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Conventionalist and Nationalist
IF WE
look to the pros and cons of the controversy between Conventionalists and
Nationalists, we shall be placed in a better position to understand the real aim
of the Moderates in putting the barrier of a creed between themselves and the
people. In the first place, a part of the quarrel is over ultimate ideals: the
Conventionalists are for the declaration of Colonial Self-Government as the goal
of our efforts, the Nationalists for Swaraj without any qualification. Whatever
the rights of the controversy, the ideal of the Conventionalists has been
accepted in the form of a resolution by the Congress, and as a resolution but
not a binding creed it has been submitted to by the Nationalists because it was
the will of the majority. A creed is a matter of belief and conscience, a
resolution a matter of policy; — and while no conscientious man will accept a creed
which he does not believe, he can always submit as a good citizen to the will of
the majority in matters of temporary policy. We are not concerned at present
with the question whether such submission is imperative in all cases. It is
sufficient that the Nationalists while preserving the liberty of every free mind
to propagate their own doctrines and get them enforced wherever possible, have
submitted to the Colonial Self-Government resolution as a part of the compromise
unanimously arrived at in Calcutta. What need was there then of foisting a creed
on the Congress? The object of the creed is to exclude the Nationalists, but the
exclusion of the Nationalists is itself motived by an ulterior object. It is
urged on behalf of the Moderates that it is impossible for them to work with the
Nationalists because they are too violent and unruly to be members of an orderly
assembly, but this is a plea too flimsy to bear scrutiny. If the Nationalists
are sometimes unruly, it is because they are forced to urge their opinions on
the Congress when they are deliberately ignored and throttled by the misuse of
official authority to secure party ends. If the Nationalists are unruly, the
Moderates are autocratic, and it is the auto-
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cratic misuse of power which creates the unruliness. Nor is unruliness in a
party any good reason for breaking up a great National Assembly and excluding a
powerful force from what professes to be the centre of national growth and
strength. It is evident that a far more powerful motive is behind the policy of
the Conventionalists, and that motive is fear and self-interest. Some are frank
enough to confess it, but to put a plausible colour of patriotism on their
deeper motives is to pretend that the Congress will be throttled or that by
association with men of violent views and actions their work for posterity is
hampered and spoiled. In other words; so long as they do not obey the orders of
the Englishman, the Madras Mail and the Times of India, and
dissociate themselves from the new movement and Nationalism, they will not enjoy
the confidence of the bureaucracy or be allowed to approach them with
statesmanlike petitions and co-operate with them in the work of prolonging the
subjection of their countrymen to foreign absolutism. This loss of position and
prestige with the bureaucracy is the ruling motive with the Bombay Moderates,
the fear of being involved in the persecution to which the Nationalists
willingly expose themselves, is the dominant thought among the respectabilities
of Bengal. Another powerful incentive to the hope of getting rid of the
Nationalist opposition to their monopoly of influence and control in the country
itself when the Nationalists are isolated for the fury of the bureaucracy to
wreak on them its vengeance for the awakening of India. "The Nationalists are
using us as a shield,'" the cry goes, "and we refused to be used, in that unheroic capacity." Whether the Nationalists have or have not the courage to
face the full fury of bureaucratic persecution and the strength to survive it is
a question which will probably be decided before another year is out. The
Moderates, at any rate, imagine that they cannot and rejoice over the pleasant
expectation of seeing this over-energetic and inconveniently independent party
being crushed out of existence by the common adversary of all. It is the spirit
of Mir Jafar, the politics of Jagat Sheth repeating themselves in their
spiritual descendants.
That these ignoble, but perfectly human and intelligible motives are
behind the Conventionalist separatism is further
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evidenced by the attempt to whittle away the resolution on National Education by
the removal of the expression on National lines and National control in order to
make it a colourless approval of a mere academic departure. Mr. Gokhale placed
his justification in his ardent passion for elegant English, but the resolutions
of the Congress are not such literary masterpieces that this particular one
should have evoked the dead and gone schoolmaster in Mr. Gokhale's breast. It
is clear that the desire of the former was to get rid of the idea of Nationality
from the resolution, because the aspiration towards Nationality is offensive to
the bureaucracy and to avoid offence to the bureaucracy is, according to
Moderate politics, the first condition of political activity in India. The
change of a word for the sake of literary elegance was not surely so essential
that the Moderates had to prefer breaking the Congress to breaking the rules of
English rhetoric. The opposition to the Boycott resolution as originally framed
has no root except in fear. No Indian in his heart of hearts can fail to sympathise with the boycott and even when he has not the patriotism or the
selflessness to practise it himself; for boycott is the first expression of our
national individuality, the first condition for the success of Swadeshi and the
standing evidence of National revival. But the boycott is as a red rag to John
Bull and the Moderate therefore is anxious to throw away the red rag or at least
put it in his pocket so long as he is in the same field with the bull. "Wore
horns" is the whole significance of the opposition to boycott, whatever
economical or political excuses may be put forward by way of apology. The
separatist policy is a policy of fear, selfishness and spite.
Is it possible for a policy of this kind to be a force in the
country or for a party actuated by such motives to keep the people in its hands?
Strength against weakness, life against death, aspiration against
self-distrust, self-immolation against self-preservation, — this is the real
issue between Conventionalist and Nationalist, and it cannot be doubted which
will survive.
Bande Mataram,
April 18, 1908
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