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Facts and Opinions
Volume I - Nov.
6, 1909 - Number 18
Mahomedan
Representation
The
question of separate representation for the Mahomedan community is one of those momentous issues raised in haste by a
statesman unable to appreciate the forces with which he is dealing, which bear
fruit no man expected and least of all the ill-advised Frankenstein who was
first responsible for its creation. The common belief among Hindus is that the
Government have decided to depress the Hindu element in the Indian people by
raising the Mahomedan element, and ensure a perpetual preponderance in their
own favour by leaning on a Mahomedan vote purchased by a system of preference.
The denials of high-placed officials, who declare that it is only out of a
careful consideration for the rights and interests of minorities that they have
made special Mahomedan representation an essential feature of the Reform
Scheme, have not convinced a single Hindu mind;
for the obvious retort is that it is only one minority which is specially cared
for and this special care is extended to it even in provinces where it is in a
large majority. No provision at all has been made for the safe-guarding of
Hindu minorities, for the Parsis, the Sikhs,
the Christians and other sections which may reasonably declare that they too
are Indians and citizens of the Empire no less than the Mahomedans. The workings of this belief in the mind of the
premier community in India cannot at present be gauged. It is not till the
details of the Reform Scheme are published, elections over, the councils
working and the preponderance of the pro-government vote visible, that those
workings can assume a definite shape. At present irritation, heart-burning, a
sullen gloom and a growing resolve to assert and organise their separate
existence and work for their own hand are the first results of the separatist
policy. How far Sir Pherozshah and his
valiant band will be able to fight this growing discontent, remains to be seen.
It is quite possible that the pro-
Mahomedanism of the Reform Scheme may lead to a Hindu upheaval all over India,
as fervent and momentous as the convulsion in Bengal, Madras and Maharashtra which followed Lord Curzon's Partition blunder. How far it will
advantage the Mahomedans to be in active
opposition to an irritated and revolted Hindu community throughout the country
they live in, is a question for Mahomedans to consider. A certain section with Syed Hyder Reza at their head, have considered it and are
against the separate representation altogether. Another section represented by
Mr. Ali Imam are for a compromise between
the full Moslem demand for separate electorates and the Hindu demand for equal
treatment of all communities. Unfortunately, this compromise is merely the
Government scheme which Hindu sentiment has almost unanimously condemned as
unfair and partial. The only section of Hindus in its favour is the dwindling
minority which follows the great Twin Brethren of Bombay; and
the support given by Mr. Gokhale and Sir Pherozshah to the separate representation idea is
likely to cost them their influence with the moderate Hindu community
everywhere outside the narrow radius of their personal influence. A third section
rejoicing in the leadership of Mr. Amir Ali,
are the irreconcilables of militant Islam
aspiring to hold India under the British aegis as heirs of the Mogul and
keepers of the gateway of India. The Reform Scheme is the second act of
insanity which has germinated from the unsound policy of the bureaucracy. It
will cast all India into the melting-pot and complete the work of the
Partition. Our own attitude is clear. We will have no part or lot in reforms which
give no popular majority, no substantive control, no opportunity for Indian
capacity and statesmanship, no seed of democratic expansion. We will not for a
moment accept separate electorates or separate representation, not because we
are opposed to a large Mahomedan influence in popular assemblies when they
come but because we will be no party to a distinction which recognises Hindu
and Mahomedan as permanently separate political units and thus precludes the
growth of a single and indivisible Indian nation. We oppose any such attempt at
division whether it comes from an embarrassed Government seeking for political
support or from an embittered
Hindu community allowing the passions of
the moment to obscure their vision of the future.
The
Growth of Turkey
The
article on young Turkey and its military strength, extracted in our columns
this week from the Indian Daily News,
is one of great interest. Behind the deprecation of Turkish Chauvinism and
Militarism we hear the first note of European alarm at the rise of a second
Asiatic Power able to strike as well as to defend its honour and integrity
against European aggression. The fact that it is the army in Turkey which
stands for free institutions, is the greatest guarantee that could be given of
the permanence of the new Turkey, for it assures a time of internal quiet while
the country goes through the delicate and dangerous process of readjusting its
whole machinery and ways of public thought and action from the habits of an
irresponsible autocratic administration to those
which suit free institutions and democratic ideas. No doubt, the support of the
army veils a Dictatorship. But that is an inevitable stage in a great and
sudden transition of this kind, and suits Asiatic countries, however perilous
it may have been in other times to European countries when men could not be
trusted not to misuse power for their own purposes to the detriment of their
country. In Europe the present high standard of public spirit, duty, and honour
was the slow creation of free institutions. To Asiatics, not yet corrupted, as
many of us in India have been by the worst part of European individualism and
an unnatural education divorced from morality and patriotism, a high standard
of public spirit, duty and honour comes with the first awakenings of a freer
life; for the Asiatic discipline has always been largely one of
self-effacement, the subordination of the individual to a community and the
scrupulous adhesion to principle at the cost of personal predilection and
happiness. As in Turkey now, so in Japan, it was a few strong men who, winning
control of the country by the strength of great ideas backed by the sword,
right supported by might, held the land safe and quiet while they revolutionised the ideas and insti-
tutions of the whole nation,
forged a strength by sea and land no enemy could despise and secured from the
gratitude of their race for their wisdom, selflessness and high nobility of
purpose that implicit following which at first they compelled by force. The
complaint that the young Turks ignore the necessity of civil reorganisation,
commerce and education is a complaint without wisdom, if not without knowledge.
The circumstances of Turkey demand that the first attention of her statesmen
should be given to military and naval efficiency. The Revolution plucked her
from the verge of an abyss of disintegration. The desperate diplomacy and
cunning of Sultan Abdul Hamid had stayed her long on that verge, but she
was beginning to slip slowly over when the stronger hand of Mahmud Shevket
Pasha seized her and drew her back. Even so, the deposition of the cunning and
skilful diplomatist of Yildiz Palace might
have been the signal for a general spoliation of Turkey. Austria began a rush
for the Balkans, Greece tried to hurry a
crisis in Crete. The shaking of the Turkish sword in the face of the Greek and
the rapid and efficient reorganisation of
army and navy against Europe were both vitally necessary to the safety of the
Empire. They were the calculated steps not of Chauvinism but of a defensive
statesmanship.
China Enters
The
circle of constitutionally governed Asiatic countries increases. To Turkey,
Persia and Japan, China is added. Towards the close of the ten years set apart
in the Chinese programme for the preparation of self-government, the Chinese
Government has kept its promise to grant a constitution. Provincial Assemblies
have been established, are working and have shown their reality and
independence by opposing government demands. The electoral basis of an
Imperial Assembly has been provided. There cannot be the slightest doubt that
the steady, resolute, methodical Chinese, with their unrivalled genius for organisation, will make a success of the constitutional experiment. In all Asia
now, with the exception of Siam and
Afghanistan, the only countries which are denied a constitutional Government
are
those
which have not vindicated their national freedom. Even in Afghanistan the first
ineffective stirrings of life have been and
will grow to something formidable before many years are over. We wonder whether
Lord Morley and his advisers really believe
that when they are surrounded by a free and democratic Asia, the great Indian
race can be kept in a state of tutelage and snail-paced advancement, much less
put off to a future age in the dim mists of
a millennial futurity to which the penetrating vision of the noble and Radical
Lord cannot pierce. The worst opponents of Indian freedom know well what this
Asiatic constitutionalism means, and therefore the Englishman
struggles, in the face of continual disappointment, to foresee the speedy
collapse of Nationalism and Parliamentary Government in Persia, Turkey and even
Japan as the inevitable fate of an institution foreign to the Asiatic genius,
which is popularly supposed to recoil from freedom and hug most lovingly the
heaviest chains.
The
Patiala Arrests
For
some time past the Native States of Rajputana
and Punjab have been vying with each other in promulgations and legislations
of a drastic character against sedition and conspiracy. The object of these
edicts seems to be to stifle all agitation or semblance of any political
thought and activity that may be directed against the existing state of things
not in the States themselves but in British India. Otherwise, it is impossible
to account for the Draconian severity of the language and substance of these
ukases or the foolish thoroughness of some of the measures adopted, such as the
prohibition of entry even to colourless papers like the Bengalee. The
exponents of Anglo-Indian opinion point triumphantly to these measures both as
a proof of aristocratic loyalty to British officialdom and as an index of the
severity with which the agitation would be visited if, instead of the misplaced
leniency of British bureaucrats, we were exposed to the ruthlessness of an indigenous government. As every Indian
knows, these self-gratulations are insincere
and meaningless. The majority of Native States are wholly under the thumb of
the
Resident and, with the exception of one or two
independent princes, like the Gaekwar,
neither Maharaja nor Council of Administration can call their souls their own.
On all this comes the commotion in Patiala.
The Patiala conspiracy has yet to be proved
to be more real than the Midnapur specimen.
But, if all is true that is being asserted in the Punjab press as to the
refusal of the most ordinary privileges of defence to the numerous accused and
the amazing and successful defiance of High Court orders by Mr. Warburton, the police are not going the best way
to convince the public opinion on this point. The facts stated amount to a
gross and shameless denial of justice. We do not blame the young Maharaja for
his inability to interfere in favour of the oppressed victims of police rule.
We know how helpless the princes are in the face of an Anglo-Indian Resident or
employee and we wholly discredit the newspaper assertion that these strange
proceedings were initiated or are willingly countenanced by him. It was first
asserted that — as usual ! — the police had
full evidence and information in their hands. The present delay and sufferings
entailed prove sufficiently that they had nothing of the kind — again, as
usual. The arrested Arya Samajists may be innocent or guilty, but the procedure
used against them would be tolerated in no country where law and equity were
supreme.
The
Daulatpur Dacoity
The extraordinary story from Daulatpur of a dacoity by young men of good family, sons of
Government servants, is the strangest that has yet been handled by the
detective ability of a very active police — more active, if not successful, we
are afraid, in cases of this kind than those in which the dacoits are of a less interesting character. The
details as first published read more like a somewhat gruesome comic opera, than
anything else. Dacoits who wear gold watches and gold spectacles on their
hazardous expeditions, dacoits who talk English so as to give a clue to their
identity, dacoits who turn up at a railway station wearing gold watches,
bare-footed and stained with mud, dacoits
who carry in their
pockets bloodcurdling oaths neatly written out for the police to read in case
they are caught, are creatures of so novel and eccentric a character that they
must have either come out of a farcical opera or escaped from the nearest
lunatic asylum. The later accounts modify some of the more startling features
of the first, but until the story for the prosecution is laid before the
Courts, thoroughly known and thoroughly tested, sensational headlines and
graphic details are apt to mislead.
Place
and Patriotism
The
elevation of Mr. Krishnaswamy Aiyar to the Bench some short time ago was the
occasion for some comments from the Moderate Press highly eulogistic of the man
and the choice. Mr. Aiyar was a successful lawyer and a capable man and we have
no doubt his elevation was justified. But the curious habit of ultra-Moderate
politicians gravitating to the Bench is a survival of those idyllic times when a judgeship
or a seat in the Legislative Council was the natural goal of the political
leader who rose by opposing the Government. This harmony between place and patriotism,
opposition and preferment was natural to those times for whose return the
lovers of the peaceful past sigh in vain. Mr. Krishnaswamy Aiyar belonged to
the old school and his final consummation is natural and laudable. But our
object in writing is not so much to praise Mr. Aiyar as to suggest to the
Government that, if they would similarly promote Sir Pherozshah Mehta, they would be rewarding a loyal
champion and at the same time conferring a boon on the country. Farther, if
only done in time, it might save the Convention from going to pieces.
The Dying
Race
Dr.
U. N. Mukherji recently published a very interesting brochure
in which he tried to prove that the Hindus were a dying race and would do well
to imitate the social freedom and equality of the still increasing Mahomedans. Srijut Kishorilal Sarcar
has
gone one better and proves to us by equally cogent statistics that not only
the Hindus but the Mahomedans are a dying
race, — even if the Hindus be in some places a little more rapid in the race
for extinction than the followers of Islam. With all respect to the earnestness
of these two gentlemen we think it would have been well if they had been less
strenuous in their discouraging interpretations and chosen a less positive
title. The real truth is that, owing to an immense transition being effected
under peculiarly unfavourable conditions, both communities, but chiefly the
more progressive Hindu, are in a critical stage in which various deep-seated
maladies have come to the surface, with effects of an inevitable though
lamentable character. None of these maladies is mortal and the race is not
dying. But the knife of the surgeon is needed and it is to the remedy rather
than the diagnosis that attention should be pointedly directed. The mere
decline in the rate of increase is in itself nothing. It is a phenomenon which
one now sees becoming more and more marked all the world over and it is only
countries backward in development and education which keep up the old rate of
increase. The unfit tend to multiply, the fit to be limited in propagation.
This is an abnormal state of things which indicates something wrong in modern civilisation. But, whatever the malady is, it is not peculiar to Hindus or to
India, but a world-wide disease.
The
Death of Senor Ferrer
The
extraordinary commotion in Europe over the execution of the enthusiast and
idealist Ferrer, — a judicial murder committed by Court Martial, — has revealed
a force in Europe with which statesmen and Governments will have very soon to
deal on pain of extinction. We have no sympathy with the philosophy or practice
of Anarchism, holding, as we do, that the Anarchist philosophy is some
millenniums ahead of the present possible evolution of humanity and the
Anarchist practice some millenniums behind. But Señor Francisco Ferrer was no
mere Anarchist. He was a man of high enthusiasms and ideas, engaged, at great
sacrifice and, as it turns out, risk to himself, in freeing the
Spanish mind by
education from the fetters of that bigoted Clericalism which has been the ruin
of Spain. For a man of this kind — a man of
eminent culture and unstained character, the friend and fellow worker of
distinguished men all over the occidental world, — to be shot without any
reputable evidence by a military tribunal regardless of universal protest, was
an outrage on civilisation and an insult to European culture. Such an incident,
however, might have happened formerly with no result but a few indignant
articles in the Continental Liberal Press. This time it has awakened a
demonstration all over the Western world which is, we think, unprecedented in
history. The solidarity and deep feeling in that demonstration means that the
huge inert Leviathan, on whose patient back the aristocratic and middle class
of Europe have built the structure of their polity and society, is about to
move. When he really uplifts his giant bulk, what will become of the structure ?
Will it not tumble into pieces off his back and be swallowed up in the waters
of a world-wide revolution ?
The Budget
It
is curious that England, which was, a little while ago, the most conservative
and individualistic of nations, the least forward in the race towards
socialism, should now be the foremost. The socialistic Radical, the forerunner
of insurgent Leviathan, is in the Cabinet and has framed a Budget. The Budget
is the pivot on which English progress has turned from the beginning. The power
of the purse in the hands of the Commons has been the chief lever for the
gradual erection of a limited democracy. The same power is now being used for
the gradual introduction of a modified socialism, and, by a curious provision
of Fate, seems destined to be also the occasion for the final destruction of
one at least of the two remaining restrictions on democracy, the veto of the
Lords and the limitation of the suffrage. The Lords were bound to oppose the
Budget, for the triumph of socialism means the destruction of the aristocracy.
The Lords, therefore, have either to fight or to fall;
and the pathos of their situation is that,
in
all probability, the choice is not theirs and that, whether they fight or not,
they cannot but fall. The Lords have only continued to exist because they were
discreet enough to lie low and give a minimum of trouble. As for the limitation
of the suffrage, it is not at all unlikely that the daring and unscrupulous
campaign of the suffragettes may end in the concession of universal suffrage.
For, if women are given the vote, the proletariate will not be content to
remain without it. They too can lift crowbars and hammers and break glass roofs !
A
Great Opportunity
The end of the
great struggle between the last representative of European autocracy and the
insurgent Demos, is not yet. At present the Czar holds the winning cards. The
mismanagement of the Revolution by a people unaccustomed to political action
has put advantages into his hands to which he has no right. But it is
significant that the revolution still smoulders. As Carlyle
wrote of the French Revolution, it is unquenchable and cannot be stamped
down, for the fire-spouts that burst out are no slight surface conflagration
but the flames of the pit of Tophet. Murder
and hatred rising from below to strike at murder and tyranny striking from
above, that is the Russian Revolution. Had another man than a Romanoff, the
race obstinate and unteachable, sat on the
throne at St. Petersburg, the victory of the autocracy after such imminent and
deadly peril would have been surely used to prevent, by healing measures and
perfectly spontaneous concessions, a repetition of the sanguinary struggle. It
is probably the last opportunity Fate will concede to the Czar Nicholas and it
is a great opportunity. But he will not take it and in the shadow forces are
again gathering which are likely in the end to destroy him. The Czarina is
sleepless in deadly anxiety for the safety of her child;
the Czar, leaving her behind, enters Italy and is guarded by an army. In Russia
the Ministry balances itself on the top of a frail edifice crowning the volcano
that still sputters below. One wonders why they should think it worth their
while to bolster up sanguinary injustice for a season at so huge a cost.
Buddha's
Ashes
Again
the powers that be have committed a blunder. If any of the wise men who weave
the tangled web of Anglo-Indian statesmanship at Simla, had a little common
sense to salt their superior wisdom, they would never have allowed the strong
feeling against the removal of Buddha's ashes to vent itself so long in public
expression without an assurance at least of favourable consideration. We have
waited long for that simple and natural act of statesmanship, but in vain. It
is such a trivial matter in itself, concession would be so graceful, natural
and easy; yet the harm done by perverseness
and churlishness is so immense ! We wonder
whether our official Governors ever think. It is very easy. What would they
feel if the bones of a great Englishman, say, the Duke of Wellington, were so
treated ! But the diseased attachment to
prestige and the reputation of an assured wisdom and an inflexible power have
sealed up the eyes of those in high places.
Students
and Politics
All
India and especially Bengal owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Hassan Imam for his strong, manly and sensible
remarks on the vexed question of students and politics as President of the Beharee Students Conference at Gaya. Contrast this honest utterance and robust
recognition of unalterable facts with the fencings, refinements and unreal
distinctions of Mr. Gokhale's utterance. The
difference is between a man with an eye and a clear practical sense and a mere
intellectual, a man of books and words and borrowed thoughts, proud of his gift
of speech and subtlety of logic, but unable to penetrate a fact even when he sees
it. With Mr. Hassan Imam a strong personal force enters the field of politics.
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