FOOTNOTES:
[30] “Macedonia,” by H. N. Brailsford, p. 75.
[31] Speech at Arbroath, October 21, 1907.
[32] This increase is probably shown in the rapid increase of the Excise Revenue, which rose from £3,742,800 in 1897 to £5,687,820 in 1906. Of the latter sum “country spirits” yielded nearly £3,000,000, and “toddy” (the popular drink made from the toddy palm), £874,000.
CHAPTER VI
On the Beach
It was evening, and the sky was full of the deep and ominous colours of an Indian sunset in the rains. A hot wind blowing in from the sea threw the waves in heavy surf upon the sand. Up and down the long “Marina,” or esplanade, bordered by a few vast public offices and a few fishermen’s hovels, the last carriages were bearing home Anglo-Indian ladies or youths comfortably wearied with their polo and other games. But on the broad, dry sand, between the esplanade and the surf, a vast circle of people was gathered round a little platform and chair. They were seated by hundreds on the sand—between four and five thousand of them altogether—and round the outer edge of the seated circle hundreds more were standing upright, like the rim of a flat plate.
When the meeting began their dark and eager faces could still be seen in the sunset light. The faces disappeared, and only the brilliant white turbans and white draperies were visible by the flicker of a big lamp they had fitted upon the platform. The waning moon rose late and shapeless among heavy clouds, and the dark faces reappeared, outlined in silver; but still the crowd sat on.
All were men, and most of them were young. They had assembled to show their joy at the release of Ajit Singh and Lajpat Rai—both inhabitants of the far-off Punjab, one till lately an unknown youth, the other till lately hardly known to any one in Madras, and only known anywhere as a reformer of Hindu superstitions, a man of austere private life and inexhaustible liberality to his own people.[33] Now both had been raised by their deportation and imprisonment without trial to the position of heroes and martyrs, and their recent release (Nov. 11, 1907) had been greeted with joy throughout the country, though not with gratitude; for there is no great cause for gratitude when a wrong-doer undoes the wrong.
Through the middle of the crowd came a line of white-robed students carrying a yellow banner with a strange device. “Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram! Hail to the Motherland! we bow before our mother!” rose the familiar cry from the thousands seated there. But there was no wild gesticulation, no frantic excess, such as we might imagine in a fanatical East. A Trafalgar Square crowd is more demonstrative and unrestrained. Nor was a single soldier or policeman visible, though the occasion had been publicly announced as a meeting of the Extremists. In the audience I was of course the only European present.
A little boy with head half shaven and a long tuft of black hair at the back stood up before the platform, and amid complete silence sang in his native Tamil the Bengali song of “Bande Mataram,” which has now become the national song of India. The music is of that queer Eastern kind, nasal, quavering, full of turns and twists, such as one may hear from the Adriatic to Burma, and very likely beyond. In origin I believe it to be Persian; at all events I have heard it in highest perfection on the Persian frontier and sung by Persian musicians. Usually—in Greek for instance—the words are rendered difficult to distinguish owing to the twists and long-drawn phrases, but in this boy’s singing the words were fairly distinct, and the repeated cadence gave a certain solemnity.
The words of the song were by a Bengali poet, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, who introduced it into his historic novel called “Anandamath,” or “The Abbey of Joy,” a romance upon the rebellion of the austere Sanyasi Order against the decaying rule of the Mohammedans in Eastern Bengal when Warren Hastings was the real power. The best-known translation is by Mr. W. H. Lee, late of the Indian Civil Service. It is fairly close, but English cannot reproduce the compression of the original Sanscrit and Bengali mixed:—
“My Motherland, I sing
Her splendid streams, her glorious trees,
The zephyr from the far-off Vindyan heights,
Her fields of waving corn,
The rapturous radiance of her moonlit nights,
The trees in flower that flame afar,
The smiling days that sweetly vocal are,
The happy, blessed Motherland.
Her will by seventy million throats extolled,
Her power twice seventy million arms uphold;
Her strength let no man scorn.
Thou art my head, thou art my heart,
My life and soul art thou,
My song, my worship, and my art,
Before thy feet I bow.
As Durga, scourge of all thy foes,
As Lakshmi, bowered in the flower,
That in the water grows,
As Bani, wisdom, power;
The source of all our might,
Our every temple doth thy form unfold—
Unequalled, tender, happy, pure,
Of splendid streams, of glorious trees,
My Motherland I sing,
The stainless charm that shall endure,
And verdant banks and wholesome breeze,
That with her praises ring.”
It is obviously too tender for a stirring “Marseillaise.” There is not enough march and thunder either in words or tune to enflame the soul of trampling hosts. The thunder comes in the cry of “Bande Mataram!” But the tenderness, the devoted love of country, and the adoration of motherhood are all characteristic of the Indian mind.
When this national anthem was finished, the Tamil poet of Madras recited a lament he had written for Lajpat Rai at the time of his deportation. It was the common lament of exiles—the fond memory of home, the deep attachment to the land of childhood, the loneliness of life among strangers and unknown tongues—all very quietly and simply told. Then by a sudden change, the poet turned to satire, and described a dialogue between Mr. John Morley and India, on the subject of Swaraj or Home Rule:—
“You are disunited,” says Mr. Morley; “what have you to do with Home Rule? You don’t speak the same language, you haven’t got the same religion; what have you to do with Home Rule? You cannot fight, you are too fond of law, you are the victims of education; what have you to do with Home Rule? You are born slaves, you prostrate yourselves before the Englishman: what have you to do with Home Rule? You are seditious, you are a prairie on fire, you are a barrel of gunpowder, you cry for the moon, you are not fit for a fur coat; what have you to do with Home Rule?”[34]
To which India makes firm and dignified reply. She has tasted freedom, she has learnt from England herself what freedom is; even John Morley has been her teacher, and she will not cease to labour for Swaraj. Having drunk the nectar of freedom, can she turn back to the palm-tree “toddy” of a Government shop, or cease to labour for Swaraj? She claims the right of other nations, the rights for which England herself has fought; she claims the same freedom of person and of speech, and she will not cease to labour for Swaraj. From north to south her people are becoming united, from east to west the cry of “Bande Mataram” goes up, and slowly the sun of freedom is arising: it may rise slowly, but India will not cease to labour for Swaraj.
The chairman rose, and the darkening air glimmered with the petals of flowers thrown in handfuls, as the custom is. Round his neck heavy garlands were hung, pink and white, to match the lesser garlands which surrounded the photographs of the two national heroes on the table. He spoke in English, like all the subsequent speakers till the last. One felt at once how great a contribution to Indian unity the English rule makes in the gift of a common language which all educated men can understand, while even in Madras alone four distinct native languages are spoken. He summarized the history of the last year of suspicion, repression, deportation, imprisonment, flogging of boys and students for political causes, and the Seditious Meetings Act. It was all done without passion or exaggeration, and he ended with a simple resolution calling on the Government to repeal the deportation statute as contrary to the rights which England had secured for herself under the Habeas Corpus.
Four speakers supported the resolution, and all spoke with the same quiet reasonableness, so different from our conception of the Oriental mind. But for clapping of hands, and occasional shouts of “Bande Mataram!” or “Jai!” (literally “Victory!” or “Long live So-and-so!”), the immense crowd remained equally calm. There was no frenzy, no disorder, no excitement, beyond intense interest and desire to leave no word unheard. If a speaker was just a shade too emotional the crowd laughed a little scornfully, just as an English crowd does. They laughed when one speaker—a well-known writer and journalist of Madras—just overstepped the limits in recalling, with tears in his voice, those happy days when as a student he had sucked the enthusiasm for freedom from John Morley’s own books, and had learnt to regard him as one of the gods of literature and liberty, in the same great pantheon with Mill and Burke and Milton. The crowd knew the man was in earnest, and they applauded, but they laughed just a little scornfully. For the rest, the speaking was average straightforward stuff, free from flowers, and even free from quotations, which are the besetting tendency of many Indian minds. Indeed, I remember only one quotation—just a hint at a parody on Mark Antony’s speech, with John Morley and the Liberal Government as the honourable men.
Only Anglo-Indians could have called the speeches seditious. To a common type of Anglo-Indian mind any criticism of the Government, any claim to further freedom, is sedition. But though this was avowedly a meeting of Extremists, the claim in the speeches was for the simple human rights that other peoples enjoy—the right to a voice in their own affairs, and in the spending of their own money. As to the increased suppression and persecution now overhanging them, they might well be driven to despair. Other grievances they had long known, and ever since Lord Curzon came to India their complaints had been augmented. But they had always kept a belief in England’s respect for personal rights and freedom, till Mr. Morley, of all statesmen, came to overthrow it. What was left to hope for now?
So the meeting went on, till four speakers had spoken long, and the late moon was moving up among the clouds and stars. Then a new speaker rose—tall, dark, and aged, with clearly cut features, and a shaven head. His dress was of deep salmon-coloured cotton—saffron, with a tinge of red—and in one hand he held a wanderer’s staff, symbolic of control over thought, speech, and action. Once he had been a rich man, a barrister, a councillor, a leader of public life. Now he had given away all he possessed. He had discarded the mark of worship and the sacred thread. Having said farewell to family and friends, to business, politics, and all transitory things, he had set off with only a staff to wander through India, begging his bread and teaching the divine realities, on which he meditated day and night. To this meeting he had come, not to discuss mortal justice or the British rule—things that hardly throw a shadow on the radiance of eternity—but only to say that in his wanderings he had met with Lajpat Rai, and had found in him a saintly human soul, simple-hearted, austere, and regardless of possessions. He spoke in his childhood’s Tamil, and when he had finished speaking he went upon his way, while the meeting dispersed, and dying shouts of “Bande Mataram!” mingled with the roaring of the surf.