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Government
by Panic
ONE does
not know precisely how to take the extraordinary accounts of the charges against
Lala Lajpatrai and the panic among Europeans which have been reaching us from
the North. We used to think the English deficient in imagination, but the vivid
and fluorescent powers of fancy which this panic has revealed, puts all our
preconceived ideas to rout. Not only have the Government given vent t6 an
outburst of poetical fancy beyond all parallel but they have insisted on staging
and enacting their dramatic creation in real life. Sir Denzil Ibbetson reminds
us of that great aesthetic realist, Nero, who made slaves and prisoners enact
the parts of classic tragedy and had them actually stabbed or crucified or torn
by real wild beasts to embody his mimic imaginations. Sir Denzil has conceived a
splendid melodramatic tragedy called The Rebellion Forestalled or British
Empire Saved and the Punjab Bar have been obliged to play the leading parts.
The conception is admirable. An inoffensive pleader sitting among his briefs, to
all appearance harmless, un- military, civilian, but in reality a masked
Tamerlane, Napoleon or Shivaji, full of dark and tremendous schemes; a disarmed
and helpless mob of workmen and peasants who are really a dangerous,
well-equipped and well-organised army of a hundred thousand Jats capable of
overthrowing the British Empire; a wide- spread and diabolically complex plot on
the bursting point, Lahore Fort to be seized and, we presume, Lajpat to be
crowned the first Punjabi Emperor of India, - when suddenly, lo and behold! the
glorified and splendiferous figure of Sir Denzil Ibbetson appears, hurling
lightnings and clothed in majesty, catches up the arch-conspirator in his mighty
hand and a motor-car tosses him over the continent to Rangoon or the Andamans,
envelops the rebel province in a cloud of cavalry and siege-guns and the British
Empire, - and incidentally Lahore Fort, -
is saved. A most admirably dramatic denouement! And to add the right
Shakespearian touch of grotesque humour, we are told that this
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phantom army foreshadows its attack by throwing stones at the gate of Lahore
Fort, whose feelings must have been deeply hurt by such contumelious behaviour,
- either as a sort of chivalrous warning to the garrison or as a symbolic
rehearsal of the intended storm!
Are these the imaginations of sane men, or the diseased and distorted
phantasmagoria which presents itself to bemused intellects in a Chinese
opium-den? If it had been a little more plausible, we might have thought it a
Machiavellian invention of Anglo- Indian statesmen to justify their instituting
a - Russian policy of repression. But a lawyer militarist leading an army of
Indian peasants, Lahore Fort to be stormed by an unarmed mob with their fists, -
or with stones, the British Empire to be over- thrown by this extraordinary
army, - the whole is a wild nightmare of panic-stricken brains. We are told that
the Europeans were so panic-stricken, many of them passed the night on the rail-
way platform, ready for flight. The Civil and Military Gazette also
solemnly affirms that Lajpatrai was an arch-rebel with a hundred thousand men
under his orders and hints pretty plainly that the prompt action of Sir Denzil
Ibbetson saved the British from a rebellion. And these are the men who think
that they can go on ruling a nation of three hundred millions by mere repression
and the terror of the sword, after the moral bases of their supremacy are gone!
The great strong successful despots of the world were not men who started at
every shadow and took every bush in the darkness for an enemy. Government by
panic has never yet been a success and we doubt whether it will be any more
successful in India than elsewhere. But here we find panic initiating a policy,
bewilderment approving of it and alarm sanctioning it. Not only the Punjab
Government, not only the "level- headed" Lord Minto, but even the
austere and philosophical Mr. Morley has committed himself to government by
panic. It is for us to take full advantage of the mistakes of our political
adversaries.
Bande
Mataram, May
13, 1907
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