Bande Mataram

British Generosity

23-May-1907

There is no quality which the British race more persistently arrogates to itself, as if it were their monopoly, than truth and frankness. Yet by a strange ill-luck they have never been able to persuade anybody but themselves that they possess now or

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ever possessed these high and noble qualities. On the contrary, the epithet "perfidious Albion" in which the French summed up their experience of English character before the present "cordial understanding" and to which they may have to revert when it is over, expresses the general opinion of their fellow-Europeans on the British claim to an unique and superior righteousness. The conviction of British political hypocrisy, large promise-making when it suited them and large promise-breaking now that that suits them, is the final conclusion to which India has been driven on the same subject. There is another quality of which the English are equally proud, their fair-play and generosity to enemies. Here again the world's opinion of them does not coincide with their opinion of themselves. On the contrary, no nation is capable of greater meanness and venomous hatred in its treatment of the enemies and opponents who are so unfortunate as to fall into its hands. The generosity is reserved for those enemies who have beaten them in fight, like Washington, or with whom they have to come to an understanding after an equal struggle, like Botha. But towards others and specially for those who have put them in fear for their national existence or their supremacy or their commerce and then fallen into their power, they observe neither chivalry nor fairness nor truth. It was the British fair-play which in mediaeval times burned Joan of Arc at the stake and then for some centuries vilely slandered her character. It was British fair-play which pursued Napoleon during his lifetime with a campaign of slander and abuse of the most extraordinary vileness and then interned him in St. Helena and embittered his last days by the meanest pettiness and persecution. It was British fair-play which, in the early days of the Boer war avenged Majuba by an astonishing campaign of lies and abuse against the Boers, representing them as a race of dirty, brutal, cunning and uneducated semi-savages. We see the same national characteristic in the shameful vilification in which the Anglo-Indian Press have indulged against the patriot whose influence in the Punjab has put in fear for their empire and their trade. We waive the question whether Lajpat Rai was or was not really guilty from the standpoint of the bureaucracy,

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whether he was or he was not actively working against the continuance of British rule, as he certainly was actively working against the continuance of irresponsible bureaucratic despotism. But as to the personal character of Lajpat Rai, his personal uprightness, honesty, candour, his earnest diligence in working for the religious, social and political elevation of his country, his unostentatious self-sacrifice, his modest worth, his quiet courage, even his opponents have nothing but praise. Yet it is this man whom the Anglo-Indian papers have been vilifying as a rascally agitator, a braggart, a coward, a "mean specimen of humanity", whose influence was solely due to his having spent money freely on "agitation". We can only salute with reverence this fresh exhibition of British fair-play and generosity. But if the man was such a poor and inconsiderable specimen, how is it that you have treated him as if he were a second Napoleon, thinking even distant Mandalay not remote enough or strong enough to hold the mighty rebel? All this foul-mouthed brutality is a measure of the extraordinary panic into which the ruling race has fallen as the result of what the Statesman describes as no worse than a street row or an election fight. The tiger qualities of a ruling race, no doubt!

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