Congress and Democracy

                     THE principles of Democracy, so difficult to learn everywhere, are the most difficult to imbibe in a country has been, like ours, for so many centuries under foreign despotism. We are not, therefore, surprised at the autocratic ways of our own democratic leaders. Ever since the birth of the Congress, those who have been in the leadership of this great National movement  have persistently denied the general public in the try the right of determining what shall and what shall not be or done on their behalf and in their name. The delegates been gathered from all parts of the country, not to deliberate , public matters, but simply to lend their support to the decisions that had already been arrived at by secret conclaves of half a dozen men. In the earlier years, the practical work of the Congress was done in an absolutely hole-and-corner way, and the general body of the delegates had nothing else to do but to dance to the tune of Messrs. Hume and Company, and the very birth e institution now known as the Subjects Committee was due threat held out twenty years ago at the First Madras Congress by a young delegate, to publicly defy the decisions of the co- which prepared the programme of the Congress by asserting  his right to move any resolution he liked, before the Congress, leaving it to the delegates to accept or reject it as they pleased. It was to avoid the possibility of such scenes that the old coterie had to abdicate their right to dictate to the Congress as to what it shall discuss and to accept the suggestion of leaving the settlement of the Congress programme to a representative Committee duly elected by the delegates present. This Subjects Committee is the only constitutional safeguard provided so far by the Congress against the exercise of autocratic power by any individual congressman or any clique or coterie of the delegates. But it has proved during the last twenty years to be more or less a paper guard and sometimes through impatience, occasionally even pen bullying, half a dozen men, led by the masterful perso-

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nality of Pherozshah Mehta, have converted the Congress into practically a private concern. Presidents are selected from year to year without the slightest regard for the feelings and sentiments of the general body of Congressmen in the country, topics for discussion are selected and rejected just as they suit the wishes or offend the susceptibilities of these half a dozen men. It was thus that Babu Surendranath Banerji came to be nominated for the Presidency of the Congress a second time, while Babu Kali Charan Banerjee, another distinguished leader of Bengal, was kept out of it altogether. It was thus again that a younger and much less influential man in his own community like Mr. Gopal Krishna Gokhale came to be called to the President's chair of the Congress, while a man like Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak who holds a unique position in the country, both as a scholar and a leader of his people, than whom no man among us has made greater sacrifices or suffered more cruelly for his love of his people, has not yet been thought of as a fit man for the Congress Presidency. Those who have attended the meetings of the Subjects Committee know from bitter personal experience how almost impossible it is for any man to get even a decent hearing from his colleagues on that Committee if his views do not fall in completely with those of the three or four gentlemen who have all these years usurped the guidance of the Congress. Neither so universally respected a leader like Babu Baikunthanath Sen of Berhampur, nor a man so universally loved of his people as Babu Aswinikumar Dutt of Barisal, nor so thoughtful a politician as Pandit Bishnu Narayan Dhar could get oftentimes a decent hearing from the three or four men who have practically kept the Congress apron-strings since Mr. Hume's departure from India. It is these men who, accustomed to run the show according to their sweet will and pleasure, have constantly obstructed every attempt to give a proper constitution to this great National Institution. Every year, for some time past, this proposal has been pressed on the Subjects Committee and every year it has been shelved by being referred to a Committee whose want of ability or inclination to do the work entrusted to them had always been a foregone conclusion. In consequence of this autocracy, public interest in the actual work of the Congress has rapidly declined almost everywhere.

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Meetings for organising the work of the Congress can no longer for want of people willing to attend them. Delegates are in most places, elected, if it may be called an election at all by moribund and sometimes even defunct organisations and it does not infrequently happen that half a dozen lawyers, meeting in a way at the local Bar Library, elect thirty delegates from their district for the Congress and the superhuman feat is recorded by wire in the daily papers as a crowded meeting where public enthusiasm for the Congress cause rose to white heat. The sham has continued for too long, the deceit has been practised e people far too frequently and shamelessly, and the time has come when a new departure must be made if the Congress is realise in any measure the promises of its early days. One of the most hopeful signs of the times is the quickening of new of civic life and patriotic duty in the country, and there is a desire among thinking people everywhere and more particularly in the mofussil districts of Bengal, to utilise the Congress organisation of the new democratic spirit in the country do this work properly and well, the existing autocratic and tendencies in the present leadership of the Congress will have to be put down with a strong hand by means of an organised effort on the part of those who believe in democracy and have too sincere and strong a love for their country to hesitate do the cruellest work for its sake.  

          That there is a growing desire in the country to place the Congress upon a sounder and more democratic and popular evidenced by the meetings that are being held all over the country  to place the Congress upon a sounder and more democratic and popular basis is evidenced by the meetings that are being held all over the country to have Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak elected as President of the coming session of the Congress in Calcutta. It will be the affectation to deny that these meetings are organised by ends of the New Party in this province; we have no desire to conceal that fact. At the same time, though the articulation of the sentiments that stand at the back of these demonstrations is due to outside stimulus, the genuineness of these sentiments cannot be honestly questioned, and the fact that these sentiments have ,articulated in the face of a most disingenuous attempt by people to thwart Mr. Tilak’s nomination, speaks a great deal or the intensity of the feelings of the people towards Mr.

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Tilak. Baffled in secretly "appointing some harmless" man as President of the coming Congress the old leaders have been playing a new trick. The only man who could keep Mr. Tilak out is Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji. Mr. Naoroji being asked, by whomsoever it may be, to come and guide our deliberations this year, in place of Mr. Tilak, whom it would be difficult in any case to induce to accept the President's chair, would himself stoutly refuse to be nominated. It is clear from Babu Bhupendranath Bose's letter that the invitation to Mr. Naoroji has been given, not in order to get Mr. Naoroji in but to keep Mr. Tilak out. We wonder what, Mr. Naoroji's feelings will be when he learns, as he certainly will, to what an unworthy use he has been put by the Calcutta autocracy.

Bande Mataram, September 13, 1906

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