Bande Mataram

The Pro-Petition Plot

10-September-1906

It is impossible, we think, to condemn too strongly the attempt that is being made, by means of confidential circulars from Calcutta, to get up a fresh memorial to the Secretary of State for India, for the revocation or modification of the Partition of Bengal. We are strongly opposed, it is well known, to sending any fresh memorial on this subject, but this general objection apart, the methods that have been adopted to get up this new memorial are open to very serious objection, and it is to these that we desire to call public attention today. A telegraphic message was received in Comilla about the middle of last month from one of the Calcutta leaders asking the local leaders to send a delegate to a Conference that was proposed to be held on some urgent matters the following Sunday. What these urgent matters were was left to the imagination of the addressees to discover for themselves. Comilla strongly objected to be worked upon in this mysterious, if not masterly way from Calcutta, and wired back asking for definite and detailed information. No wire, we understand, was received in reply, but about a week later, just a few hours before the time fixed for the Conference, a printed letter, marked confidential, was received by Babu Ananga Mohan Ghosh, from the Bengalee office, containing excerpts from certain letters secured from London, which suggested that a fresh memorial should be sent to the Secretary of State for India for a reconsideration of the Partition of Bengal. One of these extracts said:—"What appeared absolutely hopeless four weeks ago appears hopeful now. There are indications that the Cabinet are willing to reconsider the Partition Question on its merits. There are indications that in due time the question, if properly urged,

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will be reopened. I am not at liberty to speak about Conferences I had just before leaving London. All that I can tell you is to advise you to have an influential and representative meeting, say, early in September, to adopt a strong, well-reasoned memorial, suggesting alternative schemes of Partition based on racial and linguistic grounds, and to submit it to the Secretary of State through the Indian Government. Bengal has worked splendidly during the last 11 months,—Bengal will have to work a little longer,—not hysterically, but rationally and strongly,—making it clear that she will not accept the present Partition. I believe redress is at hand."

Later on the writer, after quoting Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's reply to Mr. O'Donnell, modified his previous advice regarding public meeting and said—"On second thought a simple memorial seems to be enough if influentially signed—a meeting is unnecessary."

This letter came from a high authority. But it is clear on the face of it that that high authority was playing into the hands of the Liberals interested in India. The enforced retirement of Sir B. Fuller was a distinct confession on the part of the Government of the failure of the policy which prompted the Partition scheme, and which subsequently came to be so closely associated with the late Lieutenant-Governor of East Bengal and Assam. This failure is distinctly due to the resistful attitude that has been assumed by the people of late, and in view of the complications with which the Government is threatened by the present anti-Partition and boycott agitation in Bengal, the authorities in England, as well as in this country, are evidently anxious to get out of the unpleasant and risky position wherein their own perversity has placed them. To do this honourably and without any loss of prestige, they want a plea for reopening the discussion of Mr. Morley's settled fact, and a fresh memorial from Bengal would find them this plea. This, it seems clear, is the meaning of the excerpts quoted by us above from the London letter, on the strength of which the Calcutta leaders want a fresh memorial to be got up. They might make the attempt, there is no reason why, if they are convinced that it is their duty

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to send a fresh memorial, they should not make this attempt. But what we object to is the secretiveness of the whole thing. Why have they tried to keep this new proposal from the public? Why should they arrogate to themselves the right of deciding, in consultation with a handful of men, as to what should be done in this matter? The Conference held in the Landholders' Association should have been an open Conference. But even at this closed Conference, the general opinion, if the reports that have reached us be correct, was decidedly against sending any fresh petition or memorial. It is said that Babu Motilal Ghose and others were distinctly opposed to the idea; and the words petition and memorial had to be dropped under pressure of this general opinion, especially among the mofussil delegates; all that was conceded by the Conference was that some suggestions might be sent. We do not know if the questions of the channel through which the suggestions were to be sent was raised at all. But whatever was decided by the Conference we find that a secret attempt is being made to send not suggestions, but a live, real memorial again to the Secretary of State for India on the Partition question. We do not respect official secrets, when public interests demand it, but widely publish them, and there is no reason why we should respect non-official secrets when their publication is called for in the interests of the public good. We, therefore, make no apology for publishing the following letter that has been addressed from the Bengalee Office, to the leaders of public opinion in the mofussil:—

Confidential

Bengalee Office.
70, Colootola Street, Calcutta.
29th August, 1906.

My dear——,

At a Conference held in the Rooms of the Landholders' Association on Sunday last, at which several delegates from the mofussil were present, it was resolved to submit a representation to the Secretary of State for reviewing the Partition of Bengal. It was agreed that the representation, if possible,

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should be forwarded early in September. The representation is being drawn up, and in the meantime I beg you will forward to the Bengalee Office as many signatures (including of course the signatures of the leading inhabitants in your District). The representation would ask for Bengal (old and new Province) being placed under a Governor and Council, or in the alternative, the Bengali-speaking population being placed under one and the same administration. I beg you will consider the matter as very urgent.

Yours sincerely,

It is clear thus, that a secret memorial is being got up to be sent again to the Indian State Secretary; and as this memorial will clearly be sent in the name and on behalf of the public, the public have just cause for complaint that in regard to such a vital question of policy they should have been left so entirely in the dark. There was a time when the people in general took really little or no interest in public questions of this kind; and in those days the getting up of such memorials in consultation with a few lawyers in the different districts, might have been justified; because they were about the only persons who took any interest in these public and political questions. The present Swadeshi agitation has, however, changed all this. We have called up the real nation out of its ancient slumber, and the masses have commenced to take a keen and possibly a more earnest interest in public questions than even the so-called educated classes. They have joined our meetings in their thousands and their tens of thousands, and have taken, during the last twelve months, an intelligent interest in our movements. What right have we now to ignore them in such momentous matters as the submission of a fresh memorial to the Secretary of State, which may radically change the face of the whole agitation? The tactics adopted by the Calcutta clique seem, therefore, to be absolutely vicious. They strike at the very root of those principles of Democracy upon which the national movement in India and especially in Bengal is professedly based. Democracy must have its leaders, and the leaders must exercise the right of guiding and shaping the

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opinions and activities of the Democracy. But to guide, to train, to shape and to control public opinion and public activities is one thing but to ignore or suppress the views and sentiments of the public is another. It is the autocrat alone who does or attempts to do so. And this pernicious autocratic tendency in the leaders of Bengal must at once be knocked relentlessly on the head, if the present movement is to realise the high promise that is in it. The old leaders in Calcutta and those who dance in the mofussil to their tune, must be made to understand this distinctly that they will not be permitted to speak and act in the name of the public without fully and frankly taking that public into their confidence in regard to all important public questions. Signs are not, indeed, wanting that the people will not suffer the tyrannies of their own leaders more patiently than they are prepared to suffer those of their foreign masters. The Comilla Resolution on this very subject of sending a fresh memorial to Government is significant as we pointed out yesterday. A similar Resolution, published in our telegraphic columns last Wednesday, has been adopted at a gathering of 20,000 men at Chittagong, in spite of the attempt made by some people to refer the matter to the local leaders. The question was asked whether a larger vote could be taken on this topic at any meeting of the local Association, and it was frankly answered in the negative. There were many men at this gathering who had come from the villages, and they all seemed clearly flattered by the fact that they were given such an opportunity of expressing their views on so important a matter, and this sense of satisfaction is a distinct guarantee of their future interest in public questions. Henceforth they will not look on our movements with their old listlessness and indifference. Is this a small gain? Are we to neglect such a result for small favours from the Government? What even if the Partition continues, if only we can arouse a real interest in the masses in our public and political agitations? If the masses once awake from their present torpor, they will be able to undo a thousand evil and obstructive measures like the Partition of Bengal. True statesmanship would prefer this quickening of public life and public spirit in the people to the revocation, as a favour, of even the most obnoxious and

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pernicious Government measure. But autocracy whether in the Government or in the governed, has no eye for the people; and it is, therefore, the greatest enemy of human progress everywhere, and should be ruthlessly exposed and knocked on the head by those who care for the advancement of the people and for their civic salvation.