Indian Unrest Part 3

Surendranath Banerjee, who subsequently fell out with Tilak, had at first modelled his propaganda very largely upon that of the Deccan leader. Not only had he tried to introduce into Bengal the singularly inappropriate cult of s.h.i.+vaji, but he had been clearly inspired by Tilak's methods in placing the _Swades.h.i.+_ boycott in Bengal under the special patronage of so popular a deity as the "terrible G.o.ddess" Kali.

Again, he had followed Tilak's example in brigading schoolboys and students into youthful gymnastic societies for purposes of political agitation, Tilak's main object at the moment was to pledge the rest of India, as represented in the Congress, to the violent course upon which Bengal was embarking. Amongst the "moderate" section outside Bengal there was a disposition to confine its action to platonic expressions of sympathy with the Bengalees and with the principle of _Swades.h.i.+_--in itself perfectly legitimate--as a movement for the encouragement of native industries. At Benares in 1905 the Congress had adopted a resolution which only conditionally endorsed the boycott, and the increasing disorders which had subsequently accompanied its enforcement had tended to enhance rather than to diminish the reluctance of the Moderate party to see the Congress definitely pledged to it when it met at the end of 1906 in Calcutta. The "advanced" party led by Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal had put forward Tilak's candidature to the presidency, and a split which seemed imminent was only avoided by a compromise which saved appearances. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, a leading Pa.r.s.ee of Bombay, who had been drawn into co-operation with the Congress under the influence of the political Liberalism which he had heard expounded in England by Gladstone and Bright, played at this critical period an important part which deserves recognition. He was as eloquent as any Bengalee, and he possessed in a high degree the art of managing men. In politics he was as stout an opponent of Tilak's violent methods as was Mr. Gokhale on social and religious questions, and he did perhaps more than any one else to prevent the complete triumph of Tilakism in the Congress right down to the Surat upheaval. Thanks largely to his efforts, the veteran Mr. Naoroji was elected to the chair at Calcutta. None could venture openly to oppose him, for he was almost the father of the Congress, which in its early days had owed so much to the small group of liberal Pa.r.s.ees whom he had gathered about him, and his high personal character and rect.i.tude of purpose had earned for him universal respect.

Nevertheless, a resolution as amended by Tilak was adopted which, without mentioning the word "boycott," pledged the Congress to encourage its practice. But there was considerable heartburning, and the Moderates were suspected of contemplating some retrograde move at the following annual session. Tilak was determined to frustrate any such scheme, and before the Congress a.s.sembled at Surat he elaborated at a Nationalist conference with Mr. Arabindo Ghose in the chair, a plan of campaign which was to defeat the "moderates" by demanding, before the election of the president, an undertaking that the resolutions of the Calcutta conference should be upheld. The plan, however, was only half successful. The first day's proceedings produced a violent scene in which the howling down of Mr. Surendranath Banerjee by the "advanced"

wing revealed the personal jealousies that had grown up between the old Bengalee leader on the one hand and Tilak and his younger followers in Bengal on the other. The second day's proceedings ended in still wilder confusion, and after something like a free fight the Congress broke up after an irreparable rupture, from which its prestige has never recovered.

Tilak's own prestige, however, with the "advanced" party never stood higher, either in then Deccan or outside of it. In the Deccan he not only maintained all his old activities, but had extended their field.

Besides the _Kal_, edited by another Chitpawan Brahman, and the _Rashtramadt_ at Poona, which went to even greater lengths than Tilak's own _Kesari_, lesser papers obeying his inspiration had been established in many of the smaller centres. A movement had been set on foot for the creation of "national" schools, entirely independent of State support, and therefore of State supervision, in which disaffection could, without let or hindrance, be made part and parcel of the curriculum. Such were the schools closed down last year in the Central Provinces and this year at Telegaon. The great development of the cotton industry during the last ten years, especially in Bombay itself--which has led to vast agglomerations of labour under conditions unfamiliar in India--had given Tilak an opportunity of establis.h.i.+ng contact with a cla.s.s of the population hitherto outside the purview of Indian politics. There are nearly 100 cotton spinning and weaving mills, employing over 100,000 operatives, congregated mostly in the northern suburbs of the city.

Huddled together in huge tenements this compact population affords by its density, as well as by its ignorance, a peculiarly accessible field to the trained agitator. Tilak's emissaries, mostly Brahmans of the Deccan, brought, moreover, to their nefarious work the added prestige of a caste which seldom condescends to rub shoulders with those whose mere contact may involve "pollution." In this, as in many other cases, politics were closely mixed up with philanthropy, for the conditions of labour in India are by no means wholly satisfactory, and it would be unfair to deny to many of Tilak's followers a genuine desire to mitigate the evils and hards.h.i.+ps to which their humbler fellow-creatures were exposed. Prominent amongst such evils was the growth of drunkenness, and it would have been all to his honour that Tilak hastened to take up the cause of temperance, had he not perverted it, as he perverted everything else, to the promotion of race-hatred. His primary motives may have been excellent, but he subordinated all things to his ruling anti-British pa.s.sion, whilst the fervour of his philanthropic professions won for him the sympathy and co-operation of many law-abiding citizens who would otherwise have turned a deaf ear to his political doctrines. He must have had a considerable command of funds for the purposes of his propaganda, and though he doubtless had not a few willing and generous supporters, many subscribed from fear of the lash which he knew how to apply through the Press to the tepid and the recalcitrant, just as his gymnastic societies sometimes resolved themselves into juvenile bands of dacoities to swell the coffers of _Swaraj_. Not even Mr. Gokhale with all his moral and intellectual force could stem the flowing tide of Tilak's popularity in the Deccan; and in order not to be swept under he was perhaps often compelled like many other Moderates to go further than his own judgment can have approved. Tilak commanded the allegiance of barristers and pleaders, schoolmasters and professors, clerks in Government offices--in fact, of the large majority of the so-called educated cla.s.ses, largely recruited amongst his own and other Brahman castes; and his propaganda had begun to filter down not only to the coolies in the cities, but even to the rayats, or at least the head-men in the villages.

More than that. From the Deccan, as we have already seen in his relations with the Indian National Congress, his influence was projected far and wide. His house was a place of pilgrimage for the disaffected from all parts of India. His prestige as a Brahman of the Brahmans and a pillar of orthodoxy, in spite of the lat.i.tude of the views which he sometimes expressed in regard to the depressed castes, his reputation for profound learning in the philosophies both of the West and of the East, his trenchant style, his indefatigable activity, the glamour of his philanthropy, his accessibility to high and low, his many acts of genuine kindliness, the personal magnetism which, without any great physical advantages, he exerted upon most of those who came in contact with him, and especially upon the young, combined to equip him more fully than any other Indian politician for the leaders.h.i.+p of a revolutionary movement.

The appeal which Tilak made to the Hindus was twofold. He taught them, on the one hand, that India, and especially Maharashtra, the land of the Mahrattas, had been happier and better and more prosperous under a Hindu _raj_ than it had ever been or could ever be under the rule of alien "demons"; and that if the British _raj_ had at one time served some useful purpose in introducing India to the scientific achievements of Western civilisation, it had done so at ruinous cost, both material and moral, to the Indians whose wealth it had drained and whose social and religious inst.i.tutions it had undermined, and on the other hand he held out to them the prospect that, if power were once restored to the Brahmans, who had already learnt all that there was of good to be learnt from the English, the golden age would return for G.o.ds and men.

That Tilak himself hardly believed in the possibility of overthrowing British rule is more than probable, but what some Indians who knew him well tell me he did believe was that the British could be driven or wearied by a ceaseless and menacing agitation into gradually surrendering to the Brahmans the reality of power, as did the later Peshwas, and remaining content with the mere shadow of sovereignty. As one of his organs blurted it out:--"If the British yield all power to us and retain only nominal control, we may yet be friends."

Such was the position when, on June 24, 1908, Tilak was arrested in Bombay on charges connected with the publication in the _Kesari_ of articles containing inflammatory comments on the Muzafferpur outrage, in which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy had been killed by a bomb--the first of a long list of similar outrages in Bengal. Not in the moment of first excitement, but weeks afterwards, the _Kesari_ had commented on this crime in terms which the Pa.r.s.ee Judge, Mr. Justice Davar, described in his summing up as follows:--"They are seething with sedition; they preach violence; they speak of murders with approval; and the cowardly and atrocious act of committing murders with bombs not only meets with your approval, but you hail the advent of the bomb into India as if something had come to India for its good." The bomb was extolled in these articles as "a kind of witchcraft, a charm, an amulet," and the _Kesari_ delighted in showing that neither the "supervision of the police" nor "swarms of detectives" could stop "these simple playful sports of science," Whilst professing to deprecate such methods, it threw the responsibility upon Government, which allowed "keen disappointment to overtake thousands of intelligent persons who have been awakened to the necessity of securing the rights of _Swaraj_."

Tilak spoke four whole days in his own defence--21-1/2 hours altogether--but the jury returned a verdict of "Guilty," and he was sentenced to six years' transportation, afterwards commuted on account of his age and health to simple imprisonment at Mandalay.

The prosecution of a man of Tilak's popularity and influence at a time when neither the Imperial Government nor the Government of India had realized the full danger of the situation was undoubtedly a grave measure of which a weaker Government than that of Bombay under Sir George Clarke might well have s.h.i.+rked the responsibility. There were serious riots after the trial. From the moment of his arrest Tilak's followers had put it about amongst the mill-hands that he was in prison because he was their friend and had sought to obtain better pay for them. Some of his supporters are said to have declared during the trial that there would be a day's bloodshed for every year to which he might be sentenced by the Court, and, as a matter of fact, he was sentenced to six years' imprisonment and the riots lasted six days. The rioting a.s.sumed at times a very threatening character. The European police frequently had to use their revolvers, and the troops had several times to fire in self-defence. But rigorous orders had been issued by the authorities to avoid as far as possible the shedding of blood, and both the police and the military forces exercised such steady self-restraint that casualties were relatively few, and the violence of the mob never vented itself upon the European population of the city. The gravity of the disturbances, however, showed the extent and the lawless character of the influence which Tilak had already acquired over the lower cla.s.ses in Bombay, and not merely over the turbulent mill-hands. In the heart of the city many Hindu shops were closed "out of sympathy with Tilak," and the most violent rioting on one day occurred amongst the Bhattias and Banias employed in the cloth market, who had hitherto been regarded as very orderly and rather timid folk. The trouble in Bombay was certainly not a sudden and spontaneous outburst of popular feeling. It bore throughout the impress of careful and deliberate organization. By a happy combination of sympathy and firmness Sir George Clarke had, however, won the respect of the vast majority of the community, and though 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--perhaps the heaviest which has been dealt--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."

The agitation in the Deccan did not die out with Tilak's disappearance, for he left his stamp upon a new generation, which he had educated and trained. More than a year after Tilak had been removed to Mandalay, his doctrines bore fruit in the murder of Mr. Jackson, the Collector of Nasik--a murder which, in the whole lamentable record of political crimes in India, stands out in many ways pre-eminently infamous and significant. The chief executive officer of a large district, "Pundit"

Jackson, as he was familiarly called, was above all a scholar, devoted to Indian studies, and his sympathy with all forms of Indian thought was as genuine as his acquaintance with them was profound. His affection for the natives was such as, perhaps, to blind him to their faults, and like the earliest victims of the Indian Mutiny he entertained to the very last an almost childlike confidence in the loyalty of the whole people.

Only a few days before his death he expressed his conviction that disaffection had died out in Nasik, and that he could go anywhere, and at any hour without the slightest risk of danger. That he was very generally respected and even beloved by many there can be no doubt, and there is no reason to question the sincerity of the regrets which found expression on the announcement of his impending transfer to Bombay in a series of farewell entertainments, both public and private, by the inhabitants of the city. Only two days before the fatal 21st of December, an ode in Marathi addressed to him at a reception organized by the Munic.i.p.al Council dwelt specially upon his gentleness of soul and kindliness of manner.

Yet this was the man whom the fanatical champions of Indian Nationalism in the Deccan singled out for a.s.sa.s.sination as a protest against British tyranny. The trial of the actual murderer and of those who aided and abetted him abundantly demonstrated the cold-blooded premeditation which characterized this crime. Numerous consultations had taken place ever since the previous September between the murderer and his accomplices as to the manner and time of the deed. It was repeatedly postponed because the accomplices who belonged to Nasik were afraid of rendering active a.s.sistance which might compromise them, though they were ready enough to arm the hand of the wretched youth from Aurungabad who had volunteered to strike the blow. Ready as he was to kill any Englishman, he himself had some misgivings as to the expediency of selecting a victim whose personal qualities were so universally recognized, and these misgivings were only allayed by the a.s.surance that all that was mere hypocrisy on poor Jackson's part. It was the news of Jackson's approaching departure for Bombay that finally precipitated the catastrophe. The murderer practised carefully with the pistol given to him and other precautions were taken so that, even if the first attempt was foiled, Jackson should not escape alive from the theatre--the native theatre which he had been asked to honour with his attendance. So the young Chitpavan Brahman, Ananta Luxman Kanhere, waylaid the Englishman as he was entering, shot him first in the back, and then emptied the contents of his revolver upon him, as he turned round. Mr. Jackson fell dead in front of the friends who were accompanying him, two young English ladies and a young civilian of his staff, who had only joined a month before from England and faced without flinching this gruesome initiation into the service.

It all happened in a moment, and the native Deputy Collector, Mr.

Pals.h.i.+kar, who leapt forward to Mr. Jackson's a.s.sistance, was only able to strike down the murderer and tear from him the second weapon with which he was armed. Thanks also to Mr. Pals.h.i.+kar's presence of mind, information was at once sent to the railway station, and the escape of some of the accomplices prevented, whose confessions materially helped in promoting the ends of justice.

But besides the facts which were brought out in evidence during the trial at Bombay, there are some features connected with the crime to which attention may be usefully directed, as they lie outside the province of the Law Courts. In the first place, it must be noted that not only the murderer but the majority of those implicated in the crime were Chitpavan Brahmans, and at the same time they were the strange products both of the Western education which we have imported into India and of the religious revivalism which underlies the present political agitation. They were certainly moral, if not physical, degenerates, and most of them notoriously depraved, none bearing in this respect a worse character than the actual murderer. I happened, when at Nasik, to see the latter whilst he was performing his ablutions in front of the Government building in which he was confined. Four policemen were in charge of him, but he seemed absolutely unconcerned, and after having washed himself leisurely, proceeded to discharges his devotions, looking around all the while with a certain self-satisfied composure, before returning to his cell. His appearance was puny, undergrown, and effeminate, and his small, narrow, and elongated head markedly prognathous, but he exercised over some of his companions a pa.s.sionate, if unnatural, fascination which, I have been told by one who was present at the trial, betrayed itself shamelessly in their att.i.tude and the glances they exchanged with him during the proceedings. Distorted pride of race and of caste combined with neuroticism and eroticism appear to have co-operated here in producing as complete a type of moral perversion as the records of criminal pathology can well show.

What are the secret forces by which these wretched puppets were set in motion? Their activity was certainly not spontaneous. Who was it that pulled the strings? There is reason to believe that the revolver with which the murder was committed was one of a batch sent out by the Indian ringleaders, who until the murder of Sir W. Curzon-Wyllie, had their headquarters at the famous "India House," in Highgate, of which Swami Krishnavarma was originally one of the moving spirits. Upon this and other cognate points the trial of Vinayak Savarkar, formerly the London correspondent of one of Tilak's organs and a familiar of the "India House," and of some twenty-five other Hindus on various charges of conspiracy which is now proceeding in the High Court of Bombay, may be expected to throw some very instructive light.

The atmosphere of Nasik was no doubt exceptionally favourable for such morbid growths. For Nasik is no ordinary provincial town of India. It is one of the great strongholds of Hinduism. Its population is only about 25,000, but of these about 9,000 belong to the Brahmanical caste, though only about 1,000 are Chitpavan Brahmans, the rest being mainly Deshastha Brahmans, another great sept of the Deccanee sacerdotal caste. It is a city of peculiar sanct.i.ty with the Hindus. The sacred G.o.davery--so sacred that it is called there the _Ganga_--i.e. the Ganges--flows through it, and its bathing _ghats_ which line the river banks and its ancient temples and innumerable shrines attract a constant flow of pilgrims from all parts of India. Indeed, many of the great Hindu houses of India maintain there a family priest to look after their spiritual interests. Nasik was, moreover, a city beloved of the Peshwas, and, next to Poona preserves, perhaps, more intimate a.s.sociations with the great days of the Mahratta Empire than any other city of the Deccan.

But though no doubt these facts might account for a certain latent bitterness against the alien rulers who dashed the cup of victory away from the lips of the Mahrattas, just as the latter were establis.h.i.+ng their ascendency on the crumbling ruins of the Moghul Empire, they do not suffice to account for the att.i.tude of the people generally in presence of such a crime as the a.s.sa.s.sination of Mr. Jackson. For if murder is a heinous crime by whomsoever it may be committed, it ranks amongst Hindus as specially heinous when committed by a Brahman. How is it that in this instance, instead of outcasting the murderer, many Brahmans continued more or less secretly to glorify his crime as "the striking down of the flag from the fort"? How is it that, when there was ample evidence to show that murder had been in the air of Nasik for several months before the perpetration of the deed, not a single warning, not a single hint, ever reached Mr. Jackson, except from the police, whose advice, unfortunately, his blindly trustful nature led him to ignore to the very end? How is it that, even after its perpetration, though there was much genuine sympathy with the victim and many eloquent speeches were delivered to express righteous abhorrence of the crime, no practical help was afforded to the authorities in pursuing the ramifications of the conspiracy which had "brought disgrace on the holy city of Nasik"?

All this opens up wide fields for speculation, but there is one point which a statement solemnly made by the murderer of Mr. Jackson has placed beyond the uncertainties of speculation. In reply to the magistrate who asked him why he committed the murder, Kanhere said:--

I read of many instances of oppression in the _Kesari_, the _Rashtramat_ and the _Kal_ and other newspapers. I think that by killing _sahibs_ [Englishmen] we people can get justice.

I never got injustice myself nor did any one I know. I now regret killing Mr. Jackson. I killed a good man causelessly.

Can anything be much more eloquent and convincing than the terrible pathos of this confession?[6] The three papers named by Kanhere were Tilak's organs. It was no personal experience or knowledge of his own that had driven Kanhere to his frenzied deed, but the slow persistent poison dropped into his ear by the Tilak Press. Though it was Kanhere's hand that struck down "a good man causelessly," was not Tilak rather than Kanhere the real author of the murder? It was merely the story of the Poona murders of 1897 over again.

Other incidents besides the Nasik tragedy have occurred since Tilak's conviction to show how dangerous was the spirit which his doctrines had aroused. One of the, gravest, symptomatically, was the happily unsuccessful attempt to throw a bomb at the Viceroy and Lady Minto whilst they were driving through the streets of Ahmedabad during their visit to the Bombay Presidency last November. For that outrage const.i.tuted an ominous breach of all the old Hindu traditions which invest the personal representative of the Sovereign with a special sanct.i.ty.

But in spite of spasmodic outbreaks, of which we may not yet have seen the end, aggressive disloyalty in the Deccan has been at least temporarily set back since the downfall of Tilak. The firmer att.i.tude adopted by the Government of India and such repressive measures as the Press Act, combined with judicious reforms, have done much; but it was by the prosecution of Tilak that the forces of militant unrest lost their ablest and boldest leader--perhaps the only one who might have concentrated their direction, not only in the Deccan, but in the whole of India, in his own hands and given to the movement, with all its varied and often conflicting tendencies, an organization and unity which it still happily seems to lack.

CHAPTER V.

POONA AND KOLHAPUR.

It is not, after all, in British India (i.e., in that part of India which we directly administer) that the Brahmanical and reactionary character of Indian unrest, at any rate in the Deccan, can best be studied. There it can always be disguised under the "patriotic" aspects of a revolt against alien rule. To appreciate its real tendencies we must go to a Native State of the Deccan about 100 miles south of Poona.

Kolhapur is the most important of the Native States under the charge of the Bombay Government, and its ruler is the only ruling Mahratta chief who can claim direct descent from the great s.h.i.+vaji, the "s.h.i.+vaji-Maharaj" whose cult Tilak made one of the central features of his political propaganda. He is the "Chhatrapati Maharajah," and is acknowledged to be as such the head of the Mahratta Princes of India.

One would have thought that such a lineage would have sufficed in itself to invest the Maharajah of Kolhapur with a certain measure of sanct.i.ty in the eyes of Tilak and his followers. Far from it. His Highness is an enlightened ruler and a man of great simplicity of character. He takes a keen interest in the administration of his State, and has undertaken, at no small cost to his Exchequer, one of the most important irrigation works yet attempted in any Native State. But he committed what Tilak and his friends regarded as two unforgivable offences: he fought against the intolerance of the Brahmans and he is a faithful friend end ally of the British _Raj_. Hence they set in motion against him, the descendant of s.h.i.+vaji, in his own State, exactly the same machinery of agitation and conspiracy which they have set in motion against British rule in British India.

It is a curious and most instructive story. There had been long minorities in Kolhapur, and, especially during the more or less nominal reign of the present Maharajah's predecessor, s.h.i.+vaji IV., who ultimately went mad, the Prime Minister, a Chitpavan Brahman of Ratnagiri, acquired almost supreme power in the State, and filled every important post with his fellow caste men, of whom he introduced more than a hundred into the public service. Under Chitpavan rule the interests of the people of the soil were systematically neglected in Kolhapur, as they had been throughout the Deccan in the later days of the Chitpavan theocracy at Poona, and privileges and possessions were showered upon members of the favoured caste. On his accession in 1894 the present Maharajah appointed as his Prime Minister, with a view to very necessary reforms in the administration, a Kayastha Prabhu, Rao Bahadur Sabnis, who, though a high-caste Hindu, was not a Brahman. There has long been great rivalry between the Brahmans and the Prabhus, who belong mostly to the moderate progressive school of Hinduism. The appointment of Mr. Sabnis, besides portending unpalatable reforms, was therefore in itself very unwelcome to the Kolhapur Brahmans, amongst whom one of the most influential, Mr. B.N. Jos.h.i.+, the Chief Judge, was a personal friend of Tilak. Consternation increased when the young Maharajah announced his intention of promoting to positions of trust such non-Brahmans as should be found capable of filling them and actually started educating non-Brahmans for the purpose. In order to put pressure upon their ruler, the Brahmans had recourse to one of the most powerful weapons with which the semi-religious, semi-social structure of Hinduism has armed them. They questioned his caste and refused to recite at certain religious ceremonies in his family the Vedic hymns, to which as a Kshatriya (i.e., as a member of the "twice-born" caste ranking next to the Brahmans) his Highness claimed to be traditionally ent.i.tled.

The stalwart Brahmans of the Deccan allege, it seems, that in this _Kali Yuga_, or Age of Darkness, there can be no Kshatriyas, since there is no room or a warrior caste in the orthodox sense under an alien rule, and that therefore the Hindus who are neither Brahmans nor pariahs can at best be Shudras--a "clean" caste, but not even ent.i.tled to wear the "sacred thread" reserved for the highest castes.

The Maharajah remained firm, for this insult, though aimed chiefly at him, affected equally all high-caste Mahrattas who were not Brahmans. To their credit be it said, several of the more progressive Brahmans, braving the pressure of their fellow caste-men at Poona and in Kolhapur itself, stood by his Highness. The dispute was aggravated when the Rajpadhya--the family priest of the Kolhapur ruling family--himself refused the Vedic ritual to his Highness, even when two Judges, both Brahmans, who were appointed to form with him a committee of three to decide the issue, p.r.o.nounced in favour of the Maharajah's claim. His Highness then took the case to the Sankeshwar Shankaracharya, the highest religious authority with jurisdiction in such matters. But the feud only grew the more bitter, as, owing to the death of the inc.u.mbent of that high office, rival candidatures were put forward to the succession by the Maharajah's supporters on the one hand and by Tilak and his friends on the other. To the present day the feud continues, and the present Shankaracharya is not recognized by the Poona school of Brahmans. Nor is he likely to be, as he has had the unique courage publicly to condemn as a Brahman the murder of Mr. Jackson by Brahmans.

I have already remarked with reference to the Nasik tragedy that, if murder is a heinous crime by whomsoever committed, it ranks amongst Hindus as specially heinous when committed by a Brahman; and I have asked several Brahmans how it is that instead of outcasting the murderer many Brahmans continue more or less secretly to glorify his crime. Some have admitted that there is a strong case for the public excommunication of Brahmans guilty of political murder, some have regretted that no such action has ever been taken by the caste authorities, some have argued that caste organization has been so loosened that any collective action would be impracticable. Only in Kolhapur has a Brahman, qualified to speak with the highest religious authority in the name of Hindu sacred law, been found to have in this respect the courage of his convictions.

This Brahman was no less a personage than the Shankaracharya of the Karveer Petha, who took the very noteworthy step of issuing a proclamation solemnly reprobating the murder committed by a Brahman "in the holy city of Nasik" as "a stain on the Brahmanical religion of mercy emphatically preached by Manu and other law-givers." After paying a warm tribute to Mr. Jackson's personal qualities and great learning, and quoting sacred texts to show that "such a murder is to be condemned the more when a Brahman commits it," and renders the murderer liable to the most awful penalties in the next world, the proclamation proceeded to declare that "his Holiness is pleased to excommunicate the wicked persons who have committed the present offence, and who shall commit similar offences against the State, and none of the disciples of this Petha shall have any dealings with such sinful men."

Amongst the majority of Brahmans in Kolhapur and elsewhere this proclamation, I fear, found no echo, for their hostility towards their own Maharajah had often a.s.sumed or encouraged criminal forms of violence. It had certainly not remained confined to the spiritual domain, and it became absolutely savage when, in 1902, his Highness declared that he would reserve at least half the posts in the State for qualified men of the non-Brahman communities. Under the constant inspiration of Poona, the Tilak Press waged relentless war against his Highness, preaching disaffection towards his Government, just as it preached disaffection towards the British _Raj_; and the agitation in Kolhapur itself was reinforced by the advent of a large number of Poona Brahmans who, in consequence of a recrudescence of plague, fled from that city to the Maharajah's capital. They flung themselves eagerly into the fray, and had the audacity even to start a mock "Parliament." But the Maharajah was determined to be master in his own State, and in Mr.

Sabnis he had found a Prime Minister who loyally and courageously carried out his policy for the improvement of the administration and the spread of education amongst the non-Brahman castes. The Maharajah realizes that Brahman ascendency cannot be broken down permanently unless the non-Brahman castes are adequately equipped to compete with them in the public services. Amongst these there is plenty of loyalty to the ruling chief, for his Mahratta subjects have not wholly forgotten the tyranny of Chitpavan Brahman rule either under s.h.i.+vaji IV.'s Prime Minister or in the less recent times of the Poona Peshwas. One of the most interesting inst.i.tutions in Kolhapur is a hostel specially endowed for non-Brahman, Mahratta, Mahomedan, and Jain youths who are following the courses of the Rajaram College. The control of education plays in Kolhapur as conspicuous a part as at Poona in the struggle between the forces of order and disorder, and it is amongst the Kolhapur youth that the latter have made their most strenuous exertions and with the same lawless results.

The first organization started at Kolhapur in imitation of Poona was a s.h.i.+vaji club, with which were a.s.sociated bands of gymnasts, Ganpati choirs, an anti-cow-killing society, &c., all on the lines of those founded by Tilak. It was suppressed in 1900 as several of its members had been implicated in the disturbances at Bir, where a young "patriot"

had proclaimed himself Rajah and collected a sufficient number of armed followers to require a military force to suppress the rebellion. The disturbances at Bir were, in fact, the starting point of that new form of political propagandism which takes the shape of dacoities or armed robberies for the benefit of the "patriotic" war-chest. After the suppression of the Kolhapur s.h.i.+vaji Club, many of its leading members disappeared for a time, but only to carry on their operations in other parts of India, where they entered into relations with secret societies of a similar type. Three years later the club had been practically revived under the new name of "Belapur Swami Club," so called in honour of the late Swami of Belapur, to whose wooden slippers the members of the club were in the habit of doing wors.h.i.+p, whilst his shrine was used as a sanctuary for sedition-mongers and a store-house for illicit weapons. "Political" dacoities were soon in vogue again, and in 1905 there was an epidemic of house-breaking in and around Kolhapur, which enriched the club with several thousands of rupees and a few arms. Seven members were finally arrested and some made full confessions. All of these except one were Brahmans and mostly quite well connected. But even those who were convicted got off with light sentences, and the campaign, which clearly had powerful aiders and abettors both inside Kolhapur and outside, was only temporarily checked.

Nor was it to stop at dacoities. A regular semi-military organization was introduced, and bands of young men used to go out into the country to carry out mimic manoeuvres. It is of no slight significance that photographs have been discovered of groups of these young men--some of whom were subsequently convicted for serious offences--with Tilak himself in their midst. They were in constant communication with Poona, and when the Poona extremists began to specialize on bombs they were amongst the neophytes of the new cult. A conspiracy was hatched of which the admitted purpose was to murder Colonel Ferris, the Political Agent, at the wedding of the Maharajah's daughter on March 21, 1908, but, if it had been carried out successfully, the Maharajah himself and many of his other guests would almost inevitably have been killed at the same time.

For, as was disclosed in the subsequent trial, a bomb was prepared and despatched from Poona which was to have been hurled into the wedding _pandal_ or enclosure railed off in the courtyard of the Palace for the Maharajah and his family and the princ.i.p.al guests, including Colonel Ferris. Fortunately the bomb, which was subsequently discovered, did not reach Kolhapur in time. The conspirators had to fall back upon less potent weapons. Thanks to the Arms Act, which is one of the favourite grievances of Indian Nationalism, they had great difficulty in obtaining arms, but they secured a few, and on April 16, 1908, when Colonel Ferris, who was retiring, left Kolhapur, some of the conspirators followed him into the train, and, alighting at one of the stations, attempted to shoot him, but, again fortunately, their cartridges missed fire. A few weeks later placards giving formulae for the making of bombs were actually posted up on the doors of schools and other buildings, and this was followed by a theft of dangerous chemicals from a Kolhapur private school. Finally ten youths, nine of whom were Brahmans, were committed for trial on these offences before a special Sessions Judge, lent by Government, and eight of them were convicted.

Quite as much as these convictions the downfall of Tilak helped to quell the forces of unrest in the State of Kolhapur as well as in the rest of the Deccan. For in Kolhapur, as in Poona, it was the Brahman Press controlled by Tilak that familiarized the rising generation with the idea of political murder. In the year which preceded the Kolhapur conspiracy, and just after the first dastardly bomb outrage at Muzafferpur to which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy fell victims, an article appeared in the _Vishvavritta_, a Kolhapur monthly magazine, for which its editor, Mr. Bij.a.purkar, a Brahman, who until 1905 had been Professor of Sanscrit at the Rajaram College, was subsequently prosecuted and convicted. The article, which was significantly headed "The potency of Vedic prayers," recalled various cases in which the Vedas lay down the duty of retaliation upon "alien" oppressors. "To kill such people involves no sin, and when Kshatriyas and Vaidhyas do not come forward to kill them, Brahmans should take up arms and protect religion. When one is face to face with such people they should be slaughtered without hesitation. Not the slightest blame attaches to the slayer." Moreover, lest these exhortations should be construed merely as a philosophic treatise on Vedic teaching, the writer was careful to add that "these doctrines are not to be kept in books, but must be taught even to babes and sucklings."

Thus in a Native State of the Deccan, just as in British-administered Deccan, we find the same methods and the same doctrines adopted by the Brahmans, with the same demoralizing results, in pursuance of the same purpose, now under one guise and now under another, the maintenance or restoration of their own theocratic power, whether it be threatened by a Hindu ruler of their own race, or by "alien" rulers and the "alien"

civilization for which they stand.

CHAPTER VI.

BENGAL BEFORE THE PARt.i.tION.

It is a far cry in every sense from the Deccan to Bengal. There is a greater diversity of races, languages, social customs, physical conditions, &c., between the different provinces of India than is often to be found between the different countries of Europe. Few differ more widely than the Deccan and Bengal--the Deccan, a great table-land raised on an average over 2,000ft. above sea level, broken by many deep-cut river valleys and throwing up lofty ridges of bare rock, entirely dependent for its rainfall upon the south-west monsoon, which alone and in varying degrees of abundancy relieves the thirst of a thin soil parched during the rest of the year by a fierce dry heat--Bengal, a vast alluvial plain, with a hot, damp climate, watered and fertilized by great rivers like the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, which drain the greater part of the Himalayas. The Deccan is thinly populated; it has no great waterways; there are few large cities and few natural facilities of communication between them, but the population, chiefly Mahratta Hindus, with a fair sprinkling of Mahomedans, survivors of the Moghul Empire, are a virile race, wiry rather than st.u.r.dy, with tenacious customs and traditions and a language--Marathi--which has a copious popular literature. Maharashtra, moreover, has historical traditions, by no means inglorious, of its own. It has played, and is conscious of having played, a conspicuous part in the history of India down to relatively recent times; and the Brahmans of Maharashtra, who were once its rulers, have preserved to the present day the instincts and the aspirations of a ruling race, combined with great force and subtleness of intellect. In Bengal, on the other hand, there is a dense population, concentrated in part in large towns and cities along the great waterways, but also spread over the whole surface of the rich plains and deltas. The Bengalees are a quick-witted, imaginative, and warm-hearted people who have been the victims rather than the makers of history. The tide of conquest has swept over them again and again from times immemorial, but generally without leaving any lasting impression upon their elastic and rather timid temperament. With all his receptive qualities, his love of novelty and readiness to learn, his retentive memory, his luxuriant imagination, his gift of facile eloquence, the Bengalee has seldom shown himself to be a born ruler of men.

All these differences are reflected in the unrest in Bengal, though on the surface it presents a close resemblance to the unrest in the Deccan, and there have been constant contact and co-operation between the leaders. Except as a geographical expression, Bengal is practically a creation of British rule and of Western education. The claim of the modern Bengalees to be regarded as a "nation" has no historical basis.

The inhabitants of Bengal are of mixed Dravidian, Mongolian, and Aryan origin, and in no other speech of India, writes Sir H. Risley, is the literary language cultivated by the educated cla.s.ses more widely divorced, not only from the many popular dialects spoken in the province, but from that of ordinary conversation. Literary Bengalee is not even an altogether indigenous growth. It owes its birth mainly to the labours of English missionaries, like Carey, in the first half of the last century, a.s.sisted by the Pundits of Calcutta. Yet it is upon this community of language that the Bengalees mainly found their claim to recognition as a "nation"; or, to put it in another form, their claim rests upon education as they understand it--i.e., upon the high proportion of literacy that exists in Bengal as compared with most parts of India. Education is unquestionably a power in Bengal. It has not superseded caste, which in all essentials is still unbroken, but it has to some extent overshadowed it.

The Brahmans of Bengal have never within historical times been a politically dominant force. They did not condescend to take office even in the remote days when there were Hindu Kings in Bengal, and still less under Mahomedan rule. They were content to be learned in Sanscrit and in the Hindu Scriptures, and they left secular knowledge to the Kayasthas, or writer caste, with whom they preserved, notwithstanding certain rigid barriers, much more intimate relations than usually exist between different Hindu castes. There is a tradition that the highest Brahman septs of Bengal are the descendants of five priests of special sanct.i.ty whom King Adisur of Eastern Bengal in the ninth century attracted to his Court from the holiest centres of Hinduism, and that the servants who accompanied them founded the septs to which precedence is still accorded amongst the Kayasthas of Bengal, and both have been at pains to preserve the purity of their descent by a most exclusive and complicated, and often unsavoury, system of matrimonial alliances known as Kulinism.

Hence in Bengal the Brahmans share their social primacy to an extent unknown in other parts of India with the Kayasthas, and also with another high caste, the Vaidhyas, who formerly monopolized the practice of Hindu medicine. The _nexus_ is education, and that _nexus_ has been strengthened since the advent of British rule and of Western education.

When the educational enterprise of the early British missionaries was followed up, under the impulse of Dr. Duff, the greatest figure in the missionary annals of India, and of Ram Mohun Roy, the most learned and earnest of all reforming Brahmans, by the famous Government Minute of March 7, 1835, many distinguished members of all these three castes responded to the call and began to qualify for employment under Government and for the liberal professions that were opening out in the new India we were making. They were first in the field, and, though other castes have followed suit, it is they who have practically monopolized the public offices, the Bar, the Press, and the teaching profession. It was they who were the moving spirits of the Brahmo Samaj and of Social Reform when progressive ideas seemed to be on the point of permeating Hinduism. But when the reaction came which first found public expression in the resistance provoked by the Age of Consent Act of 1891 for mitigating the evils of Hindu child marriage, and the spirit of reform was deflected from the social and religious into the political domain, it was they again who showed the most apt.i.tude to clothe the new political movement in all the forms of Western political activities. It was Mr. W.O. Bonnerjee, an able Bengalee lawyer of moderate and enlightened views, who presided over the first Indian National Congress at Bombay and delivered an opening address of which the moderation has rarely been emulated, and though the Congress movement originated in Bombay rather than in Bengal, the fluent spokesmen of Bengal very soon had the satisfaction of feeling that for the first time in Indian history Bengal might claim to be marching in the van.

Owing to his greater plasticity and imagination, the Bengalee has certainly often a.s.similated English ideas as few other Indians have.

None can question, for instance, the genuine Western culture and sound learning of men like Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee, the Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University, or Dr. Rash Behari Ghose, than whom the English Bar itself has produced few greater lawyers; and it would be easy to quote many other names of scarcely less distinction amongst the many highly educated Bengalees who have served and are still serving the State with undoubted loyalty and ability. With the spread of English education, habits of tolerance have grown up, at any rate as to externals; and though on the crucial point of inter-marriage caste law has lost hardly anything of its rigidity, religion, in the ordinary intercourse of life, seems to sit almost as lightly upon educated Hindu society in Calcutta as upon English society in London. Another result of English education, combined with the absence of such traditions of Brahman supremacy as are still recent and powerful in the Deccan, has been to invest the political aspirations of the Bengalees with that democratic tinge which has won the sympathies of English Radicals; and, even if the tinge in most cases be very slight, the Bengalee's own adaptability enables him to clothe his opinions with extraordinary skill and verisimilitude in the form which he intuitively knows will best suit an English audience.

Of any real democratic spirit amongst the educated cla.s.ses of Bengal it is difficult to find a trace, for they are separated from the ma.s.ses whom they profess to represent by a social gulf which only a few of the most enlightened amongst them have so far even recognized the necessity of making some attempt to bridge if they wish to give the slightest plausibility to their professions. It would be less far-fetched, though the a.n.a.logy would still be very halting, to compare the position of the Bengalee "moderates" with that of the middle cla.s.ses in England before the Reform Bill of 1832, who had no idea of emanc.i.p.ating the ma.s.ses, but only of emanc.i.p.ating themselves to some extent from the control of a close oligarchy. From this point of view there are undoubtedly, and especially amongst the elder generation, many educated Bengalees who are convinced that in claiming by political agitation a larger share in the administration and government of the country they are merely carrying into practice the blameless theories of civic life and political activity which their reading of English history has taught them. Their influence, however, has been rapidly undermined by a new and essentially revolutionary school, who combine with a spirit of revolt against all Western authority a reversion to some of the most reactionary conceptions of authority that the East has ever produced, and, unfortunately, it is this new school which has now got hold of the younger educated cla.s.ses.