reforms should be framed. We cannot imagine anything more ominous, more fatal to the little of self-government that we possess, than these suggested reforms. We pointed out in our article on the Reforms that under this scheme the Municipalities were the only weak point in the Government’s armour and we hazarded a prophecy that the Government would follow the policy of thorough and mend this vulnerable part. This is precisely what our Anglo-Indian "friend" earnestly and repeatedly calls on them to do without farther delay. The principle to be enforced is that same false, vicious and anti-democratic principle of the representation of separate interests which has made the new Reforms a blow straight at the heart of progress instead of an important step in progressive development. It is true that the Daily News deprecates separate electorates and advocates official control veiled and occasional instead of official control insistent, naked and unashamed. But we know perfectly well that official control veiled and occasional, as in the universities, can be made as potent and effective a weapon for the suppression of independent
Page – 291 action as official control direct and habitual. And if the European, the Mahomedan and the landlord are to predominate in the Municipalities as in the reformed Councils and the representation of the "professional classes" carefully restricted, we do not care whether it is done by separate electorates or by some other equally careful manipulation of the electoral lists. The result will be the same. The Daily News seems to be inspired in its anxiety for reform by two lofty motives, the predominance of the European vote, wealthy but small in numbers, and the distinction of the predominance of the professional men who, under present circumstances, can alone represent educated India. On the Councils the non-official European representation is small, not in proportion to the numbers of its constituency, but in its comparative voting power, yet this class is on the whole satisfied, because it not only gets what it knows to be disproportionately large representation but can be sure of the co-operation of the official in farthering its interests. On the Municipalities, if the direct official control disappears, it will be necessary for the European vote to be dominant so as to prevent a combination of other elements from pushing other interests to the detriment of European privilege or monopoly. The distinction which this journal, in common with other Anglo-Indian papers, draws between men with a real stake in the country and educated men, who apparently because of their education have none, sheds a flood of light on the kind of friendship which it cherishes for the people of this country.
The Statesman as a friend was intolerable; as a humorist it is hardly less difficult to bear. There was an elephantine attempt at sardonic humour in a recent article in which it weightily urged the educated community to overlook defects and take full and generous advantage of the great opportunity from the benefits of which they have been excluded. That is the peculiar humour of these reforms. They are a Barmecide’s feast, gorgeous dishes and silver covers with only unsubstantial air inside, and even
Page – 292 from that chameleon’s feast the educated classes are carefully excluded, except in a pitifully infinitesimal degree. Yet the Anglo-Indian papers are indignantly remonstrating with the educated classes for not crowding to the table where there are no seats for them and feasting themselves fat on the dainty invisible meats which others are so eager to partake of. It may be asked why others are so anxious for these aerial privileges. Well, that is because it is only the educated classes who are really hungry for substantial political food, the others are eager to see and handle the gorgeous dishes and the silver covers, to say nothing of the kudos of having dined at so rich a house and its material advantages to the individual. But the educated Hindus have had a surfeit of specious outsides and are learning to merge the interests of the individual in the good of the nation.
The resort to boycott is becoming instinctive in men’s blood; not only in India but everywhere, men confronted by opposition of a nature which renders it impossible to deal with it effectively, take to boycott with an admirable spontaneity. The rapid spread of this ancient Indian device since China and India applied it for the first time on the gigantic Asiatic scale, is a sign of the times. We can naturally understand the feeling of discomfort which leads the Anglo-Indian papers to deprecate this move on the part of the Moderates. It is true that the reported agreement to boycott the Councils has been denied by representatives of Moderate opinion; but, whether a formal resolution to the effect was recorded or not at the momentous meeting in the Indian Association’s rooms, it is this policy which the Moderates are following, for the excellent reason that there is no other. As they pathetically complain, it is not they who have boycotted the Government but the Government which has boycotted them. That is not, of course, literally true. Sj. Ambikacharan Majumdar who has refused to stand as a candidate, is eligible under the Government rules; the disabilities in the way of Sj. Bhupendranath and Surendranath have been waived or removed. But this
Page – 293 the Government has taken care to ensure, that if they enter, and evidently the Government desires that they should enter, it shall be as grandiose nonentities, stripped of all powerful backing, individual voices and nothing more ! Co-operation on such conditions would be the end of the Moderate party in Bengal and the absolute destruction of the Moderates is an event, which, we confess, we could not contemplate with equanimity. We need a party which will form a convenient channel through which the Government can glide gradually down the path of concession until events have educated our bureaucracy to the point of recognising the necessity of negotiation with the Nationalists. We are therefore glad that the Government has made it imperative on the Moderates to answer boycott with boycott. We have expressed our admiration of the skill with which the Reform Regulations have been framed, but it is the skill of the keen-eyed but limited tactician cleverly manipulating forces for a small immediate gain, not of the far-seeing political strategist. On the contrary, the framers have flung away supports which they ought to have secured and secured others which are either weak or unreliable. The nonentities who are scrambling for a seat in the Council cannot hold the fort for them; the support of the landholders is lacking in sincerity and they are, besides, a force the bureaucracy themselves have stripped ruthlessly of their ancient strength and leadership, which cannot now be recovered by a seat on the Councils; the Mussulmans have suddenly been raised by the amazingly short-sighted policy of Lord Morley into an eager, ambitious and pushing political force which will demand a higher and ever higher price for its support. On the other hand the Moderates have been humiliated in the sight of all India and made a general laughing stock, and the entire Hindu community, always the mightiest in potentiality in the land and now growing conscious of its might, has been put far on the way to becoming a permanent and embittered opposition. O wonders of Anglo-Indian statesmanship !
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