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Congress, Swadeshi and the Split - Part 2
6.0 GROWTH OF MILITANCY
The leadership of the Anti-Partition Movement soon passed to militant nationalists like Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghose. This was due to many factors.
Firstly, the early movement of protest led by the Moderates failed to yield results. Even the liberal Secretary of State, John Morley, from whom much was expected by the moderate nationalists, declared the Partition to be a settled fact which would not be changed. Secondly, the Governments of the two Bengals, particularly of East Bengal, made active efforts to divide Hindus and Muslims. Seeds of Hindu-Muslim disunity in Bengal politics were perhaps sown at this time. This embittered the nationalists. But, most of all, it was the repressive policy of the government which led people to militant and revolutionary politics. The Government of East Bengal, in particular, tried to crush the nationalist movement. Official attempts at preventing student participation in the Swadeshi agitation have already been mentioned. The singing of Bande Mataram in public streets in East Bengal was banned. Public meetings were restricted and sometimes forbidden.
Laws controlling the Press were enacted. Swadeshi workers were prosecuted and imprisoned for long periods. Many students were even awarded corporal punishment. From 1906 to 1909, more than 550 political cases came up before Bengal courts. Prosecutions against a large number of nationalist newspapers were launched and freedom of the Press was completely suppressed. Military police was stationed in many towns where it clashed with the people. One of the most notorious examples of repression was the police assault on the peaceful delegates of the Bengal Provincial Conference at Barisal in April 1906. Many of the young volunteers were severely beaten up and the Conference itself was forcibly dispersed.
On December 1908, nine Bengal leaders, including the venerable Krishna Kumar Mitra and Ashwini Kumar Dutt, were deported. Earlier, in 1907, Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh had been deported, following riots in the canal colonies of the Punjab. In 1900, the great Tilak was again arrested and given the savage sentence of 6 years' imprisonment. Chidambaram Pillai in Madras and Harisarvottam Rao and others in Andhra were put behind bars.
As the militant nationalists came to the fore, they gave the call for passive resistance in addition to Swadeshi and Boycott. They asked the people to refuse to cooperate with the Government and to boycott government service, the courts, government schools and colleges, and municipalities and legislative councils, and thus, as Aurobindo Ghose put it, "to make the administration under present conditions impossible". The militant nationalists tried to transform the Swadeshi and Anti-Partition agitation into a mass movement and gave the slogan of independence from foreign rule. Aurobindo Ghose openly declared: "Political freedom is the lifebreath of a nation". Thus, the question of the partition of Bengal became a secondary one and the question of India's freedom became the central question of Indian politics. The militant nationalists also gave the call for self-sacrifice without which no great aim could be achieved.
It should be remembered, however, that the militant nationalists also failed in giving a positive lead to the people. They were not able to give effective leadership or to create an effective organisation to guide their movement. They aroused the people but did not know how to harness or utilise the newly released energies of the people or to find new forms of political struggle. Passive resistance and non-cooperation remained mere ideas. They also failed to reach the real masses of the country, the peasants. Their movement remained confined to the urban lower and middle classes and zamindars. They had come to a political deadend by the beginning of 1908. Consequently, the government succeeded to a large extent in suppressing them. Their movement could not survive the arrest of their main leader, Tilak and the retirement from active politics of Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghose.
But the upsurge of nationalist sentiments could not die. People had been aroused from their slumber of centuries; they had learned to take a bold and fearless attitude in politics. They had acquired self-confidence and self-reliance and learnt to participate in new forms of mass mobilisation and political action. They now waited for a new movement to arise. Moreover, they were able to learn valuable lessons from their experience. Gandhiji wrote later that "after the Partition, people saw that petitions must be backed up by force, and that they must be capable of suffering". The Anti-Partition agitation in fact marked a great revolutionary leap forward for Indian nationalism. The later national movement was to draw heavily on its legacy.
7.0 GROWTH OF REVOLUTIONARY TERRORISM
Government repression and frustration caused by the failure of the leadership to provide a positive lead to the people ultimately resulted in revolutionary terrorism. The youth of Bengal found all avenues of peaceful protest and political action blocked and out of desperation they fell back upon individual heroic action and the cult of the bomb. They no longer believed that passive resistance could achieve nationalist aims. The British must, therefore, be physically expelled. As the Yugantar wrote on 22 April 1906 after the Barisal Conference: "The remedy lies with the people themselves. The 30 crores of people inhabiting India must raise their 60 crores of hands to stop this curse of oppression. Force must be stopped by force".
But the revolutionary young men did not try to generate a mass revolution. Instead, they decided to copy the methods of the Irish terrorists and the Russian Nihilists, that is, to assassinate unpopular officials. A beginning had been made in this direction when, in 1897, the Chapekar brothers assassinated two unpopular British officials at Poona. In 1904, V.D. Savarkar (Veer Savarkar) had organised the Abhinava Bharat, a secret society of revolutionaries. After 1905, several newspapers had begun to advocate revolutionary terrorism. The Sandhya and the Yugantar in Bengal and the Kal in Maharashtra were the most prominent among them.
In December 1907 an attempt was made on the life of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and in April 1908 Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage which they believed was occupied by Kingsford, the unpopular Judge at Muzaffarpur. Prafulla Chaki shot himself dead while Khudiram Bose was tried and hanged. The era of revolutionary terrorism had begun. Many secret societies of terrorist youth came into existence. The most famous of these were the Anushilan Samiti whose Dhaka Section alone had 500 branches, and soon revolutionary terrorist societies became active in the rest of the country also. They became so bold as to throw a bomb at the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, while he was riding on an elephant in a state procession at Delhi. The Viceroy was wounded.
The revolutionaries also established centres of activity abroad. In London, the lead was taken by Shyamaji Krishnavarma, V.D. Savarkar, and Bar Dayal, while in Europe Madame Cama and Ajit Singh were the prominent leaders.
Terrorism too gradually petered out. In fact, terrorism as a political weapon was bound to fail. It could not mobilise the masses; in fact it had no base among the people. But the terrorists did make a valuable contribution to the growth of nationalism in India. As a historian has put it, "they gave us back the pride of our manhood". Because of their heroism, the terrorists became immensely popular among their compatriots even though most of the politically conscious people did not agree with their political approach.
8.0 THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS 1905-1914
The agitation against the partition of Bengal made a deep impact on the Indian National Congress. All sections of the National Congress united in opposing the Partition. At its session of 1905, Gokhale, the President of the Congress, roundly condemned the Partition as well as the reactionary regime of Curzon. The National Congress also supported the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement of Bengal.
There was much public debate and disagreement between the moderate and the militant nationalists. The latter wanted to extend the Swadeshi and Boycott movement from Bengal to the rest of the country and to extend the Boycott to every form of association with the colonial government. The Moderates wanted to confine the Boycott movement to Bengal and even there to limit it to the boycott of foreign goods.
There was a tussle between the two groups for the presidentship of the National Congress for that year (1906). In the end, Dadabhai Naoroji, respected by all nationalists as a great patriot, was chosen as a compromise. Dadabhai electrified the nationalist ranks by openly declaring in his presidential address that the goal of the Indian national movement was " 'self-govemment' or Swaraj, like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies".
But the differences dividing the two wings of the nationalist movement could not be kept in check for long. Many of the moderate nationalists did not keep pace with events. They were not able to see that their outlook and methods, which had served a real purpose in the past, were no longer adequate. They had failed to advance to the new stage of the national movement. The militant nationalists, on the other hand, were not willing to be held back. The split between the two came at the Surat session of the National Congress in December 1907. The moderate leaders having captured the machinery of the Congress excluded the militant elements from it.
8.1 The Surat split
The Surat split is an important event in the modern history of India. It took place in 1907 when the Moderates parted company with the Extremists. The split in the Congress was due to many reasons. The Moderates had controlled the Congress from its very beginning and had their own ways of thinking and doing, which were not acceptable to the younger generations who were impatient with the speed at which the moderates were moving and leading the nation. The differences between the two were inevitable and the split took place in the year 1907.
8.2 Reasons for the split
The fundamental differences between the Moderates and the Extremists were on the question of loyalty to the English throne and the continuance of British rule in India. The Moderates had faith and believed in loyalty to the English throne. They also believed that the continuance of the British rule was in the interest of the people in India. On the other hand the Extremists felt that the British rule was a curse and there should be no question of loyalty to the British throne.
The emphasis on the ultimate goal and also the actual form of the ultimate goal was a point of differences between the Extremists and the Moderates. The Moderates believed in the policy of conciliation and compromise. They were not dissatisfied with the meager concessions given by the British parliament to India from time to time.
The Extremists did not bother about the petty concessions given by the British government. They felt that Swaraj alone was the final remedy. The Moderates believed in adopting strictly constitutional methods for agitation and that also of the feeblest type so that there was not the slightest chance of any violence. They believed in reasoned and emotional appeals, lucid presentation of the case, irresistible statements of facts, irrefutable arguments and presenting petitions. The Moderates were not prepared to resort to a policy of non-cooperation or passive resistance. They did not accept even the programmes of Swadeshi whole-heartedly. They considered boycott as a vindictive act which was liable to create a feeling of ill-will. On the other hand, the Extremists believed that the national problems could not be solved by resorting to argument, ethics and piety, and only a vigorous agitation could meet the need of the situation.
Another point of difference between the Moderates and Extremists was with regard to their approach and strategy. The Moderates depended for their success on the goodwill and sympathy of the Englishmen. However the Extremists rejected such an approach and believed that the people of India were the masters of their own destiny and not any foreign powers. The Moderates believed that the people of India were still not fit for self-government. The Extremists believed that the people of India were fit to rule themselves and self-government could not be denied to them on the ground of their so-called unfitness. The Moderate believed that they would get what they asked for without any sufferings, while the Extremists were of the definite view that the salvation of India was not possible without sufferings and self-sacrifice.
On account of these differences, there were clashes between the Moderates and the Extremists which eventually led to the split. There is no denying the fact that the Moderates were as much vehement in their denunciation of the partition of Bengal as the Extremists, but they had their own limitations and could not go beyond them. The Congress indeed passed resolutions on boycott, Swadeshi and national education in 1906 but faced opposition from the Moderates. The Moderates did not approve of all that happened at the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1906 and tried to undo the same at the next session in 1907 at Surat. The Extremists were not prepared to allow them to do so. Under the circumstances, an open clash between them was inevitable.
8.3 Effects of the split
The Surat split not only weakened the Indian National Congress but it virtually destroyed its effectiveness till the Lucknow session in 1916. For the next eight years, India`s Nationalist Movement remained a house divided against itself, half constitutional and half revolutionary in aspiration. This suited the British Raj in India, no doubt!
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