Chapter XI: Part III: The Birth of the New Nationalist Movement

The National Movement in India continued on its placid and humdrum course until Lord Curzon’s ridicule of the movement convinced the people that the political methods of the Congress were quite powerless to bring them any relief against the despotism that trampled upon all their rights and sensibilities. This led to a deeper and a closer study of the political problem on the part of men who had convictions as distinguished from opinions, who had faith as against opportunism, who wanted a soul for their people, rather than a few more posts under the Government. They discovered that the movement had suffered not only by the adoption of wrong methods and by want of sacrifice on the part of leaders, but by their failure to grasp principles and to formulate ideals. Hence the cry of _Swadeshi_ and _Swaraj_.[63]

_Swadeshi and Swaraj._ No sooner was the cry raised than the country was swept by a wave of political activity which deeply and intimately influenced the proceedings of the Congress in 1905 and 1906. Calcutta might have witnessed in 1906 what Surat did in 1907, but for the sagacity and patriotism of Dadabhai, who rose equal to the occasion and blessed the cry for self-government. He declared in the words of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the British Premier, that good government could never be a substitute for self-government. So far good government had been the ideal of the Congress. At the Calcutta session of 1906 it was changed to self-government,--and from the mouth of a man who had devoted his whole life to the political cause. That is the date of the birth of the real National Movement in India.

The _Surat Fiasco_[64] was, among other causes, brought about by the fear that the so-called moderate leaders wanted to go back past what had been done in 1906. There is no doubt that they had gone back in spirit, though perhaps not in letter. The enthusiasm, created by popular propaganda of the Congress in 1888, was killed by the reaction that followed in subsequent years. The same thing would have happened in 1907 but for the fact that this time the movement was sufficiently intense to claim its martyrs.

The high ideals embodied in Swadeshi and Swaraj were the ideals worked out by the sons of India: the miseries of the motherland had given an impetus to the idea, but the idea itself stood on higher ground. It was not the redress of grievances that filled the mind of the people, but the desire for liberty. It was not concessions they wanted, but liberty. Liberty is not a thing of the earth, and therefore it can neither be given nor accepted as a gift. It has to be won. People felt that, and were prepared to realise that in their lives.

After more than twenty years of more or less futile agitation for concessions and redress of grievances, they had received stones in place of bread. Lord Ripon was succeeded by a Curzon. People saw that a sort of mist, a deep, covering fog, had prevented them from seeing ahead. They had been wandering in pursuit of vain things. The haven had been concealed from their vision and the result was that their tiny bark had been following a wrong course. The waters were stormy and the sea was heavy, but no ship could reach its destination unless the mariners and sailors in charge knew what their goal was, and unless they were prepared to put forth all they had in them to carry the bark through. So far, the bark had been sailing under misleading stars, without a compass to guide the captain. Now the compass was found and with the finding of the compass the aspect changed. Ideas inspire men. Ideals prepare them to breast martyrdom. The ideal of Swaraj found men ready to suffer for it, to meet death like martyrs. The new movement has inspired a class of men whose life is filled with that idea and that idea alone. They are the worshippers of Swaraj; they love their motherland above everything else. They do not want office, or incomes, or recognition, or applause. What they want is liberty, not for themselves, because that they might get perhaps by settling in other countries, but for their beloved country. High Court Judgeships, Civil Service, Councils, mean nothing to them.

The founders of the Indian National Congress began their movement under inspiration of government and under the shadow of the high offices they held or aspired to under that government, but the founders and inspirers of the National Movement started their propaganda by boycotting government and government patronage. The former wanted high offices, the latter despised those who held them. The former asked for concessions, the latter rejected them. The former wanted Councils, the latter would have nothing to do with them. The former appealed to the British Government and the British nation, the latter appealed to their own people and to their own patriotism and to their God. The former were led by the British, the latter by pure Indians. The former would not do anything which would mar their careers, the latter threw away their chances like poisoned bread. The former lived in bungalows, revelled in drawing rooms, velvet-covered chairs, were attended by liveried servants, ate at well-furnished tables, entertained governors and magistrates; the latter gave up even the little comforts they had, changed trousers for _dhotis_, coats for _chapkans_ or _kurtas_ (shirts), overcoats for blankets, and boots for ordinary Swadeshi shoes. The former owed their prosperity in life, their positions, and their comforts, to the British system, and were therefore under obligation to the British; but the latter chose the path of poverty and destitution to avoid obligations. They threw away their chances deliberately and with the conviction that that was the right thing to do. The former cared for wines, for children, and for home. The latter gave up all, to devote themselves completely to the cause and to the motherland. The former had produced only two full time workers for the cause in the course of 22 years, the latter produced virtually hundreds and thousands in less than two years. The former worked under the best auspices, the latter started their work under overhanging clouds, which soon burst and swept away many of them into prisons.

Is it any wonder that under such inspiration the movement spread like wildfire and assumed wide proportions? Life met life. Forces met forces. Conflict and clash resulted in fatal accidents to either party. The casualties on the side of the Nationalists have been tremendously heavy and out of all proportion to their number, but judging the conflict by the resources, no one need hesitate in saying that the moral victory lies with the Nationalists. Within less than five years of their propaganda, they forced the hand of the Government to make concessions which could not be even thought of in 1905. The Congress leaders claim credit for themselves and so does the Government; but the verdict of impartial and unbiased historians will be otherwise.

Lord Morley would rally the moderates because there were extremists in the land. In the absence of the so-called extremists, the moderates were extremists and the Government and its agents looked down upon them. The Anglo-Indian statesman and his confidant, the moderate Congress leader, say that the extremists are few, that most of them are those good-for-nothings, who could do nothing at the universities, or with their lives; that they are maniacs and men who have lost all sense of right and wrong.

_Men who have Inspired the Movement._ But look at the men who have inspired the movement, some of whom are leading it even to-day. Is Arabinda Ghosh a failure? Is Har Dayal a failure? Were the nine deportees from Bengal failures? How many high-class graduates have been hanged; how many are in jail! Look at their university records and look at their prospects, and then say if you can call them “malcontents” or men who have arisen against the Government because they could not prosper under it. Their propaganda has compelled the Government to adopt the severest repressive measures open to a foreign government. The penal code has been amended to make the definition of sedition more comprehensive. The criminal procedure code has been amended to facilitate convictions and to accelerate trials. Provisions have been added to enable magistrates to award summary imprisonment for failure to give security for good behaviour asked for on political grounds. A Seditious Meetings Act has been enacted to make open propaganda impossible. An Explosives Act has been placed on the statute book. A Press Law has been passed to muzzle the press. Spies and detectives have been employed out of number. Teachers, professors, friends, pupils, class-fellows, parents, have all been requisitioned to crush the movement. The number of publications confiscated under the Press Act, the convictions for sedition, for seditious murders, for dacoities and for keeping arms, the sentences for failure to find securities for good behaviour, all continue to grow. The cry is, “Still they come!” In prisons the political prisoner has been subjected to horrible treatment; one committed suicide and another lost his senses in the Andamans. Many a tale of misery and wretchedness, of torture and of insults comes from the prisons in India, but still the movement is far from being crushed.

There is evidence that new recruits join the secret propaganda every year and take the place of those hanged or imprisoned. A number has exiled themselves and are carrying on their propaganda in distant lands under very discouraging and depressing circumstances. The man who says that the movement is dead or dying must be a liar or a fool. The movement is alive and possibly as vigorous as it ever was. It has captured the imagination of the younger generation. And at least 75 per cent. of the students in India and in England sympathise with this party. Almost all are Anti-Congress. Even those who are not Nationalists do not like the Congress and feel no obligation towards it, because the Congress failed to communicate high principles and lay down high ideals, and because it failed to create that spirit of self-sacrifice, that willingness to suffer, without which no national movement can grow, prosper, and inspire.

The failures of the Congress evolved the Nationalist Movement. The Congress did its work that way. It brought conviction home that no amount of prayers, resolutions, protests, memorials, could move the autocratic bureaucracy in India, and no amount of petitions were likely to make any impression upon the people in England. The fact that the Congress leaders would not make sacrifices for the Congress cause, though they would give large amounts of money for educational purposes and other charities, forced people to think that they themselves had no faith in the Congress propaganda or in the Congress methods, though they lacked the courage to say so or to change their methods. It was perhaps unreasonable to expect that of the kind of men that led the Congress. Most of them loved their country and were public spirited; they had given proof of it, good and sufficient, in other sides of national activity, in the cause of social reform, in the cause of public education, in industrial propaganda. Outside the Congress they have done enough to create an atmosphere which was bound to bring about the development of the political movement along the lines on which it eventually did develop in 1905.

The Nationalist child was, so to say, brought up on the lap of the old Congress man and fed on the food provided by him; though, strange enough, this bringing up and this feeding produced results for which the Congressman was not prepared and which shocked him a bit. The first shock over, some of them were happy to have lived to see the day, and blessed the movement. Some made up their minds to throttle it, but soon found that it was not in their power to do so. The worst they could do was to condemn it and to denounce it. All they could achieve was to cut the new movement, shake off all responsibility for it, and thus secure their own safety. We do not say that they did it to save their skins. But fortunately for them their convictions led them the way their safety lay. In their heart of hearts they blessed the new movement and were heartily glad that it came. It acted and reacted on their own movement. It made it possible for them to put strength and force into their demands for concessions. Whenever an extremist leader recanted or used compromising language, they were sorry. They wanted the movement to continue and to live, though they would not join it and though they believed that it was harmful to the country in some respects. They deplore the lack of enthusiasm and sacrifice in their own ranks, but they admire the selflessness of the extremists and respect their real leaders. An Arabinda Ghosh and a Tilak simply compel their admiration and respect. Whatever the shortcomings of Har Dayal may be, he is a unique personality.

We have stated wherein the new movement differed from the old, and we have also stated what its dominant note is. We would now like to examine how it intended to proceed and how its hands were forced to do the things it has done since.

_Lord Curzon and Indian Education._ We have already hinted that Lord Curzon’s policy and his utterances helped a great deal in the birth of the new movement. When Lord Curzon came to India, he formulated a rather ambitious programme of reforms to be introduced into the administration of the country. One of these reforms related to education.

Every one in the country, who has had anything to do with education in India, was of opinion that the country was very backward in education and that the system of education there in vogue was defective. It laid too great stress on the literary side and did not fit people for the battle of life; it gave undue importance to the English language and Western modes of thought, at the cost of the vernaculars and the indigenous civilisation of the country; it encouraged “cram” at the cost of real merit; it produced a class of imitators and left little scope or none for originality; it invited third class men from England to fill the highest positions in the educational service of the country, and placed the best native intellect and talent under them to starve and rot for want of opportunities; it did not recognise the duty of the Government to look after the education of the child from the beginning until he was fit to fight his own way in the world.

The educational system of the country required radical changes, but what was most needed was that the Government should be prepared to spend adequate sums of money for its spread and in order to make it efficient. Lord Curzon’s pronouncements and programme therefore raised great hopes in the minds of the people. His University Commission was simply flooded with suggestions and statements from Indians and Anglo-Indians. The two classes, however, discussed the matter from entirely different standpoints: The Indians wanted greater facilities for education, more schools, more colleges, more masters, more stipends, an extension of primary school education, abler and better-paid teachers, freedom of private enterprise, ample provision for technical and industrial education; but what they wanted most and cared for most was that education should be more nationalised and humanised. The Anglo-Indians wanted a curtailment of the educational opportunities, a greater and stricter control of private enterprise, a raising of university standards, and a system of education which would curb the rising generation and make them more easily amenable to discipline and obedience.

Lord Curzon did go into all these questions, but the decision arrived at convinced the educated Indians that the motive which underlay Lord Curzon’s policy was the tightening of government control, the strangling of all independence in matters educational, and the eventual weakening of all national movement and national sentiment.

_Lord Curzon’s Secret Educational Conference._ The fact that he admitted no Indian to the meeting of the Secret Educational Conference held at Simla, when he formulated the government policy, strengthened that idea. His University Legislation shocked the country beyond measure and left no doubt whatsoever that what he aimed at was a complete official control of all education in India. Educated Indians read between the lines and concluded that it was a mistake to look to the Government to do things or to follow a policy which might quicken the national pulse, strengthen the Nationalist sentiment, or add to the efficiency of the people so as to fit them to stand on their legs and desire to get rid of the leading strings in which they were held by the British.

_Indians and Lord Curzon at Cross Purposes._ Indians saw that they and Lord Curzon were at cross-purposes. They aimed at self-government and freedom; Lord Curzon aimed at prolongation of the period of their bondage and the permanence of the existing political conditions. We wanted independence; he wanted us to be dependent on the British. We wanted to quicken the pace of national advance; he wanted to slacken it. We wanted to be assertive and self-reliant; he wanted us to be submissive and in permanent control and tutelage. We wanted to go forward, he mistrusted us. We wanted a policy of honest confidence; instead of that he inaugurated a policy of suspicion. We wanted unity, he proceeded to bring into existence fresh causes of friction between community and community. We wanted the marshalling of our forces in the common cause, he proceeded to divide us and to keep us apart. We wanted consolidation, and he started active disintegration. We wanted an extension of representative government, Lord Curzon did his best to discredit the institutions that had been granted and to set back the hands of the clock.

_The Congress Deputation to England in 1905._ The leaders of the Indian National Congress saw all this; they resisted Lord Curzon’s policy rather boldly; they spoke with courage; they sought his patronage and sent their president to wait on him. Lord Curzon refused to see him and thus slapped the Congress in the face. He characterised their activities as the letting off of “gas.” Their resolutions he looked upon with contempt because, as he said, nothing had ever come out of them. The leaders felt offended, they fretted and foamed. But all they resolved to do was to appeal to the British public. So a deputation was sent to England in 1905 to place the grievances of India before the British public.

This deputation was composed of Messrs. Gokhale and the writer of this book. They addressed a large number of meetings in Great Britain, made many friends, saw some politicians; but they were not very hopeful as to the results. One of them on his return (the present writer) struck an unmistakable note of despondency. He frankly told his people that the British democracy was too busy with their own affairs to do anything for them, that the British press was not willing to champion Indian aspirations, that it was hard to get a hearing in England, and that the influence and the credit of the Anglo-Indians was too strong to be met successfully by the necessarily inadequate agitation which the Congress could set up in England. On his return to India the message which he brought to his people was, that if they really cared for their country, they would have to strike the blow for freedom themselves, and that they would have to furnish unmistakable proofs of their earnestness.

His message was in no way different from what Mr. Hume had told the graduates of the Calcutta University in 1883, or in his pamphlets “The Star in the East” and the “Old Man’s Hope.”

_The Congress of 1905._ This was the first time that an Indian publicist had spoken in that strain. The _swadeshi_ and _boycott_ had already been started in Bengal during his absence from India. Even Mr. Gokhale approved of the boycott as a political weapon. So the message which he brought fell on willing and sympathetic ears. The country was in a mood to listen to it, and it did listen. The Congress Session of 1905, held at Benares,[65] gave an opportunity for comparing notes and for settling a programme. The reception accorded to Mr. Gokhale and the rather uproarious meetings of the Subjects Committee afforded ample evidence of the temper of the people. Gokhale was cautious, careful, but enthusiastic. His presidential address was inspiring, though strictly moderate. His Bombay friends, however, would not let him go sufficiently far. The very first night the Subjects Committee sat, it appeared that a split was inevitable and the proceedings could not be as unanimous and harmonious as was customary. The old Congress leaders were accustomed to unanimity, but the younger generation soon convinced them that unanimity on the old lines was impossible.

When the meeting of the Subjects Committee broke up after its deliberation on the first night, no unanimity had been reached with regard to a resolution welcoming the visit of the Prince of Wales (the present King) to India. The dissentionists threatened to oppose it in the Congress. The reception committee and the older leaders were all furious, threatened all sorts of retributions, and predicted all sorts of evil consequences, but the younger men would not listen. The whole of the morning was spent in efforts to induce them to withdraw their opposition, but young Bengal refused to agree. The meeting was delayed; Gokhale then made a personal appeal to the Mahratta and the Punjab leaders, and they prevailed on their Bengalee friends to absent themselves from the meeting and let the resolution be passed in their absence. The resolution relating to Swadeshi,[66] boycott, and national education, again evoked lively discussion resulting in compromise, wherein the principles for which the Nationalists stood were conceded.

In the Congress camp, the younger generation had met in open conference to discuss their future programme. It was then that Mr. Tilak gave out the idea of passive resistance. No formal resolutions were passed, but the better mind of the people present decided to inaugurate an era of self-help and self-reliance based on an active boycott of government service and of the semi-government institutions.

_Object of the Passive Resistance Movement._ The object was two-fold. (1). To destroy the hypnotism that had caused the people and the country to have faith not only in the omnipotence of their rulers, but also in their altruism. In the words of one of the leaders of the Nationalist thought (Babu B. C. Pal,[67] “The Spirit of Indian Nationalism,” page 42), the people had been hypnotised to believe in the altruism of their foreign rulers:

“Untrained in the crooked ways of civilised diplomacy, they had believed what their rulers had said, either of themselves or of their subjects, as gospel truth. They had been told that the people of India were unfitted to manage their own affairs, and they believed it to be true. They had been told that the people were weak and the Government was strong. They had been told that India stood on a lower plane of humanity and England’s mission was to civilise ‘the semi-barbarous native.’ The Nationalist school took it upon themselves to expose the hollowness of all these pretensions. They commenced to make what are called counter-passes in

hypnotism, and at once awoke the people to a sense of their own strength, an appreciation of their own culture.”

In the second place, the object was to create a passionate love of liberty, accompanied by a spirit of sacrifice and readiness to suffer for the cause of the country. This was to be done more by example than precept. What the programme was may better be stated in the words of the leader whom we have quoted above:

“Boycott both economic and political, boycott of foreign and especially British goods, and of all honorary associations with the administration, national education implying a withdrawal of the youths of the nation from the officialised universities and government-controlled schools and colleges, and training them up in institutions conducted on _national_ lines subject to _national_ control and calculated to help the realisation of the _national_ destiny, national civic volunteering, aiming at imparting a healthy civic training to the people by the voluntary assumption of as much of the civic duties, at present discharged by official or semi-official agencies, as could be done without any violation of the existing laws of the country,--duties, for instance, in regard to rural sanitation, economic and medical relief, popular education, preventive police duties, regulation of fair and pilgrim gathering,--settlement of civil and non-cognisable, criminal disputes by means of arbitration committees:--these were the proclaimed methods of the Nationalist school.”

As to the objects of this scheme, we will again quote the same writer:

“The evident object was to create in the first place a strong civic sentiment in the people with the help of co-operative organisations for the furtherance of the common good, and thus to train them gradually for the larger and heavier responsibilities of free citizenship, and in the next place, to cover the whole country with a net-work of active, political organisations which would place the leaders in direct and living touch with the people, and enable them to bring, from time to time, the irresistible pressure of organised public opinion to bear upon the Government, helping thereby the gradual expansion of popular rights.”

Now it should be noted here in passing, that with the exception of boycott and volunteering, every other item in the above propaganda had been more or less tried and with varying success in all parts of the country, but more particularly in the Punjab and Maharashtra before this. The Deccan education Society and the Poona Fergusson College were the offshoots of the desire to further the cause of education by self-imposed sacrifices, with the underlying motives of quickening the patriotic impulse and the Nationalist spirit. Similarly Swadeshi, co-operative organisations, and private arbitration courts had been thought of and tried. The motives underlying these attempts were absolutely patriotic, combining an element of philanthropy in them. The private colleges in Bengal, started by Vidyasagar and others, were also due to the same impulse, and so was the Pachaipiya College at Madras. Bombay had its own schemes and was ahead of the rest of India in purely Indian industrial and trade organisations. Similarly in the Punjab the idea of swadeshi had been started as early as 1877. The motives were economic and patriotic. The idea of national education had found expression in the D. A. V. (Dayanand Anglo-Vedic) College, and that of national co-operative organisations in the “Punjab National Bank,” the “Bharat Insurance Company” and other joint stock concerns. Religious and philanthropic motives had brought into existence the Hindu orphan movement, the famine relief movement, and so on. A little volunteering had also been attempted in connection with the famine relief movement and the Kangra earthquake relief movement. Long before 1905, the Punjab had a network of privately organised, privately financed, unaided schools and other charitable institutions, over which the Government had little effective control. Patriotism and philanthropy were the underlying motives of these institutions, but _not politics_.[68]

The ruling bureaucracy did not quite like these activities, but they could not suppress them. Individual officers sometimes sympathised and even helped these movements. So far Bengal had been rather backward in the matter of national development on these lines. So, when Lord Curzon proclaimed the partition of Bengal, attacked the veracity of the orientals in his Calcutta University convocation speech, and on other occasions called them cowards, windbags, unpractical talkers, and mere frothy patriots, the Bengalees awoke to a consciousness of their weaknesses, and resolved to revenge themselves upon Lord Curzon, and prove to the world at large that Lord Curzon was a liar. What followed may be briefly stated in a separate chapter.