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English Democracy Shown Up
SCRATCH
an Englishman and you will find an
Anglo-Indian, — this is what we said in these columns sometime ago. The Anglophilous Indian enthusiast who goes to England saturated with the old
Congress poison of a morbid faith in the native generosity of English character,
in the innate amenability of Englishmen to reason and persuasion regarding
matters Indian, is doomed to a very rude awakening. He has not to stay long in
the country before he finds every Englishman he may come across turning a deaf
ear to his story of grievance and injustice. He is no doubt loudly applauded and
called a "true Briton" when he declaims against the tyranny in Russia, but is
invariably called "ungrateful" if he happens to tell home truths about England's
dominion in Hindusthan. He meets with the same callous disapprobation from all
Englishmen alike, from the Liberal whose motto is "Government with consent"
just as much as from the Tory whose principle avowedly is "let things be". On
the Indian question the Englishman will tell you his position is that of a
"patriot", not of a "partisan". Imperialism is far above party; every Englishman
therefore is an Imperialist when he is thinking of the Indian question, he has
then ceased to be either a Liberal or a Conservative. To this rule there are
some exceptions, a few old ladies here and there (who however hardly count in
politics yet), and some truly noble men who hold humanity far higher than
Imperialism. These men certainly frankly admit that England's arbitrary and
tyrannous tenure of power in India is a standing libel on herself, a gross
violation of those political principles which
she proclaims from the housetops to the whole of Europe. The voice of
such men however is hardly heard in the Councils of the Empire, and if ever
heard, contemptuously ignored.
The hasty, hideous, indecent,
savage yell that has been raised by the whole of the English Press against Mr.
Keir Hardie because he has dared to tell the truth about the present situation
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in this country is a striking confirmation
of what we have said above, and what we stated before in the Bande Mataram.
We must not commit the mistake of supposing that the English Press is
indignant because it doubts the truth of Mr. Hardie's statements against the
Indian Government; not that at all; they know very well, one and all of that
yelling throng, that every word of what he has said is true, and that Reuter has
wired a grossly mendacious version of his statements; but they are full of wrath
because the leader of the Independent Labour Party has told the unvarnished
truth respecting the character of the rule that England has established here.
They are bursting with rage because their long and unscrupulously kept-up
fiction of a just and benevolent Indian rule has been exposed in all its
ugliness at last by one who happens to be an Englishman, (Oh the sting of
it!) and an Englishman of power and prestige too, who easily has the ear of the
civilised world. He is a traitor, shout the impious fraternity of the British
Press, because he has the nobleness of mind, the honesty of conviction, to be
able to tell the truth against his own country when he finds it attempting
without a blush to perpetuate an outrage upon humanity. He is no longer a
statesman because he could not deliberately suppress a truth in consideration of
the reasons of state, which in the present instance means, in the interest of
the sickening British lie — repeated ad nauseam before Europe and America
— that England governs India for the benefit of the Indians. The paper which so
often contains articles from the pen of Sir Henry Cotton joins in this infamous
chorus of denunciation no less than the Daily News which always so
overflows with the pure milk of undiluted Liberalism, that is to say British
Liberalism.
Let us hope this at least will
serve to open wide the eyes of those of our countrymen who are still troubled
now and then with the visitings of their old faith in England. England will
not give us anything unless we can force her to her knees, this is the only
moral to which the present outrageous clamour of the English Press points. We
may present our case with as much eloquence, logic and precision as we please;
they in England will always brush our representations insolently aside as mere "Babu
rodomontade". If an Englishman with a disengaged mind has
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the courage to take up our cause, and tell
the world the most elementary facts about the wrong England is doing us, his
voice is drowned in the roar of the ruling nation whose one aim is mercilessly
to exploit India and let the rest of the world know as little about their real
Indian policy as possible, and even to deceive it whenever opportunity offers.
How humane it sounded, how extremely Christian, when Lord Lansdowne declared in
the House of Lords with that supreme unction of which Englishmen alone are
capable, that one of the motives of the war with the Boers was the
righting of the grievous wrongs to which "our Indian fellow-subjects were
forced to submit in the Transvaal". That grandiose declaration was not without
its effect in the international world, though we know only too well that the
Transvaal Indians live under infinitely more humiliating conditions now than
they ever did under the government of Paul Kruger. And one need not feel
surprised if one hears an Englishman, even at the present day, repeating the
pronouncement of Lord Lansdowne in all solemnity in order to prove England's
constant anxiety and watchfulness on behalf of her Indian subjects.
There
can hardly be any doubt that the Press has been shamelessly encouraged in its
campaign of foul misrepresentation against Mr. Keir Hardie by Mr. Morley's
speech at Arbroath. The philosopher-Secretary betrayed not a little ruffling of
his philosophic calm in his undisguisedly hostile and somewhat petulant
references to Mr. Keir Hardie's opinion that India should be given the same
autonomy that is enjoyed by Canada. The wonderful allegory of the fur-coat
though hardly giving us an encouraging indication of any power of imagination or
perception, of any historical insight, of any sense of humour or relevancy on
the part of its author, certainly furnishes abundant proof of his ill-natured
impatience of the generous ideal that the labour leader cherishes for the people
of this country.
But, after all, we perhaps do
the Indian Secretary an injustice in charging him with lack of historical
insight; in one sense, it may be said, he shows an abundance of it. For we learn
from Reuter, that "he paid a tribute to the courage, patience and fidelity of
the House of Commons, from which he augured that the democracies were going to
show their capacity to tackle diffi-
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cult and complicated problems." The one
remarkable feature of European democracies from the days of Athens to those of
England, has throughout been that whilst they always most jealously keep vigil
over the integrity of their own republican constitution, they revel at the same
time in the despotic sway of unlimited power over the peoples they conquer. This
is strictly true of the Pagan republics of Hellas and Rome as well as of the
Christian Communes and Country-states of Mediaeval and Modern Europe. The ideal
that has shaped the polity of Europe is always consciously or unconsciously
Hellenic and not Hebraic; the Christian ideal of human brotherhood the European
is apt to regard as part of the privilege of his citizenship, it is not to be
extended to a conquered people. This is strictly true, the Christian missions
and missionaries of Europe notwithstanding. In other words, Christian Europe
flings her Christianity aside in her treatment of those who have had the
misfortune to come under her rule; these she looks upon as Athens and Rome did
on their subject peoples. Mr. Morley whilst congratulating the English democracy
on the determination they have shown to keep their Indian Empire their own,
might very well have been feeling the secret glow of an historic enthusiasm in
insensibly thinking of similar figures in ancient and modern European history
extolling their countrymen on similar occasions.
What we meant by taxing him
with want of historic perception was that he has betrayed a sad ignorance of
Asiatic history. Asia has never embraced an ideal without universalising it. To
profess the Christian faith and persist in confining the Christian ideal of
human brotherhood to one’s own nation strikes the Asiatic as a monstrous
hypocrisy. Nor, as we have had occasion to remark before, has an ideal had to
win its way to the heart of the Orient through a welter of its martyr’s blood,
as has been the case with all kinds of ideals in Europe. This is the secret of
the willingness and readiness with which the monarchies of Asia are
democratising the constitutions of their country. The period of English History
dating from 1066 and ending with 1832, the Shah of Persia has had the
magnanimity to summarise into a few years of Persian History. It is therefore
that the average Indian who has studied England’s history and literature feels
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so extremely perplexed, and is just now
beginning to feel indignant at her strenuous and persistent refusal to give
India that liberty which she has so prized all through her history.
England, on the other hand,
and quite consistently enough thinks she is rightly acting in withholding from
the Indian the citizenship of the British Empire, for in so doing she is
strictly in the wake of European tradition, and has the full justification of
history as she has known and understood it. And consequently John Morley hastens
to remind Indians of the "weary steps" necessary before they can attain liberty,
the weary steps that the countries of Europe have had to traverse before they
secured it.
We fully understand the import
of the latest speech of the Indian Secretary, and of the latest outburst of the
British Democracy — India will only have liberty when she has the strength,
physical and moral, to wrench it from the selfish grasp of the ruling country.
Bande Mataram,
October 31, 1907
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