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The Bagbazar Meeting
WE DO not clearly understand what has been gained by the Bagbazar meeting held on Sunday under the auspices of the leading lights of Bengal. There were one or two speeches made which said certain obvious things and there were certain resolutions passed in which we condoled, sympathised, demanded and protested. But when the meeting dispersed, we were not one whit more forward than we had been a few hours before. What we want to know, what the country wants to know, is not what we think, – there is no doubt or difference of opinion about that, everybody is thinking the same thing, - but what are we going to do? The right of public meeting is to be allowed to us in future only on sufferance; students of schools are not to be permitted to think about politics; students of colleges, schoolmasters, professors are to be suffered to take interest in politics only so long as they do not do or say anything unpleasant or objectionable to the authorities; nationalist agitation has been practically forbidden on penalty of arrest, deportation or exposure to police or Mahomedan goondaism. What the Government means to do is plain enough. It intends to put down nationalism with the high hand and crush every attempt of the nation to raise its head, every aspiration to breathe, to grow and to live. The question now is, what do we mean to do in reply? There were four subjects before the meeting on Sunday. The deportation of Lajpatrai came first in importance, because it shows to what extremes the bureaucracy is prepared to go in order to crush nationalism. Merely. to express indignation and sympathy in answer to such a step is absurd; it has all the bathos and futility of a foreseen commonplace. Of course we are indignant, of course we sympathise, but what afterwards? Have we no duty to perform except the expression of these very natural, unavoidable and entirely useless emotions? Yes, we demand that the charges against Lajpatrai should be formulated Page-53
and proved. From whom do we make this demand? In the case of the Natu brothers
it was just possible that pressure in Parliament might induce the Government in
England to undo what the Government in Bombay had done in a moment of panic.
Here there is no such possibility. Mr. Morley has publicly identified himself
with this act of arbitrary oppression and his mind is too stiff and rigid with
age to change. The deportation of Lajpatrai is therefore an action for which the
Liberal Government has be- come responsible and, as such, is bound to have the
support of
almost the whole Liberal Party, while it will certainly have the support of the
whole Conservative Party. Who then is likely to listen to this empty
"demand"? We could have understood it, if the demand had been coupled
with a resolution that the campaign of Boycott, Swadeshi and Swaraj should be
pursued with tenfold vigour, that Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal should be asked to
return to Madras and complete his programme with additions, and Srijut
Surendranath Banerji should proceed at once to the North for the same purpose
and should take in Gujarat and the Central Provinces in his return journey, and
that meanwhile every nerve should be strained to promote and organise the
movement in Bengal. The resolution would then have had a meaning and the nation
would have been inspirited to draw fresh resolve and energy from what would
otherwise be a national calamity. As it stands, this "demand" rings
hollow and savours of empty braggadocio. Page-54 either have compelled the hooligans to throw themselves upon well-defended points and meet the risk of a salutary defeat which they have hitherto avoided, or else left the conflagration to die for want of material to prey upon, - unless it turned upon those who had kindled it. But merely to lament the situation and ex- press an astonishment which nobody really feels at the action of the local authorities, is neither helpful nor sincere. A third subject for consideration was the University Coercion Circular. This was a crucial point; from the way in which it was dealt with, the country could understand how far the sincerity and resolution of its leaders would go. It would perhaps be too much to expect of these gentlemen that they would respond to the insult that has been put upon them by a dignified resolution to sever connection with an enslaved and degraded University and take the education of the country into their own hands. In the present development of public feeling this would be perfectly practicable and we believe it would. be welcomed with enthusiasm by the whole of Bengal; but it requires an amount of enthusiasm and courage which we have ceased to expect from the men who lead us. Surely, however, they might at least have definitely assured the public that they would offer a firm passive resistance to the provisions of the Circular and leave the Government, if it dared to inflict the penalty of disaffiliation with or without the consent of the Senate. Even this was not done. "We protest", and there is an end of the matter. The same course was followed with regard to the Ordinance restricting the right of public meeting. Under this Ordinance the Government reserves to itself the power of putting an extinguisher on the Nationalist agitation whenever and wherever it pleases. The agitation has been a public one and had nothing in it secret or underground; but if we submit to the Ordinance, it must lose its public character and adopt other methods. Are we prepared to accept this eventuality? We had given up petitioning as proved by experience to be futile and cannot return to it with- out acknowledging defeat and enslaving India forever to the bureaucracy. Passive resistance has become our chosen weapon and this it is sought to strike out of our hands. We must, there- fore, either oppose an organised passive resistance to this Ordi- Page-55 nance, a resistance in which leaders like Srijut Surendranath must court
imprisonment and deportation, or we must find other methods. It was light on
this question that we expected from Sunday’s meeting, but it has left us only
darkness visible. It seems to be the policy of our leaders to
"protest", -
and submit. Bande Mataram, May 14, 1907 Page-56 |