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“Bande Mataram” Prosecution
THE
prosecution of the Bande Mataram, the most important of the numerous
Press prosecutions recently instituted by the bureaucracy, commenced with a
flourish of trumpets, eagerly watched by a hopeful Anglo-India Press, has ended
in the most complete and dismal fiasco such as no Indian Government has ever had
to experience before in a sedition case. The failure has not been the result of
any lukewarmness or halfheartedness in the conduct of the prosecution or any
unwillingness to convict on the part of the trying Magistrate. The Police left
no stone unturned to get a particular man convicted, the Standing Counsel did
not hesitate to press every possible point and make the most of every stray
scrap or faint shadow of evidence against the accused, the Magistrate was a
Civilian Magistrate whose leanings have never been concealed, the same who gave
two years to the Yugantar Printer, who sent Bepin Pal before a
subservient Bengali Magistrate with a plain hint to give him a heavy punishment,
who sentenced Sushil Kumar to fifteen stripes, who brushed aside the evidence of
barristers in favour of Police testimony, and every paragraph of whose judgment
in the present case shows that he would readily have dealt out a handsome term
of hard labour if the evidence had afforded him the slightest justification for
a conviction. All the winning cards in the game are in the hands of the
bureaucracy in such a trial. They can command the best legal knowledge in the
country, they have a detective and secret service system which for political
purposes is popularly supposed to be second only in its elaborateness to the
Russian, they have their own servants sitting on the bench to try a case in
which they are deeply interested, there is no trouble about juries who might be
unwilling to convict, the Police have unlimited powers of search and can even
turn the Post Office into a branch of the detective department; their methods of
discovering witnesses are various and effective; yet with all this they were
unable to
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bring
forward a single scrap of convincing evidence to prove that the particular man
they were bent on running down was the Editor. The Magistrate in his judgment
and the affectionate Friend of India in Chowringhee in his comments have drawn
from this failure the lesson that the laws against the freedom of the Press
should be made more stringent. An ordinary unilluminated intelligence would have
come rather to the conclusion that the executive authorities would do well to
reform their method of instituting proceedings in a political trial.
The one important lesson of the Bande Mataram Case is the light
which it throws on the spirit in which the bureaucracy have been instituting the
political prosecutions and persecutions which have latterly seemed to be their
only reason of existence. This spirit has been exposed in a lurid and
sensational manner in the Comilla case, when an innocent man with difficulty
escaped the gallows to which a political prosecution had condemned him. But in
the Bande Mataram Case also there has been a less sensational though
sufficient exposure of the same sinister spirit. What has been the whole meaning
and aim of this prosecution? Certainly not an honest impartial desire to
vindicate outraged law and check without personal animus or any purely political
aim a wanton tendency to disturb the public tranquillity, which would be the
only excuse for a sedition prosecution. It has been an obvious attempt to crush
a particular paper and a particular individual. The bureaucracy has sought to
cripple or silence the Bande Mataram because it has been preaching with
extraordinary success a political creed which was dangerous to the continuance
of bureaucratic absolutism and was threatening to become a centre of strength
round which many Nationalistic forces might gather. It has sought to single out
and silence a particular individual because it chose to think that he was, as
the Friend of India expresses it, the master mind behind the policy of the
paper. If we are challenged to justify this assertion, it will be sufficient to
point to the conduct of this case from its very inception. The Bande Mataram has
been for over a year attacking without fear and without disguise the present
system of Government and advocating a radical and revolutionary change. It has
advocated that change on grounds of historical experience,
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the
first principles of politics and the necessity of national self-preservation. It
has not minced matters or sought to conceal revolutionary aspirations under the
veil of moderate professions or ambiguous phraseology. It has not concealed its
opinion that the bureaucracy cannot be expected to transform itself, that the
people of India and not the people of England must save India, and that we
cannot hope for any boons but must wrest what we desire by strong national
combination from unwilling hands. Hundreds of articles have appeared in the
paper in this vein and the bureaucrats had only to pick and choose. But they
have not attacked one of these articles, nor did their counsel venture to cite
even a single one of them to prove seditious intention. The fact is that,
however dangerous such a propaganda may be to an absolutist handful desiring to
perpetuate their irresponsible rule, no government pretending to call itself
civilised can prosecute it as seditious without forfeiting all claim to the last
vestige of the world's respect. But though the paper could not be characterised
as seditious, it was highly inconvenient, and there was a growing clamour which
extended even to the cloudy home of the Thunderer in London, for its prosecution
and, if possible, suppression. And so watch is kept to find the paper tripping
over some trifle, for which it can be hauled up and got into trouble on a side
issue. What
is the matter for which the Bande
Mataram was prosecuted? A reprint of
the official translations of certain articles from a vernacular paper,
translations issued as part of a case in the law courts and reproduced as such,
— that is one count; and an insignificant correspondence which does not even
profess to give voice to the policy of the paper, — that is the second and
third; and there is no other. The Yugantar was prosecuted on articles
expressing its essential policy; the Sandhya has been proceeded against
on articles expressing its views on important matters; but it was sought to
crush the Bande Mataram partly for a technical offence and partly on a
side issue. So eagerly, so carelessly is the casual chance given snatched at
that the executive do not even trouble to know what is the article on which
action is being taken; they give sanction to prosecute on an advertisement in
the righthand corner of the paper, and but for the compassionate correction
vouchsafed by an officer of the
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company
the mistake would have had to be rectified in the course of the trial itself.
Sanction is given to prosecute a nameless Editor and the Police at once proceed
to ask for a warrant against Aurobindo Ghose. It is in evidence that they had
nothing better to go on than hearsay. But they had no hesitation in immediately
pouncing on one particular writer of the Bande Mataram without possessing
the least scrap of evidence against him. Obviously they cannot have done this
without instructions. It was popularly believed that Srijut Aurobindo Ghose was
all in all on the Bande Mataram staff, that all the best articles were
written by him, that he gave the tone of the paper and that it could not last
without him. Why did the Police take a body-warrant against Aurobindo Ghose to
the office and why, having taken it, did they not arrest him? Obviously they
took it because they thought that they would find plenty of evidence against him
in the search, and they did not execute it because they found that not a scrap
of proof rewarded their efforts. After that there was a pause till Anukul Mukherjee's testimony was secured, and on that flimsy evidence the trial was
started. Had it been honestly intended to deal only with the Editor, whoever he
might turn out to be, the proceedings against Aurobindo Ghose would have been
given up, but the Police made no secret of the fact that it was this one man who
was wanted and that no other, whatever the evidence against him, would be
thought worth capture. Even when the case for the prosecution was complete
without any evidence fit to raise more than a flimsy presumption, the Standing
Counsel would not give up, but in an outrageous address in which he rode
roughshod over the higher traditions of his office, pressed weak points and
wrested ambiguous evidence to get the charge framed. And after Anukul had broken
down in cross-examination and made admissions fatal to their case, still the
prosecution struggled for a verdict. And with what result? Even a Civilian
Magistrate willing to support the prestige of the Government had more sense of
law and justice than the bureaucracy and its advisers and was able to see that a
man could not be sent to two years' rigorous imprisonment without any shadow of
evidence. Their prey escaped them; the Manager who seems to have been arrested
on spec and tried without even any pretence that there
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was
any evidence against him was acquitted, and only an unfortunate Printer who knew
no English and had no notion what all the pother was about, was sent to prison
for a few months to vindicate the much-damaged majesty of the almighty
bureaucracy.
Bande Mataram,
September 25, 1907
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