The Allahabad Leader deserves to be congratulated for publishing the correspondence on Mr. Bosworth Smith who was one of the Martial Law officers against whom the complaints about persistent and continuous ill-treatment were among the bitterest. It appears from the correspondence that Mr. Bosworth Smith has received promotion instead of dismissal. Sometime before Martial Law Mr. Smith appears to have been degraded. “He has since been restored,” says the Leader correspondent, “to his position of a Deputy Commissioner of the second grade from which he was degraded and also been invested with power under section 30 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Since his arrival, the poor Indian population of the town of Amhala Cantonment has been living under a regime of horror and tyranny.” The correspondent adds: “I use both these words deliberately for conveying precisely what they mean.” I cull a few passage from this illuminating letter to illustrate the meaning of horror and tyranny. “In private complaints he never takes the statement of the complainant. It is taken down by the reader when the court rises and got signed by the magistrate the following day. Whether the report received (upon such complaints) is favourable to the complainant or unfavourable to him, it is never ready by the magistrate, and complaints are dismissed without proper trial. This is the fate of private complaints. Now as regards police chellans. Pleaders for the accused are not allowed to interview under trial prisoners in police custody. They are not allowed to cross-examine prosecution witnesses.... Prosecution witnesses are examined with leading questions.... Thus a whole prosecution story is put into the mouth of police, witnesses for the defence though called in are not allowed to be examined by the defence counsel.... The accused is silenced if he picks up courage to say anything in defence.... Any Cantonment servant can write down the name of any citizen of the Cantonment on a chit of paper and ask him to appear the next day in court. This is a summons.... If any one does not appear in court who is thus ordered, criminal warrants of arrest are issued against him.” There is much more of this style in the letter which is worth producing, but I have given enough to illustrate the writer’s meaning. Let me turn for a while to this official’s record during Martial Law. He is the official who tried people in batches and convicted them after a farcical trial. Witnesses have deposed to his having assembled people, having asked them to give false evidence, having removed women’s veils, called them ‘flies, bitches, she-asses’ and having spat upon them. He it was who subjected the innocent pleaders of Shokhupura indescribable persecution. Mr. Andrews personally investigated complaints against this official and came to the conclusion that no official had behaved worse than Mr. Smith. He gathered the people of Shokhupura, humiliated them in a variety of ways, called them ‘suvarlog,’ ‘gandi mukkhi.’ His evidence before the Hunter Commission betrays his total disregard for truth and this is the officer who, if the correspondent in question has given correct facts, has been promoted. The question however is why, he is at all in Government service and why he has not been tried for assaulting and abusing innocent men and women.
I notice a desire for the impeachment of General Dyer and Sir Michael O’Dwyer. I will not stop to examine whether the course is feasible. I was sorry to find Mr. Shastriar joining this cry for the prosecution of General Dyer. If the English people will willingly do so, I would welcome such prosecution as a sign of their strong disapproval of the Jallianwalla Bagh atrocity, but I would certainly not spend a single farthing in a vain pursuit after the conviction of this man. Surely the public has received sufficient experience of the English mind. Practically the whole English Press has joined the conspiracy to screen these offenders against humanity. I would not be party to make heroes of them by joining the cry for prosecution private or public. If I can only persuade India to insist upon their complete dismissal, I should be satisfied. But more than the dismissal, of Sir Michael O’Dwyer and General Dyer, is necessary the peremptory dismissal, if not a trial, of Colonel O’Brien, Mr. Bosworth Smith, Rai Shri Ram and others mentioned in the Congress Sub-Committee’s Report. Bad as General Dyer is I consider Mr. Smith to be infinitely worse and his crimes to be far more serious than the massacre of Jallianwalla Bugh. General Dyer sincerely believed that it was a soldierly act to terrorise people by shooting them. But Mr. Smith was wantonly cruel, vulgar and debased. If all the facts that have been deposed to against him are true, there is not a spark of humanity about him. Unlike General Dyer he lacks the courage to confirm what he has done and he wriggles when challenged. This officer remains free to inflict himself upon people who have done no wrong to him, and who is permitted to disgrace the rule he represents for the time being.
What is the Punjab doing? Is it not the duty of the Punjabis not to rest until they have secured the dismissal of Mr. Smith and the like? The Punjab leaders have been discharged in vain if they will not utilise the liberty they have received, in order to purge the administration of Messrs. Bosworth Smith and Company. I am sure that if they will only begin a determined agitation they will have the whole India by their side. I venture to suggest to them that the best way to qualify for sending General Dyer to the gallows is to perform the easier and the more urgent duty of arresting the mischief still continued by the officials against whom they have assisted in collecting overwhelming evidence.
GENERAL DYER
The Army Council has found General Dyer guilty of error of judgment and advised that he should not receive any office under the Crown. Mr. Montagu has been unsparing in his criticism of General Dyer’s conduct. And yet somehow or other I cannot help feeling that General Dyer is by no means the worst offender. His brutality is unmistakable. His abject and unsoldier-like cowardice is apparent in every line of his amazing defence before the Army Council. He has called an unarmed crowd of men and children—mostly holiday-makers—‘a rebel army.’ He believes himself to be the saviour of the Punjab in that he was able to shoot down like rabbits men who were penned in an inclosure. Such a man is unworthy of being considered a soldier. There was no bravery in his action. He ran no risk. He shot without the slightest opposition and without warning. This is not an ‘error of judgement.’ It is paralysis of it in the face of fancied danger. It is proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness. But the fury that has been spent upon General Dyer is, I am sure, largely misdirected. No doubt the shooting was ‘frightful,’ the loss of innocent life deplorable. But the slow torture, degradation and emasculation that followed was much worse, more calculated, malicious and soul-killing, and the actors who performed the deeds deserve greater condemnation that General Dyer for the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. The latter merely destroyed a few bodies but the others tried to kill the soul of a nation. Who ever talks of Col. Frank Johnson who was by far the worst offender? He terrorised guiltless Lahore, and by his merciless orders set the tone to the whole of the Martial Law officers. But what I am concerned with is not even Col. Johnson. The first business of the people of the Punjab and of India is to rid the service of Col O’Brien, Mr. Bosworth Smith, Rai Shri Ram and Mr. Malik Khan. They are still retained in the service. Their guilt is as much proved as that of General Dyer. We shall have failed in our duty if the condemnation pronounced upon General Dyer produces a sense of satisfaction and the obvious duty of purging the administration in the Punjab is neglected. That task will not be performed by platform rhetoric or resolutions merely. Stern action is required on out part if we are to make any headway with ourselves and make any impression upon the officials that they are not to consider themselves as masters of the people but as their trusties and servants who cannot hold office if they misbehave themselves and prove unworthy of the trust reposed in them.
THE PUNJAB SENTENCES
The commissioners appointed by the Congress Punjab Sub Committee have in their report accused His Excellency the Viceroy of criminal want of imagination. His Excellency’s refusal to commute two death sentences out of five is a fine illustration of the accusation. The rejection of the appeal by the Privy Council no more proves the guilt of the condemned than their innocence would have been proved by quashing the proceedings before the Martial Law Tribunal. Moreover, these cases clearly come under the Royal Proclamation in accordance with its interpretation by the Punjab Government. The murders in Amritsar were not due to any private quarrel between the murderers and their victims. The offence grave, though it was, was purely political and committed under excitement. More than full reparation has been taken for the murders and arson. In the circumstances commonsense dictates reduction of the death sentences. The popular belief favours the view that the condemned men are innocent and have not had a fair trial. The execution has been so long delayed that hanging at this stage would give a rude shock to Indian society. Any Viceroy with imagination would have at once announced commutation of the death sentences—not so Lord Chelmsford. In his estimation, evidently, the demands of justice will not be satisfied if at least some of the condemned men are not hanged. Public feeling with him counts for nothing. We shall still hope that, either the Viceroy or Mr. Montagu will commute the death sentences.
But if the Government will grievously err, if they carry out the sentences, the people will equally err if they give way to anger or grief over the hanging if it has unfortunately to take plane. Before we become a nation possessing an effective voice in the councils of nations, we must be prepared to contemplate with equanimity, not a thousand murders of innocent men and women but many thousands before we attain a status in the world that, shall not be surpassed by any nation. We hope therefore that all concerned will take rather than lose heart and treat hanging as an ordinary affair of life.
[Since the above was in type, we have received cruel news. At last H.E. the Viceroy has mercilessly given the rude shock to Indian society. It is now for the latter to take heart in spite of the unkindest cut.—Ed. Y.I.]