'Bakarganj Speech '
23.Jun.1909
Delivered at Bakarganj, Eastern Bengal and Assam, on 23 June 1909. Text noted down by police agents and reproduced in a Government of Bengal confidential file.
I HAVE spent the earlier part of my life in a foreign country from my very childhood, and even of the time which I have spent in India, the greater part of it has been spent by me on the other side of India where my mother tongue is not known, and therefore although I have learned the language like a foreigner and I am able to understand it and write in it, I am unable, I have not the hardihood, to get up and deliver a speech in Bengali.
The repression and the reforms are the two sides of the political situation that the authorities in this country and in England present to us today. That policy has been initiated by one of the chief statesmen of England, one famous for his liberal views and professions, one from whom at the inception of his career as Secretary of State for India much had been expected. Lord Morley stands at the head of the administration in India, clad with legal and absolute power; he is far away from us like the gods in heaven, and we do not see him. And just as we do not see the gods in heaven but are obliged to imagine them in a figure, so we are compelled to imagine Lord Morley in a sort of figure, and the figure in which he presents himself to us is rather a peculiar one. Just as our gods sometimes carry weapons in their hands and sometimes they carry in one hand the khadga and in another hand the varabhaya, so Lord Morley presents himself to us with a khadga in one hand and the varabhaya in another, and he invites us to consider him in this image. From the beginning there has been this double aspect in him. He has, so to speak, spoken in two voices from the beginning. One voice at the beginning said “sympathy”, while the other voice said “settled fact”; one voice speaks of reforms and elective representation, and the other voice speaks of the necessity of preserving absolute government in India to all time. First of all he has given you, with a great flourish it has been announced that he was going to give, and he has given, a non-official majority in the Legislative Council; he has given an elective system, he has given to a certain extent the power of voting in the Council, voting on Government measures. On the face of it these seem very large concessions; it seems that a very substantial measure of self-government has been given; that is the tone in which the English papers have been writing today; they say that this reform is a great constitutional change and that it opens a new era in India. But when we examine them carefully, it somehow comes to seem that these reforms of Lord Morley are, like his professions of Liberalism and Radicalism, more for show than for use.
This system which Lord Morley has given us is marred by two very serious defects. One of them is this very fact that the elected members will be in the minority, the nominated nonofficials and the officials being in the majority; and the second is that an entirely non-democratic principle has been adopted in this elective system, the principle of one community being specially represented.
The Government of India is faced today by a fact which they cannot overlook, a fact which is by no means pleasant to the vested interests which they represent, but at the same time a fact which cannot be ignored, and that is, that the people of India have awakened, are more and more awakening, that they have developed a real political life, and that the demands they make are demands which can no longer be safely left out of the question. There is the problem before the Government, “What to do with this new state of things?” There were two courses open to them — one of frank repression and the other course was the course of frank conciliation, either to stamp out this new life in the people or to recognise it; to recognise it as an inevitable force which must have its way, however gradually. The Government were unable to accept either of these alternative policies. They have tried to mix them, and in trying to mix them they have adopted the principle of pressing down the movement with one hand and with the other hand trying to circumvent it. “You demand a popular assembly, you demand self-government. Well, we give you a measure of self-government, an enlarged and important Legislative Council, but in giving we try so to arrange the forces that the nation instead of being stronger may be weaker. Your strength is in the educated classes, your strength is more in the Hindu element in the nation than in the Mohammedan element, because they have not as yet awakened as the Hindu element has awakened. Well, let us remember our ancient policy of divide and rule, let us depress the forces which make for strength and raise up the force which is as yet weak and set up one force against the other, so that it may never be possible for us to be faced in the Legislative Council by a united majority representing the Indian people and demanding things which we are determined never to give.”
Obviously when two forces stand against each other equally determined in two opposite directions, the people can only effect their aim by pressure upon the Government. That is a known fact everywhere, which every political system recognises, for which every political system has to provide. In every reasonable system of government there is always some provision made for the pressure of the people upon the Government to make itself felt. If no such provision is made, then the condition of that country is bound to be unsound, then there are bound to be elements of danger and unrest which no amount of coercion can remove, because the attempt to remove them by coercion is an attempt to destroy the laws of nature, and the laws of nature refuse to be destroyed and conducted. We have no means to make the pressure of the people felt upon the Government. The only means which we have discovered, the only means which we can use without bringing on a violent conflict, without leading to breaches of the law on both sides and bringing things to the arbitrament of physical force, have been the means which we call passive resistance and specially the means of the boycott. Therefore just as we have said that the boycott is a settled fact because the Partition of Bengal is not rescinded and it shall remain so until it is rescinded, so we must say that the boycott must remain a settled fact because we are allowed no real control over the Government.
For the time the Government have succeeded in separating two of the largest communities in India; they have succeeded in drawing away the Mohammedans because of their want of education and enlightenment and of political experience which allows them to be led away by promises that are meant for the ear, by promises of concessions which the Government cannot give without destroying their own ends. For a time until the Mohammedans by bitter experience see the falseness of their hopes and the falseness of the political means which they are being induced to adopt, until then it will be difficult for the two communities to draw together and to stand united for the realisation of their common interest.
These are times of great change, times when old landmarks are being upset, when submerged forces are rising, and just as we deal promptly or linger over the solution of these problems, our progress will be rapid or slow, sound or broken. The educated class in India leads, but it must never allow itself to be isolated. It has done great things; it has commenced a mighty work, but it cannot accomplish these things, it cannot carry that work to completion by its own united efforts. The hostile force has recognised that this educated class is the backbone of India and their whole effort is directed towards isolating it. We must refuse to be isolated, we must recognise where our difficulties are, what it is that stands in the way of our becoming a nation and set ourselves immediately to the solution of that problem.
The problem is put to us one by one, to each nation one by one, and here in Bengal it is being put to us, and He has driven it home. He has made it perfectly clear by the events of the last few years. He has shown us the possibility of strength within us, and then He has shown us where the danger, the weakness lies. He is pointing out to us how it is that we may become strong. On us it lies, on the educated class in Bengal, because Bengal leads, and what Bengal does today the rest of India will do tomorrow; it specially lies upon us, the educated class in Bengal, to answer the question which God has put to us, and according as we answer, on it depends how this movement will progress, what route it will take, and whether it will lead to a swift and sudden salvation or whether, after so many centuries of tribulation and suffering, there is still a long period of tribulation and suffering before us. God has put the question to us, and with us entirely it lies to answer.
