The Bombay Government, realizing that the trouble was not a sudden and spontaneous outburst of popular feeling and that the rebellious mill-hands were the victims of an unscrupulous agitation, based on malevolent falsehood, had issued strict orders for the avoidance of bloodshed as far as possible: and both the military forces and the police exercised such steady self-restraint that the casualties were relatively few. Nevertheless the continuance of rioting and the dislocation of business in the City set many people wondering whether other methods of restoring peace might not be tried. About the fifth day of the disturbance the Chamber of Commerce sent a deputation to the Governor, to point out the loss sustained by the commercial and trade-interests of the City and to urge upon Government a stronger effort to dissuade the mill-population from violence. The author of this history, who had witnessed the whole sequence of events at Jacob’s Circle and had on one occasion accompanied a detachment of the Northampton Regiment to Dadar to protect certain isolated Europeans, had already asked permission of Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Jenkins, Member of Council, to visit the heart of the disturbed area in company with certain Indian gentlemen who had offered their assistance, and endeavour to produce a milder feeling among the mill-hands. The permission was granted. Accordingly the writer, accompanied by the late Rao Bahadur Narayan T. Vaidya, Dr. Dinanath Naik Dandekar and four or five others, visited a large number of mill-hands’ chals and dwellings in Parel and Dadar, spoke to several groups of mill-hands, and urged them to resume their regular duties. In places the party was met with sullen hostility and with shouts of Tilak Maharaj ki Jai, but the eloquence of the Indian members of the party was not without effect, and when Rao Bahadur N. T. Vaidya urged them to substitute Satya Narayan ki Jai for their Tilakite war-cry, some of them seemed disposed to accept the suggestion.
Though some were inclined to look askance at their intervention, the efforts of this little peace-party did engender a better feeling, and this, coupled with a natural weariness of prolonged hostilities and the loss of their wages, resulted in the gradual return of tranquillity after the sixth day. By the end of the first week of August, affairs had resumed their normal course, the mill-hands were again at work, and the Bombay Government were at liberty to consider the salient features and lessons of the outbreak. Sir George Clarke, the Governor, was blamed in some quarters for having paid a sympathetic visit, after the close of the riots, to wounded mill-hands in the Sir J.J. Hospital. But his policy in this matter was dictated by an earnest desire to smooth away the bitterness which measures of repression are calculated to provoke, and by a conviction that there had been an absence of contact between the local authorities and the industrial population, which had been permitted to fall completely under the lawless influence of Tilak and his immediate followers. The fact that the disturbances lasted for a whole week invited a doubt whether the police arrangements were as effective as they might have been, and whether indeed a more efficient intelligence organization might not have facilitated a speedier conclusion of the unsatisfactory duties which the military were called upon to perform. An impression prevailed that, although the mill-hands who defied the police and troops had been severely punished, the real authors and fomenters of the disturbances had managed to escape scot-free, and that they could not have enjoyed such immunity, if the police had had their fingers more closely upon the pulse of the City.
So far as concerns the prosecution and conviction of Tilak, Sir George Clarke won “the respect of the vast majority of the community, and although he failed to secure the active support which he might have expected from the ‘moderates’, there were few of them who did not secretly approve and even welcome his action. Its effects were great and enduring, for Tilak’s conviction was a heavy blow to the forces of unrest, at least in the Deccan; and some months later, one of the organs of his party, the Rashtramat, reviewing the occurrences of the year, was fain to admit that ‘the sudden removal of Mr. Tilak’s towering personality threw the whole province into dismay and unnerved the other leaders’”.[114]
Having thus secured the discomfiture of the revolutionary party in Western India, the Governor applied himself to the problem of the Bombay City Police administration, which appeared to him to need revision, not only in response to the general findings of the Police Commission, but also by reason of its apparent failure to keep closely in touch with political intrigue, such as that which precipitated the riots of July 1908. Apart from the mere question of numbers and pay, the force appeared to the Governor to be working on somewhat obsolete lines and to need keying up to the pitch at which it might cope more successfully both with its regular duties of watch and ward and with the large amount of confidential investigation necessitated by the rapid and alarming growth of political unrest and sedition. These were the main reasons underlying the appointment of the Morison Committee, which has been described in an earlier paragraph. One of the most important sections of that committee’s report was concerned with the reorganization of the old detective branch of the police-force, hereafter to be called the Criminal Investigation Department (C. I. D.), upon which devolved the task of watching the trend of political movements and of accumulating knowledge of the antecedents and actions of the chief fomenters of unrest.
The work of a police-officer in an Indian city has always been extremely arduous, and few men in these days are able to bear the strain for many years without some loss of vitality and health. There is little doubt that the extra work and anxiety entailed by the Royal Visit of 1905, which was followed a few days later by the arrival of Lord Minto and the departure of Lord Curzon, had much to do with the temporary breakdown of health which obliged Mr. Gell to take furlough in 1906; while the strain inevitably imposed upon him by the Muharram and Tilak riots of 1908 was partly the cause of his again taking leave to England in the early part of 1909. In doing so, his long service in the City came to an end: for by the time his leave had expired, his successor was in the midst of a comprehensive reorganization scheme, which would have suffered in the event of his reversion to his own grade in the Indian Civil Service. In order, therefore, to enable him to complete his full period of pensionable service, Mr. Gell, on his return from England, was appointed Deputy Inspector-General of Police for the Presidency and a little later for Sind. It was in Sind that he completed his official career, and from Karachi that he sailed finally for England. His long connexion with the City of Bombay is commemorated, though not perhaps adequately, in the name of one of the newer streets opened by the City Improvement Trust in the neighbourhood of Ripon road. Memories of his equability of temper and his impartiality are still cherished by the older officers and men of the police-force, who pay a willing tribute to his character as an officer and a gentleman.
CHAPTER IX
Mr. S. M. Edwardes, C.S.I., C.V.O.
1909-1916
Mr. S. M. Edwardes, who succeeded Mr. Gell as head of the Bombay City Police Force, was the first member of the Indian Civil Service to hold that appointment. He had previously held various appointments in Bombay ranging from Assistant to the Collector and Chief Inspector of Factories to acting Municipal Commissioner, and had acquired considerable knowledge of the population and past history of Bombay by his work as Census Officer in 1901 and later as Compiler of the Gazetteer. Shortly after the Tilak riots in 1908, he was nominated a member of the Morison Committee which, as previously stated, was appointed by the Bombay Government to consider the working of the urban police administration and make proposals for its future organization.
