[1] The Government of India have been on the inclined plane of repression as a remedy of discontent, which sometimes leads to crime, for now more than twenty years. They have in the interval placed on the Statute Book the Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes, the Post Office Amendment Acts, the Official Secrets Act, the Seditious Meetings Act, the Incitement to Offences Act, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, the Press Act, the Conspiracy Act, and the Defence of India Act. Have they attained their object? The very introduction of the two new Bills ... is the eloquent answer. What is it but a confession of failure?... Leader, Allahabad.
XV
THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY
Revolution is a fever brought about by the constant and reckless disregard of the laws of health in the government of a country.
David Lloyd George
“Causes and Aims of the War.” Speech delivered at Glasgow, on being presented with the freedom of that city, June 29, 1917.
The authors of the report remark:
“There exists a small revolutionary party deluded by hatred of British rule and desire for the elimination of the Englishman into the belief that the path to independence or constitutional liberty lies through anarchical crime. Now it may be that such persons will see for themselves the wisdom of abandoning methods which are as futile as criminal; though if they do not, the powers of the law are or can be made sufficient for the maintenance of order. But the existence of such people is a warning against the possible consequences of unrestrained agitation in India. We are justified in calling on the political leaders, in the work of education that they will undertake, to bear carefully in mind the political inexperience of their hearers; and to look for further progress not to fiery agitation which may have consequences quite beyond their grasp, but to the machinery which we devise for the purpose. In every country there will be persons who love agitation for agitation’s sake or to whom it appeals like an intoxicant. It is the duty of the leaders of Indian opinion to remember the effect on people not accustomed to weighing words of fiery and heated speeches. Where ignorance is widespread and passions are so easily aroused, nothing is easier than for political leaders to excite a storm; nothing harder for them than to allay it. Breaches of the peace or crimes of violence only put back the political clock. Above all things, when the future of India depends upon co-operation among all races, attacks upon one race or religion or upon another jeopardise the whole experiment. Nor can the condemnation of extremist and revolutionary action be left only to the official classes. We call upon all those who claim to be leaders to condemn with us and to support us in dealing with methods of agitation which drive schoolboys to crime and lead to religious and agrarian disturbance. Now that His Majesty’s Government have declared their policy, reasonable men have something which they can oppose successfully to the excitement created by attacks on Government and by abuse of Englishmen, coupled with glowing and inaccurate accounts of India’s golden past and appeals to race hatred in the name of religion. Many prominent Indians dislike and fear such methods. A new opportunity is now being offered to combat them; and we expect them to take it. Disorder must be prejudicial to the cause of progress and especially disorder as a political weapon.”
We are in general agreement with the sentiments expressed in this extract but we will be wanting in candour if we fail to point out that, though the revolutionary movement in India is mainly political, it is partly economic and partly anarchic also. In the first two aspects it is at present the product of purely local (Indian) conditions. In the last, it is the reaction of world forces. While we are hoping that the change in the policy, now announced, will remove the political basis of it, we are not quite sure that that will ensure the extermination of the party or the total destruction of the movement. The growth of democratic political institutions in India must inevitably be followed by a movement for social democracy. The spirit of Revolution which is now fed by political inequalities will, when these are removed, find its sustenance in social inequalities. That movement may not be anti-British; perhaps it will not be, but that it will have some revolutionary element in it may be assumed. The lessons of history make it clear that the most effective way to prevent its falling into channels of violence is to have as little recourse to coercion as may be consistent with the preservation of general order and peace. The preservation of order and the unhindered exercise of private rights by all citizens is the pre-requisite condition to good government. Every government must see to it. It is their duty to use preventive as well as punitive methods. There are, however, ways of doing these things. One is the British, the American and the French way.[1] The other is what was heretofore associated with the name of the late Czar. The third is the German way. We hope the lessons of Czarism will not be lost on either party. The governments have as much to learn from it as the peoples. The best guarantee against the abnormal growth of a revolutionary movement is to adopt and follow the British methods and to avoid scrupulously and without fail any approach to the discredited Russian or Prussian methods.