CHAPTER XII.
THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS.
It is impossible to acquit the Congress of having contributed to the growth of active and violent unrest, though the result may have lain far both from the purpose of its chief originators and from the desire of the majority of its members. Western education has largely failed in India because the Indian, not unnaturally, fails to bring an education based upon conceptions entirely alien to the world in which he moves into any sort of practical relation with his own life. So with the Indian politician, who, even with the best intentions, fails to bring the political education which he has borrowed from the West into any sort of practical relation with the political conditions of India.
The Indian National Congress assumed unto itself almost from the beginning the functions of a Parliament. There was and is no room for a Parliament in India, because, so long as British rule remains a reality, the Government of India, as Lord Morley has plainly stated, must be an autocracy—benevolent and full of sympathy with Indian ideas, but still an autocracy. Nor would the Congress have been in any way qualified to discharge the functions of a Parliament had there been room for one. For it represents only one class, or rather a section of one class—the Western educated middle, and mainly professional, class, consisting chiefly of lawyers, doctors, schoolmasters, newspaper men; an important and influential class, no doubt, but one which itself only represents an infinitesimal fraction—barely, perhaps, one-hundredth part—of the whole population. To what extent it is really representative even of that small section it is impossible to say, as the members are not returned by any clearly defined body of constituents or by any formal process of election. Originally it attracted the support of not a few non-Hindus, though the Hindu element always largely preponderated, and a small group of distinguished Parsees, headed by Mr. Dadhabai Naoroji, together with a sprinkling of Mahomedans, helped to justify its claim to be called National, in so far as that appellation connoted the representation of the different creeds and races of India. But gradually most of the Mahomedans dropped out, as it became more and more an exponent of purely Hindu opinion, and the Parsees retained little more than the semblance of the authority they had at one time enjoyed.
On broader grounds still the Congress could never be called National in the Western democratic sense of the term, for whatever exceptions it may have been willing to make in favour of individuals, there can be no question of popular representation in India so long as the Hindu caste system prevails, under which whole classes numbering millions and millions are regarded and treated as beyond the pale and actually "untouchable." From time to time a few enlightened Hindus recognize the absurdity of posturing as the champions of democratic ideals so long as this monstrous anomaly subsists, but, whilst professing in theory to repudiate it, the Indian National Congress has during the whole course of its existence taken no effective step towards removing it. Nor is the Congress any more representative of the toiling masses that are not "unclean." No measures have been more bitterly assailed in the Congress than those which, like the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900, were framed and have operated for the benefit of the agricultural and other humbler classes—i.e., of the real "people of India," in whose name the Congress speaks so loudly and with so little title.
An earlier generation of Hindus had fully recognized the urgency of social problems, like that of the "depressed" castes, and had realized that, until Indians had brought their own customs and beliefs to some extent into line with the social customs and beliefs of the West, they could not hope to raise their political life on to the Western plane. The Indian National Congress, unfortunately, succumbed to the specious plea put forward in an evil hour many years ago by a distinguished Hindu, afterwards a Judge of the Bombay High Court, Mr. K.T. Telang, who was himself unquestionably an enlightened social reformer, that the "line of least resistance" was to press for political concessions from England where they had "friends amongst the garrison," instead of fighting an uphill battle for social reforms against the dead-weight of popular ignorance and prejudice amongst their own people. That many members of the Congress take part also in social reform conferences and are fully alive to the importance of social reform cannot alter the fact that, by turning its corporate back upon the cause they have at heart, the Indian National Congress has arrested instead of promoting one of the most promising movements to which Western education had given birth.
Do not, however, let us throw the blame wholly upon the Congress. For, like Mr. Telang, it has been induced to put its trust in "the friends amongst the garrison"—Englishmen often of widely different types and characters, like Bradlaugh and Hume and Webb and Sir William Wedderburn, and in more recent days Sir Henry Cotton and Mr. Mackarness—and upon them must rest no small responsibility for the diversion of many of the best talents and energies of educated India from the thorny path of social reform into the more popular field of political agitation.
What has been the result? A self-constituted body of Indian gentlemen who have no title to represent the people and a very slender title to represent the upper classes of Indian society, but who, as I have already said, doubtless represent to some extent a considerable and influential section of Western educated opinion, might have given very useful assistance to Anglo-Indian legislators and administrators had they devoted themselves to the study of those social problems in the solution of which it is peculiarly difficult and dangerous for an alien Government to take any initiative. Instead of that, they set before themselves a task that was impossible because they had no status to perform it. They were fighting all the time in the air, and their proceedings therefore lacked reality. The Congress was not only an irresponsible body, but it was never steadied by a healthy divergency of opinions and the presentation of conflicting arguments. It was not even a debating society, for all represented practically the same interests, held the same views, made the same speeches, which there was no one to question or to refute. Hence the monotony of the proceedings, the sameness of the speeches, sometimes marked with great ability, and generally delivered with much eloquence and fervour, at the short annual sessions. The proceedings were usually controlled by a small caucus who drew up long-winded resolutions, often embodying half a score of resolutions carried in previous sessions. Some one delivered a soul-stirring oration, and then the "omnibus" resolution, which was not even always read out, was put to the vote and passed unanimously. Every one knew beforehand that every speaker would attack the policy of Government, whether he dealt with the ancient stock grievances or with some new question raised by the legislative and administrative measures of the current year; and every one knew also that all the others would applaud. There was no other way of bidding for popularity and making a mark than by achieving pre-eminence in the arts of pungent criticism and exuberant rhetoric. Behind the scenes there were, doubtless, often fierce fights and jealousies, and the struggles in camera are reported to have been sometimes very violent and bitter. But an unbroken front was maintained to the outside world, and the divisions which ultimately almost shipwrecked the Congress very rarely showed themselves on the surface of its proceedings till nearly 20 years after its birth.
The attitude of Government who had accepted the Congress's assurances of loyalty, and recognized its aims, as defined by it, to be "perfectly legitimate in themselves," was laid down for the first time officially in 1890, under Lord Lansdowne's Viceroyalty, in terms that were certainly not hostile:—
The Government of India recognize that the Congress movement is regarded as representing in India what in Europe would be called the more advanced Liberal Party as distinguished from the great body of Conservative opinion which exists side by side with it. They desire themselves to maintain an attitude of neutrality in their relations with both parties, so long as these act strictly within constitutional limits.
To the principles of that declaration the Government of India has strictly adhered ever since, even when, as in 1905, the Congress might have been deemed to have over-stepped those constitutional limits by endorsing the Bengalee doctrine of boycott.
Though the majority of the Congress probably glided unconsciously or without any deliberate purpose from, its earlier attitude of remonstrance and entreaty into violent denunciation of Government and all its works, there had always been a small group determined to drive or to manoeuvre their colleagues as a body into an attitude of open and irreconcilable hostility. That group was headed by Tilak, the strongest personality in Indian politics, who was gradually making recruits among the more ardent spirits all over India. On one occasion, as far back as 1895, when the Congress held its annual session in his own city of Poona, he had attempted to commit it to the aggressive doctrines which he was already preaching in the Deccan, but he soon discovered that the temper of the majority was against him. He was, however, far too tenacious ever to accept defeat. He bided his time. He knew he had to reckon with powerful personal jealousies, and he remained in the background. His opportunity did not come till ten years later when he pulled the strings at the two successive sessions held in 1905 at Benares and in 1906 at Calcutta. It was then that the Congress passed from mere negative antagonism into almost direct defiance of Government. It must have been a proud moment for Tilak when the very man who had often fought so courageously against his inflammatory methods and reactionary tendencies in the Deccan, Mr. Gokhale, played into his hands, and from the presidential chair at Benares got up to commend the boycott as a political weapon used for a definite political purpose. A year later, it is true, Mr. Gokhale and the "moderate" party in the Congress, who had seen in the meantime to what lawlessness the boycott was leading, were anxious to undo or to mitigate at the Calcutta session what they had helped to do at Benares. But again, by dint of lobbying and even more by threatening to break up the Congress, Tilak carried the day, and a resolution was passed in the form upon which he insisted to the effect that the boycott movement was legitimate. It was not till the following year at Surat, after the preaching of lawlessness had begun to yield its inevitable harvest of crime, that the "moderates" recoiled at last from the quicksands into which the "extremists" were leading them. Tilak, however, carried out his threat, and he and his friends wrecked that session of the Congress amidst scenes of disgraceful riot and confusion.
Yet even after this the "moderates" lacked the courage of their convictions. The breach has never been altogether repaired, but there have been frequent negotiations and exchanges of courtesies. In the very next year at Madras a man as incapable of promoting or approving criminal forms of agitation as Dr. Rash Behari Ghose was holding out the olive branch to "the wayward wanderers" who had treated him so despitefully at Surat; and last year at Lahore, when Pandit Mohan Malavya was expounding from the chair the latest formula adopted by Congress as a definition of its aims, his chief anxiety seemed to be to prove that it offered no obstacle to the return of the Surat insurgents to the fold. This formula, it may be mentioned, lays down that "the objects of the Indian National Congress are the attainment by the people of India of a system of Government similar to that enjoyed by the self-governing members of the British Empire and a participation by them in the rights and responsibilities of the Empire on equal terms." This is a formula which many "moderates" no doubt construe in a spirit of genuine loyalty, but it does not exclude the construction which more "advanced" politicians like Mr. Pal place upon Swaraj.
The last session of the Congress at Lahore, in December last, is generally admitted to have aroused very little enthusiasm, and there are many who believe that, weakened as it has been by recent dissensions, it will scarcely survive the creation of the new enlarged Councils. These Councils have been so constituted that they will be able to discharge usefully the functions which the Congress arrogated to itself without any title or authority. Perhaps it was the consciousness that the Congress would at any rate be henceforth overshadowed by the new Councils that led Pandit Malavya to inveigh so bitterly in his presidential address at Lahore against the shape ultimately given to the reforms. What one may hope above all is that the Councils will help to give the Indian "moderates" a little more self-reliance than they have hitherto shown. The Indian National Congress has at all times contained many men of high character and ability, devoted to what they conceived to be the best interests of their country, and at first, at any rate, quite ready to acknowledge the benefits of British rule and to testify to their conviction that the maintenance of British rule is essential to the welfare and safety of India. Many of them must have seen that the constant denunciation of Government by men who claimed to represent the intelligence of the country must tend to stimulate a spirit of disaffection and revolt amongst their more ignorant and inexperienced fellow-countrymen. Yet not one of them had the courage to face the risk of temporary unpopularity by pointing out the danger of the inclined plane down which they were sliding, until they actually saw themselves being swept hopelessly off their feet at Surat. It was then too late to avert the consequences of pusillanimity or to shake off their share of responsibility for the evils which the tolerance they had too long extended to the methods of their more violent colleagues had helped to produce. One of the main purposes of the Indian National Congress has avowedly been to set up a claim for the introduction of representative government in India. Yet it has itself seldom escaped the control of a handful of masterful leaders who have ruled it in the most irresponsible and despotic fashion. The Congress has, in fact, displayed exactly the same feature which has been so markedly manifested in the case of municipalities, namely, the tendency of "representative" institutions in India to resolve themselves into machines operated by, and for the benefit of, an extremely limited and domineering oligarchy.