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The “Statesman” in Retreat
THE
strong censures which the Statesman's article on the Bande Mataram Case
has called forth from the Bengali Press in Calcutta, have forced that journal to
enter into some explanation of its conduct. While professing to stand by every
word it had written, it manages under cover of the plea that it has been
misunderstood, to unsay much that it had said. The article was on the face of it
a malignant attack on the Bande Mataram, an attempt to create the
impression that this paper was either a journal managed on a dishonest,
disreputable and impossible principle or else that its staff were a gang of
liars and cowards with an Editor who made a false or practically false defence
in order to avoid the responsibility for his political propaganda. We were told
that from this dilemma there was no possible escape. The Statesman has
now considerably altered its tone. In order that we may not be accused of wilfully misinterpreting our very Liberal contemporary, we will give his
explanation of his own meaning in his own words and answer him point by point.
"We maintained," he says, "that there had been in essence a
miscarriage of justice in the Bande Mataram Case, since the trial had
resulted in the conviction of the Printer, whereas the real offender — the
author of the article or articles complained of — was not brought to book. We
pointed out in the next place, that in England the person really responsible for
the articles could readily have been found, for no attempt would have been made
to evade the issue on the divided liability principle adopted in the Bande
Mataram office, still less to make a scapegoat of an ignorant workman. We
maintained, lastly, that unless every public journal had a responsible head of
some sort, the liberty of the Press would degenerate into a licence under which
no institution of organised society, no man's reputation would be safe." We
do not for a moment deny that there was a very serious miscarriage of justice in
the Bande Mataram Case, but we are cer-
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tainly
astonished at the malignity of the Statesman in trying to fasten the
responsibility for the Printer's conviction on the Bande Mataram or on
the other accused. It writes as if it were we who took out a warrant against the
Printer, knowing him to be nothing but an ignorant workman, or who sentenced him
to three months' rigorous imprisonment in spite of the evidence that he knew
nothing of the matter and could not have had any criminal knowledge or
intention, or as if we had asked the Printer to take any responsibility upon
himself for the articles. Does the Friend of India find anywhere in the records
of the case or out of them either that any of the accused tried to shield
himself by putting the responsibility on the Printer? The blame for the
miscarriage of justice must rest on the unjust British law which makes an
ignorant workman responsible, on the bureaucrats who sanctioned his prosecution
and on the Magistrate who sentenced him, and the attempt to fasten it on our
shoulders is as grotesque as it is malicious. The Statesman is, farther,
much exercised because the real author of the offending article has escaped
punishment, but this is not a calamity over which we can affect to be greatly
grieved. After all, miscarriages of justice, whether in the shape of the
conviction of innocent Indians or the immunity from punishment of European
criminals, are not so rare in this country
that society will be shattered to pieces because the writer of a chance letter
disagreeable to the sacred feelings of the bureaucracy, has not been sent to
turn the oil-mill for a couple of years. "In England the person really
responsible for the article could readily have been found." If the real
writer is meant, we deny this altogether. In England it would be absolutely
impossible to discover the true writer of an unsigned article, for it is not
considered binding on him to come forward even if another suffers for his
offence or his indiscretion; and when the Statesman claims a chivalrous
sense of honour for English writers, political or other, and asserts that they
always come forward to claim their handiwork, it is trading on the ignorance of
English life which is prevalent in this country. If, on the other hand, the
Editor is meant, we would advise our contemporary to study the history of the
English Press more minutely. He will find that English editors have not always
been so enamoured of legal penalties
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as
to forego any opportunity of evading responsibility which the law allowed them.
We will admit that ordinarily in England there is a single responsible head of
some kind, though he is not always the writer of the articles, but this is not
the case in every country nor with every newspaper, and we cannot admit that any
such arrangement is necessary in the interests of society. When the Statesman
says that no man's reputation is safe unless every paper has its one
responsible head, it is talking and knows that it is talking pure nonsense. A
man who thinks himself libelled has always his remedy in civil law and it cannot
matter to him whether he gets his damages from the actual writer of the
libellous matter or from the proprietor or from a company or syndicate owning
the paper. Was Mr. Lever's reputation unsafe because his damages were paid by
the Harmsworth Trust and not by the actual libeller? If the proprietor happens
to be a corporate body, the aggrieved person is no doubt deprived of the
vindictive pleasure of sending his critic to prison, but we hardly think it can
be said that society is mortally wounded by his loss. But of course what the Statesman
is really troubled about is the safety of the bureaucratic groups who
administer the country at present and whom it dignifies and disguises by
describing as '"institutions of organised society". This anxiety of
the Statesman's is rather humorous. The bureaucracy has armed itself with
such liberal powers of repression that a journalist attacking it is like a man
with no better weapon than a pebble assailing a Goliath panoplied from head to
foot, armed with a repeating rifle and supported by howitzers and maxim guns.
For a backer of the giant to complain because the unarmed assailant throws his
pebble from behind a bush or wall is, to say the least of it, a trifle
incongruous.
The gravamen of the Statesman's charge, however, lies in the
question it triumphantly posits at the end of its rejoinder as a final settler
for its critics. The impugned "articles in the Bande Mataram must
have been written by someone; is it courageous and honourable conduct on the
part of their unknown author, this precious 'patriot', that he should elect to
remain in hiding and let a poor unfortunate Printer go to jail in place of
himself?" And our contemporary asks its critics either to
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affirm
that it is right for a journalist to allow an innocent man to suffer in his
place, — or else be silent. We admit our contemporary's luminous suggestion
that someone must have written the article "Politics for Indians" and
the better to clear up the confusion of his ideas we will add that the someone
must have been either a member of the staff or an outside correspondent. The
evidence showed that he must have been the latter, and, if so, his conduct in
not coming forward was in accordance with those traditions of English journalism
by which the Statesman sets such store. It may not have been ethically
the most heroic or exalted conduct possible, but it does not lie in the mouth of
an Englishman to question it. And we presume that the Statesman will not
seriously suggest that it was our duty, even if we had recorded the name, to
peach against a correspondent in order to save our own man, or that such a
betrayal would have been either courageous or honourable. If, on the other hand,
the real writer were a journalist on the staff, he must have been someone other
than Aurobindo Ghose to whom no one in his senses would attribute such a
half-baked effusion. He would then be one who was not accused and could only
take the responsibility by giving evidence against himself as a witness for the
defence. No Englishman in a similar situation would have done it unless actually
put in the witness box, but for an Indian patriot, we admit, it would have been
the natural course if the Printer could have been saved by his self-devotion,
but it is perfectly obvious that the Printer would still have been liable under
the statute and got his three months. The imputation made by the Statesman is
not true in fact, as it was an outside contributor who wrote the article, but
even were it otherwise, it is absurd in theory. It was the bureaucracy and the
Magistrate who made a scapegoat of the Printer and not the Bande Mataram or
any one on its staff. The Statesman is intelligent enough to understand
this without having it pointed out and malice alone prompted its dishonest
attempt to discredit us.
Bande Mataram,
September 28, 1907
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The
Times of India like other Anglo-Indian journals of its class loses no
opportunity for discrediting the Nationalist movement in Bengal. In the issue to
hand it has an appreciative leader on the New Iron Industry initiated by the
late Mr. J. N. Tata and now placed on a sound business footing as a Joint Stock
concern with a handsome capital subscribed by the people of India. The Times has
been constrained to admit that Indian capital is no longer shy and the spirit of
enterprise too is much in evidence. The Times would not be itself if it
omitted to mention that the Government has been doing its best to help the new
industry thus giving a proof of its substantial sympathy with the true Swadeshi.
But the sting is in the tail. While praising the public spirit and enterprise of
Bombay, it concludes with the customary fling at Bengal where agitators are
absorbed in mouthing sedition in the Beadon Square. The Times should
remember that but for the dissemination of so-called sedition in the Beadon
Square the
recent striking industrial activity of Bombay as evidenced in the
erection of new mills and the addition of new looms would hardly have been
possible. The impartial observer must also admit that Bengal is also waking up
to her industrial needs. The "true" Swadeshi of the Times draws
its vitality from the larger Swadeshi which Bengal has made its own.
Bande Mataram,
October 4, 1907
Novel Ways to Peace
We
learn from the Empire that on Wednesday evening the Paharawallas got
completely out of hand and that a number of
them
afterwards traversed the streets indulging in looting, destruction
of property and assault. We are farther told by our contemporary that the moment
the peace was broken, the Budmash element asserted itself. And the Empire winds
up with a genial and smiling prophecy to the effect that the atmosphere will be
more or less disturbed for a month (that is till the Puja is over and the
European merchants have been able to get their con-
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signments
through) and there will be considerable bloodletting over the business; at the
end of that period, we are told, the relations between the Government and the
people, especially the Extremists, will be substantially improved, because the
latter will have fully realised by then what Calcutta would be like if the
British Government were actually "overthrown". We rather fancy the
Empire has carefully forgotten to include two very important and indeed essential
considerations in its amiable prosings on the orgy of hooliganism and police
outrage to which the unarmed Bengalis have been subjected in the interests of
foreign trade. The first is that if the present bureaucratic government were to
be, let us not say "overthrown" but to be driven to retire in a
dungeon from the scene, the Arms Act would deal with them and the people would
very soon have the means as well as the will to defend themselves. The second is
that the police in a free India would be compelled to protect the citizens
instead of supplementing the deficiencies of the hooligans. It is easy to wrench
all means of self-defence out of the hands of people, savagely repress all
attempts at mutual protection, leave them to the mercy of the turbulent classes,
allowing even the police whom we pay to protect the peace to "get
completely out of hand" and loot unpunished, and then taunt the victims
with their inability to defend themselves and the necessity of an alien and
irresponsible third party for keeping the peace. The argument has worn thin and
can no longer serve its purpose. The Empire errs grievously in thinking
that police violence and hooliganism are the royal road to peace and
conciliation. East Bengal and the Chitpur outrages will not pacify and
conciliate Calcutta. The only result will be to more fiercely embitter the
struggle. One other result there may indeed be — to eventually dethrone the
nationalist leaders and destroy their control over the van of the movement as
the control of the Moderates has already been destroyed; for as the exasperation
increases their attempts to regulate the movement will be resented and
themselves condemned as cowards and moderates at heart. But who will fill the
vacant place? Police Commissioner Halliday or Mr. Blair, does the Empire think?
Or prophets of desperation beside whom Bepin Chandra Pal will shine like an
angel of loyalty in the
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eyes
of Anglo-India? Yes, the bureaucrats and their underlings are doing much to
break down the creed of passive resistance which we have promulgated and to
prove our policy impossible. But will passive resistance be replaced by
quiescence? If so, we have much misread history. The immediate future looks dark
and gloomy, a chaos the end of which no man can foresee. But whatever God does
is good and still our cry to our Mother is the same, "Though thou slay us,
yet will we trust in thee."
"Armenian
Horrors"
It
has been pointed out to us that the tone of our reporter's account of
Thursday's doings was hardly in consonance with the creed and the spirit of
which the Bande Mataram is the exponent. The facts reported are not
materially different from those attested by other Indian dailies, but there is
too much hysterical and lachrymose exaggeration of phrase in describing them. As
it is no part of our policy to conceal our own lapses, we will at once admit
that there is truth in the complaint. To talk of Armenian horrors in such a
connection is the rhetoric of an excited Moderate disappointed in his reliance
on European humanity and "superior" civilisation, not of a sturdy
Nationalist organ which has always foreseen the possibility of this and worse
things as the price we shall have to pay for liberty. We withdraw therefore this
and all similar expressions. Calcutta has as yet suffered nothing like what East
Bengal has suffered, to say nothing of Armenia and Bulgaria. We are as yet only
at the beginning of our journey and have not gone down into the valley of death
through which our way lies to the promised land. It will not do to whine or
shriek over some shops looted and men robbed and beaten or even over a few
corpses of our countrymen floating in the Ganges, if the report be true, —
this and far worse than this we shall have to meet with a calm brow and a brave
heart. Not merely in goods and money but with the blood from our hearts we shall
have to pay for the sins of our forefathers.
Bande Mataram,
October 5, 1907
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