The Political Future of India :: XII THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

XII THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

In December, 1917, the Government of India appointed a committee of three Englishmen and two Indians (1) “to investigate and report on the nature and extent of the criminal conspiracies connected with the revolutionary movements in India, (2) to examine and consider the difficulties that have arisen in dealing with such conspiracies and to advise as to the legislation, if any, necessary to enable the government to deal effectively with them.” Of the three English members, Mr. Justice Rowlatt of the King’s Bench Division, England, was appointed as president, and of the other two, one was a judge in the service of the Government and the other a member of a Board of Revenue in one of the Indian Provinces. Of the two Indians, one was a judge and the other a practicing lawyer.

This committee submitted its report in April, 1918, which was published by the Government of India in July of the same year. The president, Mr. Justice Rowlatt’s letter covering the report gives the nature of the evidence upon which their report is based, which is as follows: “Statements have been placed before us with documentary evidence by the Governments of Bengal, Bombay, Bihar and Orissa, the Central Provinces, the United Provinces, the Punjab and Burmah as well as by the Government of India. In every case, except that of Madras, we were further attended by officers of the government, presenting this statement, who gave evidence before us. In the two provinces in which we held sittings, namely, Bengal and Punjab, we further invited and secured the attendance of individuals, or as deputed by associations, of gentlemen who we thought might give us information from various non-official points of view.”

It is clear from this statement that the investigation of the committee was neither judicial nor even semi-judicial; it was a purely administrative inquiry conducted behind the backs of the individuals concerned, without the latter having any opportunity of cross-examining the witnesses or giving their explanations of the evidence against them. While the different Governments in India were fully represented in each case by the ablest of their servants, the individuals investigated were not. We do not want to insinuate that either the Governments or the officers deputed by them were unfair in their evidence. All that we want to point out is that the other side had no opportunity of putting their case before the committee. Consequently, it is no wonder that one comes across many traces of political and racial bias both in the introduction and the Report.

The very first paragraph of the introduction betrays either ignorance on the part of the committee about the ancient history of India, or a deliberate misrepresentation of the nature of the Hindu State. The committee says: “Republican or Parliamentary forms of governments as at present understood were neither desired nor known in India until after the establishment of British rule. In the Hindu State the form of government was an absolute monarchy, though the monarch was by the Hindu Shastras hedged round by elaborate rules for securing the welfare of his subjects and was assisted by a body of councillors, the chief of whom were Brahmin members of the priestly class which derived authority from a time when the priests were the sole repositories of knowledge and therefore the natural instruments of administration.” The statements made in this paragraph do not represent the whole truth.

The committee ignores the fact that Republican or Parliamentary forms of Government “as at present understood” were neither desired nor known in any part of the world, except perhaps England itself until after the establishment of British rule in India.[1] Then the committee has altogether ignored that, in the Hindu State, the form of government was not an absolute monarchy always and in all parts of India. There is ample historical evidence to prove that India had many Republican States, along with oligarchies and monarchies at one and the same period of her history. The second part of the second sentence is also not correct, because the priestly class derived its authority from a time when the priests were not the sole repositories of knowledge. The several Hindu political treatises belong to a period when the whole populace was highly educated and could take substantial part in the determination of the affairs of their country.

Equally misleading is the last sentence of the introduction where the committee says that it is among the Chitpavan Brahmins of the Poona district that they first find indications of a revolutionary movement. This statement is incorrect, if it means that after the establishment of British rule in India no attempt had been made to overthrow it prior to the Revolutionary movement inaugurated by the Poona Brahmins. The statement ignores three such attempts which are known to history; viz., (a) the great Mutiny of 1857, (b) the WahÁbee Rebellion of Bengal, and (c) the KÚkÁ Rebellion of the Punjab; not to mention other minor attempts made in other places by other people.

Yet we think that this report is a very valuable document, giving in one place the history and the progress of the Revolutionary Movement in India. The findings and the recommendations of the committee may not be all correct, but the material collected and published for the first time is too valuable to be neglected by anyone who wants to have an intelligent grasp of the political situation in India, such as has developed within the last twenty years.

The committee gives a summary of its conclusions as to the conspiracies in Chapter XV, which we copy verbatim:

“In Bombay they have been purely Brahmin and mostly Chitpavan. In Bengal the conspirators have been young men belonging to the educated middle classes. Their propaganda has been elaborate, persistent and ingenious. In their own province it has produced a long series of murders and robberies. In Bihar and Orissa, the United Provinces, the Central Provinces and Madras, it took no root, but occasionally led to crime and disorder. In the Punjab the return of emigrants from America, bent on revolution and bloodshed, produced numerous outrages and the Ghadr conspiracy of 1915. In Burma, too, the Ghadr movement was active, but was arrested.

“Finally came a Mohammedan conspiracy confined to a small clique of fanatics and designed to overthrow British rule with foreign aid.

“All these plots have been directed towards one and the same objective, the overthrow by force of British rule in India. Sometimes they have been isolated; sometimes they have been interconnected; sometimes they have been encouraged and supported by German influence. All have been successfully encountered with the support of Indian loyalty.”

In this general summary the committee has made no attempt to trace out the causes that led to the inauguration of the revolutionary movement and its subsequent progress. A chapter on that subject would have been most illuminating.

In chapters dealing with provinces they have selected some individuals and classes on whom to lay blame for “incitements” to murders and crimes, but have entirely failed to analyze the social, political and economic conditions which made such incitements and their success possible.

It is clear even from this summary that the only two provinces where the revolutionary propaganda took root and resulted in more than occasional outrages were Bengal and the Punjab.

In the Bombay Presidency, revolutionary outrages did not exceed three within a period of 20 years (from 1897 to 1917), two murders and one bomb-throwing. Besides, three trials for conspiracies are mentioned all within a year (1909-1910), two in Native States and one in British territory. Altogether 82 men were prosecuted for being involved in these conspiracies. The total result comes to this, that in the course of 20 years about 100 persons were found to be involved in a revolutionary movement in a territory embracing an area of 186,923 square miles and a population of 27 million human beings. This is surely by no means a formidable record justifying extraordinary legislation such as is proposed.[2] The net loss of human life did not exceed three, though unfortunately all three victims were Europeans.

Bihar and Orissa formed part of the province of Bengal during most of the period covered by the revolutionary movement of Bengal, viz., from 1906 to 1917. It was in Bihar which was then a part of Bengal, that in 1908, the first bomb was thrown. The only other revolutionary outrage that took place in Bihar was one in 1913, resulting in the murder of two Indians.

In the United Provinces of Agra and Oude, the only tangible evidence of revolutionary activity recorded by the committee is the Benares Conspiracy that came to light in 1915-1916. The only outrage noted is that of the alleged murder of a fellow revolutionary by a member of the same gang.

To the Central provinces the committee has given a practically clean bill.

In Madras the revolutionary outrages consisted of one murder (of a European Magistrate) and one conspiracy involving nine persons.

The conspiracies and intrigues detected in Burma are ascribed to people of other provinces and not a single outrage from that province itself is reported.

So we find that in the period from 1906 to 1907, both inclusive, outside the provinces of Bengal and the Punjab, the revolutionary crime was limited to three outrages and three conspiracies in the Bombay Presidency, one outrage in Bihar, one outrage and one conspiracy in the United Provinces, one outrage and one conspiracy in Madras and some intrigues and conspiracies during the war in Burma. Thus the only two provinces in which the revolutionary movement established itself to any appreciable extent was Bengal and the Punjab.

In the Punjab, again, the first revolutionary crime took place in December, 1912, and the second in 1913 and the rest all during the War. Cases of seditious utterances and writings are not included in the term “revolutionary crime” used in the above paragraphs. It was from Bengal, then, that before the War revolutionary propaganda was carried on to any large extent, revolutionary movements organized and revolutionary crimes committed. About half of the Report deals with Bengal and the general findings of the committee may be thus summarized:

(1) That the object of the movement was the overturning of “the British government in India by violent means” (p. 15 and also p. 19).

(2) That the class among whom the movement spread was comprised of the Bhadralok (the respectable middle class). The committee says:

“The people among whom he (i.e., Barendra, the first Bengali revolutionary propagandist) worked, the bhadralok of Bengal, have been for centuries peaceful and unwarlike, but, through the influence of the great central city of Calcutta, were early in appreciating the advantages of Western learning. They are mainly Hindus and their leading castes are Brahmins, Kayasthas and Vaidyas; but with the spread of English education some other castes too have adopted bhadralok ideals and modes of life. Bhadralok abound in villages as well as in towns, and are thus more interwoven with the landed classes than are the literate Indians of other provinces. Wherever they live or settle, they earnestly desire and often provide English education for their sons. The consequence is that a number of Anglo-vernacular schools, largely maintained by private enterprise, have sprung up throughout the towns and villages of Bengal. No other province of India possesses a network of rural schools in which English is taught. These schools are due to the enterprise of the bhadralok and to the fact that, as British rule gradually spread from Bengal over Northern India, the scope of employment for English-educated Bengalis spread with it. Originally they predominated in all offices and higher grade schools throughout Upper India. They were also, with the Parsees, the first Indians to send their sons to England for education, to qualify for the Bar, or to compete for the higher grades of the Civil and Medical services. When, however, similar classes in other provinces also acquired a working knowledge of English, the field for Bengali enterprise gradually shrank. In their own province bhadralok still almost monopolize the clerical and subordinate administrative services of Government. They are prominent in medicine, in teaching and at the Bar. But, in spite of these advantages, they have felt the shrinkage of foreign employment; and as the education which they receive is generally literary and ill-adapted to incline the youthful mind to industrial, commercial or agricultural pursuits, they have not succeeded in finding fresh outlets for their energies. Their hold on land, too, has weakened, owing to increasing pressure of population and excessive sub-infeudation. Altogether their economic prospects have narrowed, and the increasing numbers who draw fixed incomes have felt the pinch of rising prices. On the other hand, the memories and associations of their earlier prosperity, combined with growing contact with Western ideas and standards of comfort, have raised their expectations of the pecuniary remuneration which should reward a laborious and, to their minds, a costly education. Thus as bhadralok learned in English have become more and more numerous, a growing number have become less and less inclined to accept the conditions of life in which they found themselves on reaching manhood. Bhadralok have always been prominent among the supporters of Indian political movements; and their leaders have watched with careful attention events in the world outside India. The large majority of the people of Bengal are not bhadralok but cultivators, and in the eastern districts mainly Muhammadans; but the cultivators of the province are absorbed in their own pursuits, in litigation, and in religious and caste observances. It was not to them but to his own class that Barendra appealed. When he renewed his efforts in 1904, the thoughts of many members of this class had been stirred by various powerful influences.” [The italics are ours.]

We have given this lengthy extract as it shows conclusively (a) that the movement originated and spread among people who had received Western education, most of the leaders having been educated in England and (b) that the root cause of the movement was economic.

(3) That various circumstances occasioned by certain Government measures “specially favored the development” of the movement (p. 16). Among the measures specially mentioned are (a) the University law of Lord Curzon “which was interpreted by politicians as designed to limit the numbers of Indians educated in English and thus to retard national advance”; (b) the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon. “It was the agitation that attended and followed on this measure that brought previous discontent to a climax.”

(4) That the revolutionary movement received a substantial impetus by the failure of constitutional agitation for the reversal of the policy that decided on partitioning Bengal into two divisions. This failure led to two different kinds of agitation, open and secret: (a) open economic defiance by Swadeshi and boycott—Swadeshi was the affirmative and boycott the negative form of the same movement. Swadeshi enjoined the use of country made articles; boycott was directed against English imports, (b) open propaganda by a more outspoken and in some instances violent press, (c) open control of educational agencies by means of national institutions, (d) open stimulus to physical education and physical culture, (e) nationalistic interpretation of religious dogma and forms (open), (f) organization of secret societies for more violent propaganda, for learning and teaching the use of firearms, for the manufacture of bombs, for illicit purchase and stealing of firearms, for assassination and murder, (g) secret attempts to tamper with the army, (h) conspiracies for terroristic purposes and for obtaining sinews of war by theft, robbery and extortion.

The following two extracts which the committee has taken from one of the publications of the revolutionary party called Mukti Kon Pathe (what is the path of salvation) will explain clauses (f) and (g) and (h).

“The book further points out that not much muscle was required to shoot Europeans, that arms could be procured by grim determination, and that weapons could be prepared silently in some secret place. Indians could be sent to foreign countries to learn the art of making weapons. The assistance of Indian soldiers must be obtained. They must be made to understand the misery and wretchedness of the country. The heroism of Sivaji must be remembered. As long as revolutionary work remained in its infancy, expenses could be met by subscriptions. But as work advanced, money must be extracted from society by the application of force. If the revolution is being brought about for the welfare of society, then it is perfectly just to collect money from society for that purpose. It is admitted that theft and dacoity are crimes because they violate the principle of good society. But the political dacoit is aiming at the good of society, “so no sin but rather virtue attaches to the destruction of this small good for the sake of some higher good. Therefore if revolutionaries extort money from the miserly or luxurious members of society by the application of force, their conduct is perfectly just.”

Mukti Kon Pathe further exhorts its readers to obtain the “help of the native soldiers.... Although these soldiers for the sake of their stomach accept service in the Government of the ruling power, still they are nothing but men made of flesh and blood. They, too, know (how) to think; when therefore the revolutionaries explain to them the woes and miseries of the country, they, in proper time, swell the ranks of the revolutionaries with arms and weapons given them by the ruling power.... Because it is possible to persuade the soldiers in this way, the modern English Raj of India does not allow the cunning Bengalis to enter into the ranks of the army.... Aid in the shape of arms may be secretly obtained by securing the help of the foreign ruling powers.”

(5) That except in five cases the idea of private gain never entered into the activities of the revolutionaries and of the five persons referred to three were taxi-cab drivers either hired or coerced to coÖperate in revolutionary enterprise (p. 20).

(6) That “the circumstances that robberies and murders are being committed by young men of respectable extraction, students at schools and colleges, is indeed an amazing phenomenon the occurrence of which in most countries would be hardly credible.”

(7) That “since the year 1906 revolutionary outrages in Bengal have numbered 210 and attempts at committing such outrages have amounted to 101. Definite information is in the hands of the police of the complicity of no less than 1038 persons in these offences. But of these, only 84 persons have been convicted of specified crimes in 39 prosecutions, and of these persons, 30 were tried by tribunals constituted under the Defence of India Act. Ten attempts have been made to strike at revolutionary conspiracies by means of prosecutions directed against groups or branches. In these prosecutions 192 persons were involved, 63 of whom were convicted. Eighty-two revolutionaries have rendered themselves liable to be bound over to be of good behaviour under the preventive sections of the Criminal Procedure Code. In regard to 51 of these, there is direct evidence of complicity in outrages. 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 assigned 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 passage 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 clustering 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 passages 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 classes in Bengal are generally poor, and the increased stress of competition 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 classes 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 passes 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 institutions than an ability to pass 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 classrooms, 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, passionate 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 circumstances, 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 class 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.

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