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The Khulna Comedy
THE
result of a political case is always a foregone conclusion in this country in
the present era of Anti- Swadeshi repression, for the object of the proceedings
is not to detect and punish crime but to put down Swadeshi under the forms of
law; whether the accused is innocent or guilty of the particular charge it has
been thought convenient to formulate against him, is a matter of very trifling
importance. Neither the people nor the bureaucracy really accept a conviction as
proof of any offence against the law. Indeed it is more or less a matter of
caprice or convenience whether one offence or another is selected. When the
crime is not chosen with a view to the punishment it is desired to inflict, or
the greater ease of securing evidence, or the necessity of convicting when there
is no evidence, the problem is probably determined by the sense of humour of the
prosecuting Magistrate or by an aesthetic perception of the fitness of things.
Generally the Swadeshi worker is charged with sedition or assault or breach of
the peace or wishing to break the peace, or thinking of doing something which
somebody in authority pretends to believe likely to break the peace; but he
might just as well be charged with burglary or abduction or with contempt of the
Magistrate's Khansamah or with the Bengal stare or the Coconada grimace. The
main object is to send him to prison or bind him over not to do any work for
Swadeshi for six months or a year, and the pretext is a mere bagatelle. The real
point is not whether the accused is innocent or guilty of the particular offence
but whether he is innocent or guilty of Swadeshi, whether he is innocent or
guilty of patriotism, whether he is innocent or guilty of Nationalism. For this
reason no disgrace attaches to conviction, rather it is the passport to
fame, honour and public esteem. The prosecution is a farce, the defence is a
farce, and the judgment is the most exquisite farce of all. The bureaucracy go
through the farce because they cling to the shadow of moral prestige even when
the
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substance of it is gone; they like to adopt Russian methods, but they do not
like them to be called Russian and still hug the delusion that by going through
the legal forms of which Justice makes use they can cover the nakedness of their
tyranny with the rags of law. The accused go through the farce with the sole
object of so managing the defence as to dispel even the last shadow of the old
moral prestige and to expose the nakedness of bureaucratic oppression more and
more. It is a political fight with the law courts for its scene.
In no recent political case except Rawalpindi has the veil of law been so
ridiculously thin as in the Khulna case. Partly, no doubt, this is due to the
personal gifts of the prosecuting Magistrate who decided the case. Mr. Asanuddin
Ahmed is a very distinguished man. The greatest and most successful achievement
of his life was to be a fellow-collegian of Lord Curzon. But he has other
sufficiently respectable if less gorgeous claims to distinction. Arithmetic,
logic, English and Law are his chief fortes. His mastery over figures is so
great that arithmetic is his slave and not his master; it is even said that he
can assess a man at Rs. 90 one day and bring him down 200 per cent in estimation
the other. It is whispered that it was not only for a masterly general
incompetence but also for this special gift that he was transferred to Khulna.
His triumphant dealings with logic were admirably exampled by the original
syllogism which he presented to the startled organisers of the District
Conference. "I, Asanuddin, am the District Magistrate; the District
Magistrate is the representative of the District; ergo, I, Asanuddin, am
the one and only representative of the district. Now only a representative of
the district has a right to hold a District Conference or to do anything in the
name of the district, or to use any expression in which the word district
occurs; I, Asanuddin, am the sole and only representative of the
district; ergo, I, Asanuddin, have the sole and only right to call a
District Conference." Mr. Ahmed's English is the delight of the judges of
the High Court, who are believed to spend sleepless nights in trying to make out
the meaning of his judgments. In one case at least, it is said, a distinguished
judge had to confess with sorrow and humiliation that he could make nothing of
the English of the
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learned
Magistrate and after reading the judgment in the present case, we can well
believe the story. As for his knowledge of law, the best praise we can give it
is that it is on a level with his knowledge of, say, English. Such was the
brilliant creature who appointed himself prosecutor, jury and judge in the
Khulna sedition case.
Under such auspices the conduct of the case was sure to be distinguished
by a peculiarly effulgent brilliancy. In order to prove that Venibhushan Rai
talked sedition it was thought necessary to prove how many volunteers were
present at the Conference. This is a fair example of the kind of evidence on
which the case was decided and which the great Asanuddin declared to be
particularly relevant. Beyond evidence of this stamp there was no proof against
the accused except the evidence of police officers unsupported by any verbatim
report, while on the other side were the statements of the respectable pleaders,
the verbatim copy of the speech and a whole mass of unshaken testimony. But our
one and only Asanuddin declared that the evidence of respectable men was not to
be believed because they were respectable and graduates of the Calcutta
University and partakers in the Conference; the police apparently were the only
disinterested and truthful people in Khulna. But the most remarkable dictum of
this remarkable man was that when one is charged with sedition it is not
necessary to prove the use of any particular seditious utterances; it is quite
enough for the Magistrate to come to the conclusion that something untoward
might, could or should have happened as the result of the accused having made a
speech. In fact, it is hardly necessary under the section as interpreted by
Daniels of this kind, to prove anything against the accused; the only thing
necessary is that the Magistrate should think it better for convenience official
or unofficial that he should be bound over. The section answers the same purpose
in minor cases which the Regulation of 1818 answers in the case of more powerful
opponents of irresponsible despotism.
The Khulna case has been from the point of view of Justice an undress
rehearsal of the usual bureaucratic comedy; from the point of view of Mr.
Asanuddin Ahmed it has been a brilliant exhibition of his superhuman power of
acting folly and talking
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nonsense;
from the point of view of Srijut Venibhushan Rai it has been a triumph greater
than any legal victory, a public certificate of patriotism, courage and
sincerity, an accolade of knighthood and nobility in the service of the
Motherland.
Bande Mataram,
July 20, 1907
The
chorus of jubilation with which the English Press receives news of any danger to
the last shred of independence of any ancient people is characteristic. The
Koreans cannot see their way to acquiesce in Japanese rule, ergo, they are
arch-intriguers. Europe in her present temper seems to be the most
uncompromising enemy of the liberty of all peoples except her own. The
disturbances that have followed the deputation to the Hague, the meeting of the
Korean troops and the active participation of the populace in the same, seem to
have filled Europe with a grim gratification at the prospect of Korea being
placed permanently under the heel of Japan. Europe is a worshipper of success,
and we need not wonder if she is glad to see an Eastern power taking a leaf out
of her book, in threatening the liberty of Nations.
Bande Mataram,
July 22, 1907
Srijut
Bhupendranath Dutt has been sentenced to one year's rigorous imprisonment for
telling the truth with too much emphasis. As to that we have nothing to say, for
it is a necessary part of the struggle between Anglo-Indian bureaucracy and
Indian democracy. The bureaucracy has all the material power in its hands and it
must necessarily struggle to preserve its unjust and immoral monopoly of power
by the means which material strength places in its hands, by the infliction of
suffering on the bodies of its opponents and on their minds, so far as they
allow the suffering of the body to affect the mind, by forcible inter-
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ference
with the outward expression of their feelings, by intimidation and a show of
brute power and force. But if the bureaucracy has all the material power in its
hands, the democracy has all the spiritual power, the power and force of
martyrdom, of unflinching courage, of self-immolation for an idea. Spiritual
power in the present creates material power in the future and for this reason we
always find that if it is material force which dominates the present, it is
spiritual which moulds and takes possession of the future. The despot in all
ages can lay bonds and stripes and death on our body; his power is only limited
by his will, for law is an instrument forged by himself and which he can turn to
his own uses and morality is a thing which he regards not at all, or if he
affects to regard it, he is cunning enough to throw a veil of words over his
actions and mislead the distant and ill-informed opinion which is all he cares
for. But if the despot can lay on the body the utmost ills of the scourge and
the rack and the sword, if he can directly or indirectly plunder the goods of
those who resist him and seek to crush them by wounding them in their dearest
point of honour, the enthusiast for liberty can also turn suffering into
strength, bonds into a glorious emancipation and death into the seed of a
splendid and beneficent life. He can refuse to allow the tortures of the body to
affect the calm and illumined strength of his soul where it sits, a Divine Being
in the white radiance of its own self-existent bliss, rejoicing in all the
glorious manifestations of its Will, rejoicing in its pleasures, rejoicing in
its anguish, rejoicing in victory, rejoicing in defeat, rejoicing in life,
rejoicing in death. For we in India who are enthusiasts for liberty, fight for
no selfish lure, for no mere material freedom, for no mere economic
predominance, but for our national right to that large freedom and noble life
without which no spiritual emancipation is possible; for it is not among an
enslaved, degraded and perishing people that the Rishis and great spirits can
long continue to be born. And since the spiritual life of India is the first
necessity of the world's future, we fight not only for our own political and
spiritual freedom but for the spiritual emancipation of the human race. With
such a glorious cause to battle for, there ought to be no craven weakness among
us, no flinching, no coward evasion of the consequences of our action.
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It
is a mistake to whine when we are smitten, as if we had hoped to achieve liberty
without suffering. To meet persecution with indifference, to take punishment
quietly as a matter of course, with erect head and undimmed eyes, this is the
spirit in which we must conquer.
Bande Mataram,
July 25, 1907
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