The Political Future of India

by Lala Lajpat Rai

We are afraid, however, that these statistics do not afford quite a correct index of the age, caste, occupation and position of all the people in Bengal that were and are sympathetically interested in the revolutionary movement of Bengal.

In investigating reasons for failure of ordinary machinery for the prevention, detection and punishment of crime in Bengal, the committee has assigned six reasons: (a) want of evidence, (b) paucity of police, (c) facilities enjoyed by criminals, (d) difficulty in proof of possession of arms, etc., (e) distrust of evidence, (f) the uselessness, in general, of confession made to the Police. These reasons, however, do not represent the whole truth. Some of the most daring crimes were committed in broad daylight, in much frequented streets of the metropolis and in the presence of numerous people. Moreover, the Government did not depend on ordinary law. Measure after measure was enacted to expedite and facilitate convictions. Extraordinary provisions were made to meet all the difficulties pointed out by the committee and extraordinary sentences were given in the case of conviction. Yet the Government failed either to extirpate the movement or to check it effectively or to bring the majority of offenders to book.

The members of the committee have frankly admitted: “That we do not expect very much from punitive measures. The conviction of offenders will never check such a movement as that which grew up in Bengal unless the leaders can be convicted at the outset.” They pin their faith on “preventive” measures recommended by them. It was perhaps not within their scope to say that the most effective preventive measure was the removal of the political and economic causes that had generated the movement. The committee has studiously avoided discussing that important point, but now and then they have incidentally furnished the real clue to the situation. Discussing the “accessibility of Bengal schools and colleges to Revolutionary influences,” they quote a passage from one of the reports of the Director of Public Instruction in Bengal. We copy below the whole of this paragraph, as, to us, it seems to be very pertinent to the issue.

“Accessibility of Bengal Schools and Colleges to Revolutionary Influences.—Abundant evidence has compelled us to the conclusion that the secondary English schools, and in a less degree the colleges, of Bengal have been regarded by the revolutionaries as their most fruitful recruiting centres. Dispersed as these schools are far and wide throughout the Province, sometimes clustering in a town, sometimes isolated in the far-away villages of the eastern water-country, they form natural objects for attack; and as is apparent from the reports of the Department of Public Instruction, they have been attacked for years with no small degree of success. In these reports the Director has from time to time noticed such matters as the circulation of seditious leaflets, the number of students implicated in conspiracy cases and the apathy of parents and guardians. But perhaps his most instructive passages are the following, in which he sets out the whole situation in regard to secondary English schools. ‘The number of these schools,’ he wrote, ‘is rapidly increasing, and the cry is for more and more. It is a demand for tickets in a lottery, the prizes of which are posts in Government service and employment in certain professions. The bhadralok have nothing to look to but these posts, while those who desire to rise from a lower social or economic station have their eyes on the same goal. The middle classes in Bengal are generally poor, and the increased stress of competition and the tendency for the average earnings of certain careers to decrease—a tendency which is bound to follow on the increased demand to enter them, coupled with the rise in the cost of living and the inevitable raising in the standard of comfort—all these features continue to make the struggle to exist in these classes keener. Hence the need to raise educational standards, to make school life a greater influence for good and the course of instruction more thorough and more comprehensive. A need which becomes more and more imperative as life in India becomes more complicated and more exacting is confronted by a determined though perfectly natural opposition to the raising of fees.... Probably the worst feature of the situation is the low wages and the complete absence of prospects which are the fate of teachers in the secondary schools.... It is easy to blame the parents for blindness to their sons’ true good, but the matriculation examination is the thing that seems to matter, so that if his boy passes the annual promotion examinations and is duly presented at that examination at the earliest possible date, the average parent has no criticism to offer. This is perfectly natural, but the future of Bengal depends to a not inconsiderable extent on the work done in its secondary schools, and more is required of these institutions than an ability to pass a certain proportion of boys through the Calcutta University Matriculation examination.... The present condition of secondary schools is undoubtedly prejudicing the development of the presidency and is by no means a negligible feature in the existing state of general disturbance. It is customary to trace the genesis of much sedition and crime to the back streets and lanes of Calcutta and Dacca, where the organizers of anarchic conspiracies seek their agents from among University students. This view is correct as far as it goes, but it is in the high schools, with their underpaid and discontented teachers, their crowded, dark and ill-ventilated classrooms, and their soul-destroying process of unceasing cram, that the seeds of discontent and fanaticism are sown.” [The italics are ours.]

Yet for years nothing was done to improve education, to make it practical and creative and productive. In fact nothing has been done up till now.

Let the reader read with this the report of the Indian Industrial Commission recently issued under the authority of the Government of India and he will at once find the true causes which underlie the revolutionary movement in India. These causes are not in any way peculiar to Bengal or to the Punjab; they are common to the whole of India, but they have found a fruitful soil in these provinces on account of the rather intense natures of the people of these two provinces. The Bengali is an intensely patriotic and emotional being, very sensitive and very resentful; the Punjabee is intensely virile, passionate and plucky, having developed a strong, forceful character by centuries of resistance to all kind of invasions and attacks. Of the Punjab, however, we will speak later on. For the present we are concerned with Bengal only. The amazing phenomenon mentioned by the committee on p. 20 and referred to by us before is easily explained by the facts hinted in the Directors’ report quoted above. And this notwithstanding the fact that in the matter of Government patronage Bengal has been the most favored province in India, throughout the period of British rule. To the Bengalis have gone all the first appointments to offices that were thrown open to the natives of the soil. They have been the recipients of the highest honors from the Government. Bengal is virtually the only province permanently settled where the Government cannot add to the Land tax fixed in 1793. The Bengalis are the people who spread over India, with every territorial extension of the British Raj. They have been the pampered and favored children of the Government and for very good reasons, too. They are the best educated and the most intelligent of all the Indian peoples. They know how to adapt themselves to all conditions and circumstances, they know how to enjoy and also how to suffer. They have subtle brains and supple bodies. The British Government could not do without them. It cannot do without them even now. Yet it was this most loyal and most dutiful, this most westernized and the best educated class which laid the foundations of the revolutionary movement and has been carrying it on successfully in face of all the forces of such a mighty Government as that of the British in India. What is the reason? It is the utter economic helplessness of the younger generation, aided by a sense of extreme humiliation and degradation. The Government never earnestly applied itself to the solution of the problem. They did nothing to reduce poverty and make education practical. Every time the budget was discussed the Indian members pressed for increased expenditure on education. All their proposals and motions were rejected by the standing official majorities backed by the whole force of non-official Europeans including the missionaries. The Government thus deliberately sowed the wind. Is there any wonder that it is now reaping the whirlwind?

The cause is economic; the remedy must be economic. Make education practical, foster industries, open all Government careers to the sons of the soil, reduce the cost on the military and civil services, let the people determine the fiscal policy of the country and the revolutionary movement will subside. Die it will not, so long as there is foreign domination and foreign exploitation. Even after India has attained Home Rule it will not die. It has come to stay. India is a part of the world and revolution is in the air all the world over. The effort to kill it by repression and suppression is futile, unwise and stupid.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The beginnings of British rule in India were made in 1757 A.D.

[2] Since enacted.