Indians and Lord Curzon at Cross Purposes. Indians saw that they and Lord Curzon were at cross-purposes. They aimed at self-government and freedom; Lord Curzon aimed at prolongation of the period of their bondage and the permanence of the existing political conditions. We wanted independence; he wanted us to be dependent on the British. We wanted to quicken the pace of national advance; he wanted to slacken it. We wanted to be assertive and self-reliant; he wanted us to be submissive and in permanent control and tutelage. We wanted to go forward, he mistrusted us. We wanted a policy of honest confidence; instead of that he inaugurated a policy of suspicion. We wanted unity, he proceeded to bring into existence fresh causes of friction between community and community. We wanted the marshalling of our forces in the common cause, he proceeded to divide us and to keep us apart. We wanted consolidation, and he started active disintegration. We wanted an extension of representative government, Lord Curzon did his best to discredit the institutions that had been granted and to set back the hands of the clock.
The Congress Deputation to England in 1905. The leaders of the Indian National Congress saw all this; they resisted Lord Curzon’s policy rather boldly; they spoke with courage; they sought his patronage and sent their president to wait on him. Lord Curzon refused to see him and thus slapped the Congress in the face. He characterised their activities as the letting off of “gas.” Their resolutions he looked upon with contempt because, as he said, nothing had ever come out of them. The leaders felt offended, they fretted and foamed. But all they resolved to do was to appeal to the British public. So a deputation was sent to England in 1905 to place the grievances of India before the British public.
This deputation was composed of Messrs. Gokhale and the writer of this book. They addressed a large number of meetings in Great Britain, made many friends, saw some politicians; but they were not very hopeful as to the results. One of them on his return (the present writer) struck an unmistakable note of despondency. He frankly told his people that the British democracy was too busy with their own affairs to do anything for them, that the British press was not willing to champion Indian aspirations, that it was hard to get a hearing in England, and that the influence and the credit of the Anglo-Indians was too strong to be met successfully by the necessarily inadequate agitation which the Congress could set up in England. On his return to India the message which he brought to his people was, that if they really cared for their country, they would have to strike the blow for freedom themselves, and that they would have to furnish unmistakable proofs of their earnestness.
His message was in no way different from what Mr. Hume had told the graduates of the Calcutta University in 1883, or in his pamphlets “The Star in the East” and the “Old Man’s Hope.”
The Congress of 1905. This was the first time that an Indian publicist had spoken in that strain. The swadeshi and boycott had already been started in Bengal during his absence from India. Even Mr. Gokhale approved of the boycott as a political weapon. So the message which he brought fell on willing and sympathetic ears. The country was in a mood to listen to it, and it did listen. The Congress Session of 1905, held at Benares,[65] gave an opportunity for comparing notes and for settling a programme. The reception accorded to Mr. Gokhale and the rather uproarious meetings of the Subjects Committee afforded ample evidence of the temper of the people. Gokhale was cautious, careful, but enthusiastic. His presidential address was inspiring, though strictly moderate. His Bombay friends, however, would not let him go sufficiently far. The very first night the Subjects Committee sat, it appeared that a split was inevitable and the proceedings could not be as unanimous and harmonious as was customary. The old Congress leaders were accustomed to unanimity, but the younger generation soon convinced them that unanimity on the old lines was impossible.
When the meeting of the Subjects Committee broke up after its deliberation on the first night, no unanimity had been reached with regard to a resolution welcoming the visit of the Prince of Wales (the present King) to India. The dissentionists threatened to oppose it in the Congress. The reception committee and the older leaders were all furious, threatened all sorts of retributions, and predicted all sorts of evil consequences, but the younger men would not listen. The whole of the morning was spent in efforts to induce them to withdraw their opposition, but young Bengal refused to agree. The meeting was delayed; Gokhale then made a personal appeal to the Mahratta and the Punjab leaders, and they prevailed on their Bengalee friends to absent themselves from the meeting and let the resolution be passed in their absence. The resolution relating to Swadeshi,[66] boycott, and national education, again evoked lively discussion resulting in compromise, wherein the principles for which the Nationalists stood were conceded.
In the Congress camp, the younger generation had met in open conference to discuss their future programme. It was then that Mr. Tilak gave out the idea of passive resistance. No formal resolutions were passed, but the better mind of the people present decided to inaugurate an era of self-help and self-reliance based on an active boycott of government service and of the semi-government institutions.
Object of the Passive Resistance Movement. The object was two-fold. (1). To destroy the hypnotism that had caused the people and the country to have faith not only in the omnipotence of their rulers, but also in their altruism. In the words of one of the leaders of the Nationalist thought (Babu B. C. Pal,[67] “The Spirit of Indian Nationalism,” page 42), the people had been hypnotised to believe in the altruism of their foreign rulers:
“Untrained in the crooked ways of civilised diplomacy, they had believed what their rulers had said, either of themselves or of their subjects, as gospel truth. They had been told that the people of India were unfitted to manage their own affairs, and they believed it to be true. They had been told that the people were weak and the Government was strong. They had been told that India stood on a lower plane of humanity and England’s mission was to civilise ‘the semi-barbarous native.’ The Nationalist school took it upon themselves to expose the hollowness of all these pretensions. They commenced to make what are called counter-passes in