Yet we think that this report is a very valuable document, giving in one place the history and the progress of the Revolutionary Movement in India. The findings and the recommendations of the committee may not be all correct, but the material collected and published for the first time is too valuable to be neglected by anyone who wants to have an intelligent grasp of the political situation in India, such as has developed within the last twenty years.
The committee gives a summary of its conclusions as to the conspiracies in Chapter XV, which we copy verbatim:
“In Bombay they have been purely Brahmin and mostly Chitpavan. In Bengal the conspirators have been young men belonging to the educated middle classes. Their propaganda has been elaborate, persistent and ingenious. In their own province it has produced a long series of murders and robberies. In Bihar and Orissa, the United Provinces, the Central Provinces and Madras, it took no root, but occasionally led to crime and disorder. In the Punjab the return of emigrants from America, bent on revolution and bloodshed, produced numerous outrages and the Ghadr conspiracy of 1915. In Burma, too, the Ghadr movement was active, but was arrested.
“Finally came a Mohammedan conspiracy confined to a small clique of fanatics and designed to overthrow British rule with foreign aid.
“All these plots have been directed towards one and the same objective, the overthrow by force of British rule in India. Sometimes they have been isolated; sometimes they have been interconnected; sometimes they have been encouraged and supported by German influence. All have been successfully encountered with the support of Indian loyalty.”
In this general summary the committee has made no attempt to trace out the causes that led to the inauguration of the revolutionary movement and its subsequent progress. A chapter on that subject would have been most illuminating.
In chapters dealing with provinces they have selected some individuals and classes on whom to lay blame for “incitements” to murders and crimes, but have entirely failed to analyze the social, political and economic conditions which made such incitements and their success possible.
It is clear even from this summary that the only two provinces where the revolutionary propaganda took root and resulted in more than occasional outrages were Bengal and the Punjab.
In the Bombay Presidency, revolutionary outrages did not exceed three within a period of 20 years (from 1897 to 1917), two murders and one bomb-throwing. Besides, three trials for conspiracies are mentioned all within a year (1909-1910), two in Native States and one in British territory. Altogether 82 men were prosecuted for being involved in these conspiracies. The total result comes to this, that in the course of 20 years about 100 persons were found to be involved in a revolutionary movement in a territory embracing an area of 186,923 square miles and a population of 27 million human beings. This is surely by no means a formidable record justifying extraordinary legislation such as is proposed.[2] The net loss of human life did not exceed three, though unfortunately all three victims were Europeans.
Bihar and Orissa formed part of the province of Bengal during most of the period covered by the revolutionary movement of Bengal, viz., from 1906 to 1917. It was in Bihar which was then a part of Bengal, that in 1908, the first bomb was thrown. The only other revolutionary outrage that took place in Bihar was one in 1913, resulting in the murder of two Indians.