India's Struggle For Independence Part 4

Indian newspapers began to find their feet in the 1870s. They became highly critical of Lord Lytton's administration, especially regarding its inhuman approach towards the victims of the famine of 1876-77. As a result the Government decided to make a sudden strike at the Indian language newspapers, since they reached beyond the middle cla.s.s readers.h.i.+p. The Vernacular Press Act of 1878, directed only against Indian language newspapers, was conceived in great secrecy and pa.s.sed at a single sitting of the Imperial Legislative Council. The Act provided for the confiscation of the printing press, paper and other materials of a newspaper if the Government believed that it was publis.h.i.+ng seditious materials and had flouted an official warning.

Indian nationalist opinion firmly opposed the Act. The first great demonstration on an issue of public importance was organized in Calcutta on this question when a large meeting was held in the Town Hall. Various public bodies and the Press also campaigned against the Act. Consequently, it was repealed in 1881 by Lord Ripon.

The manner in which the Indian newspapers cleverly fought such measures was brought out by a very amusing and dramatic incident. The Act was in particular aimed at the Amrita Bazar Patrika which came out at the time in both Bengali and English. The objective was to take summary action against it. But when the officials woke up the morning after the Act was pa.s.sed, they discovered to their dismay that the Patrika had foxed them; overnight, the editors had converted it into an English newspaper!

Another remarkable journalistic coup occurred in 1905. Delivering the Convocation Address at Calcutta University, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, said that 'the highest ideal of truth is to a large extent a Western conception. Undoubtedly, truth took a high place in the moral codes of the West before it had been similarly honoured in the East.'3 The insinuation was that the British had taught this high conception of truth to Indians.

Next day, the Amrita Bazar Patrika came out with this speech on the front page along with a box reproducing an extract from Curzon's book the Problems of the East in which he had taken credit for lying while on a visit to Korea. He had written that he had told the President of the Korean Foreign Office that he was forty when he was actually thirty-three because he had been told that in the East respect went with age. He has ascribed his youthful appearance to the salubrious climate of Korea! Curzon had also recorded his reply to the President's question whether he was a near relation of Queen Victoria as follows: ' "No," I replied, "I am not." But observing the look of disgust that pa.s.sed over his countenance, I was fain to add, "I am, however, as yet an unmarried man," with which unscrupulous suggestion I completely regained the old gentleman's favour.'4 The whole of Bengal had a hearty laugh at the discomfiture of the strait-laced Viceroy, who had not-hesitated to insult an entire people and who was fond of delivering homilies to Indians. The Weekly Times of London also enjoyed the episode. Lord Curzon's 'admiration for truth,' it wrote, 'was perhaps acquired later on in life, under his wife's management. It is pre-eminently a Yankee quality.' (Curzon's wife was an American heiress).

Surendranath Banerjea, one of the founding fathers of the Indian national movement, was the first Indian to go to jail in performance of his duty as a journalist. A dispute concerning a family idol, a saligram, had come up before Justice Norris of the Calcutta High Court. To decide the age of the idol, Norris ordered it to be brought to the Court and p.r.o.nounced that it could not be a hundred years old. This action deeply hurt the sentiments of the Bengali Hindus. Banerjea wrote an angry editorial in the Bengalee of 2 April 1883. Comparing Norris with the notorious Jeffreys and Seroggs (British judges in the 17th century, notorious for infamous conduct as judges), he said that Norris had done enough 'to show how unworthy he is of his high office.' Banerjea suggested that 'some public steps should be taken to put a quietus to the wild eccentricities of this young and raw Dispenser of Justice.'

Immediately, the High Court hauled him up for contempt of court before a bench of five judges, four of them Europeans. With the Indian judge, Romesh Chandra Mitra, dissenting, the bench convicted and sentenced him to two months imprisonment. Popular reaction was immediate and angry. There was a spontaneous hartal in the Indian part of Calcutta. Students demonstrated outside the courts smas.h.i.+ng windows and pelting the police with stones. One of the rowdy young men was Asutosh Mukherjea who later gained fame as a distinguished Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University. Demonstrations were held all over Calcutta and in many other towns of Bengal as also in Lah.o.r.e, Amritsar, Agra, Fyzabad, Poona and other cities. Calcutta witnessed for the first time several largely attended open-air meetings.

But the man who is most frequently a.s.sociated with the struggle for the freedom of the Press during the nationalist movement is Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the outstanding leader of militant nationalism. Born in 1856, Tilak devoted his entire life to the service of his country.

In 1881, along with G.G. Agarkar, he founded the newspaper Kesari (in Marathi) and Mahratta (in English). In 1888, he took over the two papers and used their columns to spread discontent against British rule and to preach national resistance to it. Tilak was a fiery and courageous journalist whose style was simple and direct and yet highly readable.

In 1893, he started the practice of using the traditional religious Ganapati festival to propagate nationalist ideas through patriotic songs and speeches. In 1896, he started the s.h.i.+vaji festival to stimulate nationalism among young Maharashtrians. In the same year, he organized an all-Maharashtra campaign for the boycott of foreign cloth in protest against the imposition of the excise duty on cotton. He was, perhaps, the first among the national leaders to grasp the important role that the lower middle cla.s.ses, peasants, artisans and workers could play in the national movement and, therefore, he saw the necessity of bringing them into the Congress fold. Criticizing the Congress for ignoring the peasant, he wrote in the Kesari in early 1897: 'The country's emanc.i.p.ation can only be achieved by removing the clouds of lethargy and indifference which have been hanging over the peasant, who is the soul of India. We must remove these clouds, and for that we must completely identify ourselves with the peasant - we must feel that he is ours and we are his.' Only when this is done would 'the Government realize that to despise the Congress is to despise the Indian Nation. Then only will the efforts of the Congress leaders be crowned with success.'5 In pursuance of this objective, he initiated a no-tax campaign in Maharashtra during 1896-97 with the help of the young workers of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha. Referring to the official famine-code, whose copies he got printed in Marathi and distributed by the thousand, he asked the famine-stricken peasants of Maharashtra to withhold payment of land revenue if their crops had failed.

In 1897, plague broke out in Poona and the Government had to undertake severe measures of segregation and house-searches. Unlike many other leaders, Tilak stayed in Poona, supported the Government and organized his own measures against the plague. But he also criticized the harsh and heartless manner in which the officials dealt with the plague-stricken people. Popular resentment against the official plague measures resulted in the a.s.sa.s.sination of Rand, the Chairman of the Plague Committee in Poona, and Lt. Ayerst by the Chaphekar brothers on 27 June 1898.

The anti-plague measures weren't the only practices that made the people irate. Since 1894, anger had been rising against the Government because of its tariff, currency and famine policy. A militant trend was rapidly growing among the nationalists and there were hostile comments in the Press. The Government was determined to check this trend and teach a lesson to the Press. Tilak was by now well-known in Maharashtra, both as a militant nationalist and as a hostile and effective journalist. The Government was looking for an opportunity to make an example of him. The Rand murder gave them the opportunity. The British-owned Press and the bureaucracy were quick to portray the Rand murder as a conspiracy by the Poona Brahmins led by Tilak.

The Government investigated the possibility of directly involving Tilak in Rand's a.s.sa.s.sination. But no proof could be found. Moreover, Tilak had condemned the a.s.sa.s.sination describing it as the horrible work of a fanatic, though he would not stop criticizing the Government, a.s.serting that it was a basic function of the Press to bring to light the unjust state of affairs and to teach people how to defend their rights. And so, the Government decided to arrest him under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code on the charge of sedition, that is, spreading disaffection and hatred against the Government.

Tilak was arrested on 27 July 1879 and tried before Justice Strachey and a jury of six Europeans and three Indians. The charge was based on the publication in the Kesari of 15 June of a poem t.i.tled 's.h.i.+vaji's Utterances' read out by a young man at the s.h.i.+vaji Festival and on a speech Tilak had delivered at the Festival in defence of s.h.i.+vaji's killings of Afzal Khan.

In 's.h.i.+vaji's Utterances,' the poet had shown s.h.i.+vaji awakening in the present and telling his countrymen: 'Alas! Alas! I now see with my own eyes the ruin of my country . . . Foreigners are dragging out Lakshmi violently by the hand (kar in Marathi which also means taxes) and by persecution . . . The wicked Akabaya (misfortune personified) stalks with famine through the whole country . . . How have all these kings (leaders) become quite effeminate like helpless figures on the chess-board?'

Tilak's defence of s.h.i.+vaji's killing of Afzal Khan was portrayed by the prosecution as an incitement to kill British officials. The overall accusation was that Tilak propagated the views in his newspaper, that the British had no right to stay in India and any and all means could be used to get rid of them.

Looking back, it is clear that the accusation was not wrong. But the days when, under Gandhiji's guidance, freedom fighters would refuse to defend themselves and openly proclaim their sedition were still far off. The politics of sacrifice and open defiance of authority were still at an early stage. It was still necessary to claim that anti-colonial activities were being conducted within the limits of the law. And so Tilak denied the official charges and declared that he had no intention of preaching disaffection against alien rule. Within this 'old' style of facing the rulers, Tilak set a high example of boldness and sacrifice. He was aware that he was initiating a new kind of politics which must gain the confidence and faith of the people by the example of a new type of leader, while carefully avoiding premature radicalism which would invite repression by the Government and lead to the cowing down of the people and, consequently, the isolation of the leaders from the people.

Pressure was brought upon Tilak by some friends to withdraw his remarks and apologise. Tilak's reply was: 'My position (as a leader) amongst the people entirely depends upon my character . . . Their (Government's) object is to humiliate the Poona leaders, and I think in me they will not find a "kutcha" (weak) reed . . . Then you must remember beyond a certain stage we are all servants of the people. You will be betraying and disappointing them if you show a lamentable want of courage at a critical time.'6 Judge Strachey's partisan summing up to the jury was to gain notoriety in legal circles, for he defined disaffection as 'simply the absence of affection' which amounted to the presence of hatred, enmity, disloyalty and every other form of ill-will towards the Government! The jury gave a 6 to 3 verdict holding Tilak guilty, the three dissenters being its Indian members. The Judge pa.s.sed a barbarous sentence of rigorous imprisonment for eighteen months, and this when Tilak was a member of the Bombay Legislative Council! Simultaneously several other editors of Bombay Presidency were tried and given similar harsh sentences.

Tilak's imprisonment led to widespread protests all over the country. Nationalist newspapers and political a.s.sociations, including those run by Tilak's critics like the Moderates, organized a country-wide movement against this attack on civil liberties and the freedom of the Press. Many newspapers came out with black borders on the front page. Many published special supplements hailing Tilak as a martyr in the battle for the freedom of the Press. Addressing Indian residents in London, Dadabhai Naoroji accused the Government of initiating Russian (Tsarist) methods of administration and said that gagging the Press was simply suicidal.7 Overnight Tilak became a popular all-India leader and the t.i.tle of Lokamanya (respected and honoured by the people) was given to him. He became a hero, a living symbol of the new spirit of self-sacrifice, - a new leader who preached with his deeds. When at the Indian National Congress session at Amraoti in December 1897, Surendranath Banerjea made a touching reference to Tilak and said that 'a whole nation is in tears,' the entire audience stood up and enthusiastically cheered.8 In 1898, the Government amended Section 124A and added a new Section 153A to the penal code, making it a criminal offence for anyone to attempt 'to bring into contempt' the Government of India or to create hatred among different cla.s.ses, that is vis-a-vis Englishmen in India. This once again led to nation-wide protest.

The Swades.h.i.+ and Boycott Movement, which we shall look at in more detail later on in Chapter 10, led to a new wave of repression in the country. The people once again felt angry and frustrated. This frustration led the youth of Bengal to take to the path of individual terrorism. Several cases of bomb attacks on officials occurred in the beginning of 1908. The Government felt unnerved. Once again newspapers became a major target. Fresh laws for controlling the Press were enacted, prosecutions against a large number of newspapers and their editors were launched and the Press was almost completely suppressed. In this atmosphere, it was inevitable that the Government's attention would turn towards Lokamanya Tilak, the mainstay of the Boycott movement and militant politics outside Bengal.

Tilak wrote a series of articles on the arrival of the 'Bomb' on the Indian scene. He condemned the use of violence and individual killings - he described Nihilism as 'this poisonous tree' - but, simultaneously, he held the Government responsible for suppressing criticism and dissent and the urge of the people for greater freedom. In such an atmosphere, he said 'violence, however deplorable, became inevitable.' As he wrote in one of his articles: 'When the official cla.s.s begins to overawe the people without any reason and when an endeavour is made to produce despondency among the people by unduly frightening them, then the sound of the bomb is spontaneously produced to impart to the authorities the true knowledge that the people have reached a higher stage than the vapid one in which they pay implicit regard to such an illiberal policy of repression.'9 Once again, on 24 June 1908, Tilak was arrested and tried on the charge of sedition for having published these articles. Once again Tilak pleaded not guilty and behaved with exemplary courage. A few days before his arrest, a friendly police officer warned him of the coming event and asked Tilak to take precautionary steps. Tilak laughed and said: 'The Government has converted the entire nation into a prison and we are all prisoners. Going to prison only means that from a big cell one is confined to a smaller one.'10 In the court, Tilak posed the basic question: 'Tilak or no Tilak is not the question. The question is, do you really intend as guardians of the liberty of the Press to allow as much liberty here in India as is enjoyed by the people of England?"11 Once again the jury returned a verdict of guilty with only the two Indian members opposing the verdict. Tilak's reply was: 'There are higher powers that rule the destiny of men and nations; and it may be the Will of Providence that the cause which I represent may prosper more by my sufferings than by my remaining free.' Justice Davar awarded him the sentence of six years' transportation and after some time the Lokamanya was sent to a prison in Mandalay in Burma.

The public reaction was ma.s.sive. Newspapers proclaimed that they would defend the freedom of the Press by following Tilak's example. All markets in Bombay city were closed on 22 July, the day his conviction was announced, and remained closed for a week. The workers of all the textile mills and railway workshops went on strike for six days. Efforts to force them to go back to work led to a battle between them and the police. The army was called out and at the end of the battle sixteen workers lay dead in the streets with nearly fifty others seriously injured. Lenin hailed this as the entrance of the Indian working cla.s.s on the political stage.12 Echoes of Tilak's trial were to be heard in another not-so-distant court when Gandhiji, his political successor, was tried in 1922 for the same offence of sedition under the same Section 124A for his articles in Young India. When the Judge told him that his offence was similar to Tilak's and that he was giving him the same sentence of six years' imprisonment, Gandhiji replied: 'Since you have done me the honour of recalling the trial of the late Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, I just want to say that I consider it to be proudest privilege and honour to be a.s.sociated with his name.'13 The only difference between the two trials was that Gandhiji had pleaded guilty to the charges. This was also a measure of the distance the national movement had travelled since 1908. Tilak's contribution to this change in politics and journalism had been momentous.

9.

Propaganda in the Legislatures

Legislative Councils in India had no real official power till 1920. Yet, work done in them by the nationalists helped the growth of the national movement.

The Indian Councils Act of 1861 enlarged the Governor-General's Executive Council for the purpose of making laws. The Governor-General could now add from six to twelve members to the Executive Council. At least half of these nominations had to be non-officials, Indian or British. This council came to be known as the Imperial Legislative Council. It possessed no powers at all. It could not discuss the budget or a financial measure or any other important bill without the previous approval of the Government. It could not discuss the actions of the administration. It could not, therefore, be seen as some kind of parliament, even of the most elementary kind. As if to underline this fact, the Council met, on an average, for only twenty-five days in a year till 1892.

The Government of India remained, as before 1858, an alien despot. Nor was this accidental. While moving the Indian Councils Bill of 1861, the Secretary of State for India, Charles Wood, said: 'All experience teaches us that where a dominant race rules another, the mildest form of government is despotism.'A year later he wrote to Elgin, the Viceroy, that 'the only government suitable for such a state of things as exists in India is a despotism controlled from home.'1 This 'despotism controlled from home' was to remain the fundamental feature of the Government of India till 15 August 1947.

What was the role of Indian members in this Legislative Council? The Government had decided to add them in order to represent Indian views, for many British officials and statesmen had come to believe that one reason for the Revolt of 1857 was that Indian views were not known to the rulers. But, in practice, the Council did not serve even this purpose. Indian members were few in number - in thirty years, from 1862 to 1892, only forty-five Indians were nominated to it. Moreover, the Government invariably chose rulers of princely states or their employees, big zamindars, big merchants or retired high government officials as Indian members. Only a handful of political figures and independent intellectuals such as Syed Ahmed Khan (1878-82), Kristodas Pal (1883), V.N. Mandlik (1884-87), K.L. Nulkar (1890-91) and Rash Behari Ghosh (1892) were nominated. The overwhelming majority of Indian nominees did not represent the Indian people or emerging nationalist opinion. It was, therefore, not surprising that they completely toed the official line. There is the interesting story of Raja Dig Vijay Singh of Balarampur - nominated twice to the Council - who did not know a word of English. When asked by a relative how he voted one way or the other, he replied that he kept looking at the Viceroy and when the Viceroy raised his hand he did so too and when he lowered it he did the same!

The voting record of Indian nominees on the Council was poor. When the Vernacular Press Bill came up before the Council, only one Indian member, Maharaja Jotendra Mohan Tagore, the leader of the zamindari-dominated British Indian a.s.sociation was present. He voted for it. In 1885, the two spokesmen of the zamindars in the Council helped emasculate the pro-tenant character of the Bengal Tenancy Bill at a time when nationalist leaders like Surendranath Banerjea were agitating to make it more pro-tenant. In 1882, Jotendra Mohan Tagore and Durga Charan Laha, the representative of Calcutta's big merchants, opposed the reduction of the salt tax and recommended the reduction of the licence tax on merchants and professionals instead.2 The nationalists were demanding the opposite. In 1888, Peary Mohan Mukherjea and Dinshaw Pet.i.t, representatives of the big zamindars and big merchants respectively, supported the enhancement of the salt tax along with the non-official British members representing British business in India.3 By this time nationalists were quite active in opposing the salt tax and reacted strongly to this support. In the newspapers and from the Congress platform they described Mukherjea and Pet.i.t as 'gilded shams' and 'magnificent non-ent.i.ties.' They cited their voting behaviour as proof of the nationalist contention that the existing Legislative Councils were unrepresentative of Indian opinion. Madan Mohan Malaviya said at the National Congress session of 1890: 'We would much rather that there were no non-official members at all on the Councils than that there should be members who are not in the least in touch with people and who . . . betray a cruel want of sympathy with them' Describing Mukherjea and Pet.i.t as 'these big honourable gentlemen, enjoying private incomes and drawing huge salaries,' he asked rhetorically: 'Do you think, gentlemen, such members would be appointed to the Council if the people were allowed any voice in their selection?' The audience shouted 'No, no, never.'4 However, despite the early nationalists believing that India should eventually become self-governing, they moved very cautiously in putting forward political demands regarding the structure of the state, for they were afraid of the Government declaring their activities seditious and disloyal and suppressing them. Till 1892, their demand was limited to the expansion and reform of the Legislative Councils. They demanded wider partic.i.p.ation in them by a larger number of elected Indian members as also wider powers for the Councils and an increase in the powers of the members to 'discuss and deal with' the budget and to question and criticize the day-to-day administration.

The nationalist agitation forced the Government to make some changes in legislative functioning by the Indian Councils Act of 1892. The number of additional members of the Imperial and Provincial Legislative Councils was increased from the previous six to ten to ten to sixteen. A few of these members could be elected indirectly through munic.i.p.al committees, district boards, etc., but the official majority remained. The members were given the right to discuss the annual budget but they could neither vote on it nor move a motion to amend it. They could also ask questions but were not allowed to put supplementary questions or to discuss the answers. The 'reformed' Imperial Legislative Council met, during its tenure till 1909, on an average for only thirteen days in a year, and the number of unofficial Indian members present was only five out of twenty-four!

The nationalists were totally dissatisfied with the Act of 1892. They saw in it a mockery of their demands. The Councils were still impotent; despotism still ruled. They now demanded a majority for non-official elected members with the right to vote on the budget and, thus, to control the public purse. They raised the slogan 'no taxation without representation.' Gradually, they raised their demands. Many leaders - for example, Dadabhai Naoroji in 1904, G.K. Gokhale in 1905 and Lokamanya Tilak in 1906 began to put forward the demand for self government on the model of the self-governing colonies of Canada and Australia.

Lord Dufferin, who had prepared the outline of the Act of 1892, and other British statesmen and administrators had seen in the Legislative Councils a device to incorporate the more vocal Indian political leaders into the colonial political structure where they could, in a manner of speaking, let off their political steam. They knew that the members of the Councils enjoyed no real powers; they could only make wordy speeches and indulge in empty rhetorics, and the bureaucracy could afford to pay no attention to them.

But the British policy makers had reckoned without the political capacities of the Indian leaders who soon transformed the powerless and impotent councils, designed as mere machines for the endors.e.m.e.nt of government policies, and measures and as toys to appease the emerging political leaders.h.i.+p, into forums for ventilating popular grievances, mercilessly exposing the defects and shortcomings of the bureaucratic administration, criticizing and opposing almost every government policy and proposal, and raising basic economic issues, especially relating to public finance. They submitted the acts and policies of the Government to a ruthless examination regarding both their intention and their method and consequence. Far from being absorbed by the Councils, the nationalist members used them to enhance their own political stature in the country and to build a national movement. The safety valve was transformed into a major channel for nationalist propaganda. By sheer courage, debating skill, fearless criticism, deep knowledge and careful marshalling of data they kept up a constant campaign against the Government in the Councils undermining its political and moral influence and generating a powerful anti-imperialist sentiment.

Their speeches began to be reported at length in the newspapers and widespread public interest developed in the legislative proceedings.

The new Councils attracted some of the most prominent nationalist leaders. Surendranath Banerjea, Kalicharan Banerjee, Ananda Mohan Bose, Lal Mohan Ghosh, W.C. Bonnerji and Rash Behari Ghosh from Bengal, P. Ananda Charlu, C. Sankaran Nair and Vijayaraghavachariar from Madras, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Ayodhyanath and Bishambhar Nam from U.P., B.G. Tilak, Pherozeshah Mehta, R.M. Sayani, Chimanlal Setalvad, N.G. Chandravarkar and G.K. Gokhale from Bombay, and G.M. Chitnavis from Central Provinces were some of the Congressmen who served as members of the Provincial or Central Legislative Councils from 1893 to 1909.

The two men who were most responsible for putting the Councils to good use and introducing a new spirit in them were Pherozeshah Mehta and Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Both men were political Moderates. Both became famous for being fearlessly independent and the bete noir of British officialdom in India.

Born in 1845 in Bombay, Pherozeshah Mehta came under Dadabhai Naoroji's influence while studying law in London during the 1860s. He was one of the founders of the Bombay Presidency a.s.sociation as also the Indian National Congress. From about the middle of the 1890s till his death in 1915 he was a dominant figure in the Indian National Congress and was often accused of exercising autocratic authority over it. He was a powerful debater and his speeches were marked by boldness, lucidity, incisiveness, a ready wit and quick repartee, and a certain literary quality.

Mehta's first major intervention in the Imperial Legislative Council came in January 1895 on a Bill for the amendment of the Police Act of 1861 which enhanced the power of the local authorities to quarter a punitive police force in an area and to recover its cost from selected sections of the inhabitants of the area. Mehta pointed out that the measure was an attempt to convict and punish individuals without a judicial trial under the garb of preserving law and order. He argued: 'I cannot conceive of legislation more empirical, more retrograde, more open to abuse, or more demoralizing. It is impossible not to see that it is a piece of that empirical legislation so dear to the heart of executive officers, which will not and cannot recognize the scientific fact that the punishment and suppression of crime without injuring or oppressing innocence must be controlled by judicial procedure.' Casting doubts on the capacity and impartiality of the executive officers entrusted with the task of enforcing the Act, Mehta said: 'It would be idle to believe that they can be free from the biases, prejudices, and defects of their cla.s.s and position.'5 n.o.body would today consider this language and these remarks very strong or censorious. But they were like a bomb thrown into the ranks of a civil service which considered itself above such criticism. How dare a mere 'native' lay his sacrilegious hands on its fair name and reputation and that too in the portals of the Legislative Council? James Westland, the Finance Member, rose in the house and protested against 'the new spirit' which Mehta 'had introduced into the Council.' He had moreover uttered 'calumnies' against and 'arraigned' as a cla.s.s as biased, prejudiced, utterly incapable of doing the commonest justice . . . a most distinguished service,' which had 'contributed to the framing and consolidation of the Empire.' His remarks had gravely detracted 'from the reputation which this Council has justly acquired for the dignity, the calmness and the consideration which characterize its deliberations.'6 In other words, Mehta was accused of changing the role and character of the colonial legislatures.

The Indian reaction was the very opposite. Pherozeshah Mehta won the instant approval of political Indians, even of his political opponents like Tilak, who readily accepted Westland's description that 'a new spirit' had entered the legislatures. People were accustomed to such criticism coming from the platform or the Press but that the 'dignified' Council halls could reverberate with such sharp and fearless criticism was a novel experience. The Tribune of Lah.o.r.e commented: 'The voice that has been so long shut out from the Council Chamber - the voice of the people has been admitted through the open door of election . . . Mr. Mehta speaks as the representative of the people . . . Sir James Westland's protest is the outcry of the bureaucrat rapped over the knuckles in his own stronghold.'7 The bureaucracy was to smart under the whiplash of Mehta's rapier-like wit almost every time he spoke in the Council. We may give a few more examples of the forensic skill with which he regaled the Indians and helped destroy the moral influence and prestige of the British Indian Government and its holier-than-thou bureaucracy. The educated Indians and higher education were major bugbears of the imperialist administrators then as they are of the imperialist schools of historians today. Looking for ways and means of cutting down higher education because it was producing 'discontended and seditious babus,' the Government hit upon the expedient of counterposing to expenditure on primary education of the ma.s.ses that on the college education of the elites.

Pointing to the real motives behind this move to check the spread of higher education, Mehta remarked: 'It is very well to talk of "raising the subject to the pedestal of the ruler" but when the subject begins to press close at your heels, human nature is after all weak, and the personal experience is so intensely disagreeable that the temptation to kick back is almost irresistible.' And so, most of the bureaucrats looked upon 'every Indian college (as) a nursery for hatching broods of vipers; the less, therefore, the better.'8 In another speech, commenting on the official desire to transfer public funds from higher to primary education, he said he was reminded of 'the amiable and well-meaning father of a somewhat numerous family, addicted unfortunately to slipping off a little too often of an evening to the house over the way, who, when the mother appealed to him to do something for the education of the grown-up boys, begged of her with tears in his eyes to consider if her request was not unreasonable, when there was not even enough food and clothes for the younger children. The poor woman could not gainsay the fact, with the hungry eyes staring before her; but she could not help bitterly reflecting that the children could have food and clothes, and education to boot, if the kindly father could be induced to be good enough to spend a little less on drink and cards. Similarly, gentlemen, when we are reminded of the crying wants of the poor ma.s.ses for sanitation and pure water and medical relief and primary education, might we not respectfully venture to submit that there would be funds, and to spare, for all these things, and higher education too, if the enormous and growing resources of the country were not ruthlessly squandered on a variety of whims and luxuries, on costly residences and sumptuous furniture, on summer trips to the hills, on little holiday excursions to the frontiers, but above and beyond all, on the lavish and insatiable humours of an irresponsible military policy, enforced by the very men whose view and opinions of its necessity cannot but accommodate themselves to their own interests and ambitions.'9 The officials were fond of blaming the Indian peasant's poverty and indebtedness on his propensity to spend recklessly on marriages and festivals. In 1901, a Bill was brought in the Bombay Legislative Council to take away the peasant's right of owners.h.i.+p of land to prevent him from bartering it away because of his thriftlessness. Denying this charge and opposing the bill, Mehta defended the right of the peasant to have some joy, colour, and moments of brightness in his life. In the case of an average Indian peasant, he said, 'a few new earthenware, a few wild flowers, the village tom-tom, a stomach-full meal, bad arecanut and betel-leaves and a few stalks of cheap tobacco, and in some cases a few cheap tawdry trinkets, exhaust the joys of a festive occasion in the life of a household which has known only an unbroken period of unshrinking labour from morn to sunset.'10 And when the Government insisted on using its official majority to push through the Bill, Mehta along with Gokhale, G.K. Parekh, Balachandra Krishna and D.A. Khare took the unprecedented step of organizing the first walk-out in India's legislative history. Once again officialdom was furious with Mehta. The Times of India, then British-owned, even suggested that these members should be made to resign their seats!

Criticizing the Government's excise policy for encouraging drinking in the name of curbing it, he remarked in 1898 that the excise department 'seems to follow the example of the preacher who said that though he was bound to teach good principles, he was by no means bound to practice them."11 Pherozeshah Mehta retired from the Imperial Legislative Council in 1901 due to bad health. He got elected in his place thirty-five-year-old Gokhale, who had already made his mark as the Secretary of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the editor of the Sudharak. In 1897, as a witness in London before the Royal Commission on Expenditure in India, Gokhale had outshone veterans like Surendranath Banerjea, D.E. Wacha, G. Subramaniya Iyer and Dadabhai Naoroji. Gokhale was to prove a more than worthy successor to Mehta.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale was an outstanding intellectual who had been carefully trained in Indian economics by Justice Ranade and G.V. Jos.h.i.+. He was no orator. He did not use strong and forceful language as Tilak, Dadabhai Naoroji and R.C. Dutt did. Nor did he take recourse, as Mehta did, to humour, irony and sarcasm. As a speaker he was gentle, reasonable, courteous, non-flamboyant and lucid. He relied primarily upon detailed knowledge and the careful, cool and logical marshalling and a.n.a.lysis of data. Consequently, while his speeches did not entertain or hurt, they gradually took hold of the listener's or reader's attention by their sheer intellectual power.

Gokhale was to gain great fame for his budget speeches which used to be reported extensively by the newspapers and whose readers would wait eagerly for their morning copy. He was to transform the Legislative Council into an open university for imparting political education to the people.

His very first budget speech on 26 March 1902 established him as the greatest parliamentarian that India has produced. The Finance Member, Edward Law, had just presented a budget with a seven-crore-rupees surplus for which he had received with great pride the congratulations of the house. At this point Gokhale rose to speak. He could not, he said, 'conscientiously join in the congratulations' because of the huge surplus. On the contrary, the surplus budget 'ill.u.s.trated the utter absence of a due correspondence between the condition of the country and the condition of the finances of the country.' In fact, this surplus coming in times of serious depression and suffering, const.i.tuted 'a wrong to the community.' The keynote of his speech was the poverty of the people. He examined the problem in all its aspects and came to the conclusion that the material condition of the ma.s.s of the people was 'steadily deteriorating' and that the phenomenon was 'the saddest in the whole range of the economic history of the world.' He then set out to a.n.a.lyze the budget in detail. He showed how land revenue and the salt tax had been going up even in times of drought and famine. He asked for the reduction of these two taxes and for raising the minimum level of income liable to income tax to Rs. 1,000 so that the lower middle cla.s.ses would not be hara.s.sed. He condemned the large expenditure on the army and territorial expansion beyond Indian frontiers and demanded greater expenditure on education and industry instead. The management of Indian finances, he said, revealed that Indian interests were invariably subordinated to foreign interests. He linked the poor state of Indian finances and the poverty of the people with the colonial status of the Indian economy and polity. And he did all this by citing at length from the Government's own blue books.12 Gokhale's first budget speech had 'an electrifying effect' upon the people. As his biographer, B.R. Nanda, has put it: 'Like Byron, he could have said that he woke up one fine morning and found himself famous.'13 He won instant praise even from his severest critics and was applauded by the entire nationalist Press. It was felt that he had raised Indian pride many notches higher. The Amrita Bazar Patrika, which had missed no opportunity in the past to berate and belittle him, gave unstinted expression to this pride: 'We had ever entertained the ambition of seeing some Indian member openly and fearlessly criticizing the Financial Statement of the Government. But this ambition was never satisfied. When members had ability, they had not the requisite courage. When they had the requisite courage, they had not the ability . . . For the first time in the annals of British rule in India, a native of India has not only succeeded in exposing the fallacies which underlie these Government statements, but has ventured to do it in an uncompromising manner.'14 All this well-deserved acclaim did not go to Gokhale's head. He remained una.s.suming and modest as before. To G.V. Jos.h.i.+ (leading economist and one of his gurus), he wrote: 'Of course it is your speech more than mine and I almost feel I am practicing a fraud on the public in that I let all the credit for it come to me.'15 In the next ten years, Gokhale was to bring this 'mixture of courage, tenacity and ability' to bear upon every annual budget and all legislation, highlighting in the process the misery and poverty of the peasants, the drain of wealth from India, the Government neglect of industrial development, the taxation of the poor, the lack of welfare measures such as primary education and health and medical facilities, the official efforts to suppress the freedom of the Press and other civil liberties, the enslavement of Indian labourers in British colonies, the moral dwarfing of Indians, the underdevelopment of the Indian economy and the complete neglect and subordination of Indian interests by the rulers.

Officials from the Viceroy downwards squirmed with impotent fury under his sharp and incisive indictments of their policies. In 1904, Edward Law, the Finance Member, cried out in exasperation: 'When he takes his seat at this Council table he unconsciously perhaps adopts the role and demeanour of the habitual mourner, and his sad wails and lamentations at the delinquencies of Government are as piteous as long practice and training can make them.'16 Such was the fear Gokhale's budget speeches aroused among officials that in 1910, Lord Minto, the Viceroy, asked the Secretary of State to appoint R.W. Carlyle as Revenue Member because he had come to know privately of 'an intended attack in which Gokhale is interested on the whole of our revenue system and it is important that we should be well prepared to meet it.'17 Gokhale was to be repaid in plenty by the love and recognition of his own people. Proud of his legislative achievements, they were to confer on him the t.i.tle of 'the leader of the opposition.' Gandhiji was to declare him his political guru. And Tilak, his lifelong political opponent, said at his funeral: 'This diamond of India, this jewel of Maharashtra, this prince of workers, is taking eternal rest on the funeral ground. Look at him and try to emulate him.'18

10.

The Swades.h.i.+ Movement - 1903-1908

With the start of the Swades.h.i.+ Movement at the turn of the century, the Indian national movement took a major leap forward. Women, students and a large section of the urban and rural population of Bengal and other parts of India became actively involved in politics for the first time. The next half a decade saw the emergence of almost all the major political trends of the Indian national movement. From conservative moderation to political extremism, from terrorism to incipient socialism, from pet.i.tioning and public speeches to pa.s.sive resistance and boycott, all had their origins in the movement. The richness of the movement was not confined to politics alone. The period saw a breakthrough in Indian art, literature, music, science and industry. Indian society, as a whole, was experimenting and the creativity of the people expanded in every direction.

The Swades.h.i.+ Movement had its genesis in the anti-part.i.tion movement which was started to oppose the British decision to part.i.tion Bengal. There was no questioning the fact that Bengal with a population of 78 million (about a quarter of the population of British India) had indeed become administratively unwieldy. Equally there was no escaping the fact that the real motive for part.i.tioning Bengal was political. Indian nationalism was gaining in strength and part.i.tion expected to weaken what was perceived as the nerve centre of Indian nationalism at that time. The attempt, in the words of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, (1899-1905) was to 'dethrone Calcutta' from its position as the 'centre from which the Congress Party is manipulated throughout Bengal, and indeed, the whole of India . . . The centre of successful intrigue,'and 'divide the Bengali speaking population.'1 Risley, the Home Secretary to Government of India, was more blunt. He said on 6 December 1904: 'Bengal united, is power, Bengal divided, will pull several different ways. That is what the Congress leaders feel: their apprehensions are perfectly correct and they form one of the great merits of the scheme . . . in this scheme . . . one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule.'2 Curzon reacted sharply to the almost instant furore that was raised in Bengal over the part.i.tion proposals and wrote to the Secretary of State. 'If we are weak enough to yield to their clamour now, we shall not be able to dismember or reduce Bengal again: and you will be cementing and solidifying a force already formidable, and certain to be a source of, increasing trouble in the future.'3 The part.i.tion of the state intended to curb Bengali influence by not only placing Bengalis under two administrations but by reducing them to a minority in Bengal itself as in the new proposal Bengal proper was to have seventeen million Bengali and thirty-seven million Oriya and Hindi speaking people! Also, the part.i.tion was meant to foster another kind of division - this time on the basis of religion. The policy of propping up Muslim communalists as a counter to the Congress and the national movement, which was getting increasingly crystallized in the last quarter of the 19th century, was to be implemented once again. Curzon's speech at Dacca, betrayed his attempt to 'woo the Muslims' to support part.i.tion. With part.i.tion, he argued, Dacca could become the capital of the new Muslim majority province (with eighteen million Muslims and twelve million Hindus) 'which would invest the Mohammedans in Eastern Bengal with a unity which they have not enjoyed since the days of the old Mussulman Viceroys and Kings.'4 The Muslims would thus get a 'better deal' and the eastern districts would be freed of the 'pernicious influence of Calcutta.'

And even Lord Minto, Curzon's successor, who was critical of the way in which part.i.tion was imposed disregarding public opinion, saw that it was good political strategy; Minto argued that 'from a political point of view alone, putting aside the administrative difficulties of the old province, I believe part.i.tion to have been very necessary . . .'5 The Indian nationalists clearly saw the design behind the part.i.tion and condemned it unanimously. The anti-part.i.tion and Swades.h.i.+ Movement had begun.

In December 1903, the part.i.tion proposals became publicly known. An immediate and spontaneous protest followed. The strength of this protest can be gauged from the fact that in the first two months following the announcement 500 protest meetings were held in East Bengal alone, especially in Dacca, Mymensingh and Chittagong. Nearly fifty thousand copies of pamphlets giving a detailed critique of the part.i.tion proposals were distributed all over Bengal. Surendranath Banerjea, Krishna k.u.mar Mitra, Prithwishchandra Ray and other leaders launched a powerful press campaign against the part.i.tion proposals through journals and newspapers like the Bengalee, Hitabadi and Sanjibani. Vast protest meetings were held in the town hall of Calcutta in March 1904 and January 1905, and numerous pet.i.tions (sixty-nine memoranda from the Dacca division alone), some of them signed by as many as 70,000 people - a very large number keeping in view the level of politicization in those days - were sent to the Government of India and the Secretary of State. Even, the big zamindars who had hitherto been loyal to the Raj, joined forces with the Congress leaders who were mostly intellectuals and political workers drawn from journalism, law and other liberal professions.

This was the phase, 1903 to mid-1905, when moderate techniques of pet.i.tions, memoranda, speeches, public meetings and press campaigns held full sway. The objective was to turn to public opinion in India and England against the part.i.tion proposals by preparing a foolproof case against them. The hope was that this would yield sufficient pressure to prevent this injustice from occurring.

The Government of India, however, remained unmoved. Despite the widespread protest voiced against the part.i.tion proposals, the decision to part.i.tion Bengal was announced on 19 July 1905. It was obvious to the nationalists that their moderate methods were not working and that a different kind of strategy was needed. Within days of the government announcement numerous spontaneous protest meetings were held in mofussil towns such as Dinajpur, Pabna, Faridpur, Tangail, Jessore, Dacca, Birbhum, and Barisal. It was in these meetings that the pledge to boycott foreign goods was first taken. In Calcutta, students organized a number of meetings against part.i.tion and for Swades.h.i.+.

The formal proclamation of the Swades.h.i.+ Movement was, made on the 7 August 1905, in a meeting held at the Calcutta town hall. The movement, hitherto sporadic and spontaneous, now had a focus and a leaders.h.i.+p that was coming together. At the 7 August meeting, the famous Boycott Resolution was pa.s.sed. Even Moderate leaders like Surendranath Banerjea toured the country urging the boycott of Manchester cloth and Liverpool salt. On September 1, the Government announced that part.i.tion was to be effected on 16 October 1905. The following weeks saw protest meetings being held almost everyday all over Bengal; some of these meetings, like the one in Barisal, drew crowds of ten to twelve thousand. That the message of boycott went home is evident from the fact that the value of British cloth sold in some of the mofussil districts fell by five to fifteen times between September 1904 and September 1905.

The day part.i.tion took effect - 16 October 1905 - was declared a day of mourning throughout Bengal. People fasted and no fires were lit at the cooking hearth. In Calcutta a hartal was declared. People took out processions and band after band walked barefoot, bathed in the Ganges in the morning and then paraded the streets singing Bande Mataram which, almost spontaneously, became the theme song of the movement. People tied rakhis on each other's hands as a symbol of the unity of the two halves of Bengal. Later in the day Anandamohan Bose and Surendranath Banerjea addressed two huge ma.s.s meetings which drew crowds of 50,000 to 75,000 people. These were, perhaps, the largest ma.s.s meetings ever to be held under the nationalist banner this far. Within a few hours of the meetings, a sum of Rs. 50,000 was raised for the movement.

It was apparent that the character of the movement in terms of both its goals and social base had begun to expand rapidly. As Abdul Rasul, President of Barisal Conference, April 1906, put it: 'What we could not have accomplished in 50 or 100 years, the great disaster, the part.i.tion of Bengal, has done for us in six months. Its fruits have been the great national movement known as the Swades.h.i.+ movement.'6 The message of Swades.h.i.+ and the boycott of foreign goods soon spread to the rest of the country: Lokamanya Tilak took the movement to different parts of India, especially Poona and Bombay; Ajit Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai spread the Swades.h.i.+ message in Punjab and other parts of northern India; Syed Haidar Raza led the movement in Delhi; Rawalpindi, Kangra, Jammu, Multan and Hardwar witnessed active partic.i.p.ation in the Swades.h.i.+ Movement; Chidambaram Pillai took the movement to the Madras presidency, which was also galvanized by Bipin Chandra Pal's extensive lecture tour.

The Indian National Congress took up the Swades.h.i.+ call and the Banaras Session, 1905, presided over by G.K. Gokhale, supported the Swades.h.i.+ and Boycott Movement for Bengal. The militant nationalists led by Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh were, however, in favour of extending the movement to the rest of India and carrying it beyond the programme of just Swades.h.i.+ and boycott to a full fledged political ma.s.s struggle. The aim was now Swaraj and the abrogation of part.i.tion had become the 'pettiest and narrowest of all political objects.'7 The Moderates, by and large, were not as yet willing to go that far. In 1906, however, the Indian National Congress at its Calcutta Session, presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji, took a major step forward. Naoroji in his presidential address declared that the goal of the Indian National Congress was 'self-government or Swaraj like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies.'8 The differences between the Moderates and the Extremists, especially regarding the pace of the movement and the techniques of struggle to be adopted, came to a head in the 1907 Surat session of the Congress where the party split with serious consequences for the Swades.h.i.+ Movement.

In Bengal, however, after 1905, the Extremists acquired a dominant influence over the Swades.h.i.+ Movement. Several new forms of mobilization and techniques of struggle now began to emerge at the popular level. The trend of 'mendicancy,' pet.i.tioning and memorials was on the retreat. The militant nationalists put forward several fresh ideas at the theoretical, propagandistic and programmatic plane. Political independence was to be achieved by converting the movement into a ma.s.s movement through the extension of boycott into a full-scale movement of non-cooperation and pa.s.sive resistance. The technique of 'extended boycott' was to include, apart from boycott of foreign goods, boycott of government schools and colleges, courts, t.i.tles and government services and even the organization of strikes. The aim was to 'make the administration under present conditions impossible by an organized refusal to do anything which shall help either the British Commerce in the exploitation of the country or British officialdom in the administration of it.'9 While some, with remarkable foresight, saw the tremendous potential of large scale peaceful resistance - '. . . if. . . the Chowkidar, the constable, the deputy and the munsif and the clerk, not to speak of the sepoy all resign their respective functions, feringhee rule in the country may come to an end in a moment. No powder and shot will be needed, no sepoys will have to be trained . . .'10 Others like Aurobindo Ghosh (with his growing links with revolutionary terrorists) kept open the option of violent resistance if British repression was stepped up.

Among the several forms of struggle thrown up by the movement, it was the boycott of foreign goods which met with the greatest visible success at the practical and popular level. Boycott and public burning of foreign cloth, picketing of shops selling foreign goods, all became common in remote corners of Bengal as well as in many important towns and cities throughout the country. Women refused to wear foreign bangles and use foreign utensils, washermen refused to wash foreign clothes and even priests declined offerings which contained foreign sugar.

The movement also innovated with considerable success different forms of ma.s.s mobilization. Public meetings and processions emerged as major methods of ma.s.s mobilization and simultaneously as forms of popular expression. Numerous meetings and processions, organized at the district, taluqa and village levels, in cities and towns, both testified to the depth of Swades.h.i.+ sentiment and acted as vehicles for its further spread. These forms were to retain their pre-eminence in later phases of the national movement.

Corps of volunteers (or samitis as they were called) were another major form of ma.s.s mobilization widely used by the Swades.h.i.+ Movement. The Swadesh Bandhab Samiti set up by Ashwini k.u.mar Dutt, a school teacher, in Barisal was the most well-known volunteer organization of them all. Through the activities of this Samiti, whose 159 branches reached out to the remotest corners of the district, Dutt was able to generate an unparalleled ma.s.s following among the predominantly Muslim peasantry of the region. The samitis took the Swades.h.i.+ message to the villages through magic lantern lectures and swades.h.i.+ songs, gave physical and moral training to their members, did social work during famines and epidemics, organized schools, training in swades.h.i.+ craft and arbitration courts. By August 1906 the Barisal Samiti reportedly settled 523 disputes through eighty-nine arbitration committees. Though the samitis struck their deepest roots in Barisal, they had expanded to other parts of Bengal as well. British officialdom was genuinely alarmed by their activities, their growing popularity with the rural ma.s.ses.

The Swades.h.i.+ period also saw the creative use of traditional popular festivals and melas as a means of reaching out to the ma.s.ses. The Ganapati and s.h.i.+vaji festivals, popularized by Tilak, became a medium for Swades.h.i.+ propaganda not only in Western India but also in Bengal. Traditional folk theatre forms such as jatras were extensively used in disseminating the Swades.h.i.+ message in an intelligible form to vast sections of the people, many of whom were being introduced to modern political ideas for the first time.

Another important aspect of the Swades.h.i.+ Movement was the great emphasis given to self-reliance or 'Atmasakti' as a necessary part of the struggle against the Government. Self-reliance in various fields meant the re-a.s.serting of national dignity, honour and confidence. Further, self-help and constructive work at the village level was envisaged as a means of bringing about the social and economic regeneration of the villages and of reaching the rural ma.s.ses. In actual terms this meant social reform and campaigns against evils such as caste oppression, early marriage, the dowry system, consumption of alcohol, etc. One of the major planks of the programme of self-reliance was Swades.h.i.+ or national education. Taking a cue from Tagore's Shantiniketan, the Bengal National College was founded, with Aurobindo as the princ.i.p.al. Scores of national schools sprang up all over the country within a short period. In August 1906, the National Council of Education was established. The Council, consisting of virtually all the distinguished persons of the country at the time, defined its objectives in this way . . . 'to organize a system of Education Literary, Scientific and Technical - on National lines and under National control' 11 from the primary to the university level. The chief medium of instruction was to be the vernacular to enable the widest possible reach. For technical education, the Bengal Technical Inst.i.tute was set up and funds were raised to send students to j.a.pan for advanced learning.

Self-reliance also meant an effort to set up Swades.h.i.+ or indigenous enterprises. The period saw a mushrooming of Swades.h.i.+ textile mills, soap and match factories, tanneries, banks, insurance companies, shops, etc. While many of these enterprises, whose promoters were more endowed with patriotic zeal than with business ac.u.men were unable to survive for long, some others such as Acharya P.C. Ray's Bengal Chemicals Factory, became successful and famous.

It was, perhaps, in the cultural sphere that the impact of the Swades.h.i.+ Movement was most marked. The songs composed at that time by Rabindranath Tagore, Rajani Kanta Sen, Dwijendralal Ray, Mukunda Das, Syed Abu Mohammed, and others later became the moving spirit for nationalists of all hues, 'terrorists, Gandhian or Communists' and are still popular. Rabindranath's Amar Sonar Bangla, written at that time, was to later inspire the liberation struggle of Bangladesh and was adopted as the national anthem of the country in 1971. The Swades.h.i.+ influence could be seen in Bengali folk music popular among Hindu and Muslim villages (Palligeet and Jari Gan) and it evoked collections of Indian fairy tales such as, Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandmother's tales) written by Daks.h.i.+naranjan Mitra Majumdar which delights Bengali children to this day. In art, this was the period when Abanindranath Tagore broke the domination of Victorian naturalism over Indian art and sought inspiration from the rich indigenous traditions of Mughal, Rajput and Ajanta paintings. Nandalal Bose, who left a major imprint on Indian art, was the first recipient of a scholars.h.i.+p offered by the Indian Society of Oriental Art founded in 1907. In science, Jagdish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray, and others pioneered original research that was praised the world over.

In sum, the Swades.h.i.+ movements with its multi-faceted programme and activity was able to draw for the first time large sections of society into active partic.i.p.ation in modern nationalist politics and still larger sections into the ambit of modern political ideas.

The social base of the national movement was now extended to include a certain zamindari section, the lower middle cla.s.s in the cities and small towns and school and college students on a ma.s.sive scale. Women came out of their homes for the first time and joined processions and picketing. This period saw, again for the first time, an attempt being made to give a political direction to the economic grievances of the working cla.s.s. Efforts were made by Swades.h.i.+ leaders, some of whom were influenced by international socialist currents such as those in Germany and Russia, to organize strikes in foreign managed concerns such as the Eastern Indian Railway and Clive Jute Mills, etc.

While it is argued that the movement was unable to make much headway in mobilizing the peasantry especially its lower rungs, except in certain areas, such as the district of Barisal, there can be no gainsaying the fact that even if the movement was able to mobilize the peasantry only in a limited area that alone would count for a lot. This is so because the peasant partic.i.p.ation in the Swades.h.i.+ Movement marked the very beginnings of modern ma.s.s politics in India. After all, even in the later, post-Swades.h.i.+ movements, intense political mobilization and activity among the peasantry largely remained concentrated in specific pockets. Also, while it is true that during the Swades.h.i.+ phase the peasantry was not organized around peasant demands, and that the peasants in most parts did not actively join in pertain forms of struggle such as, boycott or pa.s.sive resistance, large sections of the peasants, through meetings, jatras, constructive work, and so on were exposed for the first time to modern nationalist ideas and politics.

The main drawback of the Swades.h.i.+ Movement was that it was not able to garner the support of the ma.s.s of Muslims and especially of the Muslim peasantry. The British policy of consciously attempting to use communalism to turn the Muslims against the Swades.h.i.+ Movement was to a large extent responsible for this. The Government was helped in its designs by the peculiar situation obtaining in large parts of Bengal where Hindus and Muslims were divided along cla.s.s lines with the former being the landlords and the latter const.i.tuting the peasantry. This was the period when the All India Muslim League was set up with the active guidance and support of the Government. More specifically, in Bengal, people like Nawab Salimullah of Dacca were propped up as centres of opposition to the Swades.h.i.+ Movement. Mullahs and maulvis were pressed into service and, unsurprisingly, at the height of the Swades.h.i.+ Movement communal riots broke out in Bengal.

Given this background, some of the forms of mobilization adopted by the Swades.h.i.+ Movement had certain unintended negative consequences. The use of traditional popular customs, festivals and inst.i.tutions for mobilizing the ma.s.ses - a technique used widely in most parts of the world to generate ma.s.s movements, especially in the initial stages - was misintrepreted and distorted by communalists backed by the state. The communal forces saw narrow religious ident.i.ties in the traditional forms utilized by the Swades.h.i.+ movements whereas in fact these forms generally reflected common popular cultural traditions which had evolved as a synthesis of different religious practices prevalent among the people.

By mid-1908, the open movement with its popular ma.s.s character had all but spent itself. This was due to several reasons. First, the government, seeing the revolutionary potential of the movement, came down with a heavy hand. Repression took the form of controls and