Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal 1875-1927 0195616545, 9780195616545

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Social Conflict and Politica] Unrest in Bengal 1875-1927

RAJAT KANTA RAY

DELHI

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS 1984

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Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE HONG KONG TOKYO NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM CAPE TOWN MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

andassociates in

BEIRUT BERLIN IBADAN MEXICO CITY NICOSIA

© Oxford University Press 1984

Printed in India by P. K. Ghosh

at Eastend Printers, 3 Dr Suresh Sarkar Road, Calcutta 700 014

and published by R. Dayal, Oxford University Press, 2/11 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002

To my Parents SHEILA RAY KUMUD KANTA RAY

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1x

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

xl

INTRODUCTION ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN THE

SN Ye

82

Her Masesty’s LoyaL Sussects (1875-1899) THE WINTER OF THEIR DISCONTENT (1899-1918)

136

FF

11

THE TURN OF THE TIDE (1918-1922)

225

vA

AGE OF HIGH IMPERIALISM

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY (1922-1927)

311

CONCLUSION

370

SOURCES

377

INDEX

393

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research which has goneinto this book was generously financed by Cambridge University and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. I am deeply indebted for help in writing this book to my Research Supervisor, Dr A. Seal, to Dr Supriya Chaudhuri who helped me rewrite the text, and to Professor A. K. Bagchi, Professor D. A. Low, Professor S. Gopal, Professor Bipan Chandra, Dr S. N. Mukherjee, Professor Sumit Sarkar, Dr Swasti Mitter, Dr S. K. Rao,

Professor Tapan Raychaudhuri, Professor Ashin Dasgupta, Dr Uma Dasgupta, Dr C. A. Bayly, Dr C. J. Baker, Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Dr Peter Musgrave, Dr Ratnalekha Ray, Mr V. C. Joshi, Professor Hirendra Nath Chakravarti, Dr Sugata Bose, Professor Binay Chaudhuri, Mr Naren Das, Mr Annada Shankar Ray,

Dr Golap Chandra Raychaudhuri, Dr M. M. Islam, Mr Hitesh Ranjan Sanyal, Mr Dipesh Chakrabarti, Mr K. G. Basu, Mr Bishnu

Bagchi, Mr Panna Lal Roy, Dr P. C. V. Malik, Mr Madan Ghosh, Mr Amiya Kanta Ray, Ms Mousumi Chatterjee, Mr Prabhat Kumar Ghosh, Ms Tapati Vasudevan, Ms Lakshmi Subramanian, and to my father, Mr K. K. Ray.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AICC BCC BIA BGP BLCP BMP BNCC BRP cc CPC EA EADA EBAMP GB GI TA IIMA IMA IMF ITA MA MCC MLC RNP

All India Congress Committee Bengal Chamber of Commerce British India Association Bengal General Proceedings Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings Bengal Municipal Proceedings Bengal National Chamber of Commerce Bengal Revenue Proceedings Calcutta Corporation Calcutta Port Commissioners European Association European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association East Bengal and Assam Appointment and Municipal Proceedings Government of Bengal Governmentof India

Indian Association Indian Jute Mills (or Manufacturers’) Association Indian Mining Association Indian Mining Federation Indian Tea Association Marwari Association Marwari Chamber of Commerce Memberof Legislative Council Report on Native Newspapers

Note: For an explanation of reference to reports, etc. of Chambers of Commerce, e.g. BCC 1900, BNCC 1920, see the explanatory notes in the list of Sources under the heading ‘Reports of Chambers of Commerce, Trades Associations and

Companies’. Briefly, these printed reports have three sections: the proceedings of annual meetings, the annual reports presented there, and the year’s correspondence, each section with separate pagination. So I have not given references to page numbers. Instead I indicate a reference to the annual report by, for instance, BCC 1920, which means Annual Report of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce for the year 1920, and by spelling out further when the referenceis to the annual general meeting or to correspondence by stating the date of the

meeting ortheletter.

INTRODUCTION Imperialism and nationalism—long-term and short-term preoccupations in the politics of nationalism—centre and periphery—contradiction between metropolitan Calcutta and rural districts—role of these contradictions in the struggle for power between representatives of imperial interests and spokesmen of Indian nationalism.

Imperialism and nationalism ‘The province of Bengal’, wrote Charles Stewart in 1813, ‘is one of the most valuable acquisitions that was ever madeby anynation.”! At the end of the nineteenth century Bengalstill constituted, economically, the core of the British empire in India; and it was here, in the high noon of imperialism, that the British encountered that persistent and strident discontent that heralded the beginnings of Indian nationalism. For an understanding of the nature ofthe interplay between imperialism and nationalism, Bengal undoubtedly offers a promising field of inquiry. It has been observed that the history of Indian nationalism is substantially a history of rivalry between Indian and Indian, and the relationship between nationalism and imperialism has been perceived to be one of co-operation between two weak and interdependent forces (‘the mutual clinging of two unsteady men of straw’). But no amountofscepticism is ever likely, as has been claimed, to render it impossible ‘to organize modern Indian history around the old notions of imperialism and nationalism’.? Howeverold, the notions of imperialism and nationalism derive their substance from objective economic and political realities which refuse to be withered by the most searching analysis of ‘the brutal clashes between colonial politicians struggling at the more humdrumlevels where the pickings lay’.* But if the old but by 1 Charles Stewart, The History of Bengal Undian edn, Calcutta, 1903), p. ix. 2 Anil Seal, ‘Imperialism and Nationalism in India’, in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (eds.), Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870 to 1940 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 2. 3 Tbid., p. 1.

2

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

no means antiquated notions are to form a stable arch in the conceptual framework of colonial politics, considerable sophistication in their use is necessary. The study of the relationship between the British Raj and its Indian subjects must constantly keep in view a twofold distinction fundamental to understanding the process of polSical change in British India. Thefirst distinction is that between thé real levers of powerheld by the organized representatives of British administrative and economic interests, and the insecure pegs gained by the spokesmen of Indian nationalism in their faltering climb to power over a century and a half of British rule. Arising from this slippery climb to power is a second distinction: that between the long-term and commongoals of the Indian subjects at the end of the journey, and their short-term, parochial preoccupations on the way. Whatthis second distinction implies is that dissecting the seamy underside of Indian politics while ignoring the regenerative aspects of the movement against colonial rule is unlikely to lead to a comprehension of the complex motive powerbehind the political changes in the subcontinent from 1858 to 1947. The tools of social psychology are still in too primitive a stage for assured usein historical analysis, but the historian who frames his explanation in terms of particular interests and parochial rivalries will ignore at his peril the psychological climate of terrorism, the fierce passions of communalrioting,

and the willingness of large bodies of civil dissenters to undergo brutal assaults. Expectations of advantage will explain the manoeuvres of a considerable numberof politicians, but not the sacrifices of large bodies of ordinary men and women.In the complex politics of the subcontinent, pursuit of power by politicians and search for identity by people acted as interlocking forces* andit is inadequate analysis which ignoreseither. In Bengal the growth of conflict between the representatives of imperial interests and the spokesmenof nationalist aspirations was pregnant with political consequence for the whole empire, for the highest level of the empire’s business and governmentlay in the city of Calcutta. The local assistants of colonial administration were therefore an essential collaborating elite for the imperial structure as a whole. The sub-imperialism of the Bengalis, feeding on the skills 4 The growing concern of historians of India with the latter factoris reflected, among other writings, in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi, 1982).

Introduction

3

of mediation between the alien government and the ignorant multitude, expanded with British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Before the Mutiny, Bengalis were to be found as far up as the Punjab, dominating the subordinate branches of colonial administration throughout the upper Gangetic valley. The question naturally arises why the Bengalis, who proved so adept in exploiting the imperial connection, were among thefirst subjects of the empire to lead an articulate and organized movementof political protest against im-

perialism. This in turn leads to an examination of how successful

they were in leading such a movementontheall-India platform, to what extent and whyit became divided in their own province, and in what depth it penetrated from Calcutta’s high circles to the grassroots of Bengali society. These are questions of more than provincial interest. Firmly occupying the middle rungs of the Calcutta metropolitan economy created by imperialism, the Bengalis assisting the rulers came into direct contact with the highest level of business and governmentin India. They could move upwards only by penetrating the nervecentres of British rule and their patriotic aspirations had to be, by definition, a desire to replace the ruling class in India. Elsewhere

patriotism might take the form of an attempt to keep the imperial governmentat a distance from the humdrum levels where the pickings lay; here it could only take the form of an attempt to abolish the imperial government at that highest level where elegant exchanges between London and colonial capitals took place. If the rise of Calcutta’s educated Bengalis to the highest level of power was unacceptable to the British government in India, then the early emergence of patriotism in Bengal should come as no surprise. And if lower downthescale less sophisticated Bengalis from the backwaters were encouraged by the rulers to seek a place in Calcutta—by competing with their successful urban fellows for a place within the system—then the emergence ofsectional patriotism will also present no puzzle. . The emergence of sectional patriotism—especially Muslim separatism—was a process secondary to, and dependent on, the rise of nationalism. Competition for scarce resources among the Bengali subjects of the empire was channelized into communaland caste movements by the distribution of government patronage in such a way as to divide its critics. Communalism was thus a secondary force set in motion by the confrontation of imperialism with national-

4

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

ism. It is the central argument of this study that the dynamics of political change in the provincelay in the increasing conflict over the levers of real power between the European commercial and administrative elite and the Indian business and professional groups. All the tortuous by-lanes of Bengal politics branch out from the main road of conflict between educated Bengalis and their European masters. In order to distinguish the long-term current from the short-term eddies, pools and cross-currents, we will anticipate the

narrative to indicate briefly its general direction. The first part of this study brings the story down to the First World War, with which the high noon of imperialism came to an end. In eastern India racially discriminating administrative policies, cartels against Indian competitors, and interlocking management of European companies® helped maintain, downto the war, an almost exclusive European domination of the economy of Calcutta andits hinterland. By stimulating a marginal development of the economy up to a certain point and keeping in check the further development of productive forces, British capitalism hindered the growth of Indian enterprise and the formation of an industrial capitalist class rooted in the soil. The professional and service groups which werecalled into existence by the needs of British commerce and British administration grew steadily in number and strength, unlike the weak and stillborn entrepreneurial class; and instead of bourgeois leadership, the national movement was characterized by the leadership of professional men. An economy which grewata relatively slow pace between 1870-1918 could not generate sufficient resources to absorb these steadily expanding professional groups; and hencetheir alienation from their parent, the British Raj, became more and more acute.

The second part of the story concernsitself with the political transformation wrought by the imperial crisis during and after the war. The special wartime economic circumstances enabled the Indian capitalists to establish a firm foothold in the private sector, and the bitter economic conflict between European and Indian capitalist groups after the war was accompanied by a confrontation between the British Raj and the Indian national movementon an altogether different scale. A major breach appeared for the first time in the structure of European economic domination during the war, and a 5 That is, the managing agency system under which a single firm held contracts

for managing several companies.

Introduction

5

massive economic and political assault on the whole system, made possible by the post-war social distress, initiated the process of the dismantlement of imperialism in India. In the difficult post-war conditions the capacity of the weakenedislands of Britain to hold down large parts of the world diminished to an extent that madeit necessary to grant large economic and political concessions for running India as part of the imperial system. Such concessions, yielded under pressure, were likely.to invite further demands; and imperialism, in its rearguard action, sought more and more desperately to divide and isolate these growing pressures by patronizing sectional patriotisms. Such a short summary of long-term trends tends to emphasize unduly the commonfrontof Indian business and professional groups against the Europeanruling class and to play downtheir collaboration for short-term, particular advantages. Factions, based on individual rivalries for power and frequently cutting across caste and communal boundaries, characterized politics in the local andlegislative bodies from the beginning; later the co-operation of members of different communities for factional advantages receded to the background andthe factions took an increasingly communal colouring. Nevertheless it is useful to emphasize, as Lord Reading wrote to Montagu in 1922,‘that all sections of Indians will unite when they think something morein the nature of self-government can be wrung from the British government’.® After all, the colonial system of distribution of resources was ‘colonial’ in so far as it distinguished all natives from the European ruling class, whatever the special benefits offered for collaboration. The prevalence of multi-communal factions, composed of both Hindus and Muslims, in local self-governing bodies where they combined to exercise the limited powers conceded by the British, raises the question why, in the end, the prospect of a well-knit Bengali nationalism gave way to the emergence of two warring communities. A study of the interaction between Calcutta and its hinterland will be especially illuminating in this respect. The official demarcation of Muslims as an administrative and constitutional category, selected for special patronage, provided the less wellplaced people in the predominantly Muslim localities of East Bengal with an incentive to organize their communal bases. The urge in the 6 Reading Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 283.4, Reading to Montagu, 23 February

1923.

2

6

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

periphery to find a place at the centre was a political force which neither the rulers nor their opponents in Calcutta could afford to ignore. For here was a factor that builders of the national front mightutilize to draw the localities into the opposition, and guardians of the imperial order might exploit in orderto isolate their nationalist critics at the centre. In this battle for control everything depended on how far the rulers could build the divisions of a plural society into the constitutional order, and on the ability of their opponents to bind the diverse elements of a subject population into a mass-based party accommodating a broad rangeofinterests. Centre and periphery The developing political relationship between Calcutta andits hinterland offers a natural framework for this regional study of interplay between imperialism and nationalism. Sparsely marked by small trading and administrative centres, the predominantly rural hinterland of Bengal—a province much less urbanized than UP, Bombay and Madras’—-was not possessed of any strong regional identity at the beginning of British rule. Life centred on the parochial agricultural cycle in innumerable isolated localities. The local cultures flourishing autonomously at different centres like Bishnupur, Krishnagar and Bikrampur had not merged into a high Bengali culture with an associated sense of regional patriotism. Such a development had to wait upon the emergence of Calcutta as a centre of provincial economy and culture in the course of the nineteenth century. The rural localities became connected through the provincial towns with Calcutta, which grew into commercial prominence by drawing agricultural resources from the hinterland for export overseas. Noless strong was the administrative pull of Calcutta as the governing centre of the Indian empire andas the capital of the huge Presidency of Bengal, comprising Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Thus the increasing economic and administrative connection of rural Bengal with metropolitan Calcutta was accompanied by a growing political interaction between the districts and the metropolis. By analysing this interaction it is possible to reach a better understanding of many problems regarding Bengal’s political devel7In 1891, the proportion of urban population to the total population in the Bengal presidency was 4.8 per cent, in Madras 9.9 per cent, in the North-West Provinces 11.3 per cent, in Bombay 19.5 per cent. BMP, Municipal Branch, March 1894, Municipal Resolution 1892-3.

Introduction

7

opments that have claimed the attention of historians. This work is primarily concerned, among these various problems of the political history of Bengal, with two basic questions. First of all, why did nationalism in Bengal assumeso early and so advanced a form compared to other provinces in the pre-war period? Second, why did this movement, after apparently reaching a climax under the able leadership of C. R. Das, so quickly disintegrate within two years of his death, never again to reach the peak climbed in 1924? To both questions the answer is sought in the evolution of the social and economicrelationships within Calcutta and in Calcutta’s relationship with the hinterland. At the outset, therefore, this work examinesthe sourcesof tension

in the colonial import-export sector built up by the British around Calcutta, as also the tensions ingrained in the relationship of this sector to the peasant subsistence economies of the rural hinterland (Chapter I). As regards Calcutta itself, the main point of investigation will be the growing conflict between two interdependent groups, the European administrative-commercial elite and the Bengali landed, professional and service gentry, both of whom subsisted on the surplus yielded to Calcutta by the countryside. The enquiries into the centre-hinterland relationship will focus mainly on the mechanism of drawing the surplus from what was essentially a peasant subsistence economy, the specific structure of political control of the countryside which prevented rebellion against this tribute, and the tensions within this structure which the rulers and their opponents in Calcutta had to manipulate to mobilize support for their aims. Therise of nationalism and separatism was closely connected with this process of interaction between the centre and the hinterland, and also with the tensions bred thereby within the metropolis. Over the period as a whole, from 1875 to 1927, this relationship was becoming closer, more complex andincreasingly tense. As the relationship evolved, new forms of political organization and new networksofpolitical ties were created. Within the broader chronological division of pre-war and post-war politics, it is possible to identify at least four clearly distinct phases of political change which have here formed the basis of four chapters of political narrative (Chapters 2 to 5). Until the beginning of the twentieth century, politics at the centre—a triangular pattern of conflict and co-operation between

8

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Europeans, zamindars and professional men—tendedto be‘local’ in character (Chapter 2). Links with the politics of other localities were fitful and attempts to mobilize the countryside half-hearted. The Indian Association of Calcutta, which represented the Indian National Congress in Bengal, had no sustained contacts with the local Bars and the People’s Associations in the districts. Broadly speaking, social units were notpolitically operative beyondthe level of local interaction between small groups. But the partition of Bengal impelled the politicians of Calcutta to forge new and more solid links with followers in provincial towns (Chapter 3). The years following this momentous event witnessed the growth of Swadeshi samitis and revolutionary organizations outside the old network of the sedate Indian Association. But there was as yet no single massbased party which absorbed the political leaders in Calcutta and their followers in the districts into a uniform organization. During the same period the emergence of a smaller centre of politics in Dacca gave an opportunity to Muslim politicians of East Bengal to build up a parallel network of contacts. Political agitations were mounted from Calcutta and Dacca on the basis of broader ethnic identities, such as the Bengali people and the Muslim community. These agitations did not penetrate deeply from the provincial towns into the villages. The uniform organizational integration of the politics of the rural localities and provincial towns with Calcutta politics had to wait for the impact of the First World War, which brought into existence a broad national coalition of Hindu and Muslim politicians against the imperial government. Following the war, two genuinely broad-based organizations, the Bengal Congress and the Khilafat Committee, drew the countryside into their orbit by organizing a mass campaign in townsand villages against the administration (Chapter 4). The NCO-Khilafat struggle, however, heightened the Islamic consciousness of the Muslims. C. R. Das managed for a time to draw the districts and the Muslims into the Swaraj party, the rise of which was meteoric. But after his death there was a speedy disintegration of the national coalition which had gone from one triumph to another under his inspired direction (Chapter 5). From the last days of C. R. Das there was a growing conflict between the metropolis and its hinterland, in the form of a Struggle for power between high caste Hindupoliticians of Calcutta and Muslim and low caste politicians from the districts. This was

fraught with long-term consequences for the province. The growing

Introduction

9

interaction between the centre and the periphery, far from producing a united Bengali patriotism, was irresistibly pointing towards the second partition of Bengal, not by imperial fiat but by mass

fury.

This entire process of political change was closely moulded by the economic and religious geography of Bengal, the principal features of which were European economic preponderance and Muslim numerical majority. Together these two features shaped the changing forms of interaction between Calcutta and Bengal. The attention of economic historians has been drawn to the distorted process of economic growth under the impetus of foreign capital in Bengal.® But closely related to this was another process—a stunted constitutional development under the constraints of European manipulations. J. H. Broomfield® and others have studied this constitutional developmentcritically in its over-all political and social setting, but without detailed consideration of the economic factors that affected it.° In analysing the composition and role of various constituted bodies, such as the Calcutta Corporation and the Bengal Legislative Council, this work will keep the focus on those economic interests which sought to deflect the political progress of Bengal from its natural line of development. These interests were reflected through the activities of non-official Europeans in Calcutta, who formed an influential group inside the Calcutta Corporation and the Bengal Legislative Council, and sought alliances with Muslim and Namasudra politicians. The administration helped them in'every way by manipulating the franchise for the Corporation and the Council. What compelled the Europeans, ordinarily immersed in the business of earning profits and repatriating them from Calcutta, to resort increasingly to these political activities was the increasing opposition of the Congress to their vested interests. The material issues behind constitutional bargaining must be kept constantly in view if we are to understand the long-term direction of political change in Bengal. Nationalism arose 8 Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Private Investment in India 1900-1939 (Cambridge, 1972). ® J. H. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968). 10 Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908 (New Delhi, 1973), and Leonard A. Gordon, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement 1876-1940 (New York, 1974) also tend to givelittle attention to economic factors.

10

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

from a fundamental conflict over these issues. There were compromises in the daily politics of the Council and the Corporation, but there was no real adjustment on the fundamentally clashing interests in the long run.

CHAPTER 1

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN THE AGE ORF HIGH IMPERIALISM I. Commercial Calcutta: social framework of politics at the centre. European economic domination—racial tensions—differential modernization and the growth of discontent among educated Bengalis— capital and labour—the emergence of castes and communities in politics. II. Agricultural Bengal: social framework ofpolitics in the periphery. Dual character of Bengal’s economy—import-export trade versus

peasant subsistence agriculture—ruralstratification and village control —big and small landlords—big and small tenants—peasant unrest and crisis of the smaller gentry—communalstirrings in peasant society.

I. COMMERCIAL CALCUTTA: SOCIAL FRAMEWORK OF POLITICS AT THE CENTRE

British rule in India encountered the first serious political challenge in the province of Bengal, where the thrust of imperial economic interests was by far the deepest. The institutions of the Raj fostered a mobile group of educated Bengalis who led modern religious, cultural and political movements. But the dominant British economic interest would not allow an overall development of the economy by Bengali entrepreneurs. Instead, British capital twisted the economy into a colonial mould which impaired the organic connections between the literate and rustic levels of Bengali society. The growing distance between the classes and the masses impeded for some time the mobilization of rebellious forces in society. Much of the amorphous daily politics on the subcontinent was bound up with temporary grievances andlocal rivalries that hadlittle to do with a concerted and sustained assault on imperialism. But in the complex

12

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

strands of Indian politics there was always a thread of opposition to imperial rule that gave definition to its overall characteras the politics of Indian nationalism. The long-term course of political change in the subcontinent cannot be seen in isolation from the sources of tension between imperial rule and Indian society. Whenthe last embers of the revolt of 1857 had been thoroughly stamped out by British troops, a radical overhaul of the entire administrative and financial structure of the Raj ushered in an era of high imperialism that lasted until the coming of the First World War. Throughout the period there was a steady penetration of imperial economic, political and strategic interests. The entire structure of British overseas trade came to rest squarely on India in the course of the nineteenth century. Two-fifths of Britain’s enormous trade deficit with North America, Europe and the rest of the world was met by the excess of India’s exports over imports, appropriated by Britain through Home Charges (civil and military expenditure, guaranteed railway debt, etc.) and invisible services (shipping, insurance, etc.).1 In addition, India’s large and well-disciplined army, maintained at the heavy cost of half the revenues of India, served as a powerful instrument for protecting imperial interests all over the East. It was readily wielded whenever there was a challenge to these interests east of Suez, and indeed—as the First World War was to

show—westofit. Increasingly, the political and strategic interests of the British empire as a whole became the guiding considerations of the government which administered the subcontinent from Calcutta; and the world-wide trade and commerce of Britain cameto be linked more and more firmly with the economic Advantages accruing from the solid possession of India. However, even in its heyday imperialism was not anall-powerful economic force enjoying comprehensive control of the innumerable isolated social and economic activities on the subcontinent. The small group of British administrators and businessmen in the country had necessarily to work through successive grades of privileged elements in a complex and hierarchical society. Moreover, the rulers were ultimately guided by: broad strategic and political considerations which stood in a certain measure above the narrow commercial interests of British business groups. These broad considerations for running India as a dependable source of imperial profit and power *S. B. Saul, Studies in British Overseas Trade 1870-1914 (Liverpool, 1960),

pp. 62-3.

Economic and Social Structure

13

dictated a sophisticated technique of bargaining between the rulers and the ruled. Imperial economic interests, however, were more ag-

gressive in the eastern part of India than anywhereelse; and it was in the metropolis of Calcutta, from which British capital had penetrated eastern India, that sophisticated bargaining turned earliest into embittered strife. Britain’s new industrial power forced Bengal—economically the core of the British empire in India—into the mould of a dual economy characterized by the domination of the peasant subsistence economy and by an urban import-export sector based on Calcutta. The majority of peasants lived at the subsistence level because their surplus produce wasalienated in the form of taxes for the government, rent for the landlords, interest for the moneylenders and, less

obviously, low purchasing prices obtained by the peasants from traders who bought their produce at less than market value. This under-priced produce, ultimately collected by foreign monopsonistic corporations, was either processed within the country for export(e.g. manufacture of jute fabrics which were subsequently shipped from Calcutta) or exported in the raw (e.g. raw jute pressed into bales and exported for manufacture abroad). The benefits of this export-oriented industrial and commercial activity were withheld from the peasants and this enabled the big European corporations to earn excess profits. The prices obtained by peasants for raw jute were artificially depressed by the combination of monopsonistic European interests engaged in the baling, manufacture and export of jute. These monopsonistic interests were assisted by the poverty of the large majority of peasants, who, in order to pay taxes, rent and interest, were compelled to sell their produce immediately after the harvest when the market wasglutted, instead of holding on to their cropstill the prices recovered again. This system of extraction by under-pricing had the advantage, from the standpoint of foreign capital, of being indirect, for Indian rent-receivers, moneylenders and traders wereall involved in the process. There was no direct confrontation between Bengali peasants and British merchants, as there was with tea planters and coolies in Assam or with indigo planters and peasants in Bihar. The service and professionalclasses of Calcutta, those most active in political agitation,also lived ultimately off the surplus withdrawn from the peasant economy. Naturally it took a long time to mobilize peasant society against the colonial administration. The possibility

14

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

of such peasant mobilization depended on the gradual sharpening of conflict between the British business and administrative class and the native trading, rent-receiving and professional classes. These, in course of time, were driven by discrimination from collaboration to resistance. Until then these classes, living off the people, were cautious in calling upon the people to mobilize. The failure in the intial stages to firmly relate the political struggle of the nation to the basic economic contradiction between the colonial sector of imports and exports and the subsistence agriculture ofthe villages impeded for a long time the growth of any serious threat to the existence of the British Raj. Nevertheless, this contradiction was at the root of the struggle, and tensions arising from it sharpened the political conflict. While producing marginal developmentin certain directions, the domination of British capital was preventing rural economic growth, checking the potential rate of investment under Indian enterprise andrestricting the scope of subordinate Indian interests created within the colonial enclave. The frustration of these modern urban interests found vent increasingly in doctrines of the drain which appeared in the newspapers in the 1870s.? Britain’s enormous economic stake in India was well understood.® Whatwasless clearly recognized was that the vital British economic interests in India were all concentrated in an extraordinary measure in Calcutta and its hinterland. The European-dominated economic complex of tea, jute and coal, which embraced in its sweep the hills of Assam, the plains of Bengal, and the plateau of Chhota Nagpur, converged on the metropolitan city of Calcutta. This city was preeminently the focus of British economic activity in the East. Its hinterland Bengal constituted the largest market for English textiles in India.* The major portion of Britain’s exports to South Asia was circulated through the port of Calcutta. The articles of export—such as foodgrains, oil seeds, tea, jute, coal, indigo, hides and skins— which contributed to India’s favourable balance of trade and enabled * Lytton Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 218.14, Vernacular Press Law Papers,

Governmentextracts from Bengali newspapers showing their disloyalty. ® In an address to a learned society in London in 1903, J. M. Maclean estimated the annual return on the inflow of British investment and skilled labour (including civil servants and marginal cadres) in India at notless than from £30,000,000 to £35,000,000. J. M. Maclean, ‘India’s Place in the Imperial Federation’, Journal of the Society of Arts, Lil, no. 2665, 18 December 1903.

* Proceedings of Calcutta Corporation, 11th ordinary meeting of the Corporation, 28 August 1918.

Economic and Social Structure

15

Britain to cover her trade deficits with the rest of the world were largely drawn from Bengal and channelled through Calcutta. Not only was Calcutta the biggest entrepot for the imports and exports that supported Britain’s world economic position; the city also enjoyed the largest concentration of British capital in Asia, invested mainly in activities that promoted the export of raw materials and light export-oriented processing industries. Fairly indicative though somewhat incompletestatistics indicate that before the First World War aboutthree-fifths of British capital exploiting the natural resources and manpower of India was based on Calcutta. Bombay contained only a little over one-fifth of European investments in India, and the rest of India even less. In comparison with the magnitude of European capital invested in Calcutta—amounting in 1914 to Rs 19 crores, out of the. rupee capital of Rs 28 crores known to be employed in India by European ‘houses’—the amountinvested in Bombay, Madras and othercities by Europeans appeared small. Because of the concentration of such annihilating economic power in eastern India, the development of Indian enterprise in Calcutta lagged far behind that of Bombay. Capital exclusively managed by Indians or jointly controlled by Indians and Europeans amountedin 1914, according to fragmentary statistics available from the Jnvestor’s India Year Book, to Rs 96

million in Bombay, and Rs 43 million in Calcutta. While Indian capitalists in Bombay, either in collaboration with Europeans or by themselves, controlled 58.46 per cent of the capital invested in their city, Indian capitalists in Calcutta could command, on their own or in association with Europeans, only 18.73 per cent of the capital invested in Calcutta. The estimate of T. W. Holderness of the India Office, given in a letter to an official of the Board of Trade in London, seems to corroborate the conclusion drawn from these incomplete statistics: ‘Nearly all the tea, coal, jute mills and cotton mills in Bengal and Assam are under European control and management, and in most cases the bulk of the capital is European. ... Broadly speaking, I should say that in the Bombay Presidency possibly the Parsis and other non-Europeans own a half or more of the mills and other industrial concerns; but that elsewhere in India the nonEuropean share is less than one-fourth and may not exceed onesixth or even one-eighth.”® 5 John Maynard Keynes Papers, R&S 435, T. W. Holderness to P. Ashley, 14 February 1912.

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

16

TABLE1 PAip Up CAPITAL OF RUPEE COMPANIES IN INDIA, 1914

Calcutta

Bombay

Rest of India

India

190,183,289

58,624,200

28,942,050

287,749,539

Mixed

37,114,900

16,250,000

7,093,000

60,457,900

Indian

6,734,000

80,356,160

5,000,394

92,090,554

234,032,189

155,230,360

41,035,444

410,354,444

European

TABLE 2 EUROPEAN AND INDIAN CAPITAL INVESTMENTS, SHOWING THEIR REGIONWISE DISTRIBUTION, 1914

European

Mixed

Indian

Calcutta

66.095

61.389

7.31

Bombay

23.857

26.878

87.26

Rest of India

10.05

11.733

5.43

100.00

100.00

100.00

TABLE 3 RACIAL COMPOSITION OF CAPITAL INVESTMENTS IN DIFFERENT REGIONS OF INDIA, 1914 Calcutta

Bombay

Rest of India

India

European

81.263

41,532

70.529

65.353

Mixed

15.858

9.834

17.285

13.731

Indian

2.877

48.632

12.185

20.915

100.00

100.00

100.00

100.00

Source: Investor’s India Year Book 1914. Includes only the paid-up capital of joint-stock rupee (not sterling) companies whose shares came under the operations of the stock exchanges of Calcutta and Bombay. Excludes private companies and partnerships.

Economic and Social Structure

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European domination of the economyof eastern India was ensured

througha series of arrangements that gave these managing agencies a commanding position based on control of the new import-export sector of the economy.® The economic policy of the government only favoured entrepreneurial activities like import-export trade and manufacture of light export products earning non-sterling foreign exchange to cover Britain’s trade deficits with the rest of the world. In these branches of enterprise the European managing agency houses of Calcutta, with heador collateraloffices in London, enjoyed natural advantages over Indian commercial houses, which had no control of overseas shipping and no base in the money market of London. In a free economy dominated by the import of manufactured cloth and the export of tea and jute, Indian businessmen could not compete on fair terms with European managing agencies which possessed the advantage of marketing and information at ‘home’. This initial advantage in the home market was further consolidated by the complete monopoly of ocean shipping by European companies. On the Calcutta side also, the control of the Port Trust by European houses’ ensuredthatall trade moving between London and Calcutta remained exclusively the preserve of European enterprise. European businessmen derived a further competitive advantage from the fact that senior personnelin the railways, banks and public services belonged to their own race. In fact the ranks of European businessmen were frequently strengthened by the entry of retired senior administrators whostill retained their contacts in the government. I.C.S. officials themselves invested heavily in the shares of the companies managedbyBritish agencies, and often had closerelatives working in the powerful European firms of Calcutta. I.C.S. officials served as Chairmen of the Calcutta Port Commissioners, the Cal-

cutta Improvement Trust and the Calcutta Corporation, and the bigger contracts placed by these bodies and the Public Works Department of the government were usually secured by British firms in Calcutta or London. From the higher European railway officials the British firms obtained preferential treatment in countless daily needs of business, which was denied to Indian businessmen. Wagons 6 A comprehensive and penetrating study of the mechanics of European economic domination is to be found in Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Private Investment in India, pp. 165-81. 7N. Mukherjee, The Port of Calcutta—A Short History (Calcutta, 1968), p. 64.

18

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

were always found for transporting coal from the collieries managed by the agency houses, while Indian colliery owners suffered severe losses because of the non-availability of wagons.® Swadeshi steamer companies operating in the river network of Bengal foundthe railway authorities discriminating against them in favour of established European companies, which enjoyed the monopolistic privilege of through-booking.® One final and very effective lever in the mechanism of European economic domination in Calcutta wasthe institutional combination of European businessmen in chambers of commerce and trade associations from which Indian businessmen were virtually excluded. These bodies served as means of eliminating internal competition among European houses and promoting unity against Indian competitors. The Capital, a weekly commercial journal of Calcutta representing European business opinion, observed with a frankness characteristic of the straightforward racial attitude of the European commercial community in Calcutta, that ‘antagonistic though the various Europeanindustries be in their own originalfield of development, there is a tendency among them to coalesce in opposition to any local rivalry with a fierceness which renders successful competition practically impossible’.1° In Calcutta a powerful combination among European businessmen wasfostered by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, an association that had so influential an image in the mind of the public that a nationalist daily rashly suggested to Lord Curzon that his government was ‘under the thumb of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce’. Torrentially denying this charge in a speechatthefiftieth anniversary of the Chamber, Lord Curzon declared before the assembled captains of European industry and commerce: ‘I cannot remember the occasions on which you have behaved as the despotic master or I was the pliant victim (/aughter); nor am I quite sure thatit tallies with the picture of myself that is ordinarily drawn.’Ultimately it was global strategic and political considerations ranging far beyond the borders of India that prevailed upon the Governmentof India, which ® Report of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce 1908. Proceedings of the annual general meeting, speech by Radha Charan Pal. * BNCC 1909 and 1910. Proceedings of the annual general meeting, speech by Sita Nath Roy. 10 Capital, 29 October 1914. 1 Report of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, 1902, vol. 2, speech of Lord Curzonat the fiftieth anniversary of the Chamber.

Economic and Social Structure

.

19

stood at a certain distance from all its subjects—native as well as European. And from this isolation of ultimate power, the Viceroy and the Secretary of State naturally regarded the local European business community of Calcutta as merely one of manypressure groups among their subjects.1? Nevertheless it is true that in many matters of vital importance to European businessmen in Calcutta, the Bengal Chamber had sufficient influence to bend the policies of the government—as exemplified by the influence exerted by the Chamberin the matter of the Tea Cess Bill, the wages of the tea garden labourers, and the reconstitution of the Calcutta Corporation in 1899.15 The advice and assistance of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce was sought by the governmentin connection with newlegislation, railway extension, improvement of the public services and various matters of public importance. The Chamberpossessed elected representatives on the Imperial Legislative Council, the Bengal Legislative Council, the Calcutta Corporation, the Calcutta ImprovementTrust, the Calcutta Port Commissioners, and other bodies dealing with matters of interest to European businessmen. The executive staff of the Chamber transacted the business of numerous trades associations, the most important ones being the Indian Jute Mills Association, the Indian Tea Association and the Indian Mining Association. The exclusive European monopoly of the jute manufacturing industry, the biggest industry in eastern India, was buttressed by the Indian Jute Mills Association and its executive organ, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. Under its weekly agreements, the jute mills undertook not to sell manufactures under the rates fixed at each weekly meeting, whether in India or elsewhere.1* The Association arranged periodical agreements among the jute companies, limiting the working hours during the week so 12 The government resolutely refused to accede to the demand of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce for separation of the account of the profitable railway enterprises from the general finance of the empire, which assigned large sums to frontier railways for strategic purposes. This diverted resources from adequate transport facilities for the growing traffic in goods and gaverise to a perennial complaint about short supply of wagons on the East Indian Railways. The President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce declared in 1900: ‘It does not appear obvious to the plain commercial mind why trade in Bengal, where the Railways earn large returns, should be unduly taxed for the maintenance of strategic lines for our military defences on the Frontier.” BCC 1900, vol. 1, Presidential address at annual meeting.

13 Bengalee, 19 February 1903. 14 Report of the Jute Manufacturers’ Association 1891,

20

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

as to avoid overproduction and unnecessary competition. By 1913 all the jute mills on the Hughly river had become membersof the Association and none of them were controlled by Indians.° The apparent contradiction between the jute manufacturing industries of Dundee and Calcutta was also obviated to some extent by the fact that many of the mills in and around Calcutta were in the hands of practically the same men who owned the Dundeejute mills.*® The Bengal Chamber of Commerce was dominated by a small number of managing agencies, organized generally as partnerships which held contracts for managing the affairs of several companies, bringing to them the benefits of group management and organization. Between them six managing agencies of Calcutta—Andrew Yule, Jardine Skinner, Bird Heilgers, Shaw Wallace and Begg

Dunlop—controlled in 1914 more than half the capital invested in tea, jute and coal by hundreds of rupee companies: 51.10 per cent of tea, 57 per cent ofjute and 51.63 per cent of coal. The biggest among these managing agencies—Andrew Yule, Jardine Skinner, and Bird— managed little under 40 per cent of the investments in the three major industries of eastern India.?”? Such horizontal concentration of tea, jute and coal interests through a few managing agencies, combined with the concentration of the greater part of the total capital employedin all the branches of modern enterprise in eastern India in the hands of these same agencies, facilitated the maintenance of a collective monopoly over the major industries of the region by about a dozen European houses based in Calcutta. Among these racially exclusive managing agencies only one, Martin & Company(later Martin, Burn & Company), wasa partnership between a European and an Indian, the latter being Sir R. N. Mukherjee, a Bengali entrepreneur of Brahmin origin who broke new ground in engineering, railways and iron andsteel. Most of the other managing agencies, which were exclusively European, tended to be conservative, insisted on ‘sound finance’, and were indisposed

to venture into new industries like metallurgical and chemical manufactures. They invested mainly in extractive or plantation industries

15 Report of the Indian Jute Mills Association 1913. Proceedings of the annual

general meeting.

** Collection of Freedom Movement Committee, Paper no. 119, correspondence with B. Chakravarti: Graham Pole to Byomkesh Chakravarti, 9 February

1925 and 7 April 1925. ™ Investor’s India Year Book 1914, Bird grew even bigger in the 1920s through a merger with Heilgers. So did Martin by a merger with Burn.

Economic and Social Structure

21

like coal and tea, and manufacture of light export products like jute. There waslittle investment in basic or heavy industries and engineering works. Lord Ronaldshay on his arrival as Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal in 1917 noted that leading European’ business magnates in Calcutta like Sir David Yule were ‘not encouraging on the subject of the development of industries in Bengal’.18 In addition to managing established industries, the managing agencies also participated in the import and export trade.!® Shaw Wallace and Jardine Skinner, for example, were among the most prominent importers of Manchester piece-goodsin the east, while at the same time managingtea, jute, coal and various other companies. This combination of import and export trading with industrial management checkedthe possible tendency of the managing agencies to champion the cause of Indian industrial development through protective tariff. In spite of occasional contradictions, as in the matter of the Indian Factory Act of 1890,” there could be no real long-term conflict between British capital in London, Manchester and Dundee on the one hand, and Anglo-Indian capital in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras on the other. Internal contradictions on the imperial front were reduced in intensity through economic interconnections and racial affinities. Racial tensions in Calcutta society The economic preponderance of Europeancapital in Calcutta projected itself on the psychological plane in an ever present feeling of racial antipathy in the social life of the city. In Calcutta it could not be asserted, as was claimed of Madras, that friendly relations existed between the two races.”! The European treatment of natives was the primary cause for this state of affairs. That treatment was not, as the Prince of Wales found during a visit to India, the sameas that of superiors to inferiors in England; it was much worse.”* Analysing the 418 Skins, Sir David informed Lord Ronaldshay in a pessimistic vein, were poor and did not make good leather. Cotton wasall right in Bombay but not a success in Bengal. Paper could be got cheaper elsewhere. Zetland Papers, MSS. Eur. D. 609.1, ‘My Bengal Diary’, 1S April 1917. 19 Indian Industrial Commission 1916-18 Report (Calcutta, 1918), pp. 12-13. 20 BCC 1889-90. 21C, FE. Buckland, ‘The City of Calcutta’, Journal of the Society of Arts, LIV, no. 2776, 2 February 1906, p. 292. 22M. N. Das, India under Morley and Minto: Politics behind Revolution,

Repression and Reforms (London, 1964), p. 25.

3

22

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

problem in 1893, Rabindranath Tagore pointed out that women might have played a part in bridging the gulf between the two races; unfortunately European women themselves were among those most affected by prejudice in this matter. ‘How shall we blame them for the fact that we get on their nerves—it is our misfortune. God has made us wholly to their distaste.’** The attitude of the women of AngloIndia—‘silly, arrogant, odious, whenever a Native was mentioned’*4

—strongly affected the behaviour of their menfolk. But such irrational prejudices and fears did not explain the systematic character of racial discrimination under the Raj. The racial abasement of the natives was necessarily connected with their economic exploitation, and this objective link was clearly perceived by thinking Bengalis. ‘Manchester and Birmingham,indigo planters and tea planters, are now the king. The Chamber of Commerceis the King.’ That is why, wrote Tagore, there was so much white animosity towards natives, so persistent an attempt to repress the developmentof the nation’s potential. That, he saw, was why ‘we are being chased out of en-

gineering colleges, being dismissed from offices, being hindered in learning medicine, being secretly deflected from acquiring the knowledge of science’.2> Many otherintellectuals in Bengal, such as Bipin Chandra Pal, had perceived that economic domination and monopoly power were buttressed by racial exclusiveness and discrimination.”® Because the stake of British capital was so large in Calcutta and its hinterland, .racial antagonism wasalso all-pervasive there.

This was especially so in the European clubs of Calcutta, the gates of which were barred against natives right down to 1946, when the pressure of circumstances forced Europeansto seek ‘Indian contacts’ by taking in Indian golfers as guests at the Tollygunge Club.?’ Racialism was to be encountered in a more personally humiliating form in railway carriages where men and womenoften had thebitter 23 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Ingraj O Bharatbasi’ in ‘Raja Praja’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12 (Calcutta, B.S. 1368), p. 928. *4 Morley Papers, Morley to Minto, 5 December 1907, quoted in M. N. Das,

p. 27. 25 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Raj-kutumba’ in ‘Atmasakti O Samuha’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, p. 889 (essay written in 1903).

26 New India, 4 November 1901. 27 Furopean Association, Calcutta Branch Minutes. Proceedings of the 423rd meeting of the Committee, 6 December 1945, and the 425th meeting, 17 January 1946.

Economic and Social Structure

23

experience of being unceremoniously thrown out.?? It was to be encountered in the most brutal form in murderous andfatal assaults on Indians by Europeans, for which the latter invariably escaped with light sentences.?° Consideration for the good nameof the British in India, wrote Lord Curzon to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, prevented his government from ‘making such a statement of the real facts—as regards outrages, collisions, verdicts of juries, and the administration of justice between European and Native—as will make every Englishman in the country hang his head with shame’. ‘During all this time’, Curzon continued, ‘I have never daredtolet the real facts

be known—either aboutthe 9th lancers’ case or about these cases in general—from the national discredit that they would involve.’®° Ransacking his memory in 1898, the poet Rabindranath Tagore could remember only one case, way back in the nineteenth century, in which a European wassentenced to death in Bengalfor killing an Indian.*! In a spate of such killings in the seventies, the courts let off Europeans with light punishment by a general application of the ‘spleen theory’, finding the deaths of the natives in most cases due to a general engorgement of spleens which had been accidentally ruptured in these numerousaffrays.2? A pervading sense of racial abasement was produced bythe callous condonation in the courts of murdersof natives by white men.* This licence for Europeans which was virtually built into the judicial system** was central to the functioning of the European 28 In Bengali fiction of this time we often encounter heroes and heroines who stood up to insolent Europeans in railway carriages. Notable examples are Rabindranath Tagore’s heroine Kalyani in the short story ‘Aparichita’ and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s hero Bipradas in his novel Bipradas. 28 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 18 November 1898; New India, 4 November1901. 30 Curzon Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 111. 208, no. 71, Curzon to Bourdillon, 20 September 1903.

31 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Prasanga-Katha’ in ‘Atmasakti O Samuha’, Ravindra

Rachanavali, vol. 12, p. 850.

32 Lytton Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 218.14, Papers connected with the Ver-

nacular Press Law.

33 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Apamaner Pratikar’ in ‘Raja Praja’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, pp. 948-9. 34 For an accountof legal inequality and the struggle to abolish it, see Nemai Sadhan Bose, Racism, Struggle for Equality and Indian Nationalism (Calcutta,

1981).

24

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

enterprises in the interior, such as tea gardens, indigo factories and coal mines, especially with regard to their monopoly of labour and raw material. The economic function of a judicial system which could be counted upon to discriminate between Europeans and Indians in all racial disputes and assaults was well understood. English newspapers in Calcutta raised a hysterical clamour whenever an Indian assaulted a white man, but it was native papers which were accused of exaggerating racial assaults. The European and AngloIndian Defence Association in Calcutta acted as a pressure group to ensure that the judiciary inflicted weighted and deterrent punishment for assault on Europeans while tolerating the murder of Indians. In this it acted as an agent for purely economic bodies like the Indian

Tea Association, which utilized the Defence Association in 1898 to

move the Calcutta High Court for enhancing the sentence of some Indians who had received what was considered insufficient punishment for assault on a tea planter and his two assistants.25 The European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association was in fact a political arm of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. It was a body “primarily intended for the big bugs’,** for, as its Chairman admitted, it ‘left its affairs in the hands of what waspractically the Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce’.®? The crude literature of imperialism in India projected a racial ideology which found its most refined expression in Rudyard Kipling, about whom Rabindranath Tagore wrotein 1894: Heis trying to get the Englishman in England to understand that the Government of India is like a circus company. They are skilfully directing a dance of strange and wonderful animals of diverse species staged before the civilized world. A moment’s turning away of the steady watchful eyes kept on them would inevitably result in all these animals springing at one’s neck from behind. The nature of these animals has got to be observed with keen interest, a judicious manipulation of fear of the whip and greed for the bone is necessary, and an understandingaffection for animals is also required in some measure. But to importprinciples, fraternity and civilization in this game would render the running 35> European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, Proceedings of the meet-

ings of the council commencing 5 January 1894. Meeting of 29 July 1898. 36 European Association, Proceedings of the Calcutta Committee of the

European Association commencing 1918, p. 128. 37 Toid.

Economic and Social Structure

25

of the circus extremely difficult, and would not be attended without grave risk for the manager.®8 Such writings projected a strange image of India to convince England that the situation in India was, indeed, peculiar. The racial prejudice pervading the outlook of the large, well-knit and exclusive European community of Calcutta cementedsocialties between the businessman and the administrator. The Government was extraordinarily sensitive to European opinion in Calcutta and quickly responsive to the slightest pressure from the non-official section of the metropolitan European community. Rabindranath Tagore, the poet of international friendship and the unity of man, analysed this growing bondofracial solidarity between European officials and non-officials. Social ties among the British community in India were becoming closer because of the increasing presence of English women. Their presence also widened the distance between Europeans and Indians, and fostered a tendency among Europeans to get quickly through the business of the day and escape into the exclusive social circle of dinner parties and clubs. The contrast of the rest of India with this circle was extremely distasteful to the average British officer, whose conscience was not wholly muted. In order to escape from his sense of guilt and enjoy an insulatedlife of pleasure and comfort in an area of darkness, he movedso closely in his exclusive circle that it was impossible to resist the pressure of public opinion prevailing within it. ‘Only more than ordinarily strong men can push aside the opinion of their community in the tennis court, the dancing hall, the hunting party, the theatre and the music hall. In debate or business conflict of opinion mayarouse the excitement necessary to maintain one’s own point of view, but it is impossible to resist the silent or half-spoken views expressed in sport, in picnic, in female voices, and in the glances of women.’*In creating this irresistible climate of opinion, the European clubs of Calcutta which brought businessmen and administrators together played a role of great sociological significance.*° 38 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Raja O Praja’ in ‘Atmasakti O Samuha’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, pp. 843-4. 39 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Prasanga-Katha (4)’ in ‘Atmasakti O Samuha’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, p. 864. 40 See Sir Harry Townsend, A History of Shaw Wallace & Co. Ltd. (Calcutta, 1965), chapter 18, for a description of the importance ofclubs in the sociallife of businessmen in India. See also R. Pearson, Eastern Interlude: A Social History of the European Community in Calcutta (Calcutta, 1954), pp. 225-6.

26

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Becauseofthis situation, European businessmen werein a position

to exert sufficient pressure to deflect the government from policies which they found distasteful. This was clearly shown during the Ilbert Bill controversy in Calcutta, when the non-official Europeans conducted a fierce campaign against any changes in the judicial system in the interior which threatened their monopsonistic power over suppliers of raw material and physical labour. Since the government of Bengal was the government most directly amenable to the pressure of the European community in Calcutta, almost the entire civil service in Bengal, together with its Lieutenant-Governor, took the unprecedented step of openly opposing the Viceroy and ranged itself squarely against the I[bert Bill. The opinion of the LieutenantGovernor of Bengal, Rivers Thompson, as expressed in his Secretary’s despatch of 22 June 1883 to the Government of India,contained as Clear and frank a denunciation of the principle of racial equality as could be expected in any state document prepared at the instance of the head of a government. The very bad thing about the bill is its principle—the principle, that is, that by a stroke of the pen weare to establish equality; ignoring race distinctions, among a people who themselves repudiate the idea in their intercourse with each other with the utmost scorn and aversion. Our thoughts are not their thoughts nor are their ways our ways; and it has been quite justly pointed out that as long as there is such widespread divergence between Englishmen and Natives, as regards moral standards, social customs and political status, any attempt to remove judicial disqualifications must be as dangerous asit is premature. They will not be removed,at least, by legislative enactment. The High Court on its part exercised a racial discrimination against Indian judges and lawyers which drove some prominent members of the legal community into the ranks ofearly political agitators, thus providing the national movementin its initial stages with leadership from high professional quarters. Chief Justice Richard Garth, who stood in a class with his contemporary Rivers Thompson in the matter of racial exclusiveness, was so opposed ‘in principle’ to the appointment of a native as acting Chief Justice of the High Court during his absence on leave that rather than have Justice Romesh Mitter appointed in his place temporarily, he was * Full text of the letter quoted in C. E. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant-

Governors (Calcutta, 1901), vol. u, pp. 786-7.

Economic and Social Structure

27

prepared even to forgo his leave in deference to a sense of ‘duty’. Garth objected particularly to the appointment of Mitter because Mitter would then sit as a memberof the English Committee from which Garth had always carefully excluded him in consideration of the fact that he would then have ‘the whole patronageofthe court in his power’. The Chief Justice found all this ‘so wrong and illegal’ that he threatened to refer the matter to the Secretary of State and even to Parliament, if Ripon proceeded to appoint Mitter.4? Ripon replied in crushing terms that the appointment, as a fact, could not beillegal, though it might, in judgement, be inexpedient.** He refused to pass Mitter over for Cunningham, who was‘no lawyer’, who was, indeed,

‘the laughing stock of the Court’. Ripon and the members ofhis Council also thought that it would be a very good idea to have Mitter as a memberof the English Committee, though Garth wasthe final authority in this matter.*4 Once Ripon made knownhis intention to appoint Mitter, Garth felt that since the decision had been made, he would only sacrifice his health by remaining in Calcutta. He took leave.*® Politically more momentous thanthis incident was Garth’s objection to the appointment of W. C. Bonnerjee as Standing Counsel during the leave of absence in England of the incumbent MrPhillips. Onthis occasion Garth wrote to Ripon: I am bound, however, to inform His Excellency that there is this difficulty with regard to Mr Bonnerjee—I believe that the appointment of a Native Barrister, however good he might be, to the post of Standing Counsel would be generally distasteful to the Bar. No native has hitherto held the appointment; and circumstances mightarise (as for instance political riots or prosecutions) in which it might not be desirable that he should hold it. But the principal objection consists in this, that if the office of the Advocate-General were vacated, the Standing Counsel would probably havethe first claim to it, and it would be undoubtedly most undesirable for many reasons that a Native Barrister should be Advocate-General.*® Since, however, no suitable Englishman was available during Phillips’ leave of absence, Ripon got Garth to agree that W. C. Bonnerjee 42 Ripon Papers, BP 7/6, 1882, vol. 1, Garth to Ripon, nos. 406 and 415. 43 Tbid., Ripon to Garth, no. 341.

44 Ibid., Ripon to Rivers Thompson, 27 June 1882, no. 339. 45 Thid., vol. u, Garth to Ripon, 10 July 1882, no. 36.

48 Tbid., vol. 1, Garth to Ripon, no. 146B.

28

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

should be appointed officiating Standing Counsel.*” But steps were taken to ensure that Bonnerjee did not get the post again. Unwittingly, the Indian National Congress was provided with its first President by the High Court. Before W. C. Bonnerjee joined the Congress, the Government had decided—and Bonnerjee knew it— that he was not to get the Standing Counselship again. To get rid of Bonnerjee, Phillips was written to and asked to return and resume his duties as soon as possible.*® The High Court, by its racial discrimination, thus pushed W. C. Bonnerjee to the forefront of the Indian political opposition, while Romesh Mitter played an important backstage role in this opposition. It must not be thought that the contempt of Europeansfor natives affected only the limited section of highly qualified Bengalis who were being denied positions to which their merit entitled them. It affected all sections of native society, including the lower classes in both town and country. These felt deeply that their humanity was being denied by the barbarities—such as slaps, kicks and whippings and the use of termslike ‘nigger’ and ‘swine’-—practised upon them by Europeans.*® This sense of racial abasement, associated with economicexploitation, was the most pervasive factor in stimulating the spirit of opposition to British rule. This spirit was reflected in the growing ‘cheek’ and ‘insolence’ of ‘even the lowest class of natives’.®° The signs of resistance among the lower classes were sufficiently alarming for the Englishman to report in 1893—‘Europeans are insulted, abused andjeered at by the lowest type of natives and if they retaliate, they are set upon by a mob’.*! Consequently there were repeated attempts to crush signs of independence by exemplary punishments. A high-born young Muslim whoaccidentally whipped an insolent Europeanin a passing carriage while driving his own horses on the Maidan hadto goto prison. A rich banker of Allahabad who had his servants stop a European 47 Ibid., 1881, vol. 1, Ripon to W. Stokes, no. 83.

48 A. C. Banerjee Papers. Newspapers cuttings, Indian Mirror, 19 July 1895, letter written by ‘Zephon’. 4° Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Prasanga-Katha (l)’ in ‘Atmasakti O Samuha’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, p. 851. 5° Ampthil to Arthur Godley, 27 July 1907, Ampthil Collection, quoted in M.N. Das, p. 25. *! Quoted by Tagore, ‘Ghushaghushi’ in ‘Atmasakti O Samuha’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, p. 893.

Economic and Social Structure

29

tenant from seizing his flower-pots was sentenced to jail by a white judgeforhis ‘audacity’.>* There was a pervading scepticism affecting all classes of Indian society, regarding fairness of the British judicial system. The mass of the people were incapable of appreciating fine ‘distinctions in the laws of evidence. All they could see and remember was that no European wassentencedto death for killing a native. It was this deep feeling among the mass of ordinary people that the “baboos’, contemptuously dismissed as a small minority representing no one but themselves, expressed in their increasingly critical attitude towards the British government. “They might be small in number,’ wrote Tagore in 1894, ‘but in the fragmented society of Indiait is the educated community alone which shows the union of learning with feeling. And it is this educated community whichis in a position to express the heart-felt pain of the Indian people and to spread awareness of it by various means.’*? The bitterness of racial antagonism lent a sharp edgeto the politics of Calcutta, but did not cut through the ties of dependence between educated Bengalis and the imperial power. The politically articulate intermediate strata of Calcutta society—ranging from topranking civil servants, legal luminaries and other eminent profes-

sionals to ill-paid clerks, school teachers and briefless barristers—

were associated with the Raj in a subordinate capacity. In contrast with a genuine bourgeois class produced by structural changes in the economy, these intermediate classes rose to prominence due to disproportionate increase of the state apparatus, as contrasted with the level of technology and production. Differential modernization

While the institutional apparatus of British rule on which educated Bengalis subsisted underwent great expansion after the Mutiny, Bengali entrepreneurs were slowly squeezed out of advantageous positions in the industrial and commercial complex around Calcutta. As a result of this process of differential modernization, educated Bengalis were in the forefront of the public life of the city, while big business was predominantly European with a rather small participation of Marwari and Bengali merchants. The limited opportunities for Bengalis in the field of enterprise and investment had a close 52 Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, pp. 886, 890, 894. 53 Tbid., ‘Apamaner Pratikar’, pp. 949-50.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

bearing upon the formation of social strata in Calcutta. The nineteenth century saw the emergenceof twodistinct ‘estates’>* within the respectable society of Calcutta: the notables (abhijatas) and the ordinary householders (grihasthas). For a short time in the early part of the nineteenth century a nascent bourgeois class of enterprising Bengalis appeared on the scene. This class failed to consolidate its position and was gradually absorbedinto twohierarchically arranged groups: an upper rank of landed magnates and an intermediate rank of educated professionals. Together they formed a respectable society distinguished from the cultivating and labouring strata below them.** Thefirst stage in the formation ofsocial strata in Calcutta carried to the apex of native society a group of parvenuscalled banians. They were compradors, attached to officers of the East India Company, or private British traders. A few pioneering entrepreneurs—such as Dwarkanath Tagore, owner of coal mines and organizer of the Union Bank in partnership with Europeans—emerged from their ranks. This flourishing set of families made huge fortunes by speculative and commercial activities in the first half of the nineteenth century, but they became more and more dependenton the land from about the middle of the century. After the collapse of Dwarkanath Tagore’s enterprises with the failure of the Union Bank in 1848, Bengali entrepreneurship in Calcutta suffered a setback from which it never quite recovered. Asthe industrial capitalism of Britain made further inroads into the economy of Bengal, the European business houses, which acquired local expertise, no longer needed Bengali partnership. Bengalis were not taken in as partners in the new exportoriented manufacturing enterprises which developed in the second half of the nineteenth century.5® Debendranath, the eldest son of Dwarkanath, had to abandon muchofhis father’s extensive but in54 “Stande’ or status strata as defined by Max Weber.

55 R. C. Dutt, speaking of peasants in 1873, wrote: ‘Public opinion in this country means the opinion of aristocracy and middle classes—in one word the opinion of the bhadralok and not of the cultivating and working classes.’ R. C.

Dutt, ‘Bengal Zamindar and Ryot’, Bengal Magazine, vol. 2, December 1873. It

is better to look on the bhadralok as constituting a respectable society rather than a single status group, which implies a misleading homogeneity. This linguistic misunderstanding has led John Broomfield to treat the category as a single social groupdefined by a common status. J. H. Broomfield, pp. 5-20. 5° Pp. C. Roy, ‘The Bengali Brain and Its Misuse’, Bengalee, 22 August and

22 September 1909. In the provincial towns, however, enterprising Bengali families, such as the Sahanas of Bankura, utilized the railway and the other innovations of British rule to carve out small business empires below the top

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solvent business in banking, coal mines and silk and indigo manufactures. The Union Bankcollapsed and the coal mines went to form the nucleus of the huge Bengal Coal Company, which ultimately came underthe control of the leading European managing agency of Andrew Yule & Co. On a smaller scale Debendranath carried on manufacture of silk and indigo, financing his factories by the rents from his father’s landed properties and paying off the huge debts of his father from the profits of the silk and indigo trade.5? When his son Rabindranath assumed control of the family concerns, the dependence of the Tagores of Jorasanko on the income from land became more pronounced.®® Growing dependence on land and adoption ofthe life style of the older zamindars of Bengal turned the new rich families of Calcutta into landed notables within two or three generations. The second stage in the formation of social strata in Calcutta deposited below these rich abhijata families a middle stratum of grihastas following the social leadership of the abhijatas and depending on their patronage in matters like social ranking, caste observances and meansoflivelihood.®® In 1823 the conservative Bengali intellectual Bhabani Charan Banerjee, in one of the earliest vernacular tracts on Calcutta society, described this amorphous cluster of people as vishayi bhadralok (respectable men working for their livelihood) to distinguish them from the leisured rich of Calcutta, whose ample possession of capital or land made it unnecessary for them to work for their living. Banerjee distinguished three income groups amongthe respectable people workingfortheir livelihood in Calcutta: those who held high posts as managers (dewans) and agents (mutsaddis) of big houses or government concerns; middle income (madhyabit) people who were not rich but were in comfortable circumstances; and ‘poor but respectable men’ who served as clerks and household assistants, daily walking a long way to their stratum of European managing agencies in Calcutta. J. H. Broomfield, “The Enterprising Bengali’, paper read at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, 1973. 57 Tagore Family Letter Books, vol. 1, part 11. See the letters of Debendranath Tagore in Bengali, especially nos. 64 & 67.

58 Accounts Books and Loan Registers of Rabindranath Tagore, Tagore

Family Papers. 59 Dwijendranath Thakurer Smritikatha, p. 185, cited in S. N. Mukherjee, ‘Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta’, in Edmund Leach and S. N. Mukherjee (eds.), Elites in South Asia (Cambridge, 1970).

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

ill-paid jobs and waiting at night on their patron, calling him ‘Sir’ and repetitively uttering ‘as you command’.® After the Mutiny the expansion of the apparatus of government, the creation of public services like railways, municipalities and posts and telegraphs, the organization of a more bureaucratic estate administration on the lines laid down by the Court of Wards, the growth of European business houses, the establishment of a larger number of courts for resolving land disputes, the build-up of the new professions of law and medicine, the rise of journalism and the foundation of schools, colleges and universities—vastly increased the number of careers open to the English-educated, who consciously styled themselves the educated middle class (shikshita madhyabitta shreni). The transformation of traditional groups of rent-receiving literati—mainly composedof grihastha families of priestly, medical or writer caste— into a modern set of English-educated professionals provided the basis for the emergenceofthe intermediate strata in Calcutta society. Thetightening grip of imperial rule pressed educated Indian society into a narrow administrative and professional mould. What the rulers needed wasclerical skili, not entrepreneurial talent. Increasing education, combined with a narrowing job prospect, set the pace for growing political discontent. The Calcutta University had no proper arrangements for commercial, technical or industrial education. From the beginning of the twentieth century Bengali young men began to go to Europe, America and Japanfor this kind of educa_ tion, but even foreign training did not ensure appointment to senior positions in industry. European managers of the firms in Calcutta preferred to employ only white or Eurasian men. European firms refrained as a matter of policy from training Indians either for responsible posts or for an independentindustrial career.*! Since racial exclusiveness barred the entry of Indians in public or private enterprises in any considerable number, educated Bengalis flocked into the professions and service. After the Proclamation of 1858, which promised impartial admission to offices on a non-racial basis, the Bengalis, ‘already elated with the high praises accorded to their intellectural powers, began at once to assume a highertone of independence’. Instead of being ‘polite, gentle and unassuming’, 6° Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamalalaya (Calcutta, B.S. 1343,

‘Rare BooksSeries’ edition), pp. 8, 13.

*! Report of the Marwari Association 1923, from the Assocn to the Unemployment Committee, Bengal, 23 July 1923.

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they became more and moreself-assertive.®? Although concerned at this state of affairs, the British correctly concluded that this was not to be confused with sedition in any sense. English-educated Bengalis were tied by close ties of dependenceto their foreign rulers. A kind of sub-imperialism of Bengalis in the courts, the governmentoffices and the commissariat closely followed thetrail of British imperialism in north India, and during the Mutiny Bengalis found themselves flocking to the shelter offered by British cantonments in order to escape from the vengeance of the mutineers. It was therefore not surprising that for every passage of clear disloyalty in the Bengali press, ‘a counter-passage could be produced of signal loyalty’. The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal observed to the Viceroy in this connection: ‘Much of the dissatisfaction which is expressed is partly natural, and arises from an ambition to rise to high places, to get the good things, the loaves andfishes of their Native country.’® Manyhighly qualified Bengalis, who hopedatfirst to rise to top positions by collaboration, turned their thoughts to changing the system when they found racial discrimination barring the gates to their advancement. This specific situation arose in the seventies and the eighties, when a certain number of educated Bengalis attained technical qualifications, putting them on par with Europeansin the fields of law and public administration. To their chagrin they found that this did not secure them the highest posts, which should have been available to them under the Proclamation of 1858. The leaders of the Congress movement in Bengal, W. C. Bonnerjee and Surendranath Banerjea, came from this small groupof highly qualified but frustrated Bengalis. W. C. Bonnerjee, who was acknowledged by Chief Justice Garth to be ‘second to none’ in ability,** was nevertheless pronounced unfit because of his racial origin for the office of Standing Counsel. Similarly Surendranath Banerjea was turned out of the Civil Service for a lapse that would have been pardoned in any young English civilian. Finding the ways barred in every direction, the nation’s most highly qualified section formulated for thefirst time demands which, if conceded, could only result in the substantial transfer of power to 82 Northbrook Collection, MSS. Eur. C. 144.17, Robinson to Temple, 21

January 1875; enclosure to Temple to Northbrook, 18 February 1875. 83 Tbid., Temple to Northbrook, 18 January 1875.

64 Ripon Papers, BP 7/6, Correspondence with Persons in India, 1880, vol. 1 no. 146B, Garth to Ripon.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

the subject race. ‘Though brown, they wanted to share the White Man’s burden.’® Indeed, the tendency of their demands was to relieve him ofit altogether, in substance if not yet in form. As one nationalist was to express it later, co-operation with the rulers was only meant ‘to get whatever could be extracted from the alien bureaucrats andthen to fight for more’.** Agreeing with the Secretary of State about the mistake it would be to advocate the claims of natives to higher employment, Lord Northbrook communicated his anxiety at the growth of a mass of people with a smattering of English education, just enough to make them conceited and ape the English habit of grumbling at and criticising everything done by the Government. It would have the worsteffect to flatter this class by making them suppose their merits are equal to any posts. The way the public opinion of these people has been shownin the case of the Gaekwar is not satisfactory. There has certainly been a sympathy for him which I did not expect, and observations in favour of Native Government which are not satisfactory as coming from British subjects.®? The demand of the Bonnerjees and the Banerjeas for a share in ‘the loaves andfishes of their Native country’, when thus interpreted, was far-reaching in its effects. The propelling force behind nationalism was from the beginning a relentless pursuit of power, a will to replace the white administration that emanated from large sections of society. It is true that the desire for the substantial transfer of power was consciously articulated only by the educated section of society. But taken as a whole that section was by no means a microscopic minority, for the educated Bengalis ranged widely from highly placed lawyers to half-starved clerks. Moreover, as we shall see, they had deep and enduring connections with the literate rural gentry of petty zamindars, talugdars and sub-infeudatory tenure-holders. The real weakness of the educated Bengalis was not their small number. Urban professional Bengalis and their more numerous rural kin together constituted a landed literati far more numerous than *° Hirendranath Chakravarti, ‘Bengali Political Unrest, 1905-18, with Special Reference to Terrorism’ (Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 1968), p. 6.

*6 A. C. Banerjee Papers, Biographical Notes (handwritten), no. 3. 6? Northbrook Collection, Correspondence with the Secretary of State, 1875-6, no. 10, Northbrook to Salisbury, 26 February 1875.

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similar groups in other parts of the country.® But they were a sharply distinct element in Bengali society, cut off by their position in the dual economyfrom the lowerclasses, and dependentfortheir superior position on their share in the running of the colonial administration. They had no independent position in the economy, nor did they control new productive forces that could be deployed in their struggle for political power. The lack of a productive role connecting the respectable society of Calcutta with the working population of Bengal constituted the objective economic factorlimiting the possibilities of mobilization. Capital and labour The Bengali political leadership seemed to exist in a vacuum, having control of neither capital nor labour in the metropolis. Over them stood the powerful group of European businessmen, occupying a sphere of enterprise in which Indians had no place. Below them stood the unwieldy body of immigrant labourers, speaking different languages and drawn from different provinces, with whom political leaders had no rapport. Within Indian society there were no organized class forces of capital and labour. This was why the Bengali service gentry were so prominent in politics and were yet so uncertain in class alignment. Lacking a firm social base, they tried to acquire such a base bypolitical action aimed at creating an Indian sphere in the private sector. As the Indians did not command an adequate base for capital accumulation, the aim was to create such a base by means of institutional combination and formation of a pressure group promoting Indian business interests. Twoyears after the foundation of the Indian National Congress, the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce came into existence, apparently as a result of the political consciousness which stirred Bengal in the 1880s. The Chambersignified the emergence of Indian business as a pressure group forthe first time on this side of India, on the lines of the Bombay Mill-Owners’ Association which had been established much earlier in Bombay. To begin with, the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce was a commercial rather than an industrial body. An inaugural meeting of the proposed association, held in the house of a leading Marwari businessmanin the heart of Barabazar, was attended by merchants, traders and bankers ofall communities from the major marts of north Calcutta: Hatkhola, 68 GI, Home Poll (A), May 1913, nos. 72-5, minute by R. H. Craddock.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Barabazar, Kumartuli, Chitpur, Ultadingi, Baliaghata and Amratala.£® This inter-communal effort for commercial co-operation in Calcutta resulted in the formation of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce in 1887 with a non-sectarian and representative Executive Committee consisting of Bengali, upcountry Muslim, Marwari and Parsi businessmen.”® The Chamberhad from the first the active support of the Indian National Congress and the leaders of the national movement in Calcutta. Its constitution is said to have been drafted by A. O. Hume and revised by W. C. Bonnerjee. In the very first year of its existence prominent Congressmenof Calcutta like Surendranath Banerjea and Ananda Mohan Bose were elected honorary members by the Chamber. Soonafter its establishment, the Chamber wasinvited by the Indian Association to send delegates to the third session of the Indian National Congress, and in responseto this invitation Sitanath Roy, Kumar Rameshwar Malia, Nanda Lal Roy and Bholanath Dharattended the Madras Congressof 1887. Next year the Chamber suggested to the Governmentof India ‘that, to a fair and reasonable extent, the elective principle should be adopted in the constitution of the Supreme and the different Provincial Councils’. In spite of the growing awareness of the effects of colonialism on the Indian economy, the movement for the solidarity of Indian business groups against economic imperialism did not advance greatly after the initial success of organizing the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce. The important business community of the Marwaris, who were at first dependent on the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce for representation of their commercial interests, began to organize themselves sectionally at the end of the nineteenth century. By the late 1920s there was a plethora of native chambers of commerce in Calcutta: the Bengal National Chamberof Commerce, the Marwari Chamber of Commerce, the Muslim Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Chamber of Commerce. It wasnot surprising that with so many competing chambers of commerce Indian businessmen could not combineeffectively against the European businessmen whopreserved their close unity in the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. There was, as a matter of fact, a considerable area of co-operation between European and Indian capital which was throwninto prominence in 1890 by the common opposi6° BNCC 1887, 70 Tbid. "! BNCC 1887: BNCCto GI, 25 January 1888.

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tion of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce to the Indian Factory Act. Both these Chambers of Commerce regarded the Act as ‘the outcome, pure and simple, of pressure put upon the Home Governmentby the Lancashire merchants with a view to handicap the growing cotton industry of the country’.”* The Manchester Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution in 1888 that British Factory Acts relating to women and children should be extended to British India. With magnificent philanthropy MrShetland, the seconder of the resolution, declared: ‘Surely it will

be better for the physical welfare of the Hindu to remain in agri-

cultural employment and give us plenty of cotton, rather than be

attracted to the ranks of the mill operatives.” The Indian Jute Manufacturers’ Association, which came to be knownlater as the

Indian Jute Mills Association, objected to the raising of age for factory labour.’? In defence of jute manufacturing interests, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce took up the matter with the Governmentof India, but could not prevent.the passing of the Factory Act.’ The vernacular press in Calcutta, representing the politically conscious Bengalis, ranged itself squarely against this government exercise in labourlegislation.”® For this was considered to be an issue, not between labour and capital, but between national development and economic imperialism. Even the Sanjivani, the organ of Brahmo social radicalism, which generally supported the poor, condemned the Act because it was motivated, not by genuine solicitude for labour, but by a desire to help Manchester.’® In general the verna-

cular press stood on the side of labour when capital was controlled by the Europeans, and on the side of capital when it was controlled by

Indian businessmen. An instance of this duality of attitude is to be seen in the Dainik O Samachar Chandrika of 5 March 1890, which accusedlocal officers of abetting the oppression by indigo planters in Jessore, and at the same time objected to labourlegislation designed to destroy Indian industry for the benefit of English mill-owners.”” Meanwhile, what of the labourers themselves ? While other parties

72 BNCC 1890.

73 BCC 1889-90, IIMA to GI, Home Department, 19 June 1889. 74 BCC 1890-91. 75 Report on Native Newspapers in Bengal 1890: Dainik O Samachar Chandrika, 3 February; Samaya, 14 February; Surabhi O Pataka, 10 April. 76 RNP 1890: Sanjivani, 8 February. 77 RNP 1890: Dainik O Samachar Chandrika, 5 March.

4

38

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

fought over their fate during the debates on the Indian Factory Bill, the working population of Calcutta was in no position to speak for itself. Indian business groups in Calcutta, drawn from different communities, showed at least a limited ability to achieve some kind of co-ordination. The labouring masses of Calcutta, even more diverse in origin, showed themselves incapable of any combination. The bulk of the industrial labour force was composed of Hindi and Urdu speaking immigrants from Bihar and upper India. Besides the industrial workers, there was a large floating population of servants, cooks, gardeners, sweepers, washermen, cart-drivers, etc., among

whom Bengalis and Oriyas figured more prominently. The sailors and boatmen in the port area were drawn largely from Bengali Muslims of Chittagong and Noakhali in the extreme southerh corner of East Bengal. There was no widespread social communication amongthese labouring communities to foster a class-conscious proletariat. They were unorganized and incapable of exerting any pressure except through communal rioting and sporadic industrial unrest. The only leadership they had was that provided by labour gang leaders (sardars), who brought them from their villages and watched over their affairs while they spent the working season in Calcutta. The Bengali politicians had nothing in common with these rustic labour leaders and made no attempt to tap the potential source of power

provided by the existence of an industrial labour force until the Swadeshi period. In the late nineteenth century industrial strikes were so rare that the Secretary of the British Indian Association, writing to the Government of Bengal in 1892 on the employment of labour, doubted whether since 1880 there had been a single strike in Bengal.*8 Workerswerestill tied to their native village, where they went back every summer to look after their families and lands. There was, therefore, no question of their undergoing a thorough process of urbanization andlosing their traditional rural identities. Employment of cheap, exploited, unorganized labour was the very basis of the existence of the European industries of tea, jute and coal, for the market prices of these products did not leave much margin ofprofit unless the cost of production could be violently kept down by paying shamefully low wages. The problem of cheap labour supply was ultimately solved by the migration, during 1880-1900, of surplus "8 British Indian Association Publications. BIA to GB, General Department,

8 July 1892.

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labour from certain rural pockets of extremely high population in Bihar and the United Provinces. The migration was on a scale massive enough to permanently change the character of the population of Calcutta from the linguistic point of view. By 1901 the proportion of people speaking Bengali had fallen to 51.3 per cent in Calcutta, while the proportion of people speaking Hindustani had risen to 36.3 per cent.”® A motley migratory body of labourers was thus drawn by European capital into Calcutta. The bulk of the working population in Calcutta had no natural links with respectable Bengali society in Calcutta, nor with its political leaders. Politics in Calcutta in the late nineteenth century was very muchthepolitics of the privileged, or, at any rate, of the relatively privileged, who constituted this respectable society. Society had come to be arranged broadly into two ranks: the propertied magnates who looked down uponthe service class, and whose leisured life implicitly denied the value of education; and the salaried or self-employed professional people who scorned manual labour and valued education as a source of earned income. Both these elements—the leisured upper crust of rich influential families and the salaried or self-employed professional groups —had to look for political support outside the city. Neither could aspire to effective social control of half the population of Calcutta, which by the beginning of the twentieth century was non-Bengali. They hadto resort to their existing social links with the countryside for mobilizing political resources. The constituent elements of Calcutta’s respectable society were substantially linked with the plural, fragmented society of the hinterland by caste and community connections with ancestral localities. The emergence of castes and communities in politics Communal and caste alignments became increasingly important factors in the politics of respectable society in Calcutta with the growth of competition for salaried jobs. Educated Bengalis lacked the cohesion of a proper middle class. There was no common bond of an economic role to counteract the caste and communalties which pulled them in different directions. Such an administratively fostered group, arising out of no major breakthrough in the production system, was from the beginning a heterogeneous collection of preexisting service communities who were in a position to dominate the 7° Census of India 1901, vol. vu, part Iv, p. 72.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

expanding network of the new institutions of the British Raj. By 1870 traditionally mobile local clusters of high caste literate groups— such as the Rarhi Brahmans, the Bangaj Kayasthas and the Bikrampuri Babus—had established closed networks in the various courts and government establishments. This created natural resentment amongless fortunate groups which could not adjust so quickly to colonial rule. Amongst the employees of the Nizamat,®° which had constituted the ruling military power in Bengalin thefirst half of the eighteenth century, Bengali Hindus had been no more than nineteen per cent.®4 The Nizamat was controlled by a dominant urban group of Muslim nobles and officers, recruited mainly from the Irani and Turani nobility of the Mughal court in north India. The passing of the control of the state to the British ended the favoured position of the immigrant Muslim nobility (ashraf) vis-a-vis the Bengali Hindu service groups employed in the subordinate branches of government. The substitution of English for Persian as the language of the governmentand the law courts in 1838 gave a competitive edge to the upper caste Bengali Hindus who showed a greater aptitude for learning English. As late as 1851 Muslim pleaders equalled the combined number of English and Hindu pleaders in the Calcutta High Court, but between 1852 and 1868 only one Muslim was admitted to pleadership in the High Court, as against scores of new Hindu pleaders. Theresult was that by 1863, only eight were Muslims among the High Court pleaders, forty-seven were Hindus and six Christians.°* Leadership in the walks of life open to natives in Calcutta therefore passed to the educated Bengali Hindus. The eclipse of the old Mughal towns of Dacca and Murshidabad (which had been dominated by sharif®* Muslims) by the growing township of Job Charnock (where influence passed to their Hindu subordinates) thus shifted the balance of job opportunities and created the first stirrings of communal consciousness in politics. Understandably, Urdu-speaking sharif Muslims, separated by their tradi80 The establishment of the Nazim or Governor, whose department embraced the military and judicial functions of government, as distinct from the revenue functions exercised by the Diwan. 81 A. K.N. Karim, ‘The Muslim Political Elite in Bengal’ (Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1964), pp. 83-106. Hindus figured more prominently in the: Diwani or revenue department. 82 Thid., p. 325. 88 Singular form of ashraf, a plural noun meaning ‘aristocracy’.

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tions of governmentservice from the vast masses of Bengali Muslim peasants, resorted earliest to separate political organization in Calcutta to seek British patronage. The early Muslim associations in Calcutta, the Muhammedan Literary Society and the Central National Mahomedan Association, were dominated by these Urduspeaking sharif Muslims. A long time elapsed before Bengali Muslims as a community became politically active under the democratic leadership of educated Muslim publicists. Their emergence as a collective political entity was due to a change in the nature of the competition for scarce resources among educated Bengalis. Competition was inherent in the nature of the new resources on which the intermediate strata of society rested—jobs, educational facilities, municipal positions, etc. But the competing units in early municipal politics were multicommunal factional alliances, not antagonistic communal groups. In the composition of early municipal factions, conflicting caste and communal considerations played a secondaryrole to personalrivalries and connections. With characteristic pragmatism municipal politicians built up opportunistic alliances for the mutual accommodation of Hindus and Muslims, Brahmans and Sudras, in a system of shared spoils of municipal jobbery. Reporting on the affairs of Burdwan municipality, which had to be taken over because of the scandalous behaviour of the dominant multi-communalfaction of municipal commissioners, an officer commented: Most of the Municipal Commissioners took undue advantage of their position as ‘City Fathers’ in the matter of valuation of holdings, house connections, reduction in the valuation of holdings, etc.... They generally conducted the affairs of the municipality by mutually helping each other and favoured those who had voted for them. We find that latterly the trader community among Municipal Commissioners got an ascendancy in, and control of, the municipal affairs and that they had their eye to self-interest mainly in getting into power.®* Suchself-interest took no account of communal difference. During the term 1915-16, Muhammad Yasin was the Chairman of the Burdwan municipality, and formed with the Vice-Chairman, Mri84 BMP, Municipal Branch, December 1919. Report on enquiry into the affairs of the Burdwan municipality.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

tyunjay Chaudhuri, the dominant clique of five Hindus and four Muslims. Some of these commissioners, such as Nityananda Datta, Rajkristo Datta and Purna Chandra Adhikari, were merchants with large resources. With the occasional support of some other municipal commissioners they formed a majority and carried out any policies from which they benefited, regardless of the interests of the rate-payers. Muslim politicians like Muhammad Yasin who belonged to this dominant municipal group, being associated with Hindus in running the affairs of the town, were also prominent Congress members whoregularly attended Congress meetings at both provincial and nationallevels. In view of the clear-eyed pragmatism of Hindu and Muslim politicians, it may be asked how the politics of Bengal came to be increasingly vitiated by the passions of communalism. The explanation is not far to seek. Muslim politicians, who in their gameoflocal powerdid not hesitate to form factions with Hindus, found that as the national movement gathered momentum the imperial government offered them increasingly attractive terms which served more immediately the ends for which they co-operated with Hindu politicians, that is to say, more representation, more education and job facilities, more access to the resources of government. The rulers were in a position to distribute the share of resourcesleft for natives in such a way as to foster communal and caste antagonisms among them. As families of Muslim or low caste origin broke into the salaried professions, and as government policies increasingly provided them with an incentive to keep apart from theritually highranking families whose pre-existing dominance impededtheir entry, separatist movements, both Muslim and low caste, gathered momentum.

In India there was a potential national tie among all natives as distinguished from Europeans, as well as a potential Islamic tie amongall people professing to follow the Prophet. Both were handy instruments of political agitation in a moderninstitutional setting; and while objective conflict of interests between European rulers and native subjects was to lend increasing substance to the first bond, selective patronage administered by the imperial government gradually strengthened the second tie. Of all sectional movements in Bengal, Muslim separatism became the strongest political force because of the driving power of a world religion and the weight of numerical majority, conditions that were lacking in the case of lower

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Hindu castes which were concentratedin particular areas and did not possess a unifying set of religious observances. Among these lower Hinducastes as well, British policies fostered sectional movements, but these were of lesser political significance. The immediate occasion for the outbreak of caste antagonisms on a large scale at the beginning of the twentieth century was the use of the census operations of 1901 by the British governmentto fix the social rank of different castes. An elaboratelist of caste precedence, drawn up by Sir Herbert Risley, was submitted to committees of Indian gentlemen for scrutiny and criticism. An extraordinary amountofill-feeling and jealousy characterized the debates of these

committees, which in more than one instance failed to reach a

decision.*° This use by government of census operationsto fix caste rank was an extraordinary exercise of official power. It reflected the official ideology of British rule in India formulated by intellectual bureaucrats like Risley, who sought to rationalize the position of the British in India as arbitrators between innumerable antagonistic groupsinhabiting the subcontinent. Theill-advised policy of the government called forth a deluge of caste literature in Calcutta, and caste associations organized on modern lines began to proliferate. The isolated local circles of the caste, known as samajs, came to be bridged by a new form ofcentral caste organization (called sabha or samiti) which came into existence

in Calcutta at about this time. These sabhas, which were voluntary

associations unlike the traditional samajs, mushroomed during the census operations of 1901. Modelled upon European associations and companies, these bodies claimed to represent the whole caste with all its local circles, and their declared objective was the improvementofthe social position of the caste as a whole throughritual purification and English education.** The leading men in these associations were men of English education, and were frequently lawyers. The census operations thus effected a greater caste solidarity, an enlargement of social groups and an enhancementof the scale of corporate action. Forthefirst time, a caste as such, and not 85 Dharmananda Mahabharati, Siddhanta Samudra (Calcutta, 1903 onwards), vol. 4, pp. 14-15.

86 Census of India 1911, vol. v, part I, p. 483; Ambashtha Dipika, published by Ambashtha Sammilani Sabha (Calcutta, 1893), advertisement; Krishnavallabh Ray, Kayastha Katha (Calcutta, 1914-15), pp. 81-2; Harekrishna Talukdar, Vaishya Saha Jatir itibritta (Calcutta, 1910), pp. 205-6; Prakash Chandra Sarkar Mahishya Prakash (Calcutta, 1912), pp. 8-9.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

merely a local circle within the caste, was used as the unit of corporate action. The sign of this new attempt in public agitation was the formation of central caste associations in Calcutta with branches in the interior. Dueto continuingvitality of endogamouslocal circles within each

caste, these associations were beset by factions; and the ambitions of

rival patrons produced a tendency towards splits and secessions. To take an instance, the agricultural caste of West Bengal, the Sadgops, were divided into the eastern clan (purva kul) and the western clan (paschim kul), and these clans in turn were each divided into the pure born (Kulins) and the commoners (Mauliks). A Sadgop Samiti was founded in Calcutta in 1900 by Dwarakanath Ghosh,the proprietor of a musical instruments shop which he had named Dwarkin & Son. A commonerof the eastern clan, he found control of the association passing to Kulins who pushed their way into the committee. He left the association in disgust and threatened to start a new Calcutta Sadgop Samiti. He was persuaded by his friends not to take this extreme step and he contented himself with starting on his own a Sadgop papercalled the Sadgop Suhrid. Sarat Chandra Biswas of the neighbouring town of Chandernagore, who persuaded him not to split the Sadgop movement, soon afterwards confounded everyone by splitting the movement himself. He went over to his home town and founded there a Sadgop Sabha of his own. This Sabha established friendly relations with the journal of Dwarakanath Ghosh. Meanwhile the Sadgop Samiti of Calcutta managed to publish a monthly paper called the Priti, which began competing with the rival monthly edited by Dwarakanath Ghosh. Within three years of its existence, the Calcutta Sadgop Samiti began to dissolve into fresh factions broughtinto being by rivalries between the eastern and western Kulins for the office of President. Nor were the commoners prepared to submit tamely to the leadership of the pure born unless they were men of substance. By 1906 all the sabhas and samitis of the Sadgops were virtually extinct, having spent their energies in factional quarrels.8? The caste movements which sprang into being for the first time with Calcutta as their centre were thus by no means homogeneous. 87 This account of the Sadgop movement is based on Dwarakanath Ghosh, Sadgop Samitir Samkshipta Vivarani (Calcutta, 1910); Sarachchandra Ghosh, Sadgop Jati O Samaj Taitva (Calcutta, 1906); Narayan Chandra Ghosh, Sadgop Sopana (Calcutta, 1911).

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Animosities operated more among members of the caste than with members of other castes. The improvement of the position of the caste vis-a-vis other castes was the ostensible object of a caste association. In reality social climbers who had earned money in trade, service or law used these associations to improve their own status within the caste. The caste associations reflected a shift of leadership from the traditional heads of local circles (samajpatis), residing in their ancestral homes, to men on the make who had connections in Calcutta and the wider world of services and professions. The caste associations, while professing to represent apparently traditional units of society, were institutions promoting newinterests within urban educated society. The significance of the growing communal and caste alignments among educated Bengalis in Calcutta lay in indicating the social boundaries within which these new interests could mobilize political support. The well-established interest groups, such as the Bikrampuri babus, naturally sought a political base amongst the high caste East Bengali gentry, but the same affiliation set them apart from the great body of Muslim and Namasudra villagers, led by large and prosperous agriculturists. The late-comers in the world of service and professions, such as Muslim lawyers from Barisal and Dacca, could try to seek out a political base among theserustic villagers,if given the proper kindofofficial incentive. From the late nineteenth century lines were being drawn more and more sharply between the different strata in local societies, so that alliance with one local elementspelt antagonism with other elements in the locality. From the social composition of Calcutta it is now time to turn to the constituent elements of rural society. Il. AGRICULTURAL BENGAL: SOCIAL FRAMEWORK OF POLITICS IN THE PERIPHERY

The economic basis of the metropolis of Calcutta—its government, its business, its multifarious activities and professions—was the ex-

traction and transfer of a large surplus from its agricultural hinter-

land without any equivalent return to the peasant subsistence economy.®* British institutional and commercial arrangements were successful in extracting much more from the countryside than pre88 R. K. Ray, ‘The Crisis of Bengal Agriculture 1870-1927: The Dynamics of Immobility’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, September 1973.

46

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

colonial governments. The British did so with the help of educated Bengalis who enjoyed a share in the tribute from agriculture. This hindered Bengali politicians from mobilizing rural society on the basis of the fundamental contradiction between the peasant subsistence economy and the colonial power which appropriated its surplus resources. The links of urban politicians with rural society necessarily operated through successive grades of people whose involvement in engrossing the produce of the villages enabled the British to control the countryside. Theinsidious character of colonial exploitation in Bengal had the effect of blurring the lines of real cleavages in rural society. Here there was no import of slaves lacking peasant traditions, as in Jamaica, to build up a sugar industry; no crowding of reserves by dispossessed tribal peasants, as in Kenya, where they becamea parttime agricultural labour force for the white farms producing coffee; no pressing of an embryonic peasantry into enclave sugar plantations, asin Puerto Rico, where they were reduced to a landless labour

force; nor any rotational imposition of sugar plantations on peasant villages, as in Java, where the cane worker remained a peasant at the same time that he became a cooly. Cash crop cultivation expanded, on the plains of Bengal, within the framework of the peasant economy whichproducedthe crops sufficiently cheaply to preclude the intrusion of plantations. British investments brought about a subtle export reorientation of the peasant subsistence agriculture without affecting its small farm framework. Peasants in British Bengal, like farmers in Japanese Formosa, producedon their own colonial export products which were sold through successive grades of native middlemen to foreign corporations enjoying monopsony powerof pricing agricultural products. Thus an import-export sector operating from Calcutta, exporting rice, jute, tea, oilseeds and hides and skins, and importing sugar, salt and cloth, was carved out of the peasant subsistence economy by foreign investments. The very considerable expansion of this sector in the late nineteenth century did not stimulate in a corresponding measure the development of the peasant subsistence economy. The stimulus was weak because the peasants did not get the full market price for their products. The essential aim of British economic policy in Bengal was to ensure the exportof agricultural products which could be sold in the world market, thus producing a favourable balance of payments that

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would meet Britain’s deficits with Europe and North America.In this aim the British were completely successful, for the Bengal Presidency producedconsistently a far larger export surplus than anyotherprovince of India. In the first decade of the twentieth century Bengal produced an export surplus of 243.5 crores of rupees, while Bombay and Madras yielded only surpluses of 93.9 and 72.9 crores respectively. The British achieved their purpose in Bengal partly by colonial taxation and partly through the under-pricing of agricultural products. Despite the fact that foreign banks and companies in Calcutta were making enormous profits and were relatively easy to tax, taxes on the industrial and business class were negligible. Income tax, derived mainly from foreign companies, formed less than three per cent of the revenues of the Government of Bengal at the turn of the century. Government revenues were derived mainly

from the land revenue and indirect taxes which, by constraining peasant consumption, helped to produce a consistent excess of exports over imports. However, because of the Permanent Settlement the British government did not derive the benefit of the vast increases in rental assets during the nineteenth century, which was shared amongst a numerous and growing class of rent-receiving gentlefolk. This factor, which seemed to place Bengal in a more favourable position compared to the ra/yatwari areas of Bombay and Madras, was,

however, more than counterbalanced by the ubiquitous domination of the commerce and industry of Bengal by a monopolistic British businessclass. It may be argued at this stage that the size of the transferred agricultural surplus should not be exaggerated since the rural traders, village moneylenders and resident landlords retained a sizeable portion of the surplus extracted from the peasants. It may also be argued that instead of merely emphasizing colonial taxation and monopoly and monopsony powerof foreign capital, one should also take into account the traditional unequal land tenure system, the intricate pyramidal structure of marketing agricultural products, and the entrenched local monopolies of the rural credit network as channels for transferring the agricultural surplus. While fully recognizing the importance of the local and indigenous mechanism ofexploitation of the peasantry, it is possible to maintain, on the other hand, that 89 Calculated from Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Reflections on Patterns of Regional Growth in India during the Period of British Rule, occasional paper no. 5, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta, 1976), table 2.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

a very large part of the extracted surplus was concentrated in the hands of the alien government and a small group of top British administrators and businessmen, who thus became the principal beneficiaries of the process. Objectively speaking, it was to cover the Home Charges of the government and the private remittances of white officials and businessmen that Bengal was annually producing, at the turn of the century, an export surplus of Rs 21 crores, by no means an inconsiderable sum.% Secondly, while the total surplus withdrawn from the peasant subsistence economy was undoubtedly muchlarger than this and was distributed amongst a large numberof native landlords, moneylenders, traders, petty officials and lawyers, the mechanism of local indigenous exploitation became so subservient to the wider process of colonial exploitation as to change its real direction. The whole structure of government taxation was squarely dependent on the intricate rent-collecting and rural credit systems, which the British administrators so often identified as the cause of the ills of rural society without looking at the colonial context in which they operated.*! Rent-collecting and money-lending operations within village society set in motion the broader outflow of resources from the colony to the metropolitan country, directly by facilitating the payment of taxes and indirectly by weakening the holding capacity of peasants and forcing them into distress selling of crops. Through these operations, agricultural produce and raw materials were extracted from Bengal’s villages at abnormally low prices for ultimate transfer out of the country. One additionallever in the local mechanism of exploitation was moreovera purely British invention: the extremely expensive judicial mechanismfor settling land disputes. This gave rise to a class of lawyers. British institutional arrangements were designed to draw much more from the villages than taxes for the government—and thus supported new classes of collaborators—in service and in law. Thusnative rentiers, traders, moneylenders and professional men consolidated their position by assisting in the process of colonial exploitation of the peasant economy. Onthe other hand, they were forced into a role of opposition by the constricting racial dominance 0 Thid. *! For the dependence of government tax-collection on moneylenders see Richard Temple Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 86.161, ‘The Conditions of Peasantry, Bengal 1875”.

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of the ruling white minority, who claimed the lion’s share of the extracted surplus, thus denying the true potential benefits of the modern sector of the economyto the upthrusting elements in Bengali society. The role of middlemen was naturally ambiguous. Indian traders in raw jute, while generally refraining from giving a lead to the unorganized body of peasants producing the crop, came to resent increasingly the racial discrimination practised against them by the big European corporations. Traders as well as peasants suffered from the combination of Europeansin trade associations. European corporations held down the prices of raw jute by periodical agreements for limiting the production of jute fabrics under the auspices of the Indian Jute Mills Association.*? The dominance of European business corporations in this trade became apparent as soon as the produceleft the village and reached an important jute mart. Big corporations, such as Ralli

Brothers, R. Sim & Co., and Sarkies & Co., dominated the main

centres of the trade in East Bengal—Sirajganj, Narayanganj and Dacca. They were sufficiently well organized to have their own Narayanganj Chamber of Commerce. They had informal contacts and agreements with railway and steamer companiesfor transporting raw jute to Calcutta. They had the powerful backing of the European district officers and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce in Calcutta together with considerable influence in the local municipalities. Indian trading interests were effectively subordinated to the European corporations by the practical enforcement of native traders to sell their supplies through these corporations to the ultimate buyers ofjute. The Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee recorded clear evidence of such racial discrimination: The Indian merchants on the Calcutta Jute market find much difficulty in disposing of their stock to the mills. Their names and marks, with rare exceptions, are not recognised by the mills in utter disregard of their proved integrity and their financial position. They are compelled to sell through European firms of brokers... With a few exceptions the mills do not allow Indian brokers to call on them tosell jute. Direct sales to the mills is thus practically closed to the Indian brokers.*? °2 These arrangements are listed in all Annual Reports of the Indian Jute Manufacturers’ Association in the late nineteenth century. 93 Report of the Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee 1929-30, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1930), p. 107.

50

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal The worst sufferers from the racial monopoly, however, were the

peasants, as even native traders pointed out. The Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee was told by a man from Birla Brothers of various malpractices by which the prices of raw jute were forced down. The jute mills manipulated standards in such a waythat there wasa hiddenfall in the prices of raw jute, for cultivators had to part with higher quality jute for the price of low quality jute.** The frequent recommendation by the jute mills of an increase in the jute acreage, endorsed by the government every time without regard for the interests of cultivators, contrasted with the demand of native

traders in raw jute for a restriction of the jute acreage in their own interests, and incidentally those of the producers. The fundamental structural weakness of the jute market lay in the cultivators’ lack of holding power and organization as against the remarkable holding power and reserves of strength of the ultimate buyers of their product in Calcutta and Dundee. The producers of raw jute, the peasantry of East Bengal, possessed neither a trade union for controlling production nor a co-operative for marketing the produce.** The indigenous traders, who could have provided them with leadership, were restrained by the consideration that their share in the profits of the jute trade consisted of the difference between the price offered by the European brokers and the price received by the peasants. Instead of organizing the peasants, they tried to exert political pressure through Indian politicians in the Legislative Council for measuresto restrict cultivation of jute. The structure of the market for agricultural products set definite limits to the profitability of further capital inputs in agriculture. A settlement officer in Jessore calculated that the per acre net profit in the cultivation of crops, allowing for expenses including the cultivator’s own labour, was for winter rice Rs 24.8, for oilseeds Rs 14, for fruits and vegetables Rs 30, for jute Rs 29, for sugar-cane Rs 40 and for date palm Rs 125. Except for date palm, the net profit in the cultivation of these crops was not sufficiently attractive for owners to engage in direct capital-intensive farming with the help of hired labour, which was so expensive as to makecollection of produce rent from share-croppers actually more attractive. This was the reason why there were practically no gentlemen farmers in the district, ** Indian Chamber of Commerce. Annual Report of the Committee for the year 1930, pp. 206-27. °° Report of the Bengal Jute Enquiry Committee, 1933, vol. 1 (Alipore, 1933).

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apart from those owning date palm gardens.** Nordid rich peasants, who had some resources to spare, employ their capital in the improvement of their farms. A successful cultivator who had saved a little money became almost as a matter of course a moneylender.®’ By combining the role of creditor, trader and rentier (in the capacity of superior tenant taking produce rent from the under-tenant), the richer villagers could ensure the perpetual indebtednessof the cultivator andhis obligation to sell his produce to them at much below market prices. For both the rural gentlefolk and the substantial villagers of peasant stock, systematic collection of produce rent from share-croppers and interest from usurious loans was usually more attractive than large-scale market-oriented farming upon purely economic considerations. The effective domination of the commerce and business of the country by a tightly knit group of European managing agencies, which werein a position to intercept the gains of commercial agriculture through the exercise of monopsony power, prevented the peasant economy from deriving the full advantage from its new international commercial connections. In these circumstances peasantagriculture had no chanceofdeveloping into capitalist farming. The new cash crops, sold by peasants through numerous grades of middlemen to combined groups of foreign corporations, failed to stimulate in Bengal the growth of a class of profit-oriented capitalist farmers producing for the market and willing to reinvest their profits in new inputs. The peasant economy of Bengal remained essentially a subsistence economy in which peasants marketed a part of their produce merely to meet the pressing demandsoftax-collectors, rent-receivers and moneylenders. The influential elements in the countryside—the rural gentlefolk of respectable origin and the dominantvillagers of peasant stock—were both part of an indigenous mechanism of engrossing the produce of the villages upon which imperial economic interests fastened as a super-layer of appropriation. Ruralstratification and village control The families exercising leadership at village level usually belonged to the great cultivating communities of low social status—Muslim, Namasudra, Kaivarta, Sadgop, Rajbanshi and Pod. The gentlefolk, 9° M. A. Momen, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District ofJessore 1920-1924 (Calcutta, 1925), pp. 48, 50, 53-113.

87 Richard Temple Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 86.161.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

who did not work in the fields like the dominant peasant families, were composed mostly of Brahmans, Kayasthas and Vaidyas.%® These grihasthas or respectable householders, settled for generations

in their bhadrasanas(ancestral household and landed property), lived in Mughal times under big territorial magnates like the Rajas of Burdwan, Bishnupur, Nadia, Rajshahi, Dinajpur and Jessore, and were dependent on their favour. By virtue of their knowledge of Bengali and Persian, they manned the government and zamindari establishments as clerks, writers and officials (mainly Kayasthas) and supplied the personnel for the literate professions which had developed in pre-modern Bengali society—priests (Brahmans), pundits (Brahmans) and physicians (Vaidyas). These local service gentry extended and consolidated their landed possessions during the decades after the Permanent Settlement, when large portions of the landsof the territorial magnates were sold for arrears of revenue and bought largely by smaller local gentry and zamindari officials.°® They also managed to switch from Persian to English learning and thus managedtofill the urban service and professional groupscalled into existence by the needs of British administration and business. The connection between the smaller landed gentry of rural Bengal . and the English-educated urban society of Calcutta was therefore organic. The income of a typical grihastha family would be drawn partly from ancestral landed property in the native village and partly from service or professions taken up in Calcutta by some of the adult male membersof the family. The interests of these service gentry with small landed property stood in contradistinction from the interests of the titled landed magnates. In Dacca, for instance, there were extensive estates pos-

sessed by the Raja of Bhawal, the Nawab of Dacca and the Babus of Bhagyakul, with which the petty, interlaced estates of the smaller gentry of Bikrampur pargana, subdivided into minute tenures, could bear no comparison.1 The distinction was a constant theme of the Dacca Prakash, which demanded amendmentofthe rent laws to ease the pressure on the smaller gentry of Dacca on the groundthat they 8 “The Zamindar and the Ryot’, Calcutta Review, vol. v1, part 1 (1846), p. 325. §® Sirajul Islam, The Permanent Settlement in Bengal: A Study of Its Operation 1793-1819 (Dacca, 1979), pp. 144-70; Ratnalekha Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society (1760-1850) (New Delhi, 1979), pp. 250-5. 100 F, D. Ascoli, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Dacca 1910-1917 (Calcutta, 1921).

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were being much more hard pressed by rentlegislation than big landlords with larger resources.1°! The Rent Act of 1859 gave right of occupancyto all raiyats who had been in occupation of the same piece of land continuously for twelve years. It also sought to define and thusrestrict, in a somewhat vague manner, the grounds on which rents could be enhanced, a point on which the Permanent Settlement had been practically silent. The Act was even more vague concerning those tenures, as distinct from raiyats’ holdings, which were permanentand transferable by custom. Since there was nothing in the law as to how intermediate holders were to be assessed, soon after the Act of 1859 the zamindars

sought to enhance rents by suing middlemen. A legal war began, in which the zamindars soughtto assess the intermediate holders at the rates of the cultivators, leaving them no profit. The ‘middle classes’, as the Amrita Bazar Patrika described the intermediate holders, thus

came under heavy pressure: some went into governmentservice, others led the raiyats in fighting the zamindars, as in the Pabna disturbances.Pleading on behalf of the smaller landed gentry, the Patrika commented: “The middle class is the backbone of society on earth. Whatever the case in other countries, in Bengal the origin and growth of the middle class is to be traced to land rights. The zamindars maybe the proprietors of the land, but hitherto it is the middle class which has exercised authority on the land.’1° The demand of the Amrita Bazar Patrika for the adjustment ofthe rates between ‘the zamindars and the middle classes’ was substantially conceded by the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885. It distinguished clearly between three classes below the ‘proprietors’ of the land: (1) tenure-holders and under-tenure-holders, (2) occupancy.and nonoccupancy tenants and (3) under-tenants. The right of the tenureholders to bequeath andtransfer their tenures wasclearly recognized, but the advantage which the smaller rural gentlefolk derived from these provisions was offset by other provisions extending the rights of the occupancy raiyats below them. It was laid downthat a tenant who had continuously occupied any piece of land (i.e. not necessarily the same piece of land) for twelve years was entitled to the right of occupancy. Furthermore, his rent could be enhanced only if his rate was below that of other occupancy tenants, or if there was a 101 RNP 1894: Dacca Prakash, 6 May 1894. 102 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 25 June 1876. 103 Tbid., 18 May 1876.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

rise in the average local price of staple food crops, or if the productivity of the land increased on account of improvements by the landlord or changes in the course of a nearby river. The single greatest beneficiary from these provisions wasthe type of substantial cultivating villager who was coming to be known as the jotedar. The permanentsettlement had sacrificed this yeomanry, as Colebrook had noted in 1819, by merging all interests below the proprietors in a single category of tenants.1°* They now cameinto their own. But notall cultivators benefited equally from tenancylegislation. For the new law was based on the assumption that there was only one occupancyraiyat for a single holding, an assumption which ran against the actual reality that under a raiyat recorded in the zamindari rentroll there might be one or more under-tenants enjoying customary rights. The difficulty in such cases was to secure the raiyati right to the right person, the real cultivator, and not to a moneylender or other interloper who had superimposed himself upon the cultivator and had annexed the occupancy right. However benevolent the intentions of tenancy legislators might have been, such legislation could not secure any occupancy right for that large body of actual tillers of the soil, the share-croppers, to whom village custom denied any right. No frameworkof legal nights in the soil could possibly do justice to the endless complexities of the land tenure system in Bengal, which in districts like Bakarganj seemed at the beginning of the twentieth century to be growing ‘too complicated for the wit of man to comprehend’.The unusualintricacy of the rent structure in Bengal derived from three features: sub-infeudation, subdivision and aliquot tenures. These indicated the pressure on agriculture to absorb a growing population by the creation of more and more complicated shares in the produce ofthe soil. As the rent structure grew in complexity during the nineteenth century the ‘estate’ increasingly lost touch with the land. More and more,the ‘estates’ seemed to become

hotch-potch collections of scattered land rights of different grades, of arithmetically calculated shares in the produce of the land in

4 Cited in Chittabrata Palit, Tensions in Bengal Rural Society: Landlords, Planters and Colonial Rule 1830-1860 (Calcutta, 1975), p. 153.

10° BRP, Land Revenue Branch, February 1923, nos. 11-12, Minute of Dissent

by Brajendra Kishore Ray Chaudhuri; The Report of the Rent Law Commission, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1881), p. 249. 208 J. C. Jack, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Bakarganj 1900-1908 (Calcutta, 1915), p. 60.

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several villages and districts. A Bengali settlement officer in Hughly reported in 1914 that zamindari records were ‘practically losing all bearing uponthe land’, and in most cases they were ‘no better than mere accounts of dues and balances which may just as well be kept in the same manneras the money-lender keeps his books’.1°7: In conceptualizing the structure of the ‘estate’ in Bengalin thelate nineteenth century, the English connotation of the word must be deliberately shut out from the mind. A land-owning family of some status was able to control economically its native village and the villages around it, being usually careful to acquire a ring-fence aroundits residence which was completely in its possession and the inhabitants of which were boundclosely to the house by a system of traditional exchanges of goods and services.1°* By its very naturethis radius of control did not extend far, and the nature of influence in

other parts of the estate was on a different basis. The estate, apart from the core around the residence, might comprise exclusive zamindaris or shares in zamindaris in different districts, much ofthis

proprietary right being leased and sub-leased to tenure-holders; tenures or shares in tenures within or outside these zamindaris, held

under zamindars or other tenure-holders, and perhaps sub-leased to a Still lower grade of tenure-holder; Devottar, Brahmottar and other descriptions of property free from the land revenue; large raiyati jotes acquired specially for controlling an area, cultivated by household servants, share-croppers or under-tenants of various grades,1°° The more malintegrated the structure of an estate, the less likely wasit to be effective against bodies of tenants and againstinfluential families entrenched in positions of local power, particularly if the landlord happened to be a new purchaser. To cite an instance, the estate Saidpur in Hughly was an ancient Mughal aima orservice tenure of only 459 acres, scattered in 22 villages in four different police jurisdictions, and held under 37 separate accounts by cosharers under private arrangementsstipulating a different combination of co-sharing for each of the 37 accounts. Babu Bipin Bihari 107 Mahendranath Gupta, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement of Certain Government and Temporarily-Settled Estates and Zamindari Estates in the District of Hooghly 1904-1913 (Calcutta, 1914), p. 20. 108 For a description of the nature of influence within this radius of control see Krishnakumar Mitra, Krishnakumar Mitrer Atma Charita (Calcutta, 1937), pp. 1-41; Suresh Chandra Gupta, Asvini Kumar (Barisal, B.S. 1335), pp. 16-27.

109 BRP, Land Revenue Branch, Head 2 Wards, Attached and Government

Estates, December 1876, appendix A.

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Mallik purchased a 5 anna, 2 ganda, 3 kara, 1 kranti share of the estate at the beginning of the twentieth century, but could notget possession as, like 25 neighbouring proprietors of other estates, he did not know wherehis lands lay, and as the raiyats in occupation absolutely denied thetitle of these unfortunate landlords. Thesettlementofficer in Hughly succeededfinally in unravelling these ‘estates’ from the revenue survey map of the mid-nineteenth century, but the difficulty of separating the denied landlords’ shares in the separate accounts of the estates proved even more difficult.1° The powerof landlords was greatest in compact and well-managed estates under resident landlords and was weakened in subdivided estates where the constant squabbling of petty co-sharers called forth combinations of tenants.1The relation of the average incidence of rent in an estate to the rice-growing capacity of the land varied considerably in relation to the past history and structure of the estate and the power and financial resources of the landlord. During the survey and settlement of Tippera in 1915-19, it was found that rents in pargana Toro were very low because of the disunity of the co-sharing landlords, but in the adjoining pargana Dallai, where the rates of rent had been the same as in Toro as late as 1870, the

rent was 60 per cent higher because it had passed to the strong management of the Nawab of Dacca.¥? A big landlord with a properly organized staff and considerable means could enhance rent by the exercise of physical coercion and attachment with the aid of leading villagers. A feature of village life which deeply impressed the settlement staff during the survey of Rangpur was the influence exerted over tenants by village dewanias, principal raiyats with a smattering of legal knowledge who were usually retained by the zamindar’s agents to guard their interests in return for favourable rates of rent.11% Without bribing a few village bosses no landlord stood a chance of succeeding in a new survey or revision of rent.14* The powerful 110 Final Report on Certain Estates in Hughly, p. 27. 111, S. S. O’Malley, Bengal District Gazetteer, Pabna (Calcutta, 1923), pp. 82-93. 12. W. H. Thomson, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Tippera 1915-1919 (Calcutta, 1920). 48 Arthur Coulton Hartley, Final Report of the Rangpur Survey and Settlement Operations 1931-1938 (Alipore, 1940), pp. 1-14. 14 FB, A. Sachse, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Mymensingh 1908-1919 (Calcutta, 1920), p. 29.

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Dubalhati Raj in Rajshahi, which attempted to measure land and enhance rent annually from 1880, enjoyed at first the co-operation of the village headmen, who were acting as the Raja’s collecting agents in return for holding a large area of land at a very low rate compared with other tenants. As soon, however, as the alliance

between the estate and the village leaders broke down due to annually repeated enhancements, a combination of tenants sprang up on the estate, bringing to an end the era of easy and large exactions.1® Within an estate, however large and powerful, all tenants were by no means reduced to one dead level of equality. ‘There are many well-to-do substantial yeomen in Dinageporeand in Chittagong who possess more influence within their own village or immediate neighbourhood, and are moreoverbetter off than many zamindars’, wrote the Commissioner of Chittagong to Sir Richard Temple.1¢ Under whatever local terms these peasant owners of land were known—jotedar in Rangpur and Dinajpur, mandal in Midnapur, gantidar in Jessore, haoladar in Bakarganj—thesevillage bosses were the real controllers of the land, which they partly distributed among prajas (subjects) under share-cropping (barga) or under-tenancy (chukani) arrangements, and partly cultivated themselves by hired labour and household servants. A weak and unskilful zamindar stood ‘no chance whatever with a few energetic small proprietors backed by the spears, bamboos and clubs of the cultivating tenants’.1)? The Rent Commissioners of 1880 seriously considered the question whether the jotedars of Rangpur, the haoladars of Bakarganj and the mandals of Midnapur could properly be considered as raiyats and whether the acquisition of a right of occupancy should not be limited in all cases to the real tillers who cultivated the land under them as under-tenants or share-croppers. But having examined the enormouspolitical implications of the question, they refrained from recommending such a rule on the ground that it would exercise a disturbing influence and upset existing relations of agricultural production.118 115 BRP, Land Revenue Branch, Survey and Settlement, July 1892, nos. 9-12. 116 Richard Temple Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 86.161: Commissioner, Chit-

tagong Division, to Private Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal,

16 September 1875. 17 Bengal Village Biographies (reprinted from Calcutta Review, no. LXL, Calcutta, 1858), p. 21. 18 The Report of the Rent Law Commission, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1881), pp. 9-13.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

During the settlement of Midnapur from 1910 to 1918, an attempt to secure occupancy rights for share-croppers made no headway because of fierce resistance from vested interests backed by public opinion in the villages that the share-cropper was a tenant-at-will whose lease must be renewed from year to year. Going even further, the big chakdars of Contai subdivision claimed that the sharecropper was not a tenantat all, but a mere labourer paid half the produce as wage. So completely was the poorer section of the villagers in the control of its richer neighbours that the settlement staff found it practically impossible to discover the holdings of the intimidated share-croppers.™° The share-croppers continued to be without any right in the soil even in the age of tenancylegislation which strengthened the richer villagers against the zamindars without weakening the former’s position vis-a-vis the share-croppers and under-tenants. The opportunities of leadership were thus considerable for those prosperous villagers who belonged to the numerically dominant peasant community in any locality. Rural Bengal neverfell under the domination of a distinct class of professional moneylenders who lived by swindling the villagers, loans being generally obtained from well-to-do farmers. These substantial farmers were menof influence in their villages—influence which they had acquired by lending money, seed and grain.1*° The cultivators who held under the jotedar often paid him, as the Collector of Dinajpur wrote to his Divisional Commissioner in 1876, three times more in money or produce than whathe paid to the zamindar. “They are the actual cultivators of the soil, and what they pay represents the rent which can by competition be obtained from the land accordingto the ordinary rules of demand and supply.’ This fact, however, was complicated by the further factor that the jotedar was also usually the moneylender, and either by interest-bearing loans or under someshare-cropping conditions kept agriculture going by supplying seed, corn and cultivators’ maintenance. The rent payable by the inferior to the superior tenant was, therefore, inextricably mixed up with the question of interest, and as

Collector Westmacott observed, what the jotedar usually received ue A. K. Jameson, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the

District ofMidnapore 1910-1918 (Calcutta, 1918), pp. 51-6.

120 Richard Temple Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 86.161, Commissioner of Chit-

tagong Division to Private Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor, 1 October 1875.

Economic and Social Structure

59

afforded no criterion as to the dues of the zamindar.?24 Peasant lineages which had acquired village leadership by amassing larger holdings than their neighbours owed their success usually to favoured positions in the complex rent-collecting structure of the estate. On the one hand the ownerofthe estate relied on the village boss as his local agent for collecting rent from the villagers; on the other hand thevillage boss acquired powerin the village as the representative of the estate owner. The latter retained the former’s service by fixing on his holdings light rates of rent and by forgoing the assessment of the concealed lands held by him.It was the patronclient relationship between the estate owner andthevillage boss that ensured the flow of the surplus from the village and upheld the rural orderat large. But in spite of their mutual dependence,this relationship was beset by an inherent conflict over the distribution of the engrossed produce. Conflict over relative shares in the agricultural surplus was boundto grow as the expanding network of the government and the political parties offered alternate sources of outside patronageto the village bosses and freed them from dependence on superior landlords for maintaining their local positions of power. As long as the controlling village lineages remainedtied to the estates, there was little scope for any widespread peasant disorders in the countryside, for the poor villagers seldom had any institutional means of combined resistance against the hierarchy of people engaged in extracting the surplus produce of their labour. In the control mechanism of the countryside, the crucial factor from the point of view of the administrator concerned in maintaining agrarian peace wasthe local relationship of zamindar andjotedar. Peasant unrest and the crisis of the smaller gentry Underlying the occasional conflict between the estate and its powerful tenants was a great measure of co-operation which inhibited the polarization of antagonistic forces in the countryside. Any breakdownin the system of rural control waslikely to be local and partial, and a consequence of temporary conflict between landlords and village leaders in particular estates. The countryside was to be drawn into the wider orbit of nation-wide political unrest only when the links between the superior landlords and the peasant landlords began to snap. Slowly these links were replaced by alternative bonds be121 Tbid., MSS. Eur. F. 86.165, E. V. Westmacott, Collector of Dinajpur, to the Commissioner, Rajshahi and Kuchbihar Division, 29 June 1876.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

tween the political leaders in the towns and the village bosses in the countryside. There was then a confrontation between the smaller rural gentry of respectable origin and the dominantvillage lineages of peasant stock. Before this happened, tensions in rural society were kept in check by local alliances between the estate and its superior tenants. Strains were likely to develop in this mutually advantageous connection only in a period of general attempt at enhancement of rent by landlords, which did not spare the special privileges of the superior tenants. At this stage the tensions within the extremely intricate rent structure, between co-sharing or graded landrights coexisting in a confusing maze of land tenures, would be likely to contribute to the stream of rural unrest, making any peasantresistance movement a rather complex phenomenon. There was considerable unrest in rural Bengal in the second half of the nineteenth century and a concentrated spell of peasant combinations and agrarian leagues in East Bengal between 1872 and 1886. At no stage was this unrest directed against the foreign government of the country. Nor did peasant disturbances in the nineteenth century usually assume the shape of a struggle against colonial exploitation except during the “blue mutiny’ in the indigo districts in 1859-60. After the overthrow of indigo plantations in Bengal, the rural scene in Bengal presented no overt and readily identifiable feature of colonial exploitation which could call for the peasant combinations. The insidious drain from agriculture due to the colonial and monopsonistic structure of the market for agricultural produce did not generate tensions in the way in which the visible presence of white plantations and farms could provoke peasant anger. The big European corporations of Calcutta buying jute and rice for export did not come into direct relation with the small peasant farms producing these crops. In such a situation the only likely form of peasantstruggle against colonial rule would have been a no-rent campaign, but here a whole range of native landed and money-lending interests were allied with the rulers, and the government had the tactical advantage of being in the role of tenancy legislator. Nor was peasant resistance directed against rural credit relations in the absence ofa differentiated and alien money-lending class in the villages. The only exception in this matter was the Santhal insurrection in Birbhum in 1855, caused by oppression beyond bearing of a simple tribal folk of the highlands to whom

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61

Bengali Hinducreditors from the plains were ‘foreigners’.122 Among the Bengal peasants of the lowland villages, credit relations were based on personal relations between debtor and creditor, the creditor usually being a big jotedar of the village and the debtor being his dependent co-villager. The typical peasant resistance in Bengal, which became familiar with the outbreak of the Pabna disturbances in 1872 and continued in a milder form right up to and beyond the passing of the Bengal Tenancy Act in 1885, was against the paymentofrent, not of interest. But even this was of a limited character. The agrarian leagues were formed by the peasants under the leadership of rich farmers and village headmen to fight the enhancement of rates of rent and exaction ofillegal cesses by the bigger landlords, but the peasants did not seek to stop paymentofrent at prevailing rates and there was very little actual violence.??* Since the whole movement turned on rates of rent, a matter in which only occupancy tenants enjoyed customary rights, the really serious disputes occurred between landed magnates and occupancy raiyats led by their headmen. Tenants-atwill or share-croppers who were immutably committed to paying half of their produce did not find a separate voice in the movement and did not press for the extension of occupancy rights to themselves.1*4 In the estates in which agrarian leagues sprang up, it was usually to be found that the landlords had tried to impose newrates of rent or to exact a large number of cesses which not only increased the total burden on the villages but also affected the special privileges of the village leaders. Such landlords tended to be the bigger magnates, such as Maharani Swarnamayi of Kasimbazar, who could afford to take on the jotedars.?5 This period of agrarian unrest saw a general attempt on the part of the landlords to increase their share in the produce, due to the increased cost of living, increasing number of 122.W, W. Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal (Calcutta, 1965), pp. 122-32. 123 Richard Temple Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 86.165, A. Mackenzie, Offg.

Secy. to GB, to HomeSecretary, GI, 25 September 1875. 124 BRP, Land Revenue Branch, Miscellaneous, March 1875, Collection 14, nos. 2-4; British Indian Association Publications, Secy. BIA to Secy. GB,

Revenue Department, 15 December 1876 on the Rent Bill. 125 The Kasimbazar estate which purchased Hatkhali Taraf in Pabna made repeated attempts to oust its jotedars. This was one of the causes of the Pabna riots. BRP, Land Revenue Branch, Miscellaneous, March 1875, Collection 14, no. 11.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

dependants, wider use of urban consumer goods, new cesses like the road and postal cess imposed by the government, and the enormously increased cost of collection of rents due to the break-up of: estates into small disjoined parcels and undivided aliquot shares. This new pressure on the landlords was accompanied at the same time by an appreciable increase in the value of agricultural produce in East Bengal, which provided grounds for enhancement. A markedrise in the prices of agricultural produce started in the year of the Mutiny, but the chief impetus to prices was given by the famine of 1865-66, when the rice crop of East Bengal, though not much below the average, realized famine prices. At the same time jute cultivation spread in districts like Pabna and Dacca, bringing new sources of income to the agricultural economy which had not been taken account of in customary rates of rent based on therice crop. It was significant that the first major outbreak of peasant unrest occurred in the subdivision of East Bengal which becametheearliest centre of the jute trade and jute cultivation, Sirajganj in Pabna district.12° Doubt was expressed by district officers at the time as to how far ordinary raiyats benefited from higher prices of their produce, for the increased cost of cultivation had to be taken into

consideration and peasants could benefit only from the surplus produce marketed at higher prices.12” Presumably, the big farmers were in the best position to exploit the new marketsituation. When the estates pushed their claims to a higher rent on the ground of the increased value of produce, rates of rent were already extremely

unequal, falling so heavily on the smaller tenants that the rental assets could not be increased in many instances without imposing higher rates on the favoured tenants holding large jotes. The smaller landlords were prepared to compromise, but not the bigger magnates. Significantly the agrarian leagues sprang up on the larger estates, and in someinstances the neighbouring smaller gentry sided with the tenants.

At a time when landlords were trying to obtain higherrents, recourseto litigation becameeasierfor the tenants. The radical changes in the civil laws which followed the Mutiny, the sweeping reform of the Penal and Criminal Codes and the formation of numerous subdivisions and extension of civil courts to all parts of the country intensified administration of the law, and the former administrative 126 BRP, Land Revenue Branch, Miscellaneous, January 1874, Collection 14, nos. 26-7, 127 Thid.

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laxity was now replaced by greater regulation of rural relations by administrative and judicial agencies. The munsif of Munshiganj observed in this connection:

From 1859 the courseof legislation has been uniformly in favour of the ryots. Having courts in their immediate vicinity, they have gradually learnt their rights . .. These circumstances embolden the ryots to assert their rights, and the several decisions of the courts of law here being uniformly in favour of the ryots havestill further emboldened them. The combinations are a necessary consequence for a ryot singly cannot cope with zamindars, and

therefore they have combinedto preserve their rights.2

Big landlords, on the other hand, were provoked by the passing of the Rent Act of 1859, conferring occupancy rights on tenants in

possession of their holdings for twelve years or upwards, to attempt

systematically to destroy occupancy rights. This practice of ‘high landlordism’ in certain estates—taking their stand on the right to enhance rent and eject tenants—introduced an elementofinstability in rural relations.?”° Certain peasant communities were especially fitted by their internal organization to resist ‘high landlordism’. In East Bengal, disputes occurred most readily in recent alluvial formations and swamps where cultivation was expanding underthe enterprise of energetic jotedars and where arrangements between them andtheir landlords werefluid.1°° These areas, moreover, contained many Faraizi Muslim peasant settlements, which possessed their own structure of control. Unity was imposed among them bya sectarian hierarchy which was well known from the time of Dudu Mian for organizing Muslim peasant resistance against Hindu landlords. In Dacca, the first agrarian combination sprang up on a huge alluvial formation in Munshiganj subdivision, which was inhabited by Faraizi Muslims.134 Noa Mian, the son and successor of Dudu Mianto the leadership of the Faraizi sect, gave leadership to several peasant combinations against landlords in Dacca, Faridpur and Bakarganj.1* 128 Toid. 129 Kalyan Kumar Sengupta, ‘Agrarian Disturbances in 19th Century Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, June 1971, pp. 192-212.

130 Richard Temple Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 86.165, R. H. Pawsey, Collector of Mymensingh, to Commissioner, Dacca Division, 20 July 1876. 131 BRP, Land Revenue Branch, Miscellaneous, January 1874, Collection 14, nos, 26-7. 182 See Kalyan Kumar Sengupta.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

The most serious riots and peasant assemblies, however, took place in the Yusufshahi and Barabaju parganas in the Sirajganj subdivision and Sonabju pargana and Hatkhali Taraf in the Sadar subdivision of Pabnadistrict. The agrarian league of Pabna, which organized stoppage of rent payments, village defence against the landlords’ clubmen andlitigation in the courts, originated in the Yusufshahi pargana of Sirajganj, a subdivision which had grown into the foremost jute-growing area in Bengal and wherethe natural activity of the rivers had increasedsoilfertility. After the Permanent Settlement this pargana had passed out of the possession of the Natore Raj and had been taken over by four new and powerful landlords—the Tagores of Calcutta, the Banerjees of Dacca, the

Sanyals of Sallop and the Pakrasis of Sthal. As the Subdivisional Officer reported, the zamindars considered themselves entitled to a share in the increased valueof agricultural produce, and the raiyats— at any rate the bigger ones—were sufficiently well-to-do to offer resistance in an organized manner.}** The Banerjee family, having consolidated illegal cesses with rent, was bent on destroying the occupancyrights of its tenants, and the Tagore family was trying to realize a fifty per cent increase in rent. Initially the agrarian league’s primary purpose was to create a reserve fund for litigation. The league sent messengers to villages beyondits jurisdiction but left the management of village policy to the village leaders once they had joined the league. The top leadership of the league was formed by small landlords and big tenants, such as the petty landlord Ishan Chandra Roy of Daulatpur, the village headman Sambhunath Pal of Meghulla, and the jotedar Khudi Molla of Jogtolla.1*4 Originally the trouble wasinstigated on the estate of the Banerjees of Dacca by Ishan Roy, a petty taluqdar and local creditor and trader, who had a land dispute with the Banerjees about a share of a taluq in their estate.One ofthe first villages to combine against the estate was led by the noted headman Sambhunath Pal, but Ishan Roy definitely remained the ‘Rebel King’ (bidrohir raja) and the disturbances came to an end only after his arrest. 88 BRP, Land Revenue Branch, Miscellaneous, January 1874, Collection 14,

no. 11.

184 Kalyan Kumar Sengupta, ‘The Agrarian League of Pabna’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, June 1970, p. 216. *88 Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Economy and Agrarian Relations in Bengal 1859-1885’ (Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 1968), pp. 355-7.

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Even after the end of the Pabnariots, simmering agrarian tension and rent disputes continued for several years, the Banerjees of Dacca energetically pursuing civil litigation to bring their tenants to heel. The agrarian unrest, contrary to earlier British expectations, then spread over many districts. During the decade between 1875 and 1885, peasant combinations and rent disputes occurred in Dacca, Mymensingh, Tippera, Bakarganj, Faridpur, Bogra, Midnapur and Hughly. Nowhere did the structure of rural control really break down, for the leaders had the movementwell in hand. But the situa-

tion caused anxiety to the government and forced it to undertake tenancy legislation in order to gain ground for manoeuvre between landlords and tenants in the role of an impartial mediator. Thebill, however, whenfinally passed under Dufferin, was much less favourable towards the tenants. The earlier bill had given the right of free sale of occupancy right, but this privilege, together with compensation for ejection of non-occupancy tenants, was withdrawn in the final draft. Because of the peasant combinations, governmentacts and judicial decisions, rent collection became anincreasingly difficult operation in the late nineteenth century, and even big landlords experienced difficulties in realizing rent. A measure of the difficulties faced by landlords and tenure-holders can be obtained by looking at the rate of realization of the rent in the attached and wards’estates in Bengal. Collections were generally better under the Court of Wards than under the proprietors, and the debts of many estates were cleared under its more efficient administration. Between 1887 and 1922, col-

lection of rent in wards’ and attached estates never exceeded 62.34 per cent of the total rental, which was the highest proportion collected in 1901-2. After a bad spell in the eighties, collection improved in the 1890s to some extent, but from 1907 collections dropped sharply below fifty per cent. With the outbreak of the war and the slump in the jute market, there was an even greater crisis of rent collection, which becameless than forty per cent during 1914-16 and again during 1920-22.1%¢ If this was the situation in the wards’ and attached estates, the situation was even less favourable for the petty interlaced estates of the smaller gentry. Thecrisis of the rural gentlefolk became acute from 1907 and reached desperate proportions during and after the First World War. The economiccrisis of the 136 Calculated from annual reports on attached and wards’ estates by Dr Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, to whom I am grateful for these statistics.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

smaller gentry created in rural society a discontented educated element which provided the driving power behind political mobilization in the countryside during the Swadeshi movement and the Nonco-operation movement. Thoughthe pressure on the rent-receiving classes became a general feature throughout Bengal in the latter part of the nineteenth century,

the gentlefolk of East Bengal, especially of pargana Bikrampur in Dacca andits adjoining areas in Faridpur and Bakarganj, exhibited a more dynamicsocial and political response to the growing pressure than the gentlefolk of West Bengal districts like Nadia, where the smaller rent-receiving classes remained stay-at-home and preferred a lower standard of life at home to seeking employment and fortune abroad. While English schools seemed to proliferate in the areas of heavy gentry concentration in Dacca, Bakarganj and Faridpur, educationalfacilities did not expand similarly in Nadia or Bankura, wherethe gentry population was equally dense, but by no means so well equippedfora literary or clerical avocation.!®’ This difference in the social characteristics of the rural gentlefolk in East and West Bengal wasreflected. in the differing rate of political mobilization in the two areas during the Swadeshi movement. The highly educated, mobile and intelligent gentry of Bikrampur, belongingto the ritually top-ranking section of the Brahmans, Vaidyas and Kayasthas, streamed out of their rural homes in the nineteenth century and secured a considerable portion of the jobs opened up by British administration. ‘Do we not know’, exclaimed the indigo planters’ paper Dacca News,‘that all the Omlah of Eastern Bengal come from a single pergunnah, Bickrampore, and that no civilian influence though more than once applied has been able to break the monopoly? Who that knows anything of our Courts is not aware ofthis system of monopoly ?’188 The economic pressure whichsetoff the diaspora of the Bikrampur gentry was intense and derived from increasing numbers, higher prices and falling rents. A memorial of the taluqdars of Bikrampur, published in the Amrita Bazar Patrika in 1877, complained of the high prices of commodities, the imposition of taxes and cesses by the government and thedifficulties of rent realization. ‘For some years past’, stated the taluqdars of Bikrampur,‘the rebellious tenants, 487 J, M. Pringle and A. H. Kamm, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Nadia 1918-1926 (Calcutta, 1928), pp. 18-19, 24-5. 488 Quoted in A. K. N. Karim, p. 173.

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having stopped paymentof the rent due to the owners of the land, have caused untold losses and humiliation to them. Far from getting the proper rent in due time from the tenants, the collecting agent during his tours for realising the rent is turned back with various abuses... The tenants are now refusing to pay more than one fourth of the rates at which they formerly paid rent.’ The taluqdars ended the memorial in despairing terms: ‘At this time the land is producing more crops than before. Theprices of agricultural produce have increased three or four times, but it is a matter of great disappointment that withal our incomeis not increasing, but is rather decreasing day by day.’°9 The settlement operations carried out in Dacca between 1910 and 1917 by F. D. Ascoli revealed that the predicamentof the Bikrampur gentry, at any rate from 1905 onwards, was notat all far removed from the somewhat exaggerated terms in which the taluqdars of Bikrampurstated their condition in 1877. Dividing the net rental of Dacca (6.25 per cent of the gross value of agricultural producein the district) by the censusfigures of the rent-receiving classes in Dacca in 1911, Ascoli calculated that the annual income per manofthe landlord class in Dacca was only Rs 60. Had this income been equally distributed between the rent sharers, it would, though hardly exceeding that of the cultivators, have formed a possible basis for the support of the class. But a large part of the district was covered by extensive estates, and the remainder, particularly Munshiganj subdivision containing the Bikrampur pargana, consisted of petty estates subdivided into minute tenures. In a district where every acre of land was assessed to rent and in which the rental was hardly capable of an increase under the law commensurate with the increase of the rent-receiving population, the condition of the landlordclass, in so far as they continued to depend on land, could only deteriorate. By the beginning of the twentieth century, therefore, the elements which helped in the maintenance of British control over the countryside and aided the colonial economic process of extracting and transferring the agricultural surplus were developing, under the pressure of an accumulating economic impasse, attitudes directly hostile to colonial rule. For the Bengali rural gentlefolk who respondedin a positive mannerto the political movements of the urban service and professional people drawn largely from their own ranks, the contradiction in their position created a long-term political 189 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 24 May 1877.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

problem. The problem was how to commit the villages to antigovernment action without allowing it to develop from a purely political action into social and economic action threatening subversion of the whole rural order. The ambitious, culturally awake rural elite, so prominent in Bengal’s political organizations, was extremely vulnerable to challenges from below. In the nineteenth century the growth of high Bengali culture—especially the efflorescence of modern Bengali literature—powerfully promoted the sense of national identity among them, but set them apart from the rest of society. The Bengali gentry cameto regard their intellectual achievements and creative activities as a new awakening,a ‘renaissance’ that led naturally to the emergence of political nationhood. This new culture of the renaissance did not penetrate deep into peasant society; and from its womb there ultimately emerged political challenges to the high caste, neo-Hindu culture of the educated Bengalis. The increasingly self-assertive peasant landlords of the countryside came to back movements of Sanskritization and Islamization, which posed very real threats to the dominant high caste Bengali culture. Communalstirrings in peasant society

New cults backed by the village leaders—such as the Faraizi, Khilafat,

Mahishya,

Namasudra

and

Rajbanshi

movements—

indicated the lines of cleavage between respectable and peasant society. The significance of these supra-local communal and caste stirrings among the peasantry lay in their novelty. In traditional Bengal there was no monolithic Muslim community, no integral Mahishya or Namasudra caste. An actual description of local groups in the overwhelmingly rural district of Malda by the settlement officer of the district revealed how far removed from thereal local divisions were the broad census classifications of the Bengali people in termsof all-Bengal castes and all-India communities. Many Malda castes were local castes which were included by the census authorities in big all-Bengal castes, though really standing apart from the rest; other local castes in Malda were altogether ignored in the uniform census scheme drawn up for Bengal as a whole; those castes which found mention in the census were again divided internally into exclusive endogamous units.14° The Muslims in Malda had not devel120 The Deshis and Koches, isolated local castes of Malda, were bracketed with the all-Bengal Rajbanshi caste in the census. The Ganesh caste—a fairly large group in Malda—found no mention because it had no counterpart elsewhere.

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oped such an elaborate scheme of formalized ritual divisions, but their communal unity was more apparent than real. Many were Shershabadiyas, non-Bengali in origin, who were hardy cultivators, and pious and orthodoxin religious matters. Some were Nadegustis, said to be immigrant Hindu converts from Nadia, who, like the Shershabadiyas, did not marry with other Muslimsin the district.14

There are traditions which record caste movements in medieval Bengali society, but these were smaller in scale than modern caste movements, and involved only the basic unit of caste government, called the samaj, and not the whole caste with all its units. A caste contained so manyself-sufficient endogamous sub-castes and local units that it was hardly anything more than a theoretical unit of society conceived by the Puraniclegislators of the Brahma-vaivartapurana and the Brihad-dharma-purana, two Sanskrit purana texts bearing upon medieval Bengali society. The caste structure in its actual operational content appertained to the locality. The local caste structure determined to some extent the social and economic opportunities of the individual families of a village. Because they were legislating for a caste structure in the context of a larger regional area than its true local setting, the Brahman Puranists took an abstract view of the situation far removed from social reality. They lumped together numerous local groups under all-Bengal caste names, which were adopted by the census authorities in their classification of castes. The basic corporate group in society was the samaj, which meantthe circle within which the members of a caste or sub-caste dined on ceremonial occasions. In effect it meant the local community, with its own head (samajpati) or committee of influential men to whom disputes could be referred.142 Processes of Sanskritization took place in traditional Bengal through these samajs. The movement of the Vaidyas in East Bengal under the headship of Maharaja Rajvallabh for assuming the sacred thread on the eve of British rule in Bengal took place within the Banga Samaj of the The Goalas, a proper all-Bengalcaste, were really divided in four local kin groups in Malda-Majrote, Kishnota, Megharia and Kanoje—endogamous units which did not indulge in commensality. Even the local caste Mandal, ignored in the census, was divided into four exclusive groups. M. O. Cartier, Final Reporton the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Malda 1928-1938 (Alipore, 1939), pp. 38-46. 141 Thid. 142 Census of India 1911, vol. Vv, part 1, pp. 482-8.

6

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Vaidya caste and did notaffect the Vaidya samajs in other parts of Bengal.14* It is similarly misleading to ascribe a supra-local political role in medieval society to those custodians of Islamic learning, known as the ulema, who were supposed to constitute a traditional Muslim clergy. Islam in Bengal, as indeed elsewhere, was not organized as a church, with a hierarchical commandanda bodyofpriests separated from the laity. There was no formal machinery of consultation among the ulema, who possessed no mutuallinks except the network of central madrasas (colleges) like those in Calcutta, Hughly, and Dacca, from which the properly educated ulema graduated. Below these central madrasas in the key centres, there were smaller, privately owned madrasas for young men, and even smaller village maktabs for boys, all imparting a religious education in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Bengali. He who graduated from a madrasa was an alim; there was no question of his being ordained as a priest, of forming a social group identifiable as the clergy. The ulema were nothing more than a dispersed literati with traditional religious education acquired in Arabic schools. These schools, uneven in standard and under no central supervising authority, were maintained by rent-free grants. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a considerable amount of rent-free landed property was set apart for the support of maktabs and madrasas. Many of these rent-free properties were subsequently alienated, but the remaining properties supported the only accessible institutions where the great body of Muslim villagers aspiring for literacy could receive some kind of education. Inhabitants of a group of villages might often unite to establish small madrasas. Muslim zamindars and taluqdars would also frequently support these institutions. No sooner were the students of these madrasas awarded the titles of munshi and mullah than they would disperse throughout the country, some being appointed as teachers in village maktabs or madrasas, others securing positions in village shrines or mosques. Their remuneration was low, ranging between Rs 10 and Rs 15 for teachers in rural madrasas. Ninety-nine per cent of the custodians of the Muslim faith were said to come from this class of people, and their audience also formed ninety-nine per cent of the Muslim community in Bengal.1* It is clear that socially the ulema weretheclients 43 Rasiklal Gupta, Maharaja Rajvallabh Sen (Calcutta, 1914), pp. 202-3. “4 East Bengal and Assam Appointment and Municipal Proceedings, April

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of richer villagers and landlords and did not form an independent traditional group with a pre-existing social bond that sprang into operation under its own impulse in twentieth century politics. Indeed, the ulema had noseparate social background. From the same respectable rural family might comethe enterprising son, who would pass school and college examinations and practise law at the district headquarters, and his less enterprising brother, who would content himself with taking a degree from a central madrasa and would settle down in his village as the local alim. Behind the supposedly traditional ulema stood a variety of modern interests which were represented by the ulemain their capacity as a learned bodyof spokesmen able to communicate with a large number of people. Their representation of political interests was, moreover, bound to remain restricted to localities until they acquired a central body professing to speak for ‘the ulema of Hindustan’; andtraditionally there was no such body.*4 From whatever angle they are viewed, the traditional agrarian societies in the interior appear as fragmented societies, their politics being circumscribed by the locality. From the beginning of the twentieth century, however, there began to appear new communal associations—anjumans among Muslims and sabhas among lower castes—which cut across the local boundariesof isolated agricultural communities. The driving force behind the spread of these new associations was the prosperousagricultural section in thelocalities. As the government undertook survey and settlement operations in the districts and tried to fix social rank by census operations, the dominant agricultural lineages were emboldened to compete for political power with the service gentry of respectable Hindu origin. Especially self-assertive were the hardy Muslim, Mahishya and Namasudra lineages which had employed capital and labour in extending cultivation in the lower delta. These were determined to resist demandsfor increased tribute from superior landlords and the government. Movements among the Muslims, Mahishyas and Namasudras heightened among these peasant communities a collective 1906, Nowsher Ali Khan Eusofzai, ‘Note on Muhammadan Education in Bengal’. 145 For an imaginative account of the Bengali ulema and their contending schools, see Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity (Delhi, 1981), pp. 27-35, 39-105.

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consciousness which increased the possibility of corporate action by hitherto isolated local circles. The formation of rural anjumans, which cameincreasingly into evidence in the countryside, was due to the growing ambition of prosperous Muslim villagers to extend their political influence in order to capture union boards and local boards. The local ulema were dependent on the substantial villagers—often rich jotedars— who collected subscriptions for their mosques and madrasas and contributed a big part of these subscriptions themselves. The maulvis with their programme of enforcing orthodox Islamic practice among a grossly idolatrous peasantry were handy instruments for serving the ambitions of prosperous Muslim villagers. From the propaganda platform of rural anjumans, controlled by rich agricultural families, the maulvis preached the adoption of true Islamic practice and the unity of Muslim peasants. A Bengali autobiography by an unknown Muslim author gives a detailed account of the origins and activities of a rural anjuman.1*6 The author’s family lost a small taluq under a Hindu zamindar, yielding Rs 250 a year, due to the machinations of their Brahman agent whosecured the aid of the zamindar’s officials. The rent-free lands that remained to the family were distributed mostly among tenants(fifty bighas), but a small portion (fourteen bighas) was kept in direct possession by the family and cultivated by a Muslim sharecropper. After the loss of the taluq the author dismissed the sharecropper and took charge of the cultivation himself. As soon as he had gained some success in farming, he organized an anjuman in the village, and the maulviof the village, Khalilur Rahman, held regular sermons underits auspices. The cultivators contributed some paddy to the fund of the anjuman during the winter harvest, and traders, petty landholders and salaried Muslims also paid subscriptions. The literate, well-born and prosperous Muslimsofthe village, numbering sixty to seventy, combined under the anjuman to found a madrasa and a school in the village. The funds of the anjuman were derived from subscriptions, grains contributed by peasants, income ofrentfree property, fees of madrasa students,price of the skinsofsacrificed animals and income from a bazaar ownedby the anjuman. The main expenses of the anjuman were on the madrasa, school and maktab 8 Ton Maazuddin Ahmad, Amar Samsara-Jivana (Calcutta, 1914), pp. 1-312. The author, who wrote under a pseudonym,has been identified as one Sharfuddin Ahmad. See Rafiuddin Ahmed, p. 102.

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maintained by it, contributions to famous madrasas in Mecca and elsewhere, contributions to the Hedjaz railway fund, building and repair of local mosques and loans to a few cultivators and traders. Theeffect of the sermons of Khalilur Rahmanwasthat the numberof civil suits declined, and Hindu lawyers andofficials in the nearest subdivisional headquarters were affected. Lawyers, police, zamindari officials, moneylenders,

clerks and judicial stamp sellers

became hostile to the village maulvi, but not daring to touch him, persecuted a few ofhis disciples. In retaliation Khalilur Rahman held a numberof gatherings at which he delivered angry sermonsagainst Hindu persecution. The poor Muslims serving Hindu families, about 297 in number, were induced to leave the service of Hindus and to

earn a living by manufacture and shopkeeping. Muslims no longer went to the open-air operas of the Hindus, no longer subscribed to the Hindu festivals, and stopped paying the festival cesses of the zamindar. With the support of the district magistrate, cow sacrifice was practised in the Hindu zamindari. The account given above, though obviously coloured,illustrates how the Muslim village leaders, with the help of maulvis, could combine against the Hindu zamindars. In the pursuit of local power the rich Muslim agriculturists, with the aid of the maulvis, were

willing to take the risk of instigating Muslim share-croppers not to cultivate the land owned by Hindus. In 1912 and 1915 the Hindus of Ullapara in the Sirajganj subdivision of Pabna experienced a boycott by Muslim share-croppers. In the first instance, ‘some maulvis and a Mahomedan, well known here, set themselves to incite the local

Mahomedans against the Hindus’. They held meetings in public places in which they asked Muslimsto cutoff relations with Hindus, and as a result of social pressure exerted by the maulvis and the | leaders of the anti-Hindu movement, the poor Muslimsleft the service of their Hindu employers, whose lands lay uncultivated.**’ In a second quarrel in the same village (Ullapara) in 1918, a cooperative bank was formed to loosen the grip of the Hindu usurers wholent money to needy Muslims."8 The anti-Hindu movementhere and elsewhere, in which the ulema figure prominently, was not allowed to develop into an agrarian uprising of poor peasants against 147 Bengalee, 1 December 1912,letter from 50 Hindu residents of Ullapara. It is not unlikely that Maazuddin Ahmad’s unspecified account related to this village. 448 Final Report of Bogra and Pabna, p. 73.

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all propertied classes and was really meant to enhancethepolitical and economic influence of the rich Muslim jotedars who hadpolitical ambitions. With the outbreak of the Balkan war, followed by the First World War, there was a sudden stepping up of activity by the ulema over the issue of the Khilafat (i.e. the headship of Islam embodied in the Sultan of Turkey). The large and well-organized Faraizi sect in East Bengal, which had pursued a policy of friendship with the government from the time of Noa Mian (1852-1883) down to 1913, joined the pan-Islamic movement underthe leadership of Badshah Mian.1*° Traditionally anti-Hindu and anti-landlord, this sect had spread along the banks of the rivers of the lower delta of East Bengal, where enterprising bands of Muslim agriculturists had been reclaiming land from the forest. The tightly organized hierarchy of the Faraizi sect enabled these bands of land-reclaimers to resist the claims of the Hindu landlords for a share in their new prosperity. From 1913 this sect turned from collaboration with the British district officers to anti-British propaganda for Turkey. At the same time a pro-Turkish ulema organization called the Anjuman-i-Ulamai-Bangla was formed for the whole of Bengal, which imparted a structural cohesion to the Bengali Muslims as a single religious— political community for the first time.-It was organized in 1913 by Akram Khan and Maniruzzaman Islamabaditosettle the differences between the Hanifite and Muhammadisects of the: Muslim community at a friendly meeting in a madrasa at Bogra.}*° The importance of this all-Bengal anjuman for the ulema was that it was the first association promoting political consultation and concerted action among the unorganized body of Muslim preachers in Bengal. At the sametime that revivalist and pan-Islamic movements were heightening the communal consciousness of the Muslim peasantry in East Bengal, Sanskritization movements among the twolargest peasant castes in Bengal, the Mahishyas and the Namasudras, in-

creased their caste solidarity. The agricultural Kaivartas, who later became known as Mahishyas, had been the dominant caste in the Midnapurregion from time immemorial. At a very early date, according to the genealogies of Gadadhara Bhatta, five kingdoms were

4° Muin-ud-Din Ahmad Khan, History of the Fara’idi Movement in Bengal (1918; rpt. Karachi, 1965), pp. 56-7. *5° Government of Bengal, Political Department, Political Branch 66/1913. Extract from IB Weekly report, 26.3.13.

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founded in the district by Kaivarta chiefs—Tamluk, Mayna, Turka,

Sujamuta and Kutubpur.!*! The Raj families of Tamluk, Mayna and Sujamuta werestill surviving as small landholders at the beginning of the twentieth century, their zamindaris being carved up among a great mass of small Kaivarta landholders under British rule. This class of independent local farmers, constituting the backbone of the population in the Tamluk and Contai subdivisions of Midnapurdistrict and united by commoncaste ties, were very difficult to manage once they mobilized on any political issue. For there was no solid local community either above them exercising power,or below them nursing resentment. Theclass divisions of landlord, tenant and agricultural labourer were contained within a single caste-cluster which formed almost the whole of the population of the southern (Contai) and eastern (Tamluk) half of the district. The great number of poor Kaivarta cultivators and share-croppers had small parcels of land of their own, which gave them status in local society and considerably muted the economic divisions within the community. The social status of this group waspeculiar: sufficiently high not to tear them apart, like the Namasudras, from the nationalist movement of the caste Hindus, but low enough to mobilize them to improve their social and educationalstatus. In 1896 the president of the college of Nadia pandits, Yogendranath Bhattacharya, reckoned the group amongthelocal aristocracy of Midnapur: ‘In the Tamluk and Contai subdivisions of Midnapur district, where the number of high caste Brahmans and Kayasthasis very small, the Kaivartas may be said to form the upperlayer ofthe population. A great many of them are zamindars and holders of substantial tenures.’!53 A second group of Mahishya land controllers were the big jotedars, forest settlers and salt land reclaimers who controlled most of the agricultural lands in Tamluk and Contai. These enterprising Mahishya agriculturists had played an active role 15t Harish Chandra Chakravarti, Bhranti-vijaya (Dule-Andul, Howrah, 1912) pp. 157-8.

152 There were comparatively recent upper caste migrants—government ser-

vants, lawyers and teachers—whofigured prominently in municipal politics, but their influence was confined to towns, unlike the rural power base of the Bikrampur gentry. Kaivarta lineages remained dominant in the hinterland. Hiteshranjan Sanyal, “The Socio-Political Roots of Nationalism—A Case Study of the Political Movements in Eastern Midnapore Initiated by Birendranath Sasmal’, unpublished paper, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta, 1974). 158 Yogendranath Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects (Calcutta, 1896).

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in the reclamation of the densely afforested Sundarbansin the neighbouring 24 Parganas, where they had built up forest settlements and agricultural farms with the help of dependants and servants from their own caste.4*4 When salt ceased to be made on the low-lying jalpai lands of Tamluk and Contai, they also took over the blocks (Chaks) of brushwood land on whichsalt was formerly manufactured and built up splendid farmsyielding large crops of winter 1ice in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In Calcutta, too, a considerable

middle stratum of Kaivarta businessmen, manufacturers and professional men had grown up, counting among them nearly six hundred income-tax assessees, mostly traders.}* The Mahishya movement was the work of successful men who had seized the new avenues of power opened by commerce, education and professions. Those who held the traditional levers of power in the community were generally opposed to the movement. These were the samajpatis who as substantial landholding families had from generation to generation stood as the social leaders of different local samajs of the Kaivarta community. They were either formerterritorial magnates (such as the Rajas of Mayna and Tamluk)or superior estate officials and village heads. The samajpatis administered the villages, exercising civil and criminal jurisdiction, organizing public festivals, enforcing caste customs and repairing roads and embankments: their special powers were outcasting and the stopping of the services of the barber and the washerman. Theoffice of samajpati had for long been monopolized by certain families. The growth of new sources of influence left these families behind the times. ‘On observing the activities of most samajpatis nowadays’, remarked a modern Mahishya agitator, ‘it appears as if they are so manyliving embodiments of sin... As a result a full scale social revolution is on the way.’ Unwilling to undertake reform, they opposed the new men who advocatedit. Factions were formed onthis issue. The control of the samajpatis ovcr society began to weaken, except with regard to families of dependent tenants or cultivating families in debt to them,156 The Mahishya movement wasstarted in 1304 B.s. (1897/1898) by a local zamindar of Midnapur whocalled together a big conference in Tajpur where the agricultural Kaivartas were identified with the 181 See Hiteshranjan Sanyal. 185 Census 1911, p. 586. *° Prabodhananda Saraswati, Mahishya Suhrid (Diamond Harbour, 24

Parganas, 1911), pp. 20-6.

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ancient Mahishya caste mentioned in the shastras. From the conference originated a permanent body called the Jati Nirdharani Sabha which received financial assistance from a large number of respectable Kaivartas, mostly local proprietors of Midnapur. At the time of the census of 1901 a great many local Mahishya associations sprang up in different districts and a Central Mahishya Samiti was founded in Calcutta, patronized by the educated and wealthy men of the Kaivarta community—Trailokyanath Biswas of the Janbazar Kaivarta family of Rani Rasmani, Mahendranath Ray, pleader of the High Court, Prakash Chandra Sarkar, pleader of the High Court, Ananta Ram Das, muktar of the High Court, Mahendranath Halder, editor of the Sevika, Ishan Chandra Ray, pleader of Gaya and Sashi Bhushan Biswas, zamindar and president of the Central Mahishya Samiti.1*? The Census Commissioner observed that ofall agitations that arose in connection with the caste question, the most vigorous wasthat of the agricultural Kaivartas.4* At his request the Maharaja of Nadia secured the decision of the Nadia Pandits, who conceded the distinction between the fishing (Jalia) and the agricultural (Chasi) Kaivartas and the claim of the latter to the name Mahishya.15® The vigour of the agitation persuaded the Census Commissioner to enter separate columns for the Jalia and the Chasi Kaivartas and to allow the Chasi Kaivartas to return themselves as Mahishyas. The movement became divided, at a conference called togetherat Subadi by local zamindars of Midnapur, between those who claimed Vaisya status for the Mahishyas and those who were content with a clean Sudra status. Ashutosh Jana, a Mahishya scientist trained in America, opened the session by reading a paper recommending the adoption of the Vaisya rites by the Mahishya community. The local high-born conservative Kaivartas did not attend the meeting, pleading illness.48 The samajpatis and zamindars of high birth opposed the attempt of educated Kaivarta zamindars, lawyers and journalists to prove that all Mahishyas were Vaisyas. The rich farmers who marketed their produce through servants, however, took to their new Mahishya designation with avidity, and attempts were made by 157 Prakash Chandra Sarkar, pp. 8-9. 188 Census of India 1901, vol. vi, part 1, p. 380. 159 Basanta Kumar Ray, Mahishya Vivriti (Dacca, 1915-16), pp. 277-82. 160 Indranarayan Jana, Subadi Mahishya Sabha (Subadi, Midnapur, 1912), pp. 11-13, 45.

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these jotedars to outcast those who sold their home produce in the market themselves. The poorer Kaivarta agriculturists resisted this move, and somesaid openly that if adoption of Mahishya status meant employing servants to market their produce, then they could not afford to assume the new style and would prefer to be plain Chasi Kaivartas. The Census Commissioner of 1911 reported the prospect of a further differentiation within the Kaivarta caste— Chasi Kaivarta and Mahishya. The jotedars and professional men, however, had sufficient influence to carry the whole community with them andthe split did not occur. So extensive and penetrating were the efforts of those who were trying to popularize the new Mahishya identity that even women were drawn into the movement and a

paper called the Mahishya Mahila, edited by an educated Mahishya lady, urged Mahishya women to let themselves be known as Mahishyas and not as Kaivartas and to familiarize their children with the word Mahishya from the time they started speaking.1*! As a result of these efforts, the Mahishya identity was firmly established ‘by 1920. A peasant community had been mobilized on the issue of social status, and once a respectable identity had been established the imposition of unpopular measures by the government drove this already mobile community to new and unforeseen courses of action during the non-co-operation and civil disobedience movements leading to virtual breakdown of British administration in the Mahishya inhabited areas of Tamluk and Contai. The Namasudra movement in East Bengal had very different consequences from those of the Mahishya movementin West Bengal. It was a story of segregation, revolt and social disintegration, which so weakened the dominant Hindugentry of the area as to strengthen the bid for power by Muslim politicians. Brahmanical tradition regarded the section of humanity known as Chandal (later Namasudra) with a peculiar loathing: in the dictionary of the lexicographer Amara the word Chandal was explained with the further synonyms svapacha (dog-eater) and antevasi (dweller on the confines of human habitation), and in the laws of the social legislator Manu the rank of this peculiar human being was immutablyfixed as that of ‘the lowest of mankind’. Hindu society in Bengal treated other untouchable castes—Dom, Hari, Bagdi—with equal contempt. Butin the case of the Namasudras their low ritual status coincided with an unusual amount of spirit and independence which did not make for tame 161 Krishnabhamini Biswas, Mahishya Mahila (Nadia, 1911), pp. 1-3, 6-9.

.

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submission. They were a virile, industrious and martial-spirited people whoinhabited the healthy swamps of East Bengal andcarried on a flourishing agriculture which supported their rapidly increasing numberwhich grew at a rate even faster than that of the Muslims. The Namasudra movementwasthe result of the acquirement of English education by a handful of Namasudras. The community did not produce, like the Mahishyas, a considerable urban class of educated and professional men; in 1911 this large community counted among them only one hundred income-tax assessees, as compared with nearly six hundred among the Mahishyas. But the smaller number of Namasudras employed in the legal and teaching professions guided a community who were spontaneously rejecting the servitude forced on them by Brahman and Kayastha gentry. Most of them were hardy and courageous peasants who were extending the frontiers of cultivation by clearing the Sundarbans, and there were among them manyprosperousjotedars and landholders. Christian missionaries, particularly C. S. Meade of Faridpur, laboured to spread education among the Namasudras and raised their social and moral consciousness, thus earning their gratitude and affection. The announcement of the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam soonafter the partition of Bengal that government employees would be recruited on the basis of the proportional numerical strength of the various communities aroused hopes among the educated Namasudras.1° The district of Faridpur became the stronghold of the Namasudra agitation. An ‘entrance’ school was founded there by educated Namasudraswith the help of the government. The teachers of this school published a paper called the Namasudra Suhrid. Relations between the Namasudras and the higher castes becameincreasingly bitter, and in the Bengal Legislative Council the Namasudra MLCs combined with the European and Muslim MLCsagainst the nationalists during the 1920s. The aspirations of the prosperous peasant lineages in East and West Bengal for social position and political power brought them increasingly into conflict with the high caste service gentry, whose access to local administrations placed within their reach the important positions in the district boards, municipalities and local boards. Some of them were resident local gentlefolk, such as the Bikrampur taluqdars in Dacca. Some again were immigrants, such as the Brahman and Kayastha officers, lawyers and teachers who 162 Balaram Sarkar, Namasudra Jnana Bhandara (Faridpur, 1911), pp. 14-22.

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came to Midnapur during the nineteenth century from neighbouring districts and established themselves in the district and subdivisional headquarters, as well as in the outlying centres of local administration. These gentry, whether respectable local folk with landed property or upper caste immigrants in the service of the government, monopolized the positions of power andinfluence in the subordinate branches of governmentas well as in other moderninstitutions, such as the local bars, social and educational services and public associations. The challenge to their entrenched position in the centres of administration came from outlying areas, especially those areas where locally dominant Muslim, Mahishya and Namasudralineages were engaged in the enterprising task of reclaiming land from forest and swamp. Their social aspirations were encouraged bythe British administrators in the hope of building a political counter-force to the political agitation of the service gentry in the towns. In the late nineteenth century the Government of Bengal had increasingly come to feel the need to curb the inflated political ambitions of the ‘penniless, spouting Baboo’.1® At the time of Ripon’s local self-government reforms, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Rivers Thompson, had expressed the fear that professional politicians would utilize the district boards for ‘purpose of a distinct political character and as an engine for the attainment and for the promotion of ulterior designs’.1«4 The Government of Bengal feared particularly ‘what may be called the extraneous element of the district—the element which represents high education and political ambition—the pleaders and school masters, and other foreign residents at the headquarters station’.In the outlying areas of East Bengal like Chittagong Division, ‘the bulk of Muslim cultivators showed no interest in local self-government and only the educated Hindu minorityin civil stations, pleaders, officials and other educated men, very often inhabitants of other districts, took up discussion of the subject.’166 By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the prosperous peasant lineages in the hinterland were showing a keener apprecia183 Ripon Papers, BP 7/6, Correspondence with Personsin India, 1882, vol. u, no. 128A, Baring to Ripon, 3 August 1882. 161 Tbid., Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. u, no. 254, Thompson to Ripon, 1 May 1883.

8° Public and Judicial L/P & J/6/1931/1883. 266 Thid., L/P & J/6/755/1883.

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tion of the importance of English education, employmentin government establishments and representation in district and local boards for the exercise of political power. At the same time the British administrators were trying to break the monopolyofpolitically disaffected high caste Hindus in the subordinate branches of govern-

ment and institutions of local self-government by offering special

education and job facilities to communal categories of their own choice. The dominant peasant lineages in the outlying areas were afforded an opportunity to seize these opportunities as representatives of ‘backward communities’ and ‘depressed classes’. Broader communal identities, cutting across local divisions, thus

cameinto play in the sphere ofpolitics. In a plural society, the resort to the strategy of divide and rule in order to counter political challenge was natural on the part of the imperial power, which had in the first instance classified its subjects in broad social categories for purposes of general administration. Certain social and cultural distinctions—specifically, the distinction between respectable society and local peasant cultures—were brought into sharper focus by the conflict over the sharing of the agricultural surplus between superior and peasant landlords and came to provide the basis for social solidarities and political divisions in twentieth century Bengal. The emergence of these broad antagonistic social categories in the sphere of politics was a consequence of the gradual breakdown of patron— client relationships binding together hierarchically graded people in restricted local arenas. The dissolution of the mutually advantageous local connections between superior and village landlords led to the forging of broad supra-local alliances between the English-educated Muslims and the dominant Muslim peasants in East Bengal. With the aid of the Namasudras they challenged the position of the Hindu service gentry, composed of professional people and holders of small estates and sub-infeudatory tenures.

CHAPTER 2

HER MAJESTY’S LOYAL SUBJECTS

(1875-1899) I. Emergence of liberal nationalism. A triangular struggle for power— Non-official Europeans, landed magnates and educated Bengalis— triumph of middle class liberal nationalism—liberalism versus orthodoxy—The Indian Association versus the Amrita Bazar group—a very badspirit’: the Ilbert Bill controversy—Congress and Conferences. II. Opposition to liberal nationalism. The seeds of discord—Muslim opposition to Congress—critics of the Congress—the liberal achievement,

I. THE EMERGENCE OF LIBERAL NATIONALISM

Modern institutional politics was not a new development in late nineteenth century Bengal. It went back at least as far as 1838, when the first political association—the Landholders’ Association—was founded in Calcutta. Yet the last quarter of the nineteenth century was clearly a new period in the development of modernpolitics in Bengal. It saw the growth of a nationalist movement led by professional politicians belonging to the ‘educated middle class’. The shift of emphasis from collaboration to criticism was especially marked in Bengal. The earlier rhetoric of loyalty was not abandoned. But a more sustained spirit of opposition to the British was clearly evident from about 1875. This movement of opposition in Bengal, moreover, federated with the Indian National Congress in 1885. It thus acquired the characterof an all-India nationalist movement. The development of a more strident opposition in Bengal, followed by its integration with an all-India movement,raises several questions. In the first place, what was the underlying factor behind it ? Secondly, why wasit, at least initially, a weak movement? Thirdly, what kind of organizational forms and linkages did it develop in order to overcome these weaknesses and to become a moreeffective lever of

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pressure to change the framework of the governance of India in accordance with nationalist aspirations? The answers that will be suggested in this chapter will outline three main themes: the economic and racial aggression of non-official Europeans, the plurality of interests and aspirations in Bengali society, and the attempt to build a political organization spanning Calcutta and the districts, using the connections forged by British constitutional reform. The underlying factor behind the nationalist movement, it will be suggested, was a reaction to white aggression. It was to wrest control of the Calcutta Corporation from the Europeans that the Indian League was organized in 1875. The Indian Association, which supplanted the Indian League next year, consolidated the Indian power in the Calcutta Corporation and provided the local base of the Indian National Conference, and its successor, the Indian National Con-

gress. The Conference and the Congress, in turn, were organized directly in reaction to the racial campaign of the Europeans against the Ilbert Bill. At every major turn of the nationalist movement a reaction to white economic andracial domination was very much in evidence in Bengal. The nationalist movement, in this province, was a conscious protest against the economic stranglehold of foreign monopoly capitalism and the political and racial subjection of the native population under that economic system. The movement wasinitially weak because of the diversity of the interests that were seeking a voice in moderninstitutional politics in Bengal. Bengal wasa plural society, in which mobilization tended to provoke counter-mobilization. In their struggle to hold on to the country, the British naturally exploited this advantage. The nationalist leadership of the Indian Association and the Indian National Congress encountered opposition from several quarters in native society. The socially superior landed interests, organized in the British Indian Association, were hostile to the educated Bengali nationalists who dared to challenge their hitherto acknowledged supremacy. The notables of the Muslim community were equally hostile, for they, too, were afraid of the threat to their position that

was implicit in the Congress movement. Within the nationalistminded educated Bengali community itself, there soon developed orthodox neo-Hindu sentiments, especially among the lower middle classes and the smaller gentry, who were often opposedto the liberal reformist attitudes of the Congress leadership.

The liberal nationalists in Bengal thus needed to mobilize support

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for themselves, and for this reason the Calcutta-based Indian Asso-

ciation sought to develop political connections with the districts. As we shall see, the nature of these connections changed over a period of time. The last quarter of the nineteenth century itself falls into two distinct phases. The first phase, which was the pre-Congress phase, was distinguished by the attempt of the Indian Association to develop a network of institutions parallel to the British machinery of control. It formed district and village branches and tenant associations which gave it a genuinely broad-based character. The second phase, which followed the formation of the Congress, saw the gradual atrophy of these radical connections. Ripon’s self-government scheme and the Indian Councils Act of 1892 stimulated the development of a new set of connections between the Calcutta-based nationalist leadership and the districts. The Indian Association sought positions in the new constitutional machinery, and in order to capture seats in the legislative council, it developed constitutional links with the district Bar Associations, mofussil municipalities, and local boards. These were links defined by the framework of British

administration. As such they were more respectable than the earlier peasant connections which had madethe Indian Association dangerous in the eyes of the British officials.

A triangular struggle for power In the late nineteenth century there came into existence a new triangular pattern of political relationship in Calcutta, characterized by shifting combinations and conflict between three important elements in the city—the non-official Europeans, the landed magnates and the educated Bengalis. Henceforth it was not unusualto find the rich native magnates of Calcutta striking a deal with the Europeans in one year and forging an alliance with professional Bengalis against non-official Europeans in another. The really importantrelationship over a long period of time, however, was that between the white administrators and businessmen and the native educated and professional groups. The underlying hostility in this relationship over a fifty-year span was often concealed in the ordinary day-to-day intrigues of politics by the co-operation of the educated Bengalis with the rulers for limited short-term advantages. While colonial society was in the process of formation in Calcutta, there had been a remarkable degree of co-operation between the

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European merchant-administrators, the native entrepreneurial and landed magnates, and the English-educated Bengali service and professional groups. In the eighteen-forties politics in Calcutta was characterized by the participation of European residents and native magnates in two political associations, the Landholders’ Association and the British India Society. It seemed as if a parting of the ways had come, when,after the first major racial conflict in Calcutta over

the ‘Black Acts’ between Indians and Europeans,? the British Indian Association was founded in 1851 without any European participants to secure a place for Indians in the Charter Act of 1853. But this body, dominated by big absentee landlords, was also heavily dependent on the patronage of a benevolent government which regarded it as a valuable ally for controlling the rural hinterland. The association successfully absorbed the close ties of dependence that had been established in Calcutta between the notables (abhijatas) and the ordinary householders (grihasthas) in the early decades of the century. The grihasthas sought the patronage of individual magnates for jobs and caste honour, while the abhijatas acquired power and prestige by securing bodies of followers and dependents. The British Indian Association formalized these connections. The oligarchic leaders of the British Indian Association were anxious to enlist intelligent western educated men whoalone could provide the sustained intellectual effort that would make political agitation a success. For the English-educated professional men such collaboration within the framework of the British Indian Association offered an opportunity of acquiring recognition and influence. Gifted men

like Rajendralal Mitra and Kristodas Pal, the professional poli-

ticians employed by the association, utilized their connection with the association for raising their status in society. With the expansion of the English-educated service and professional groups in Calcutta, however, the British Indian Association could no longer accommodate the aspirations of rising professional men. New signs of energy andself-reliance appeared among the educated Bengalis of Calcutta with the founding of the Science

1B. B. Majumdar, Indian Political Associations and Reforms of Legislature (1818-1917) (Calcutta, 1965), p. 30. 2 Four bills designed to put an endto the existing privilege of Europeans to be tried in the Supreme Court in Calcutta only, which practically denied justice to native inhabitants in the interior in any conflict with Europeans.

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Association by Dr Mahendralal Sarkar in 1876 and the establishment and management of commercial firms by natives in Calcutta.® These efforts for self-reliance in the directions of science, technology and commerce were unmistakable signs of a desire on the part of the educated Bengalis for a broader scope in the public life of the city. They found to their increasing frustration that the British Indian Association, with its high membership fee, excluded the majority of professional men.* In 1875, the editors of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, whobelonged to a small landholding family of Jessore, organized the Indian League as a consciously designed ‘middle class’ organization. Having thus thrown off ‘aristocratic’ leadership, the ‘educated middle class’, whom the Indian League claimed to represent, became an independentforce in Calcutta politics. A new style of leadership based on intellect and popularity rather than birth and patronage began to pose an increasingly serious challenge to the older leaders. In course of time the political leadership largely passed from the hands of the landed magnates, headed by such men as Raja Peary Mohun Mukherjee, to popular leaders such as Surendranath Banerjea. Their growing differences were graphically sketched by Tagore in an article entitled ‘Mukherjee versus Banerjea’ in the Bharati magazine.® The passing of the political initiative from ‘the Mukherjees’ to ‘the Banerjeas’ was accompanied by a growinghostility to the entrenched European monopolies in business, service and the ‘professions. On any issue concerning the substance of power, such as the constitution of the Calcutta Corporation, the educated Bengalis were not prepared, like the landed magnates, for a compromise with the non-official Europeans. The reorganization of the Calcutta Corporation on an elective basis in 1876 was the occasionfor the first major contest for power between the educated Bengalis and the non-official Europeans, a contest in which the latter secured the aid of the landed magnates. Formerly Europeans enjoyed a majority in the municipal council, but were dissatisfied because the executive under Sir Stewart Hogg (as the European paper Indian Daily News was always pointing out) was not responsible to them. The non-official Europeans wererepresented by Roberts, Wilson and others; the Indians by landed magnates like Jotendra Mohan Tagore, Narendra Krishna Deb and 5 Bengalee, 9 June 1877. * Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 October 1875. ° Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Mukhujje banam Barujje’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, pp. 868-74.

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Digambar Mitra, and their dependents like Rajendralal Mitra and Kristodas Pal. Europeans, never ceasing to grumble about the irresponsible character of the municipal administration, pressed for a more representative system and compelled the government to draw up an electoral scheme which ultimately resulted in the loss of political control of the Corporation to professional Bengali politicians. The British Indian Association was by no means anxious for an elective system and asked only for a reform of the system of Justices which would give more representation to real property at stake in the city.* In the Council the representative of the landed magnates, Kristodas Pal, objected to the new elective system on the specious groundthat the Bill, although it professed to concedeselfgovernment to the people of Calcutta, left the appointment and dismissal of the executive in the hands of the government, thus destroying one of the most essential attributes of local self-government. Mr Brookes, a representative of the non-official Europeans,

‘cordially agreed in the remarks’ of Kristodas Pal.? The European businessmen hadin fact discovered that they had bitten off more than they could chew and had now combined with the landed magnatesin opposing the elective system. The Hindoo Patriot professed to discover in this matter a fresh bond of union between Europeans and natives.® The combinedagitation of the landlords and the Europeans gave ammunition to the Indian League and the Amrita Bazar Patrika.® ‘The interests of the European residents and natives clash at every point and the surest test of discovering whatis really good forusis to reject what these gentlemen pray for and vice versa.’ By this sure test the Amrita Bazar Patrika found the British Indian Association and the Hindoo Patriot, which lined up on the side of the Europeans, wanting in national feeling.1? When the Calcutta Municipal Bill was passed, giving the Indians an elected majority in the Corporation, the non-official Europeans, through the Englishman and the Indian 6 British Indian Association Publications, 24th annual general meeting, 29th

April 1876; Hindoo Patriot, 7 February 1876. ? Proceedings of the Council ofthe Lieutenant-Governor of Bengalfor the Purpose of Making Laws and Regulations, 25 March 1876. 8 Hindoo Patriot, 28 February 1876. 9 For a more detailed treatment of Calcutta municipal politics see Rajat Ray, Urban Roots of Indian Nationalism: Pressure Groups and Conflict of Interests in Calcutta City Politics 1875-1939 (New Delhi, 1979). 10 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 17 February 1876.

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Daily News, vented their anger in vain on the new municipal act. Respectable Europeans refused to come forward in the municipal elections, hoping that the system would thusfail. Sir Stewart Hogg’s calculation that 14 Europeans would be elected, giving him a majority of 40 in a municipal council of 75 (14 elected, 24 nominated and 2 executive officers), was thus upset. The Amrita Bazar Patrika exclaimed with delight: ‘And John Bull now finds that the control of the city has slipped away from his hands. It is too late to repent.’”#+ The growing municipal needs of a fast expanding city forced the government to carry out this reform of the Corporation. It had never been intended by the government that political control of the Corporation should slip away to professional Bengalis. But the reform aroused a palpable excitement among the population in the native quarters, the result of which was that Bengali politicians in the city achieved an electoral mobilization on an unexpected scale, upsetting the calculation that non-official Europeans hadsufficient influence in the city to give the municipal executive a majority. The politicians of the Indian Association, a new popular political association which supplanted the Indian League soonafter the reconstitution of the Corporation, obtained considerable influence in the municipal administration of Calcutta under the new system. The new politicians of the Indian Association, such as Surendranath Banerjea and Bhupendranath Basu, were independentof the patronage ofrich landlords. European commissioners objected to the monopoly of power built up by certain commissioners serving in five or six committees where the real work was done. These elected municipal commissioners, who counted among themselves such prominent politicians as Surendranath Banerjea, got themselves elected year after year to all the important committees. It was considered unfair by European commissioners that a few men who had a flair for oratory should get themselves put on every committee and should govern the municipality as they had done for years past.?? It was, in their view, ‘a hugger mugger system’.}8 11 [bid., 10 August 1876. 12 CC, special general meeting of the Commissioners, 21 January 1886. 18 An expression used by Philip Nolan, Commissioner, to describe the manner in which a licence was given to an Indian to open a market. CC, special general

meeting, 12 November 1885.

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Liberalism versus orthodoxy Although educated Bengali politicians presented a united front against European merchants andnative landlords during the struggle for control of the Calcutta Corporation, they were at the same time divided into factional groupings that had a lasting impact on the political developments in Bengal. Initially the factions came into existence due to personalrivalries for power, but these rivalries soon acquired ideological overtones that reflected deeper tensions within society. In the politics of Calcutta in the late nineteenth century, the most persistent factional quarrel was that between the dominant liberal party of Surendranath Banerjea and the group consisting of the editors of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the brothers Sisir Kumar and Motilal Ghosh. The quarrel went back to 1875, when proposals for a political association of the middle classes were in the air in Calcutta. The movement was being actively pushed by the leading spirits of the Students’ Association, Ananda Mohan Bose (a Cambridge University Wrangler) and Surendranath Banerjea, in association with Manomohan Ghose(a leading barrister) and Shivanath Sastri (a Brahmo radical). Sisir Kumar Ghosh, who was supporting this movement through his paper, stole a march on the Students’ Association leaders and founded the Indian League, in his own language, by a coup d’état. Sisir Kumar Ghosh took good care to remain in the background and the League voted to the chair the editor of the Reis and Rayyet, Sambhu Chandra Mukherjee, ‘a man famous only for writing yard-long sentences full of nonsense and Billingsgate’.14 This was the opinion of ‘a Bengalee’ who expressed his disapproval in the correspondence columns of the Indian Daily News in no uncertain terms. He was delighted to find that he was not alone in his opinion of the League. ‘The Mirror, the Saptahik Samachar, the Howrah Hitakari, all write in the samestrain, crying downthe farce of an association. Others, such as the Patriot and the

Bengalee, damn the Leagueby scornful silence.’In spite of adverse criticism from many quarters, the League agitated successfully for an elective Calcutta Corporation. Ananda Mohan Bose, Surendranath Banerjea and Manomohan Ghose joined the League, but finding the dictatorial methodsofits leaders distasteful, they seceded from that body and founded next 14 Indian Daily News, 29 September 1875, letter of ‘a Bengalee’. 15 Tbid., 5 October 1875, letter of ‘a Bengalee’.

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year (1876) the rival association called the Indian Association. The inaugural meeting was packed with students from the Metropolitan College, where Surendranath Banerjea was a lecturer.1* The attempt of a few members of the Indian League who were present at the meeting to question the necessity of a new association was howled down bythe enthusiastic students. Assertingits utility, Surendranath Banerjea observed in his speech: I ask, is there any association in this large city, which really represents the people? The British Indian Association, and all honourto that body for the many andincalculable blessings it has conferred on this country, represents only a section of the people ... The Indian League represents no portion of the community whatever, it certainly does not represent the ryots, the dumb unrepresented millions, who above all need representation... Therefore, gentlemen, because there is really no representative body in this city—and this association aspires to represent the views, the feelings and the aspirations of the middle classes and the ryots, its necessity is placed beyond the shadow of a doubt.” Unconvinced by these protestations, the editors of the Amrita Bazar Patrika wrote perceptively: ‘The objective evidently is to steal a march,the intentions are evidently warlike. Indeed the new Association to live must feed upon the League ordie of starvation.’!8 The leaders of the Indian Association received powerful support in their struggle with the Amrita Bazar group from another body of seceders, the younger Brahmoradicals who underthe leadership of Shivanath Sastri revolted against the dictatorship of Keshab Chandra Sen in the Brahmo Samaj of India and foundedin protest against his conservatism the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. The Indian Association quickly sappedthelife-blood of the Indian League, which collapsed. Similarly the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, representing a more thoroughgoing social reform movement thanthat allowed by Keshab Chandra Sen, supplanted the more orthodox Brahmo Samaj of India. The

Indian Association and the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj were closely

associated groups, and because of the influence of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj within the Indian Association, that body wasliberal in outlook and supported reform of Hindu society.19 18 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 August 1876. ” Bengalee, 5 August 1876, supplement.

18 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 August 1876, %® For an account of these two ‘secessions’ see Shivanath Sastri, Arma-charita

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The Amrita Bazar Patrika, which had sworn enmity to Surendranath Banerjea, moved towards a position of Hindu orthodoxy in order to gather opposition to his party. Even before the foundation of the Indian Association, the enlightened liberalism of the Bengalee, edited by Surendranath Banerjea, had strongly contrasted with the Hindu orthodoxy of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, which was sharply criticized by the former for writing ‘stuff and nonsense’ aboutsocial legislation by foreigners and foreign inroads on Hindu civil law.?° Now, under the new political situation, the lines were more sharply drawn between the liberal nationalists and the Hindu revivalists. Although originating in personal rivalry for power, the factional conflict between the Indian Association leadership and the Amrita Bazar group assumed importance in politics because the latter became the rallying point for a new force in the politics of Bengal, the orthodox Hindu lower middle classes and smaller gentry. The Amrita Bazar group represented the more strident political views.*4 Political activism, however, does not necessarily go with social or economic radicalism, and in real economic and social terms the

Amrita Bazar group represented the conservative force, the Indian Association standing far to the left of it in matters of social reform and peasant welfare. Whereas the Amrita Bazar Patrika had from the beginning set its face against tenancy legislation,” the Indian Association substantiated its claim to speak for the raiyats by advocating far more advanced tenancy laws than the British government waswilling to enact. This difference in the attitudes of these two factions, both drawn from the educated professional Hindus of Calcutta, towards the peasantry derived from the diverse interests within the intermediate strata which they represented. The Amrita Bazar Patrika cared nothing for the bigger zamindars for all its opposition to tenancy legislation. That opposition stemmed really from the fact that it (Signet Press, Calcutta), pp. 332-50; Bipin Chandra Pal, Memories of My Life and Times, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1932), pp. 332-50; Krishna Kumar Mitra, Krishna

Kumar Mitrer Atma-charita (Calcutta, 1937), pp. 98-121; Surendranath Baner-

jea, A Nation in Making (London, 1963), pp. 37-9. 20 Bengalee, 22 July 1876. 21 Sudhir Chandra, ‘The Indian League and the Western India Association’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, March 1971. 22 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 6 May 1875, 27 April 1876, 3 March 1881, 19 March

1885.

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represented the smaller zamindars and taluqdars and intermediate tenure-holders and gentlemen farmers. The Indian Association was controlled by more urbanized professional men, and although many of them, such as Krishna Kumar Mitra, had small landed properties in their original homes, the fact that many of them were radical Sadharan Brahmos working for social reform and uplift of the masses coloured their attitude. The achievements of the Indian Association between 1876 and 1886 in organizing a peasant occupancy right movement have beenlittle recorded, but were by no means negligible. When the zamindars launched an agitation against the TenancyBill, the Indian Association appointed several Brahmos, Kalisankar Sukul, Dwarakanath Ganguli and Krishna Kumar Mitra, to take up the job of organizing the tenants’ agitation by holding peasant meetings. The association workers visited many places in the interior, held meetings of tenants in spite of opposition from the police and the zamindars, and built up an extensive organization with affiliated branch associations in several towns of Bengal.”* After ascertaining the opinion of the tenants in several public meetings held in Nadia, Birbhum, Hughly, Burdwan, 24 Parganas and Calcutta, the Indian Association sent a memorial to the Government

of Bengal on the Bengal Tenancy Bill, demandingsevererestrictions on enhancement of rent and free transferability of occupancy holdings. These were demandscalculated to benefit the occupancy tenants only, but even these relatively moderate provisions were not enacted in the final Bengal Tenancy Act. Lord Dufferin, under whom thebill was passed, wrote to Lord Kimberley that political associations had long been formed in Bengal, but a new developmentof this popular machinery was the organization of mass meetings of raiyats in many

Bengal districts, where various kinds of public entertainments were

staged to collect crowds. The crowds at these assemblies were not

great, and bogus newspaper reports described in picturesque language incidents of meetings which never took place. But although the movement was not immediately dangerous, Dufferin felt an anxiety as to how long an autocratic government would stand the strain of the perfected machinery of democratic agitation.% *8 See the fourth andfifth Annual Reports of the Indian Association for 1879-80 and 1880-1. *“ Cross Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 243.17, Letter from Dufferin to Cross, 16 May 1887, being an extract from a letter from Dufferin to Kimberley, 21 March 1886.

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There was, however, no true cause for alarm,for the passing of the

Bengal Tenancy Act and the foundation of the Indian National Congress diverted the Indian Association from building upits grassroot organization to matters of interest to the service and professional groups all over India. Even before the foundation of the Indian National Congress, the principal activities of the Association had always concernedthe vital interests of educated Indians. The Indian Association was the first body to organize an all-India political agitation on the Civil Service question, provoked by the lowering of the minimum age for competitors. Touring through north India in 1877, Surendranath Banerjea aroused an all-India response of the educated groups on a political question for the first time, and such was the enthusiasm aroused among the hardy people of north India by the visit of this fiery Bengali orator that his meetings in Lahore competed successfully with those of Dayananda Saraswati, the Hindu reformer, who was delivering evening discourses there at this time.*° The meeting convened by the Indian Association in Calcutta itself was acknowledged by the Amrita Bazar Patrika to be a great success, and the former head of the now defunct Indian League, Kali Charan Banerjee, delivered an eloquent speech at the meeting on the subject of the Civil Service, a question on which all factions in Calcutta were united in spite of their internal differences.**° The Indian Association and the Amrita Bazar group agitated with equal vigour against Lytton’s Vernacular Press Act next year, showing once again the tendency of the political factions in Calcutta to combinein order to exert pressure on the government in matters of concern to the educated public. This unanimity on certain questions of national importance, which persisted amidst all the factional divisions of educated Bengali society, exhibited the fundamental cohesion of a nation in the making, against those imperial interests that were seen to be clashing with the nationalinterest. An analysis of the Bengali vernacular press, ordered by Lytton, showed the far-reaching character of the ‘disloyal’ sentiments, which animated not merely the Amrita Bazar Patrika and the Bengalee of Calcutta, but a host of Bengali newspapers circulating through the province. All the newspapers harped on the proclamation of 1858 regarding free admittance of Indiansto all jobs, and on the indubit25 14, First Annual Report 1876-77: special report on the civil service question by Surendranath Banerjea to Ananda Mohan Bose. 28 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 29 March 1877.

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able fact that the promise had not been honoured. Nor were they voicing the narrow sectional interest of the educated community in stressing this. For they clearly related the exclusive employment of Europeansin the top positions of the army and the bureaucracy with the growing burden of the Home Charges, which in turn they identified as a ‘drain’ from the country and a cause of national impoverishment. Their real desire was the replacement of white with native government, as exhibited by their support of native princes against the British and by their pro-Turkish sympathy at the fall of Plevna—God forbid our fate should befall even an enemy, not to say the Turks’. ‘What political economyis this that would sanction the retention of highly-paid Europeansin the service, while famine and destitution raged in the country and people groaned under the burden of taxation ?’?” Lytton sought to curb this growing dissidence by his Press Act, but in vain. The liberals in England condemned the Act, and upon coming into power sent Ripon out to repeal it. The Bengali press went on expanding practically unchecked. Out of nineteen papers edited by Bengali Hindus, the government found as many as fourteen more orless hostile. A perturbed Chief Secretary of the Bengal Government informed the Home Secretary to the Governmentof India that amid all the differences that characterise the Vernacular Press, there are certain points on which they manifest almost unvarying unanimity. The high scale fixed for European officers, the policy of giving low salaries to natives of India in the higher ranks of the public service, their practical exclusion from branches of that service such as the Opium and the Forest Departments; the Home Charges, the increased cost of the Army, and especially the expenditure on frontier defences, the abolition of the import duties on cotton, the Indian Factory legislation—on these and other points in which English and Indian interests are believed to be in conflict, the vernacular papers are practically unanimous in maintaining that the former are unduly preferred to the latter. They also agree in asserting that the administration of law in this country, usually so strict and impartial, fails when justice has to be done between native and European.”® *” Thid., extract from Bharat Mihir, 20 September 1877. *8 Chief Secy. GB to HomeSecy., no. 2541 J.D. dated 13 June 1891, quoted in Shyamananda Banerjee, National Awakening and the Bangabasi (Calcutta, 1968), p. 107.

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While competing with each other and jockeying for position within the existing system, the clashing personalities in Bengali journalism and politics were undoubtedly united in their demand for root and branch reform of that system. Understandably theystill looked to’ England for the initiative in such reform, especially to Gladstone and his party. In a meeting convened to thank Gladstone and other members of Parliament for condemning the Vernacular Press Act, Surendranath Banerjea pronounced with a touching naiveté: ‘That there should be one law for the white and anotherfor the black man,

one for the rich and anotherfor the poor, one for the high and one for the low, one for English journalists and another for native journalists, is a thing which no Englishman can endureortolerate, unless and until he has ceased to be an Englishman (tremendous cheering).’*® Encouraged by this response of the Opposition in Parliament to the grievances of educated India, the Indian Association sent Lal Mohan Ghose on deputation to England for lobbying Englishmen on various matters—the Vernacular Press Act, the Arms Act, the government policy of restricting English education, the Afghan war, the repeal of the import duties on cotton piece-goods, discrimination against Indians in recruitment to the Civil service, etc.°° There was unbounded joy in Calcutta when in 1880 the elections to Parliament brought aboutthe fall of the Tory Ministry and the victory of the Liberals under the leadership of Gladstone, leading to the repeal of the Vernacular Press Act under the administration of the new Viceroy Ripon.*4 ‘A very bad spirit’ This childlike faith in the benevolence of British administration was, however, based on inadequate appreciation of the alien interests which could pressurize the imperial administration. These vested interests were laid bare in their naked ferocity by Ripon’s attempt to empowernative officers and judges in the interior to try cases involving Europeans. The European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, formed in order to conduct the agitation against the IIbert Bill, clearly spelt out these interests in its first annual report: It is not out of place here to put on record what the European community really represents in India. It represents a powerful 29 14, Report on the Proceedings of the Second Public Meeting held at the Town Hall on Friday the 6th September 1878 in connection with the Vernacular Press Act. 31 Bengalee, 1 January 1881. 80 JA, Third Annual Report 1878-79.

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contingent of 13,500 to the European garrison of the empire, it represents a local trade which in 1882-83 amounted to a yearly value of 2114 millions sterling, it represents the debt of India as a State, that is, a further sum of 160 millions. Then it represents

140 millions more invested in Railways with the prospect in the immediate future of seeing this sum increased to a total of at least 200 millions. Nor is this all, for the European community also represents a sum of 38 millions invested in Indian industries and spread overall the provinces of the empire.** These were the interests, however overestimated in calculations of

their money value by enthusiastic businessmen turned agitators, which were affected by Ripon’s new measure. His government had long been thought to be leaning towards the natives at the expense of the Europeans, but the hard-headed European businessmen who initiated the Ilbert Bill agitation kept quiet when Indians were advanced to important posts, when the local self-government scheme was brought forward, or when the Rurki Bill confining admissions to the Rurki Engineering College to Indians was passed. Nor did they lose their poise when the European members of the Calcutta Bar were infuriated by the reduction of the salaries of High Court Judges and the appointment of Romesh Chandra Mitter as acting Chief Justice. ‘If you add these grievances of the lawyers to those of the planters . . .2, Ripon somewhathastily concluded, ‘you have the secret of the whole affair.’ Here Ripon was mistaken. The true measure of the interests aligned against him was appreciated with greater insight by the General Superintendent of Operations for Suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity, J. L. Lambert, in a note which the latter sent to Ripon’s Private Secretary, A. M. Primrose: The men at the bottom of the agitation are capitalists, who say they see ruin in front of them if the Bill becomes law. The High Court did not begin the agitation, nor did the Bar...It was begun by residents of Calcutta, who have a great stake in the Mofussil. They saw that what they considered bad justice was to be given to them,—badjustice that would ruin their zamindaris, their tea gardens, their silk factories, their indigo interests, their

*2 European Association Quarterly Review 1924, no. 14, June 1924: ‘History of the European Association, no. 1, 1883-84’, pp. 21-5. °° Ripon Papers, BP 7/6, Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. I, no. 127, Ripon to Grant Duff, Governor of Madras, 27 March 1883.

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trade in the country produce,—all their Mofussil business. Thus to make their grievance a general one, they raised the cry of danger to European women,and so the agitation spread.*4 The agitation assumed the most violent form in the city where mofussil interests were the most considerable—Calcutta. This was the city which contained houses like Jardine Skinner, a managing agency possessing indigo works in Rajshahi and Midnapur, silk factories and zamindaris in Rajshahi, shellac manufacturing concerns in North-West provinces, and tea gardens in Assam. The headofthis firm, J. J. J. Keswick, who served as President of the Bengal Chamber

of Commerce for many years, became the first Secretary of the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association and directed the

political agitation against the Ilbert Bill.*

Racial antipathy exploded with incredible violence at the public meeting in the Town Hall of Calcutta in which the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, later renamed the European Association, was born. Movingthe first resolution of the meeting, which asserted that the bill would ‘deter the investment of British Capital in the country’, J. J. J. Keswick, the responsible head of a great business firm, asked: ‘Do you think that Native Judges will by three or four years’ residence in England become so Europeanisedin nature and in character, that they will be able to judge as well in false charges against Europeansasif they themselves were Europeans born and bred? Can the Ethiopian changehis skin or the leopard his spots 7°36 Having set the tone of the meeting, Keswick, after proferring the breathtaking confession, — ‘I am no hater of natives (cheers)’— left the stage open to the muchless responsible barrister, Mr Branson, who immediately proceeded to introduce an explosive sexual element in the already highly charged proceedings. He began by abusing the Bengalis who daredto claim the rightto sit in judgment upon Europeans and their women: Gentlemen,it is asked that you should give up your right to be tried by your own countrymen. Nowthis is notoriously a country 34 Ripon Papers, BP 7/6, Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. 1, no. 27, enclosed note to letter from J. Lambert to Primrose, 18 July 1883. 35 Furopean Association Quarterly Review 1924, no. 15, September 1924, p. 13. 36 RADA, Proceedings of the General Meetings of the Association commencing March 1883: public meeting in the Calcutta Town Hall on 28 February 1883 to protest against the Ilbert Bill.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal in which the utmost ingenuity is ever trying to concoct and bring false charges (cheers). What the stiletto is to the Italian, the false charge is to the ordinary Bengali. He loves it, it is his weapon which he ever carries about with him, and the facility with which false evidence can be procured out here enables him to use this weapon with the most fatal effect: and we are called cowards forsooth, because we have asked that we shall not be tied hand and foot, and left in the hands of these men with theirstilettos of false charges; and not we alone, but English Jadies, in the remote

district of Cachar, may be brought up before a native commissioner when their husbands are away, and there has been some quarrel with the coolies of some neighbouring garden. They may be carried before a native Magistrate and there tried at his hands, and subjected to all the indignities which you can picture for yourselves before a man who hasnot the smallest knowledge of their natures (loud and continued cheering).

Carried away by this hysterical applause, Branson now uttered the shrill warning: ‘Gentlemen, it is more than sentiment, it is a sacred charge, a sacred duty, you have cast upon you. Many of you have brought from your far English homea fair girl, entrusted to you by a fond father to be your wife; and if you abandontheir rights now, you break yourfaith with those whogavethatgirl to you.’*” Elemental passions were let loose by Branson’s hysterical utterances. The meeting hissed, groaned and yelled at every mention of the Viceroy. Lord Ripon stood outside the entrance of Government House, listening in wonder and almost stupefaction, to the fierce uproar. The abuse of the natives set the audience beside itself with delight. The next day the natives were worked into a sort of fury by whathad taken place.*® The leading attorneys of the Calcutta High Court moved resolutions against Mr Branson, but were compelled to withdraw them under the pressure of the Chief Justice. The participation of some of the judges of the High Court and their wives in the agitation was encouraged by the quiet approval of the campaign by the LieutenantGovernorof Bengal, Rivers Thompson, and by membersofthe Civil Service in Bengal, who aligned themselves openly against the Government of Lord Ripon.*® Anassociation of ladies, headed by the wives of some of the leading Calcutta officials and judges, joined the 37 Ibid. 38 Quoted in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 15 March 1883. 39 Tbid., 5 April 1883. 40 Tbid.

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European agitation, contributing the bitterness of feminine dislike to the already acrimonious state of public feeling.*! J. Gibbs, a member of the Viceroy’s Council, wrote to Ripon: ‘The sole conversation at dinner parties is the Ilbert Bill, and the violence of the language used is beyond precedent. I was speaking to Hensmanlast evening, whois here for a few weeks, and hesaid that he had, until he camehere, thought the papers were the loudest on the subject, but he found that the people were far more violent than the press, which was now merely following public opinion.’** Describing the deterioration of race relations, Rivers Thompson,whohadfrom the beginning been urging withdrawal of the Ilbert Bill, warned Ripon: “The alienation between Europeans and Natives is widening every day; and the evil influence of this affects administration at every turn. There is not an appointment that becomes vacant, but a native claims it. Everywhere there is a spirit of irritation and suspicion, a promptness to misunderstand and a readiness to put the worst malicious construction upon everything one does.’ Unrestrained by the head of their government, many Bengal officials lost their heads in this atmosphereoffierce racial passions. The Magistrate of Howrah, E. V. Westmacott, wrote to the Private Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor: The Europeans will not stand the tone of the Native Press, especially when they speak of European women asthey do, and one man mentioned to me the possibility of tarring and feathering.

If the Baboos are impertinent in the streets, tram cars, etc., as they

have always been inclined to be, I think, in the present state of feelings among Europeans, they are likely to get their heads | broken. I therefore hope the riotous students, who are to be brought up again next Friday, will get a lesson which will teach them andtheir class to keep quiet, and J regret very muchthatit has been so long delayed.** Westmacott himself dealt out savage punishments, disproportionate according to his own admission, to native servants who dared to be 41 Tbid., 19 April 1883, extract from the Pioneer; Public and Judicial L/P & J/6/1404/1883. 42 Ripon Papers, BP 7/5, Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. u, no. 160B, Gibbs to Ripon, 18 November1883. 43 Tbid., Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. 1, Rivers Thompson

to Ripon, 1 May 1883. 44 Ibid., Correspondence to enclosure to no. 281, E. V. Westmacott to F. C. Barnes, 13 May 1883.

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disrespectful towards Europeanladies in order ‘to check the growing insolence towards Europeans’.*® The strange interplay of interests in Calcutta during 1883 was demonstrated by a cynical alliance between the European businessmen and the big Hindu zamindars,tacitly backed by the Government of Bengal, against the Viceroy and his Council. The Bengal Tenancy Bill was at this stage being pushed through the Legislative Council, against the opposition of the big zamindars of Calcutta. The campaign of the Indian Association to hold raiyats’ meetings in various places so angered them that the British Indian Association held aloof from the protest meetings in Calcutta against the prison sentence on Surendranath Banerjea in a High Court case involving a Hindu idol.** Big zamindars like Maharaja Jotendra Mohan Tagore, infuriated by the attitude of the Viceroy’s Council on the rent question, were talking of the radical craze which had come over the rulers of India;4’ and they received much encouragement on this point from Rivers Thompson, who opposed Ripon’s suggestion, approved by the Indian Association, that compensation should be paid to non-occupancy raiyats upon eviction.*® In this situation the zamindars respondedreadily to the offer of help in the matter of the Tenancy Bill from European non-officials like Keswick, who thus hoped to obtain the co-operation or at least the neutrality of the zamindars with regard to the Ilbert Bill. A Central Committee of the Landholders of Bengal and Behar, convened in the Town Hall to initiate landlord action against the government policy on tenancy legislation, was attended by both Indians and Europeans, bringing about an ‘unholy union’ between the zamindars and the Europeans of the Anglo-Indian Defence Association, which was severely castigated in the papers of the educated Bengalis. The paper of the zamindars, the Hindoo Patriot, remained quiet throughout the Ibert

Bill agitation, exerting its influence to calm the excitement among the Indian population in Calcutta. One Indian paper proposed a boycott of the Hindoo Patriot for its attitude.*® 45 Tbid., enclosure to no. 372, Westmacott to Barnes, 19 June 1883. 46 Ibid., enclosure to no. 317a, H. L. Harrison, Commissioner of Police, to Rivers Thompson, 21 May 1883; enclosure to no. 335, Jotendra Mohan Tagore to 8. C. Bayley, 1 June 1883.

4? Tbid., Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. u, no. 164a, A. O. Humeto Ripon, 22 November 1883. 48 Tbid., no. 47, Rivers Thompson to Ripon, 1 August 1883. 4° Hindoo Patriot, 16 April and 19 November 1883, 27 December 1886; Indian Mirror, 25 November 1883.

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The agitation against the Ilbert Bill became more and morefierce in course of 1883, and a hitherto unfamiliar pace was set in the politics of Calcutta. The European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, which met regularly in the rooms of the Bengal Chamber of Commerceto direct the campaign, quickly grew into a permanent, well-organized, financially strong all-India body maintaining close liaison with its branch committees; and with the money collected by the association amounting to Rs 1,49,080, a vigorous agitation was

set up in England against the IIbert Bill by the London Committee. With all this organized activity, excitement reached such a pitch that a conspiracy was set on foot by a number of men in Calcutta who bound themselves, in case the government adheredto its proposed legislation, to overpowerthe sentries at Government House, put the Viceroy on board a steamer at Chandpal Ghat and send him to England via the Cape.*! The non-official European community absented themselves with hardly an exception from entertainments at Government House, a very effective method of putting the responsible officials beyond the pale of ‘society’. Social ostracism ultimately brought the government to its knees, and the bill to place Europeans in the interior under Indian judicial officers was virtually abandoned under a ‘concordat’ between the government and the Europeans and the Anglo-Indian Defence Association. Lieutenant-Governor Riveis Thompsonpersonally assured the members of the Council of the Association that the modified bill, em-

powering native ICS officers to try Europeans, would remain a dead letter in Bengal after being passed.” Although non-official Europeans in Calcutta thus scored a signal success, the long-term effects of this victory on the political climate of the country were not favourable for British rule. In the first place, the organization and methods of the agitation were an eye-opener for Bengali politicians in Calcutta, an object-lesson in new pressure tactics as yet wholly untried. In its report for 1883 the Indian Association recorded: ‘The triumph of the Anglo-Indian agitation has taught us a memorable lesson. It has shown us how evenin this country, discipline and organized union have triumphedin an unholy 50 RADA, Proceedings of the General Meetings of the Association com-

mencing March 1883. First six Council meetings between 29 March and 23 July 1883. 51C, E. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors, vol. m (Calcutta 1901), p. 790. 52 RADA, Adjourned meeting of Council, 21 December 1883, and Council meeting, 5 January 1884. 8

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cause. The time has come when we must sink petty and personal differences and learn to make commoncausefor the advancementof our country’s interests.’®? Secondly, the political tempo in the city never resumed its formerleisurely pace after the passions aroused by this aggressive defence ofracist laws. It strengthened the determination of the politically conscious classes of the Bengali community in Calcutta to unite and organize. During 1883 the native press in Calcutta worked itself up to an unprecedented pitch of excitement over several issues—the Ibert Bill, the local self-government and municipalbills, the Rent Law Commission, and the imprisonment of the editor of the Bengalee, Surendranath Banerjea, for contempt of court. A political climate was thus created in Calcutta in 1883 which led directly to the organization of the Indian National Conference by Surendranath Banerjea in Calcutta, a forerunner of the Indian National Congress of 1885 with which it merged later on.*4 In order not to embarrass Ripon in his difficulties the Bengali politicians of Calcutta refrained from holding any counter-demonstrations during the Jlbert Bill agitation under the advice of his confidants, accepting even the concordat without a murmur.® But the anger generated in them at this time burst forth over the imprisonment of Surendranath Banerjea. Justice Norris, a Judge of the High Court who had taken an unseemly part in the Ilbert Bill agitation, was pronounced to be unworthy of his high office by the editors of the Bengalee for having contemptuously brought into court a Hindu stone idol (Salgram) for identification. Surendranath Banerjea, who edited the paper, was given the exceptionally vindictive sentence of two months’ imprisonmentfor a relatively minor offence by the European Judges of the High Court with a dissenting judgment from the only Indian on the bench, Romesh Chandra Mitter. Rivers Thompson, who apparently attached ‘great value to getting Surendranath out of the Corporation’, toyed with the idea of seizing this opportunity to debar him from becoming a member of the Calcutta Municipality, but the Commissioner of Police, H. L. Harrison, who knew andliked Surendranath, came to his defence, 53 TA, Seventh Annual Report 1883. 4 For a detailed account, see Edwin Hirschmann, White Mutiny (New Delhi, 1980). 55 Ripon Papers, vol. 1, no. 154, Ripon to Gibbs, and vol. 1, no. 215a, A. O.

Humeto Ripon, 25 December 1883; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 May 1883; Indian

Mirror, 4 January and 6 January 1884.

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advising the Lieutenant-Governor that, left alone, Banerjea would be a moderator rather than an inflamer of popular excitement. ‘You know probably that he did not write the article against Norris himself, but a Pleader, named Ashutosh Biswas; and although this would not have excused him as Editor from insertingit, I think it is somewhatto his credit that he never pleaded this, or in any waytried to help himself out of his difficulty by giving up his subordinate. Norendranath Sen of the Mirror is a pucca beast, so is Lal Mohun Ghose; but Surendranath has a great deal of good in him andis certainly not without a conscience.’*® Surendranath, who had never been noted for his practice of orthodox Hinduism,arousedfierce loyalties among orthodox Hindus as well as liberal students by his spirited defence of a religious practice in which he himself had no great faith, but to which an alien judge in his racial arrogance wasseen to be offering gratuitous insult. On the day of the judgment, the court premises werefilled by an excited crowd, andin the violent demonstrations that followed the passing of the sentence, the student community smashed windows and pelted the police with stones. In view of the menacing attitude of the crowd waiting outside, Surendranath was taken to prison through the back doorin a private carriage. The event called forth the first real native political demonstration all over Bengal. In Calcutta, on the day of Surendranath’s sentence, Indian shops were closed and business was suspended in the Indian part of the city as a spontaneous reaction of the whole community. The student community of Calcutta went into mourning. Crowded meetings were held not only in Calcutta, but all over Bengal and even in many great towns outside Bengal—Lahore, Amritsar, Agra, Faizabad and Poona. These were organized mainly by immigrant Bengalis who persuaded a few north Indian leaders like Syed Ahmad Khan and ImdadAli to join them in the demonstrations, which were successful mainly because of the excitement over the Ilbert Bill, though the local pandits and Muslims disliked the Bengalis.®’ A meeting convened by the Indian Association was considered to be the largest ever held in Calcutta. Open air meetings came into being for the first time because no halls could contain the demonstrations that took place. The fever pitch of political excitement gave an 58 Ripon Papers, vol.1, enclosure to no. 317a, Harrison to Rivers Thompson,

21 May 1883. 57 Tbid., no. 322, Lyall to Primrose, 30 May 1883, with enclosure.

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impetus to cheap journalism which wasseen in the circulation of the Bangavasi, an organ of orthodox Hindu opinion, as a pice paper. A National Fund of Rs 20,000—thefirst of its kind—was collected by the Indian Association. Political agitation was carried to an altogether new plane ofintensity.** As a result of this outburst among educated Bengalis, the big magnates of Calcutta began to lose influence in the city and the stalwarts of the British Indian Association did not take kindly to this development. A member of the Viceroy’s Council wrote to Ripon’s Secretary: ‘It is worth noticing how strong the feeling of antagonism and contempt is between the older Hindus of good position, represented by the British Indian Association, and the younger and more noisy party, represented to a great extent by

Surendranath himself. I am afraid the powerof influencing Bengali public opinion is slipping from the hands of the former, in spite of the strong social and quasi-official support which Eden gave them at the expense oftheir rivals.’®° In utter frustration, Maharaja Jotendra Mohan Tagore confided to this Memberof the Council: Perhaps you are not quite aware of the character of the men who have raised this false religious cry. They have neither status nor stake in society, and to attain the one or the other or both, they resort to various kindsofagitations,social, religious, reformatory, and so on... They are, for the most part, East Bengal men,

joined in by some England returnednatives, who also hail from that part of the country... . They are naturally of a restless disposition, and take delight in hatching mischief, whether it be against Government, individual officer, or private person of sufficient mark and eminence. When they convene meetings, they fill them with schoolboys, and then exclaim that they have the public with them. They go to the ryots, pretend to be their friends, sow seeds of dissension between them and the zamindars, and thus setclass against class. The Police Commissioner of Calcutta, who took the situation seriously, reported to the Lieutenant-Governor that ‘a very badspirit’ 8 Tbid., enclosure to no. 289, Wilkins, Deputy Commissioner of Police, to Barnes, Private Secretary to Lieutenant-Governor, 13 May 1883; Amrita Bazar

Patrika, 10 and 17 May, 7 and 21 June 1883; Bengalee, 12 May 1883; Surendranath Banerjea, pp. 68-78; Bipin Chandra Pal, vol. m1, pp. 433-5; Jogesh Chandra Bagal, History of the Indian Association (Calcutta, 1953), pp. 6-15; IA, Seventh Annual Report 1883. 5® Ripon Papers, no. 335, Bayley to Primrose, 5 June 1883.

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was now abroad among the educated Bengalis in Calcutta. ‘If we had to deal with a more warlike race, I should regard the situation as almost menacing. Asit is, I do not think there is the slightest cause to apprehend any breach of the peace except such as a score of policemen could not promptly put down; but nonetheless the spirit of active disaffection which is abroad is muchto beregretted.’6° Congress and conferences The nationalist leaders in Bengal were well aware that the Ilbert Bill controversy had been orchestrated by British capital invested in Calcutta. The firmness with which they grasped this central fact led Bipin Chandra Pal to write in retrospect: ‘The Ilbert Bill controversy, though it was apparently a mere matter of sentiment, was, however, at its centre, an economic one.’®! The concordat which

ended the controversy served to confirm their impression of the economically exploitative character of British rule in India. As Pal observed in the New India later on, it was the declared policy of the government to draw as much British capital into the country as possible for the exploitation of its natural resources and manpower; and having thus invited British capital, the rulers acted under a moral compulsion to give its agents all the protection that they needed to give them an edge over native competitors.®* The Ilbert Bill controversy thus served to bring into focus the economic and racial dislike of a government that served as the instrument of white businessmen. It stimulated a growing desire for national self-sufficiency, both in economic andin political matters. The bitterness of racial controversy and a sharpened sense of exploitation led directly to parallel moves, in Calcutta and in Bombay, to organize an all-India political body. The Indian National Conference in Calcutta in 1883 and the Indian National Congress in Bombayin 1885 were the products of the [bert Bill controversy. The Bengalnationalists joined the Congress as the advocates ofa national economy freed from foreign domination. The Jndian Mirror, the editor of which attended the first Bombay Congress as one of the three representatives from Bengal, explained this view consciously during the canvassing for the Indian National Congress in 1885. The paperlaid downin clear terms that Indians could never become a nation unless they succeeded in creating new pursuits and occupa6° Tbid., enclosure to no. 276, Harrison to Rivers Thompson, 8 May 1883. 81 New India, 4 November 1901. 82 Tbid.

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tions of a productive type in which they could earn livelihood independentof the colonial government. We have competed with Englishmen, and not unsuccessfully, at the Bar, on the Bench, in Medicine and Engineering, and even in the covenanted Civil Service. But we have never attempted to pit ourselves against them in commerce, trade, agriculture, manufactures or in private enterprise in its various branches, such as the construction and managementof Railways, in the establishment of steam lines, in the business of banks, &c, &c. It is impossible for us to understand why, with the resources at their command, Natives should not try and compete with the best European Merchants, tradesmen, shipowners, tea and coffee, sugar and tobacco planters, bankers, &c. While Calcutta is full

of European Merchants and Commission Agents, how many Natives are there, who carry on the same business in this city? Whyshould we not have Native mercantile houses as great as the largest Europeanfirms in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay ?° The Indian National Conference and the Indian National Congress were, in the final analysis, institutions which embodied the desire of a subject people to break out of a colonial situation, which in material terms distinguished the Europeans from the natives as a race apart. These national associations sprang from the realization that the political subjection of the Indian people was organically related to their economic deprivation and racial degradation. Admiration for Englishmen and for English civilization had hitherto been a prominent element in the Bengali attitude towards the British; it still remained a force to reckon with among Bengali intellectuals and politicians.** But the more instinctive antipathy to white rule now began to well up to the surface, and the public protestations of loyalty, sincere enough in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, acquired a tone so hollow that it no Jonger reassured the British. The bitterness that resulted from the Ilbert Bill controversy lay at the root of the new efforts at nationalist organization from 1883 to 1885. The altered climate of opinion precipitated the political moves leading to the summoning of the two rival national unions—the Indian 88 Indian Mirror, 14 January 1885. ** The autobiographies of several Bengali nationalist leaders bear testimony to the continuing admiration of English civilization after the Ibert Bill controversy. See for instance Shivanath Shastri’s account of his visit to England in 1888 in Atma-charita.

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National Conference and the Indian National Congress.In the longer run, the psychological atmosphere created by the Ibert Bill controversy ensured the consolidation of these two institutionsinto a single organization and sustained it through the lean periods when there were no immediate grievancesto exploit. Considering how diverse were the interests and the aspirations in the subcontinent, this was a remarkable organizational feat in the nineteenth century. That a single national federation of such diverse elements emerged andthatit lasted through frequent and prolonged lean periods can be explained only by the psychological fact of a rooted dislike of colonial rule, especially the dislike of its economic and racial aspects. Bengali literature in the late nineteenth century was punctuated by expressionsofthis dislike: the satirical pieces that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote during and after the Ilbert Bill controversy afford significant glimpses of the antipathies that were stirring deep down in the Bengali consciousness. The bitter irony with which Chatterjee satirized an imaginary native Christian of low caste who claimed immunity from trial by a Bengali magistrate in a case of petty theft—on the ground that a ‘sahib’ could not betried by a ‘native’-—indicated the devious outlets through which a corrosive dislike was spending its fury.® The birth and development of an all-India nationalist organization in the 1880s must be understood in this psychological context. The shareddislike was the more remarkable in view ofthe different 65 See the satirical piece in Bengali entitled ‘Bransonism’, in Bankim Rachanavali, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, vol. m (Calcutta, B.S. 1376), pp. 33-7; see also ‘Masik Sambad’, which criticizes an English judge for testing the virginity of an Indian woman, pp. 920-1 of the same volume. 86 Anil Seal, Gordon Johnson and John Gallagher have emphasized the impact of the unified and centralizing framework of British government in bringing together politicians with diverse interests. Their analysis is useful in showing how the Congress movement became anall-India movement. But to explain why the Congress movement was an opposition movement, it is necessary to go beyond this constitutional-administrative analysis and to lay bare the economic and racial content of British rule and its psychological impact on the collective consciousness of the subject native population. See Locality, Province and Nation; and also Gordon Johnson, Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism: Bombay and the Indian National Congress 1880 to 1915 (Cambridge, 1973). A useful corrective which delves into the psychology of early nationalism is John McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress (Princeton, 1977). Another study which emphasizes the growth of economic discontent behind the emergence of the Congress is Sudhir Chandra, Dependence and Disillusionment: Emergence of National Consciousness in Later 19th Century India (New Delhi, 1975).

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directions in which individuals, factions and social groupings were constantly pulling in the political world of late nineteenth century India. The emotional bond ofanti-white feeling supplied a basis for the coming together of nationalist politicians from different provinces on a commonnational forum. But it did not obliterate the rivalries and antagonisms among them,nor did it removeat a stroke the difficulties of political communication between widely separated regions and social groups. The viceroyalty of Ripon brought into existence two political nuclei, one around Surendranath Banerjea in Calcutta and the other around Alan Octavian Hume in Bombay.

Both these centres were capable of drawing together a coalition of nationalist elements from different provinces. But they were quite different in colour and make, a fact which attests to the diversity of conditions in the subcontinent. But even in Calcutta itself, the

Banerjea group was only one among several nationalist groups, though admittedly the most important one. W. C. Bonnerjee, the veteran barrister and senior politician, maintained a discreet distance from the Banerjea group and their Indian Association. The Amrita Bazar group wasactively opposed to them. Yet another small clique had been formed around Narendranath Sen and his paper, the Indian Mirror. Thus it happened that while Bonnerjee and Sen were in close touch with Hume in Bombay, Banerjea wasnot. Instead of a single concerted effort, parallel moves for a national federation were launched in Calcutta and Bombay by Banerjea and Humerespectively. Bonnerjee and Sen, keeping aloof from Banerjea’s move, supported Hume’s initiative. Banerjea’s group decided in 1886 to merge with Hume’s Congress. That this merger could take place, and that even the Amrita Bazar group, so bitterly opposed to the Indian Association, also joined the Congress, reveal a commonnationalist commitment that persisted throughall rivalries. A federation of such widely separated political groupings became a practical proposition in the altered psychological atmosphere produced by the inflamed passions and racial antipathies of 1883. It could not have been possible earlier. The shared dislike of colonialrule, and the sharpened sense of its economic andracialinjustices, were the basis of the union. Without that emotionalbasis, a single national union would not have

come about, nor would it have lasted even if a coalition had somehow

been put together by calculating politicians in response to the administrative and constitutional initiatives of the British. Calcutta’s initiative preceded that of Bombay in federating the

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nation. The outburst of indignation from different provinces of India at the imprisonment of Surendranath Banerjea suggested to the leaders of the Indian Association that the growing bondof unity and fellow-feeling among the Indians mightbeinstitutionalized in a representative all-India body. Riding on the crest of this feeling, the leaders of the Indian Association organized the Indian National Conference in Calcutta at the end of 1883. It was attended by delegates not only from Bengal but also from distant towns like Bombay, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Lahore, Delhi, Meerut and Madras. The Conference, which Ananda Mohan Bose proudly proclaimed to be the first stage towards a national parliament, voiced the characteristic aspirations of educated Indians: promotion of general and technical education, reform and expansion of the Legislative Councils, larger employmentof Indiansin the Civil Service and separation of the judicial functions from the executive. The same demands were repeated with greater authority at the next National Conference of 1885, which was joined in by the British Indian Association and the Central National Mahomedan Association. The participation of these two bodies was an important triumph for the Indian Association, for it denoted the support of the landed aristocracy and the Muslim nobility for its new political initiative.*’ The Indian National Congress, summoned by Alan Octavian Humeandhis allies in Bombay and Maharashtra, sat at the same time in Bombay. Its President, W. C. Bonnerjee, a veteran barrister who possibly regarded Surendranath Banerjea as a dangerousrival in politics, was later reported by Bipin Chandra Pal to be reluctant to invite Surendranath and other leaders of the Indian Association. An invitation was in fact extended to Surendranath, but it came so

late that he could not attend the first Bombay Congress (attended only by three Bengali delegates including Narendranath Sen of the Indian Mirror),® and had to go ahead with his own plans for the Indian National Conference.*® The Indian National Conference was jointly convened by three bodies: the Indian Association, representing the educated Bengalis, the British Indian Association, representing the landed magnates, and the Central National Mahomedan Association, representing the Muslim nobles. Such a centre of power was impossible to ignore, and Alan Octavian Hume, the retired 8? 14, Decennial Settlement Report. 68 Indian Mirror, 1 January 1886. 69 Surendranath Banerjea, pp. 91-2; Bipin Chandra Pal, pp. 13-14.

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civilian who put up the Congress with the help of Bombayleaders, entered into negotiations with Surendranath Banerjea as a result of which the two bodies merged in the Calcutta Congress of 1886. According to revelations made by Bipin Chandra Pal later on, the Congress, which was hatched in secret by a few influential persons of great wealth or high professional standing, accepted Surendranath Banerjea as the spokesman of the educated middle class only whenit wasdecided that the Congress of 1886 would be held in Calcutta and when Humesaw the impossibility of a successful session in Calcutta without taking Surendranath into the movement. ‘But though the Congress leaders dared not keep him out’, wrote Bipin Chandra Pal somewhat spitefully in 1913, ‘and were subsequently even ready to exploit Surendranath’s powers and influence in aid of their work, it is needless to conceal the fact that he never cameto the actual leadership of this body, but on the contrary, with the spirit of accommodation characteristic of the man, he hasall along submitted to be led and exploited by his rivals, many of whom never cared even to conceal their want of regard for his personality or their want of appreciation of his worth.’ Although the Bengal delegates were not prepared to join the Congress ‘in the role of the bearer of the hubble-bubble (hukkabardar) of anybodyelse’ (as the Chairman of the Reception Committee of the Congress of 1886, Rajendra Lal Mitra, put it), the innermost levers of power within this body were controlled by the Bombayleaders. In the early years of the Congress, the actual work behind the resolutions to be put up at the pandal was done ‘in an absolutely hole and corner way and the general body of the delegates had nothing else to do but to dance attendance to the tune of Messrs Hume & Company’. The birth ofits first regular institution, known as the Subjects Committee, was due to the threat by a young delegate at the third Congress of Madras to assert his right to move any resolution before the open Congress, leaving it to the vote of the delegates. The coterie adroitly countered this move by accepting the suggestion that the agenda should be prepared by a representative committee duly elected by the delegates. This paper safeguard did not change the real equations of power, and for many years down to 1915 the Bombay faction, led by the masterful personality of Pherozeshah Mehta and including among its other leaders Wacha and Gokhale, were able to control the Congress, turning it into 7° Bipin Chandra Pal, Character Sketches (Calcutta, 1957), p. 29.

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‘practically a private concern’.”! The leaders of the Indian Association were admitted to the inner counsels of the Madras Congress of 1887, but they did not possess sufficient power to put through the Congress programmea resolution on the oppression of the labourers in the tea gardens of Assam. This was a matter which the Indian Association and the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, which displayed the radical tendencies of early middle class liberalism, had taken up jointly after 1882, when the murderofa ‘coolie’ woman bya planter aroused the indignation of the educated Bengalis of Calcutta. On behalf of the Indian Association, of which he was the Assistant

Secretary from 1882 to 1898, the prominent Sadharan Brahmo Dwarakanath Ganguly undertook a tour of Assam in 1886, during a part of which he was accompanied by Shivanath Sastri.72 He brought back harrowingtales of dungeons and physical tortures for recalcitrant men and women who would not work for unlimited hours at shameful wages. The Brahmo paper Sanjivani and the Bengalee of Surendranath Banerjea published these tales as ‘the Sons of Legree in India’ and ‘Slave Trade in British Dominion’. The Bengal delegates tried at the Madras Congress of 1887 and the Allahabad Congress of 1888 to pass a resolution against the Assam Cooly Act which permitted these legalized barbarities, but it was ruled out of order on the ground that it was a provincial subject.” Upon its failure to move the Congress, the Indian Association formed a new organization, the Bengal Provincial Conference, to push the agitation against oppression in the tea gardens. Thefirst Bengal Provincial Conference of 1888 in Calcutta, under the presidentship of Dr Mahendra Lal Sarkar, passed a resolution, moved by Bipin Chandra Pal and seconded by Dwarakanath Ganguly, for a revision of the Assam Cooly Act.** As the initiator of the Bengal Provincial Conference, the Indian Association undertook the responsibility of holding this conference annually. The agitation in favour of the tea garden labourers thus led to the creation of a political organization of considerable importance to the politics of the province. The Indian Association, which showeditself to be much more radical and forthcoming in defence of oppressed labour than the Congress, was the only important political body to carry on an 71 72 73 74

Bande Mataram, 13 September 1907. 14, Eleventh Annual Report 1886-87; Shivanath Sastri, p. 202. Bipin Chandra Pal, Memories, pp. 52-5. TA, 1886-87; Bengalee, 3 November 1888.

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agitation in favour of tea garden labourers in the late nineteenth century.” The Bengal Provincial Conference indicated the growing bond of common nationalist sentiment between Calcutta and the districts. But still politics in the provincial towns and rural localities was strongly parochial. There were, of course, many local nationalists

who opposed colonial interests in the districts. But to understand the actionsof these politicians, many of whom attendedthe early sessions of the Congress, it is necessary to delve into their local affiliations and interests. In this connection it may be fruitful to examine the political biography of an unknown but typical Congressman of Sylhet district,’° which, although transferred from Bengal to Assam,

belonged linguistically to the former province and produced the well-known leader of the extremist group in the Congress, Bipin ChandraPal. Radhanath Chaudhuri, an early political associate of Bipin Pal, was a Sylheti Brahman (held in low esteem by Rarhi and Varendra Brahmans), whose grandfather was a substantial mirasdar (intermediate landholder). His father lost much of their landed property and the family was in straitened circumstancesin his childhood. His mother’s family was also a landholding family of middling means. Radhanath passed out of Sylhet District School and entered the Metropolitan Institution in Calcutta, but he left the college without a degree. He devoted his considerable entrepreneurial talents to spreading English education in his backward district on a commercial basis. English education spread in Sylhet during Radhanath’s school and college career (1870-78), which saw also the foundation of a local press, the circulation of a political paper and the organization of a district association. The Srihatta Prakash, edited by a former government clerk sentenced to three months’ imprisonmentfor accidentally killing a European, appeared in 1876,its circulation being confined to the clerical staff of the government and the pleaders of the district bar. In 1875 Rai Sahib Nabakishore Sen founded the Sylhet Association, but because of the paucity of educated men in Sylhet its centre was shifted in the same year to Calcutta, whereits

executive committee was formed by students from Sylhet under the leadership of three bright students—Bipin Chandra Pal, Rajchandra **TA, Manuscript proceedings of the Committee of Indian Association, 8 December 1899. *® Radhanath-Charita, published by Bhutnath Palit (Calcutta, 1909).

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Pal and Rajchandra Chaudhuri. The association, run by liberal Brahmo and semi-Brahmo students, worked mainly to spread women’s education in Sylhet. Radhanath Chaudhuri came to Calcutta in 1877 and joined the executive committee of the association. Soon after this Sylhet students in Dacca also opened a Sylhet Friends’ Association, devoting their energies mainly to the eradication of the habit of drinking. Bipin Pal went back to Sylhet at this stage and converted a defunct Mufti School into the National Institution (1880), of which he himself became the headmaster, joined there soon after by Radhanath Chaudhury. The school, however, soon got into debt and was not helped by Bipin Pal’s adoption of the Brahmoreligion, which cut him off from the financial support of his orthodox relatives. More pragmatic, Radhanath never became a Brahmo ceremonially in spite of his liberal convictions, and this helped him run the school andattract students after Bipin Pal finally went back to Calcutta, where he rose to the leadership of the extremist party. To support the school financially Radhanath worked as private tutor to the wealthy Muslim zamindar, Amzad Ali, and took over the school completely when the other two associates of Bipin Pal, who had joined the school as second andthird teachers, went away to the capital of Assam on goveinment jobs. Radhanath stuck to his native place and took over also the progressive paper Paridarshak, which Bipin Pal had been publishing from the school. To run the paper he formed the United Company, but when this proved a failure he bought a press himself and published the Paridarshak as the only newspaper of Sylhet, stridently criticizing the oppression of the tea planters in his area. Meanwhile the managing committee of the National Institution was formed by Radhanath Chaudhuri and the Reverend Sonaton Some, but the two split on the control of the school. A Bible class in the school taken by Some provided the occasion for a public quarrel between the two, and Someforcibly prevented the entry of Radhanath to the school compound. Radhanath promptly assembled a large number of schoolboys and dramatically informed his audience that ‘Hundreds of Sonatons cannot make a Radhanath’—a saying which becamecurrent for many years among the schoolboys as an expression of triumph over defeated rivals. The Reverend Some sought theintervention of the deputy commissioner of the district, but the officer refused to intervene personally and Radhanath wonthecase in the civil court. This was the hour of his triumph. Hejoined the Calcutta

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Congress of 1886 and uponhis return held a meeting in favourof the Congress, overcoming the opposition of the orthodox party, led by a Sanskrit pundit of his own school. In 1887 he became commissioner of Sylhet municipality and in 1888 Vice-Chairman of the Karimganj Local Board. Hedied in 1892, Men like Radhanath Chaudhuri formed the provincial political constituency to which the Calcutta leaders directed their appeal in order to build up an organized national movement for exerting pressure on the British government. Yet the provincial members of the Congress did not as a rule spare much thoughtto this struggle, their passions being aroused more readily over local issues such as control of municipalities, local boards, schools, associations, etc.

Radhanath Chaudhuri, unlike many other provincial Congressmen, did wage a continuous press campaign against the colonial exploitation of his district by tea planters, but his principal concern was the effective control of his school and the exclusion of rivals from it. This strong parochialism precluded any continuous connection between national andlocal politics in the early days of the Congress. Paradoxically, the emergence of the Congressitself brought about a further disjunction of local and national politics in Bengal. In the pre-Congress era Surendranath Banerjea’s energies had gone as much into forging connections with the countryside of Bengal as with politicians in U.P., Bombay and Madras. Down to 1886-87 the Indian Association was steadily growing into a genuine all-Bengal organization with a country base amongthe educated gentlefolk and the occupancyraiyats. In 1887 the Indian Association had well over a hundred branches spread throughout Bengal and beyond; nearly half of which were village unionsespecially evident in the districts of Pabna and Midnapur.”’ By reducing the membership fee from Rs 5 to Re 1 the Association sought to enrol the raiyats and succeeded so well in its efforts that, in the frightened language of Maharaja Jotendia Mohan Tagore,it ‘nearly brought the country to a blaze by inciting agrarian insurrection’. It was aided by the Bengal TenancyBill, which proved ‘a powerful weaponin their handsforsetting class against class’ and a meansof acquiring ‘a largeclientele’.”8 This development, however, was cut off by the Congress, which diverted the Indian Association from the exploitation of rural dis” TA, 1887-88. *® Ripon Papers, Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. 1, no. 335,

enclosure.

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contents in its backyard to the ventilation of more generalized grievances on the all-India platform. The Congress, which frowned upon rabble-rousing activities, acted as a brake on Bengali radicalism. Consequently the Indian Association began to lose touch with the rural scene, and its promising district network of 124 branches lost its cohesion and then disappeared altogether. The stabilization of the rural scene after the Bengal Tenancy Act also contributedto this. In the absence of a closely knit organization covering the entire province, the Congress in Bengal cameto rely on occasional contacts with independentcentres of local political activity. These centres of local politics could be classified basically into five categories. In the first place there were the district bar associations which wereheavily politicized bodies that often took the most crucial part in selecting the issues and techniques of agitation. Secondly, there were the schools and colleges whose teachers and students formed the rank and file in political campaigns. Thirdly, there were mofussil newspapers, printing presses, libraries, literary societies and athletic clubs that were semi-political bodies. Fourthly, there were district associations, people’s associations in the subdivisions and municipal rate-payers’ associations which were professedly political in their objectives. Finally, there were the municipalities, local boards and district boards, which formed in turn the constituencies for the

Bengal Legislative Cotincil under the Indian Councils Act of 1892. Withall these local institutions it was the Indian Association which— in the name of the Congress (the Congressitself was no independent entity in Bengal)—kept up communication from Calcutta. Having failed to sustain its mass contacts drive of the eighteen-eighties, the Indian Association had fallen back more and more upon packingits meetings with students and asking support for its memorials from the district bars and associations.?® On the other hand, its achieve-

ment in keeping open these channels of communication with the 79 The limitations of the modus operandi of the Indian Association are clearly revealed in a letter written by Surendranath Banerjea in 1900 regarding a proposed public meeting on a current issue: ‘But the colleges are now closed and we cannot hope in a matter like this to fill the Town Hall without our undergraduates.” The meeting was therefore to be postponed. Meanwhile the Indian Association would prepare a memorial to the government and would ask the Bombay Presidency Association, the Deccan Sabha, the Madras Mahajan Sabha and the various mofussil associations including the Bar associations to take action. A. C.

Banerjee Papers, Surendranath Banerjea to A. C. Banerjee, 29 May 1900.

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interior should not be minimized. By establishing a practical monopoly over these channels, the Indian Association slowly reduced its main rival—the British Indian Association—to impotence, and emerged as the one and only body representative of nationalism in Bengal as a whole, with a complete monopoly over the Congress identity in the province. II. OPPOSITION TO LIBERAL NATIONALISM

The seeds of discord Initially both sharif Muslims and big landlords were favourably disposedto the politics of national union. The sharif leaders of Calcutta lent their support to the Indian National Conference of 1885. Within a year their attitude had changed. Amir Ali, Nawab Abdul Latif and other leading Muslim public figures of Calcutta refused to join the Indian National Congress in Calcutta next year. Explaining this sudden change of policy on the part of the Central National Mahomedan Association, its Secretary Amir Ali wrote in a letter to the Statesman that there was no question which could be discussed in the Congress that was not receiving the attention of the government and that circumstances indicated ‘a policy of confidence in the Government’.® Muslim sharif opposition to the Congress grew even more pronounced two years later during the Allahabad session of 1888 under active encouragement from the government. On the eve of this session, Lord Dufferin, who was due shortly to leave India at the end of his administration, delivered at St Andrew’s Dinner in Calcutta a

diatribe against the Congress, calling it a ‘microscopic minority’. His motive, as he wrote to the Secretary of State, was to mobilize opposition to the Congress by a formal declaration of official displeasure. ‘The Congress movement’, wrote the Viceroy,

is neither formidable, nor—as far as most people whotake part in it are concerned—either a disloyal or an illegitimate movement, though we must never forget that in it, and connected with it, there is a very real and bitter element of what I would call 80 This was in sharp contrast with the politics of the Bombay Presidency. The BombayPresidency Association in Bombaycity was isolated from the politics of its hinterland. Poona, a rival centre of politics, was torn by factions. See Gordon Johnson, Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism: Bombay and the Indian National Congress 1880 to 1915.

81 The Statesman and Friend of India, 9 December 1886.

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‘bastard’ disloyalty, represented by a small Bengali clique in

Calcutta, whose organ is the Mirror. I say ‘bastard’ because,

though the party hates Englishmen and the English rule, and desires to do all it can to injure and discredit them, I do not believe that in their secret hearts they are aiming at any special

ideal as a substitute ... On the other hand, the Mahomedans, the

Oudh Talookdars, and even most of the responsible and sensible Bengalees, have an instinctive dislike of the Congress and ofits works; but midway between the two parties there stands a considerable massof irresolute opinion, which has been watching with wonder the immunity extended to what in its view are the insubordinate proceedings of the Congress-Wallahs, such as Mr

Hume’s foolish threats of insurrection, and the dissemination of

libels and calumnies contained in the Tamil Catechism and similar publications.®?

Dufferin hoped to detach, by this declaration, the mass of uncommitted opinion from the Indian National Congress. The officially instigated opposition to the Congress at Allahabad was not merely communalbutalso regional, comprising both sharif Muslims and great Hindu taluqdars, who equally disliked the advance of Bengali officials and clerks in northern India in the trail of their British superiors. Furiously declaiming this opposition, the Indian Mirror, with which the personal relations of Dufferin were poisonous, asked: Whoare, then, our declared opponents? We will name only the leading ones. An old Mussulman run mad, or in his dotage. A young Talukdar, who employs evidently an English Private Secretary to write for him an anti-Congress letter all the way to the Times. A fawning Munshi, who has becomefat and oleaginous on official favours and Governmentcontacts. A senile Maharajah at the mercy, notfor the first time, of the wily Shiva Prosad. Shiva Prosad himself—Notoriety itself. A few Hyderabad Mahomedan officials, who subsist not so much on the favour of their august master, the Nizam, as on the favour of the Nizam’s august master,

the British Resident.*?

And all were held to be, equally, the stooges of the British government.

Behind the Muslim separatist movement lay the expectation of

82 Dufferin and Ava Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 130.11B, Dufferin to Cross, 3 December 1888. 83 Indian Mirror, 27 September 1888.

9

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special privileges, which was encouraged at a crucial point by the government of Lord Dufferin. Sharif Muslim leaders broke away from the national movement, encouraged by Lord Dufferin in the belief that non-participation in the movement would bring better opportunities in the matter of government jobs and educational facilities than they could obtain by participation in the Congress with Bengali Hindus whoconstituted the main threatto their existing position in governmentservice. In Bengal as well as in upper India, sharif Muslims were being threatened with loss of their positions in the native establishments of the government to English-educated Bengali Hindus. It is true that under colonial rule power and resources werelimited for all natives; and the nature of the division of

resources between Europeans and Indians should have powerfully promoted unity amongthe latter. But the rulers enjoyed the tactical advantage of being able to distribute resources in a discriminatory manner so as to encourage broad communal divisions in a plural society. ‘Divide and Rule’ henceforth became an ingrained, almost subconscious elementin the political creed of the British empire, and any temporary combinations between Hindus and Muslims were viewed with alarm by the British officials. Reflecting this subconscious fear, Viceroy Elgin’s private secretary wrote to the Agent in Rajputana in 1898 with reference to the recent combinations between Hindus and Muslimsin several parts of India against plague measures: ‘If Hindus and Muslims were forced into active opposition, the combination between them might be perpetuated and might assume a dangerous form.’ Because of the extremely fragmentary character of Indian society, some nationalist leaders, who foundit difficult to extend their political control over the people and to nationalize their political movement, appealed to the potential tie of Hinduism, which in turn reacted upon and activated the other great potential tie in India, Islam. Nineteenth century Hindu reformers evolved an ideology emphasizing the superiority of the religious value of the ‘national’ tradition as opposed to the purely materialistic capitalist values of the white rulers. The orthodox Hindureaction in culture and politics acted as a stimulant to Muslim sectionalism. In the late eighties and the early nineties there was a sinister development in social relations: the cow became an explosive issue between Hindus and 84 Elgin Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 84.72, no. 280, Babington Smith to A. H. T.

Martindale, 27 May 1898.

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Muslims. Bengal was notafflicted by this to the same extent as Bihar, the North-West Provinces, the Punjab, and Bombay. But riots in north India were at once reported in the Hindu and Muslim press in Bengal and began to produce perceptible excitement. NeoHindu chauvinism, which spread from upper India to Bengal, reflected itself in the attempt to stop cow sacrifice, the activity of Gorakshini Sabhas, the illegal use of force by the Hindus.®° The agitation against cow-slaughter, set on foot in Allahabad upon the ruling of the N.W.P. High Court that the killing of a cow in a public place was not an offence under the Indian Penal Code, gained the support of the Amrita Bazar Patrika in Calcutta, which feared that the low class Muslims in upper India would take full advantage of the ruling to hurt the religious feelings of the Hindus.** In 1890 several powerful zamindars in East Bengal prohibited cow sacrifice in their jurisdictions. Among them werethe Raja of Bhawal, the Babus of Bhagyakul and the zamindars of Bikrampur in Dacca district; the zamindars of Kagmari, Muktagacha and otherplaces in Mymensinghdistrict; the Narail Babus of Jessore and the Rajas of Putia in Rajshahi. The educated men of the Hindu community— lawyers, doctors, muktars, clerks and deputy magistrates—followed the zamindars and ‘inaugurated’, according to the Bengali Muslim paper Sudhakar, ‘an era of violence’, though as a matter of fact there were no actual riots. This paper, published from Calcutta by the associates of the dynamic Muslim missionary Munshi Meherulla, called for unity among Muslim landed and educated classes for defence of the right of cow sacrifice. It incited Muslims living under Muslim zamindars to help by force of arms their oppressed coreligionists in neighbouring Hindu zamindaris.8’” Mir Musharraf Husain, the leading Muslim writer in Bengali literature, sought to pour oil on troubled waters by suggesting that Muslims should abjure cow slaughter. He only succeeded in inviting upon himself a storm of invective which led him to bring a suit against the editor of a Muslim paper. But growing pressure from his community compelled him to withdraw the suit and to withhold from publication a pamphlet which he had written on the cow.® The right to slaughter 85 GB, Judicial Department (Confidential) 1896/36: ‘Cow Protection Movement and the National Congress’. Confidential file preserved in the political branch of the Home Department of the Government of West Bengal. 86 4mrita Bazar Patrika, 1 March 1888. 87 RNP 1890: Sudhakar, 5 September, 88 Tbid., 19 September.

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cows had become identified in the eyes of educated Muslims with the right to maintain their Muslim identity. Another issue which alienated educated Muslims from educated Hindus was the communaltone in Bengali nationalistliterature. The later novels of the leading Bengali prose writer, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, published between 1882 and 1887,°° were perceived to be communalin tone, with Muslim characterscast in the role of villains.

With the disappearanceoftheearly radical social tendencies apparent in his essay on ‘Samya’ (‘Equality’), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee developed a neo-Hindu philosophy of which the best documents were his last three philosophical treatises—Krishna-charitra (1886), Dharmatattva (1888) and Srimad-Bhagavad-gita (1886-1888). The Sudhakar was the first paper to voice the Muslim protest against the historical romances of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. The Hindu misrepresentations of Muslim character in Bengali literature came to be increasingly resented as more and more Muslims becameliterate and read with indignation the historical novels which formed the staple food of the educated Hindus of Bengal. Bengali Muslims were prepared to respect Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore, two writers whose works were completely free from any undertone of communalism. But they deeply resented the popular historical novels of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Romesh Chandra Dutt. ‘It is only a short time since that the Mussalmansof Bengal have commenced studying Bengali’, commented the Sudhakar in 1892, ‘and they are greatly pained to see their race vilified in every page of every work of these authors. Literature is the true mirror of the national mind, and Bengali literature being so full of abuse for the Mussalmans,it is easy to see how deepis the Bengali’s hatred of the Mussalman.’ This grievance lay deep in the heart of the educated Muslim and the Sudhakar warned that no superficial plaster of honey would win the Muslims to the Congress.” The anti-cow slaughter movement and the content of Bengali literature thus constituted two prominent themes of the Sudhakar. The paper commented on these matters with a frenzy which sometimes rose to the pitch of the threat that thirty million Muslimsin Bengal would rise in arms against the Hindus and that the struggle that would ensue would reduce all Bengal to a desert.*! In spite ofall 89 Ananda-matha (1882), Rajasimha (1882), Devi Chaudhurani (1882), Sitarama (1887). °0 RNP 1892: Sudhakar, 30 December. *1 RNP 1890: Sudhakar, 17 January.

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this, however, Bengal was not a scene of communal violence in the

late nineteenth century.® Anofficial inquiry into police recordsrevealed that during the quinquennium 1889-1894, there was no communal disturbance in Bengal except one riot in Calcutta andits suburbs (1891), three minor village incidents in Murshidabad district, and one minor incident in the Karisunda police station in Midnapurdistrict. There were no incidents in the Muslim majority divisions of Rajshahi, Dacca and Chittagong. The Commissioner of Dacca division wrote to the Chief Secretary: ‘It seems to me a very extraordinary fact that in five years not a single riot of this description should have occurred.’®* Critics of the Congress By the end of the eighties the limitations of liberal nationalist politics had becomeevident, especially after the Muslim breakaway from the Indian National Congress, and there was a crystallization of the social and cultural tendencies within the Hindu community which stood in opposition to the tactics or objectives of the Congress. The Congress as an organization invited muchcriticism for its ineffectiveness. It was pronouncedto be a three-day wonder which people who had a reputation to keep attended.™ British officials, whom the Congress was meant to impress, became contemptuous, and one official wrote to the Viceroy in 1893: The Babus who work with the Congress have no mind above intrigue, wire-pulling, bogus meetings, and a never-failing stream of journalistic misrepresentation andlies, the object of which is not so muchto excite the people against us, as to excite a prejudice in Parliament against the British Government in India and its officials. The last thing the Congress Babudesires is the subversion of the British power. What he wants is to get hold of the administration and to enjoy the fruits of power, while the country is held by the British Army.”

Congress leaders were not unaware of the organizational defects of the Indian National Congress, but their plans for its reform were 82 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 24 May 1896. °3 Bengal Political Proceedings, police branch, July 1894, nos. 21-43. 4 Diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, December 1890 and 1 April 1901.

85 Lansdowne Collection,

MSS. Eur. D. 558.25, no.

Lansdowne, 26 September 1893.

289,

Crosthwaite to

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‘fanciful and insubstantial.%* The Indian Association, which looked after Congress affairs in Bengal, was a somewhat better organized body than the Congress. However, its leadership was drawn almost exclusively from a comparatively smaller section of the educated Bengalis—the section which was successful in urban professions and held progressive social views. Its branch associations in the interior now existed only in name, and its raiyat sabhas, which had been active during the period of rent legislation in the eighties, were extinct. The political agitations organized by the Association were mostly confined to Calcutta and succeeded in arousing only small response from theinterior. Radical opposition to Congress methods and aspirations came from vernacular, provincial and orthodox Hindu sentiments. The vehicle of this opposition was the vernacular press, with the added support of the Amrita Bazar Patrika. The editor of the Patrika, Motilal Ghosh, never let slip away any chance ofcriticizing, at a personal level, his hated contemporary Surendranath Banerjea. Motilal Ghosh was an orthodox Vaishnavite by conviction and a devoutfollower of the famous Vaishnavasaint Sri Chaitanya, but the feelings which he entertained towards the more liberal-minded Indian Association leaders who pushed out his brother Sisir Kumar Ghosh and himself from the leadership of the national movement in Bengal were far from pacific. An angry provincial correspondent wrote to the editor of the Bengalee about him in April 1900: ‘Does he notrealise that by vilifying our public men in season and out of season he is being gradually lowered in the estimation of a large section of his fellow countrymen?... He boasts of being a devout follower of the prophet of Nadia. Does his Divine Master enjoin upon him to indulge in abuse andvilification of the basest kind ?’9” Stung by the criticism of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the editor of the Bengalee, Surendranath Banerjea, commented in an article entitled ‘The Amrita Bazar Patrika and Its Tactics’: ‘Our contemporary is a past master in trickery... We are sorry to write in this strain; but the hypocrisy of the Patrika is beyond description. It professes friendship and love—it examinesits heart and finds nothing but love in it—but in the same breath it makes malicious insinuations against the object of his aboundingaffection.’% 88 See for instance R. C. Dutt’s plan of Congress reorganization in Gokhale Papers, file no. 168, from R. C. Dutt to Gokhale, 12 November 1903.

8? Bengalee, 24 April 1900.

*® Bengalee, 1 August 1896.

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In 1896, before the Calcutta session of the Indian National

Congress of that year, a particularly nasty quarrel broke out between Surendranath Banerjea and the Amrita Bazar Patrika over a case of defamation brought by Heramba Chandra Maitra against the editor of the Hitabadi.®® Surendranath took up the cause of his protégé, the editor of the Hitabadi, but this led to a by-play with the Amrita Bazar Patrika, which accused him of fomenting party differences.1° Dissensions in Calcutta becameso rife over this case that the arrangements for the forthcoming Congress fell far behind schedule. The Reception Committee in Calcutta became a house divided against itself. W. C. Bonnerjee, in an interview with the Madras Standard, remarked that the state of collection of funds for the forthcoming Congress was‘as bad as ever’, and expressed his determination not to attend the Reception Committee meetings where things had become extremely hot.1°! But if personalities clashed in politics, they also madetactical alliances. At the last minute Surendranath and Motilal formed an unexpected combination to induce the Bombayleaders to create a Congress board equally representing the zamindars and the educated men. This joint venture, which would have increased Bengali weight in the Congress by bringing the Bengal zamindars into it, bore no fruit.1©?

The vernacular press, both in Calcutta and in the provincial towns, was also disposed to be severely critical of the Congress and its leaders. Bengali papers were conducted by needy editors, who used strong language against both the Congress and the government because they found it paid. The reading public of these papers was predominantly the not too well educated lower middle class. The vernacular press, catering to their Hindu reactionary sentiments, was largely orthodox. This press also reached the rural gentlefolk, who were less exposed to the liberalizing influences of metropolitan city life and were in addition jealous of the England-returned Babus. The vernacular press was, therefore, violently opposed to the spending of moneyin England by the Congress forpolitical agitation andto its 89 Hamilton Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 509.3, Elgin to Hamilton, 7 October 1896; A. C. Banerjee Papers, newspaper cuttings, letter of Ban-de-paday in Indian Mirror, 27 September 1896. 100 Bengalee, 22 and 29 August 1896.

101 Bengalee, 19 September 1896. 102 Pherozeshah Mehta Papers, item 4, M. G. Ranade Correspondence, enclosure to a letter from Ranade to Wacha, 11 November 1896, being a letter from Motilal Ghosh to Ranade; S. N. Banerjea to Mehta, 1 November 1896.

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meddling in matters of social reform.1°? When Surendranath Banerjea appealed to the public in 1890 for Rupees three lakhs to carry political agitation to England, the Dacca Prakash commentednastily that since he was a patriot and hadinherited a large property from his father he should pay out of his own pocket, and not hesitate to stake his whole fortune on an attempt which would reward him liberally in case of success.1°* Along with vernacular papers, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, which shared their orthodox social sentiments,

regarded with suspician and disapproval the Social Conference of the Indian National Congress, and backed the orthodox Maharashtra opposition to it led by B. G. Tilak. This resulted in the complete disaffiliation of the Social Conference from the National Congress.1°* The vernacular paper with the largest circulation was the Bangavasi, which was extremely reactionary in tone. Pandit Sasadhar

Tarkachuramani, the leader of the orthodox Hindu reaction mas-

querading as ‘Scientific Hinduism’, was a regular contributorto this paper. Like the Amrita Bazar Patrika, and with its active support and approval, it indulged in violent personal abuse of Surendranath Banerjea.?° Surendranath was the leader of the Babusof the time; in the Babu community, and especially in the schoolboy community, a big man. A handful of Babus and a lot of schoolboys made a fuss over him. The noise did not reach the corners of Bengal, did not, in fact, travel far beyond Calcutta.1°’? He was a lover of agitation, he would removeall grievances by agitation. ‘Political beggary’ was his forte. When a boy, he had read with English boys in a school kept by an Englishman. His youth was spent in the society of Englishmen, in Englanditself. As an ICSofficer, he spent his time in English company,living in English style. ‘“Surendranath was then a Saheb to the backbone. His service gone, Surendra Nath turned a “‘patriot”. And forthwith there was a change in his dress and manners, and in his outward conduct and behaviour, but at heart he remained the out

and out Saheb that he had become.’2% Muchof the opposition to the Congress was due to personal envy of the two foremost leaders in Bengal. Bonnerjee and Banerjea were 103 See entries on two mofussil vernacular papers, Dacca Prakash of 12 June

and Burdwan Sanjivani of 18 January, RNP, 1890. 104 RNP 1890: Dacca Prakash, 27 July. 105 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 8 January 1896. 106 Ibid., 1 July 1886. 107 RNP 1890: Bangavasi, 2 August. 108 RNP 1892: Bangavasi, 12 March.

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muchsatirized in the press by ambitious young politicians, such as A. C. Banerjee and Aurobindo Ghose,future leaders of the extremist party. In a letter written to the Indian Mirror under the pseudonym “Zephon’, A. C. Banerjee, a struggling young barrister, divulged to the public the High Court scandal that W. C. Bonnerjee had joined the Congress because he knew that he would not get the Standing Counselship again. Bonnerjee was hated by the members of the Calcutta Bar, not only because he did not help Indians but because he went out of his way to harm Indians and hated everything Indian. “Mr. Bonnerjee,’ wrote ‘Zephon’, ‘we love your money in as much as it supports the Congress and its British Committee, but alas, for your worthyself, Mr. Bonnerjee, we have not much love to spare.’!° Discontented politicians, excluded from the inner counsels of the Congress, fanned the reactionary lower middle class sentiments represented by the Bangavasi. It played a major role in the Age of Consent agitation of 1891 (an agitation against a government bill fixing the age of consent for marriage), which demonstrated the ability of the forces opposed to liberal nationalism to stage a political agitation of some intensity. In Calcutta the Congress movement and the Indian Association were temporarily swept aside from the centre of the political scene. A different kind of struggle between the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj on the one hand and orthodox Hindus on the other engaged public attention for the moment. The political ally of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, the Indian Association, passed a resolution to the effect that the age of consent should be raised to thirteen. Two liberal barristers—Rash Behari Ghosh and Manomohan Ghose—lent open support to the bill. So did the Sanjivani, the progressive and radical paper of the Brahmos, on medical grounds.° The Bengalee uttered the warning that disastrous effects to national interests would ensue if the impression were to go forth that while Indians clamoured for political privileges, they were not prepared to make the smallest advance along the line of social progress. But seeing the way the wind was blowing in Calcutta, the senior leaders, W. C. Bonnerjee and Surendranath Banerjea, decided that the best strategy was to lie low for the moment. This became clear from the proceedings ofa public meeting held in the Sobhabazar residence of the Debs, where Kalinath Mitter, a rival of Surendranath 109 AC. Banerjee Papers, newspapercuttings, Indian Mirror, 19 July 1895. 110 RNP 1891: Dainik O Samachar Chandrika, 9 and 11 February; Sanjivani, 10 January.

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Banerjea for leadership of the elected majority in the Corporation, said in moving the resolution against the bill: Some of their [the Hindus’] so-called reformers, who had been

consulted and who said that such a law was required, was [sic]

answerable for the measure [shame, shame]. Had any of their orthodox friends come forward and asked for the Act? [None, none]. He wassure of that, and in order that Government should do what they wished, they should have consulted the conservative Hindus, and accepted their opinion [loud applause], in place of the opinions of a few Babus who had been to England, and returned to their mother-country with new-fangled ideas [Babu Moti Lal Ghosh of the Amrita Bazar Patrika: I am glad to say that Mr W. C. Bonnerjee opposes the measure. Mahara] Kumar Neel Krishna Bahadur: And so does Babu Surendranath Bannerji]. The speaker was glad to hear that. He was certain that neither of those gentlemen could be guilty of wronging the religious sentiments of their countrymen [/oud applause].™ The landed magnates of Bengal, in Calcutta as well as in provincial towns, came out for the agitation against the Age of Consent Bill in a big way. So did the traditional medical and priestly elements, and the conservative elements in Hindu society belonging to the intermediate strata. All the leading Bengali vernacular papers were, with the exception of the Sanjivani, actively involved in the agitation, along with the Hindoo Patriot, the English language paper of the zamindars, and the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the orthodox paper of the English-educated Bengalis. The excitement of the agitation was financially so beneficial to the Amrita Bazar Patrika that Motilal Ghoshseized this opportunity to turn the paper into a daily, thus scoring off against his rival nationalist paper Bengalee which remained a weekly.Upset by his successes, the Congress leader, A. O. Hume, wrote to Lansdownethat the Amrita Bazar group were stirring people up and taking them out of the hands of the Congress and instigating them against the Congress as the ally of the government in the alleged interference with religion.14*5 The movement was, 11 Full Proceedings of a Public Meeting held on the 22nd January 1891, at the residence of the late Maharajah Kamal Krishna Deb Bahadur, Sobhabazar Raj Bati, Calcutta, to protest against the Age of Consent Bill (published by the Sobhabazar Standing Committee, Calcutta, 1891); Indian Nation, 19 January 1891.

12 Speeches and Writings of Babu Motilal Ghosh (Calcutta, 1935), pp. 138-47. 13 Lansdowne Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 558.21, no. 230, Hume to Lansdowne,

5 March 1891.

,

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indeed, organized on a scale that had not previously been attained by any of the agitations ofthe liberal Indian Association and Congress leaders. For the first time in Calcutta a monster meeting was held in the Maidan. The Bengalee admitted it to be an enormous meeting, the largest that had ever been held to protest against any measure of the government.!4 ; It was because the orthodox forces were able to harness nationalist sentiments behind the agitation that the protest against the Age of Consent Bill acquired such an impressive character. Even so, the masses were not drawn into the movement. Theagitation failed to force the government to abandon the Bill. From this failure, the Bangavasi drew the interesting moral that agitations were fruitless and that Hindus should not use British articles and should start mills and manufacture the goods that were now imported.! The liberal achievement

The political climate for putting the Bangavasi’s radical strategy into operation did not exist at the time. During the nineties, politics in Bengal continued to move through the well-marked grooves of speeches, resolutions and petitions. In spite of the racial hatred unleashed by the Ibert Bill controversy andstray killings of defenceless Indians by white men, the educated Bengalis as a community still possessed a strong faith in the justice and necessity of British rule in India. This conviction persisted until the end of the nineteenth century because political agitations aiming at exploiting the good sense of British statesmanship werenot, as the critics of the Congress sometimes claimed, entirely fruitless. In their successful participation in British institutions liberals had a definite edge over the miscellaneous bunch ofrevivalist politicians. The liberal politicians scored a decisive victory with the Indian Councils Act of 1892. This Act, for the first time, provided for election of representatives to the Legislative Councils by municipalities, district boards and other bodies, though the government wascareful to maintain official majorities inside the Councils and to give them only advisory powers. It conceded in substance what the Congress leaders had been agitating for since 1885. The frustration of their orthodox opponents found vent in the opposition of the Bangavasi to elected Legislative Councils. Whereas these discontented politicians had to rely on ephemeral agitations which soon petered out, 114 Bengalee, 28 February 1891.

115 RNP 1891: Bangavasi, 27 March.

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Banerjea and his followers built up permanent bases of power by utilizing the municipal andlegislative bodies created by the Raj. The Indian Councils Act of 1892 put the Indian Association and the Congress leaders firmly back in the position of influence from which they had been temporarily swept away by the forces of Hindu reaction and the Amrita Bazar faction during the Age of Consent controversy. The success of the liberal Congress leaders in excluding the Amrita Bazar faction and allied orthodox groups from representative positions in the Legislative Council was due to two reasons. In the first place the latter lacked the liberal conviction that the most effective way of building a new India would be to modernize the country on western lines by co-operating with the British through representative institutions of the parliamentary type. However, their appeal to indigenous sources oftradition against imported liberal institutions was partly a rationalization of their failure to manipulate the constitutional structure of the Raj. This failure was due to electoral regulations, making representation in the Bengal Legislative Council contingent on control of municipalities and district boards, where the dominant factions had informal links with Banerjea’s party in Calcutta. Here lay the second reason for the success of the liberal Congress leaders against their orthodox opponents. Links with leading factions in provincial towns—such as Baikuntha Nath Sen’s faction in Murshidabad, Ambika Charan Majumdar’s Faridpur party and K. B. Dutt’s Midnapur group—were successfully tapped by Surendranath Banerjea and his lieutenants in Calcutta for the Congress victory in elections to the Bengal Legislative Council against big landlords and Muslim notables on the one hand, and orthodox opponents of their own class on the other. Ripon’s local self-government reforms of 1883 had led, as Rivers Thompsonhad feared at the time, to substantial enjoyment of power at a locallevel by ‘a particular class—men who havevisited England, the pleaders at the Bar, and people generally who, though educated, have not much personalinterest in the country’.1!® The big zamindars as a body, Thompson suspected rightly, disliked Ripon’s reforms. The landed magnates of Bengal seldom stood for elections to local bodies, and the large number of landholders present in these bodies were mostly, as the Secretary of the British Indian Association “6 Ripon Papers, Correspondence with Persons in India, 1883, vol. 1, no. 10, Thompson to Ripon, 6 January 1883.

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pointed out to the Government of Bengal, owners of a few bighas of land.4” The numerically best represented people in the district and local boards were small landlords, estate agents and pleaders. Municipalities, on the other hand, were usually controlled by the substantial traders, in association with the principal pleaders of the district and subdivisional towns. These people backed Banerjea and his followersin the elections from local bodies to Legislative Councils because the liberal group in Calcutta enjoyed the prestige of being part of the all-India Congress leadership and was the only group which had regular and extensive contacts with the local bars, district associations and municipalities. The liberal dominance in the Bengal Legislative Council faced as yet no effective communal challenge, for communalpoliticians came at this stage almost exclusively from the tiny Urdu-speaking elite of Calcutta, who had no hope of winning representation in the Council on the popular vote. They stood apart from the general body of Bengali Muslims who were politically unorganized. The introduction of electoral politics through the Legislative Councils Act brought into sharper focus the differences between the Bengali Muslims and the Urdu-speaking ashraf of Calcutta. The MuhammadanLiterary Society and the Central National Mahomedan Association, which represented the Urdu-speaking notables of Calcutta, were opposed to the Indian Councils Bill from the first.4® The attitude of the Bengali Muslims, who hadlittle voice in these two associations, was

ambivalent. The Sudhakar considered it idle to expect that any Muslim would be amongthe elected membersof the Bengal Legislative Council, since the time had not yet come when a Muslim could compete with a Hindu in an electoral contest. The only chance of Muslims getting representation in the Council was that the Lieutenant-Governor had reserved the right of appointing three non-officials, one of whom might be a Muslim. But if the LieutenantGovernor chose a blind supporter of the government as the representative of the Muslim community, the Bengali Muslims would rather have an independent Hindu than such a Muslim as their representative. This was the opinion voiced by the Sudhakar which advocated self-reliance for the Bengali Muslims instead of dependence on the government.!!9 Its populist, communalist, anti117 BIA, Secy. BIA to Chief Secy., 30 April 1898.

118 GI, HomePublic, April 1890, nos. 150-3. 119 RNP 1893: Sudhakar, 7 April.

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European views were fairly common among the Bengali Muslims. Though angered by the cow protection movement andthe antiMuslim themes in Bengali literature, they were by no means impervious to the appeal of popular anti-British sentiments. No separate Muslim electorate was set up in 1893. The elected members, who constituted a minority in the Bengal Legislative Council, were to be elected from the Calcutta Corporation, the

Calcutta University and the provincial municipalities and district boards. This implied a definite shift of the centre of power away from the landed magnates to the educated professional groups. Educated Bengali liberals were an influential body in the Calcutta Corporation and the Calcutta University. Neither of these institutions was, however, an absolutely secure base for the election of

liberal-minded educated Bengali politicians, for the Calcutta University had a strong leaven of European and official influence and the Calcutta Corporation represented the diversified interests of a multi-racial society. The district boards, presided over by district magistrates, were quasi-official in character and could be expected to return at least a few big zamindars who hadstrong influence in the interior. Only the provincial municipalities faithfully represented the interests of the Bengali trading and professional groups. The electoral provisions, however, entitled only municipalities paying a tax of Rs 50,000 to elect members. This category included all municipalities which werestill under official chairmen and excluded the smaller municipalities presided over by non-official chairmen. This was a matter of dissatisfaction to the educated Bengali politiclans. They were given a broaderbasis of power in 1893, but by no means a secure one. Furthermore, among the members nominated by the government, the planters and the zamindars had a representative each and the Bengal Chamber of Commercehad tworepresentatives, one for commerce and one for manufacture. On the other hand, the

petition of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce for representation amongst the nominated members was contemptuously set aside by the government, which refused to recognize it as a genuine merchants’ and manufacturers’ body.1”° Nonetheless, the rules framed by the Bengal Governmentin 1893

for giving effect to the Indian Councils Act of 1892 augured well for the developmentof a healthy, constitutional and liberal nationalism in Bengal. Certainly there was no attempt to divide and weaken liberal nationalism by giving separate electorates to Muslims and 220 RNP 1893: Bangavasi, 17 June.

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weighted representation to European business interests. Had this cautiously liberal policy been continued in the subsequent reforms of 1909, 1912 and 1919 and had no attempt been made to foster a com-

bination between European capital and Muslim separatism against the liberals inside the Bengal Legislative Council, political developments might not have been distorted later on. Fortunately in 1893, whenthe rules were being framed for the Bengal Legislative Council, the Lieutenant-Governor was away for a time and Sir A. McDonnell, a rare Bengal lover among thecivilians, was acting as the head of the provincial government. His Chief Secretary was Sir Henry Cotton, an outright Congress sympathizer. These twoliberalcivilians did not entertain the requests of the non-official Europeans for greater representation. This group demanded for themselves a separate constituency rather than inclusion within the category of non-official nominees. They were alarmed by the larger Indian element and the greater freedom to discuss the budget. However, since the official majority was maintained within the Council, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association did not really feel the need to press hometheir point on this occasion.1#! Thefirst elections under the Legislative Councils Act of 1893 in Bengal were a triumph for Congressmen. Out of six men elected to the Bengal Council, five were ‘Congresswallahs’.1** Of these five again, the Bangavasi noted with disapproval, four were Englandreturned Babus.!23 On the publication of the results, the Bengalee of 20 May 1893 announced with joy: ‘The “Microscopic minority’’ are no longer to be despised; they are a living powerin the land; in the facetious language of a friend, they have all on a sudden been converted into “a telescopic majority”.’ Besides the Englandreturned politicians and barristers—W. C. Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjea, Lalmohan Ghose, and A. Chaudhuri—one big magnate, the Maharaja of Darbhanga, who was a contributor to Congress funds, became an MLC. A Muslim lawyer practising in Calcutta, Maulvi Serajul Islam, was also elected from Chittagong, largely on the Hindu vote. In the Calcutta Corporation, from which Surendranath Banerjea

121 BADA, Proceedings of the meetings of the Council commencing 26 January 1906 to December 1913; 198th meeting, 23 September 1907 and 209th meeting,

25 January 1909.

122 Diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, 18 May 1893.

123 RNP 1893: Bangavasi, 20 May.

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was elected to the Council in 1893, the European commissionersat first tried in conjunction with Muslim commissioners to elect a Muslim candidate, but the proposal fell through." Since no Muslims could be returned from the Corporation, the Sudhakar recommended that Muslims should vote for Surendranath Banerjea because ofhis independence of thought and action. The election of Serajul Islam with Hindu support gave muchsatisfaction to the Bengali Muslims. The differences of Urdu-speaking and Bengali-speaking Muslims in Calcutta were outlined by the fact that while the organ of the Urduspeaking community in Calcutta, the Darrussaltanat and Urdu Guide, advocated reappointment of Nawab Syed Amir Husain to the Viceregal Council in 1895, the Mihir, a Bengali Muslim paper associated with the Sudhakar, opposed the appointmentof this immigrant nobleman from Bihar on the ground that he was ignorant of the Bengali language, manners, customs and the social and political conditions of the Bengali Muslims.The amalgamated Mihir O Sudhakar was quite as consistent in advocating the appointment of Bengali Muslims to the Bengal Legislative Council.1"6 As it became more and moreclear in the successive elections of 1893, 1895 and 1897 that power in the Bengal Legislative Council waspassing to the Congress-minded lawyersat the cost of the loyalist landlords, there was a crystallization of zamindari opposition to liberal influence in the Legislative Councils (see Table 3). From 1895 to 1897 there was not a single big Bengali zamindar in the Bengal Council. The Maharajas of Darbhanga and Gidhore, who secured entry into the Council, belonged to Bihar. In 1897 the Maharaja of Natore was returned to the Council from Rajshahi, but since he was not a memberof the dominant Calcutta landed aristocracy this did not satisfy the British Indian Association. No prominent man ofthis association got into the Council between 1893 and 1898. In 1898 the British Indian Association therefore submitted a petition to the Lieutenant-Governor in which it complained that the elective principle had led to the exclusive election of pleaders and barristers and that the zamindars—the natural leaders of the people—had been thrown into the shade. The Bangavasi joined in this chorus of condemnation of the ‘Vakil Raj’. The dominance of the lawyers in politics, which had so long been an object of displeasure to the 124 RNP 1895: Darrussaltanat and Urdu Guide, 17 January. 225 RNP 1895: Mihir, 9 January; Darrussaltanat and Urdu Guide, 17 January. 226 RNP 1899: Mihir O Sudhakar, 4 August.

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TABLE 3 ELECTED MEMBERS, BENGAL LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 1893-99

Occupation

Political affiliation

Constituency

1893-95 Surendranath Banerjea

Educationist

Congressman

W.C. Bonnerjee

Barrister

Congressman

Calcutta Corporation Calcutta Corporation

Lalmohan Ghose

Barrister

Congressman

Serajul Islam

Pleader

Independent

A. Chaudhuri

Barrister

Congressman

1895-97

Surendranath Banerjea

—

—

Ananda Mohan Bose

Educationist

Congressman

Rai Ishan Chandra Mitter Bahadur Madhu Sudan Das

Lawyer

Loyalist

Pleader

Congressman

Guru Prasad Sen

Pleader

Congressman

1897-99 Surendranath Banerjea

—

—

Narendranath Sen

Journalist

Congressman

Kalicharan Banerjee

Educationist

Congressman

Saligram Singh

Pleader

Congressman

Jatramohan Sen

Pleader

Congressman

Presidency

Municipalities Chittagong

Boards Nottraceable

Calcutta

Corporation Calcutta University

Burdwan Municipalities Orissa Municipalities Dacca Boards Presidency Boards Calcutta

Corporation

Calcutta

University

Patna Municipalities Chittagong

Municipalities

Source and notes: BIA; Secy. BIA to Chief Secy., 30 April 1898, appendix A, p. 321 of vol. vim. The preponderance of Congressmen belonging to the liberal professions was due to two reasons. In Calcutta the educated Bengali community, overwhelmingly nationalist in its sympathies, predominated in both the Corporation and the University. Secondly, the Congress through the Indian Association had extensive connections with the district bars which in turn had widespread connections in localsocieties. 10

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officials, had now incurred the displeasure of the zamindars as well.??” Society had indeed evolved a long way from those early days of British rule when Bhavani Charan Banerjee had depicted his society of abhijatas controlling dals and of grihasthas clustering round the leaders of dals. Native Calcutta had long slipped away from the control of the magnates to that of the English-educated liberal intellectuals. The Legislative Council elections registered this change in the balanceofsocial forces. These changes in the politics of Calcutta did not as yet radically affect the alignments in the localities, which continued to be shaped largely by local circumstances in isolation from metropolitan influences. The passing of the Indian Councils Act of 1892 made the liberal politicians turn towards dominant factions in municipalities and district boards in order to win seats in the Bengal Legislative Council. The representative institutions of the Raj thus promoted the developmentof constitutional links between Calcutta leaders and local politicians, but these were arrangements of convenience limited to particular ends and quite unlike the contacts which the Indian Association had made with the peasants in connection with the Bengal TenancyBill. Neither the liberal nor the orthodox politicians had yet experimented with building political machines with organized bases in the interior which might be utilized for launching sustained mass campaigns in the countryside. Yet the constitutional character of the early Congress must not obscure the basic fact that it was an opposition movement. Thereis a view that regards this opposition as the offspring of collaboration.18 On this view, India wasa plural society in which antagonistic elements were competing to collaborate with the Raj. As the Raj could not accommodate everyone, by favouring someit alienated others. But to regard the early Congressmen as a set of frustrated

collaborators is to underestimate considerably the driving force of the Congress opposition to British imperialism. It is true that Congressmen worked through the British constitutional framework defined by the Indian Councils Act of 1892. It is also true that Congress politicians sought power and influence, as indeedall politicians do. But the historian who does not take into consideration the broad calculations of early Congressmen will be unable to capture the inner meaning of these actions. In working through the 17 Bengalee, 11 June and 2 July 1898; RNP 1899: Bangavasi, 4 June. 128 See Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism.

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framework of British rule, Congressmen were inevitably altering the equations of power within it. And in their relentless pursuit of power through constitutional means they were not merely promoting their sectional or personal interests, but were also steadily eroding the steel frame of the empire. The early Congressmen were committed to ending economic exploitation, racial degradation and political subjection. Given the narrow choice of meansin the late nineteenth century, they saw that the most practical and effective way to attain these objectives was to capture positions of power by exploiting the constitutional rules by which the imperial system operated. To have refused to take advantage of the positions which gave leverage within the system would have been to condemn themselves to impotence in the quiescent conditions of the 1890s. Participation within the system was, in the view of liberal politicians like Surendranath Banerjea, the slow but sure approach to altering it in favour of the nation.

CHAPTER3 THE WINTER OF THEIR

DISCONTENT (1899-1918) I. Emergence of Provincial Politics. Increasing racial antagonism— imperial offensive—Indian counter-offensive—the Swadeshi movement —Congress in disarray—the revolutionaryterror. II. Emergence of communal politics. Divide and control—Muslim separatism in Eastern Bengal and Assam—the constitutional reforms (1909 and 1912)—revolutionof rising expectations (1914-18)—extremist ascendancy in Congress—Muslim politics—from collaboration to confrontation.

I. EMERGENCE OF PROVINCIAL POLITICS

The last decade of the nineteenth century had held out for educated Bengalis the promise of further constitutional progress. An expanding prospect was suggested by their hold over the interlinked institutional complex of the local boards and municipalities, the Calcutta Corporation and University, and the Bengal Legislative Council. The liberal leadership of Surendranath Banerjea and his colleagues in the Indian Association, as yet unchallenged by any serious alternative force in Bengal politics, apparently expressed a united Bengali patriotism. At the end of the nineteenth century the orderly progress of constitutional liberalism under a recognized and seasoned leadership was rudely interrupted in Bengal by a joint counter-offensive of foreign capital and colonial administration. A sharp confrontation between imperial interests and nationalist aspirations released new forces in Bengal politics. New organizational linkages across Bengal outside the old moderate network came to support extremist, terrorist and communal movements. Orderly political progress was distorted by the machinations of colonial eco-

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nomic interests, and a narrow radicalism was born ofalienation and despair. Oneof the principal factors that vitiated the political processes in the province was the baneful influence exercised by the non-official European community of Calcutta. The well-ordered development of liberal Bengali nationalism in the late nineteenth century had been possible because the European merchant community had notfelt the necessity of playing an obstructive part in the new arenasofpolitics opened upbythe local self-governmentresolution of Ripon and the Indian Councils Act of 1892. Right until the end of the nineteenth century, and indeed until the Montagu—Chelmsford reforms of 1919,

all real power was concentrated in the hands of the JCS-filled executive, and non-official Europeans could feel secure in the knowledge that ‘we had in India a British administration to which representation by responsible men of our community could be made with some effect’.1 The direct channels of communication which the European commercial organizations enjoyed with the government departments? made it unnecessary to organize an active European lobbyin the Legislative Council. Moreover, the non-official Europeans did not have to rely solely on the executive, for they had in the predominantly European Bench of the High Court of Calcutta a powerful instrument for the defence of their vested interests. Indeed, the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association was extremely jealous of any executive interference with the jurisdiction of the High Court, for the European community ‘had always looked upon the High Courtas theirlast line of defence against unfair treatment from the Executive Government’.® The Association agitated for the extension of the jurisdiction of the High Court to such outlying areas as Cachar, Lushai Hills and the Santhal Parganas, where important tea, mining and other European interests, which could be entirely safe only in the hands of the High Court, were growing.* Under the existing structure of power, with their easy access to the powerful executive and their tactical ability to set off the High Court against the bureaucracy, the non-official Europeans were not unduly alarmed 1BA, Calcutta Branch. Minutes 28 April 1918-16 December 1924. Annual general meeting, 7 February 1922.

2 Thid. 3 BADA, Proceedings of the Meetings of the Council commencing 5 January 1894 to 8 December 1905. Special meeting, 18 August 1903. 4Tbid., 144th meeting of the Council, 28 July 1899.

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by the small gains made by liberal nationalists through increased representation in the Bengal Legislative Council. With a view to making the executive more amenable to their will, the non-official Europeans occasionally went so far as to call for co-operation with the Indian public in order to put ‘the Government in this country into its proper position as a responsible Government’.® Any prospect of fruitful co-operation between European and Indian members of the public was, however, ruled out by a fresh explosion of racial antagonisms at the turn of the century. In the course of the eighteen-nineties an increasing determination among the Bengalis to resist white oppression had come into evidence. In 1900 the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association expressed its anxiety over the increased racial violence in Bengal.* What brought the simmering racial tensions to the boiling point was the order issued by the government of Lord Curzonforretrials in those cases where jury verdicts had resulted in evident miscarriage of justice as between Europeans and Indians. Lord Curzon’s order aroused violent protests from planting and commercial interests which had hitherto relied heavily on the freedom of the planters to do as theyliked. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce, the Calcutta Trades Association, the Indian Jute Mills Association, the Calcutta Baled Jute Association, the Calcutta Tea Traders’ Association, the Calcutta

Import Trade Association and the Calcutta Fire Insurance Agents’ Association combined to make an issue of the Bain case where a retrial had been ordered after the accused had been acquitted by the jury. The case divided all natives from all Europeans, for the few Indian members of these predominantly European commercial organizations dissociated themselves from the move to protest against the retrial of Bain.” For European commercial interests the issue was vital, because the planter, ‘one European among hundreds of natives’,® could maintain his brutal ascendancy over the coolies only by freely and fearlessly exceeding the licence allowed by the law. In

a closed joint meeting of the above-mentioned commercial organiza-

5 Tbid., 107th meeting, 30 March 1894. 6 Thid., 151st meeting, 27 July 1900. 7 Bengal Chamber of Commerce Committee Proceedings (manuscript), 3

November 1903.

8 BCC Committee Proceedings, 22 September 1903.

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tions regarding the Bain case, N. Elsworthy of the Calcutta Trades Association explained the matter very frankly: Gentlemen, our position in India is peculiar. We are a handful of Europeans among millions of natives. I am one of the oldest residents of this city and I have spent thirty years of my life amongst them, and I have been in all parts of India and seen the best of them and someof the worst. I have in my business capacity and in my private life received much kindness and I have made manyfriendships which I value in an extreme degree. Nevertheless after all this experience I am bound to acknowledge that the people of this country do not love us, they never did, they never will. It is therefore unfortunate that anything should happen that would widen the breach. Weare, as I have already said, a handful of Europeans among millions; it is our business as Britons to stand by Britons. The Britisher needs protection and not persecution.® European feeling ran high in the Bain case and the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association held out the threat that ‘things had come to such a pass that the Government needed such an object lesson as they had received during the Ilbert Bill agitation’.1° Lord Curzon’s order for retrials was widely believed by Europeansto be the cause of the growing tendency of self-assertion among the natives. ‘It is said that when a Europeanraises his stick to chastise an insolent Native the latter frequently threatens to “‘tell the Lord Sahib!” When Sir Michael Hicks-Beach wasin India the thing which struck him most was the growing “‘cheek”’ of the Native, andif this is apparent to the casual globe-trotter it is pretty certain that the change ofattitude is a considerable one.’!! Accordingly, proposals were aired in Calcutta for ‘a law of masterandservant’, for bringing insolent servants to heel.12 Another cause of concern was‘the evil of Native marriages with English girls’,1® though neither onthis issue nor on the issue of master and man waslegislation found to be practicable. Small incidents indicated the intense pitch of racialill-

* Ibid.

10 EADA, Proceedings of the Meetings of the Council commencing 5 January

1894 to 8 December 1905. Special meeting, 18 August 1903. 11 Ampthil Collection, Ampthil to Arthur Godley, 27 July 1904, quoted in M. N. Das, p. 25. 22 RADA, 170th meeting, 31 July 1903.

18 Tbid., 139th meeting, 27 January 1899.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

feeling in Calcutta in the opening years of the twentieth century: the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association protested stridently in 1904 when Mr Sims of Monghyr was summonedbefore a Bengali deputy magistrate and bound downbythelatter to keep the peace." Next year there was a fresh outburst of anger when Mr Blyth, Inspector of Hackney Carriages, was convicted by a native magistrate for taking bribes. The Association did not take up this matter because manifestly the trial was not unjust.?° Much of this might appear to be irrational, but the core of the issue was solidly economic. It was the planters who were the most violent in their espousal of racial hegemony, for being thinly dispersed in remotedistricts they felt that their lives and business could not be safe without the power to terrorize their coolies. They felt surrounded by hostility and not without reason. A planter in Darjeeling, Mr Goss, was murdered by his bearer in circumstances that alarmed the planters of the district.46 Mr Goss had a liaison with a native woman, and a fear had been worked up among the coolies by a labour leader that they might be outcasted for taking water from a secretly corrupted woman. Moreover, the Sahib and his bearer were rivals for the favours of the native woman andthis added the edge ofjealousy to the coolies’ desire to avenge the honour of their women. The murder of Mr Goss gaverise to an acute feeling of insecurity amongthetea planters of the district, and the Darjeeling Tea Planters’ Association raised a furore when two coolies were acquitted by the High Court for lack of evidence of their complicity in the murder. The intense racial animosity at the turn of the century auguredill for liberal nationalism and orderly constitutional progress. White arrogance and aggression were already producing among the younger generation of politically-conscious Bengalis a new type of political response that was to crystallize in the extremist movement. It was a crudely physical response at one plane, exhibited in their new enthusiasm for athletic and wrestling clubs and, at a more abstract, philosophical plane, it was an invocationof the primal energy of the universe (sakti), embodied in the Goddess of Power with ten arms, Bhavani. A pamphlet published in 1905 by Aurobindo Ghose, who 4 Vbid., 175th meeting, 29 April 1904. 16 Ybid., 183rd meeting, 28 April 1905. *® EADA, Proceedings of the Meetings of the Council commencing 26 January 1906 to December 1913. Special meeting, 12 September 1906.

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was at this time teaching in a college in Baroda in western India, proposed the idea of a temple of Bhavani with a celibate order of patriotic devotees vowed to action.?’ Meanwhile, a fiery young lady went about formingassociations of boys in Calcutta for developing their physique, taking part in the exercise herself.18 In 1904, inspired apparently by the victory of Japan in the Russo-Japanese war, Miss Sarala Devi Ghoshal, a cousin of Rabindranath Tagore, opened a new academyin Bally-

gunge (a southern suburb of Calcutta) for fencing and ju-jitsu, where she employed a Turkish fencing master. Exhorting her brother-in-law, the young barrister A. C. Banerjee, to spread the new cult of physical prowess among Bengali youth, she wrote: ‘Learn, learn, and teach boys you know howto usethestaff, the fist, the sword and the gun.’!® The news of Japan’s victory over a European powerlent weight to such exhortations and stirred great excitement among younger Bengali politicians who came to form the core of the extremist party two years later. Bipin Chandra Pal, who was editing the paper New India at this time, A. C. Banerjee, and P. Mitter, a barrister of the

High Court who founded the Anushilan Samiti of Calcutta, met frequently at this time in Mitter’s house to arrange rallies in favour of Japan. This drawing together of younger politicians indicated the future shape. of a new party in Bengal politics.?° Inspired by the knowledge gained from the Japanese victory that white superiority to the non-white races was not ordained by nature, a younger generation was vaguely but unmistakably groping towards the plan of expelling white rulers by physical force. Intellectually they were sustained by the new Hinduism that emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century: the Vedanta as reinterpreted by Swami Vivekananda, the Bhagavad Gita as popularized by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and the Sakti cult as transformed into a political doctrine.”4 17 TB 1915, ‘The Ramakrishna Mission’; Aurobindo Ghose, ‘Bhawani Mandir’, in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library: vol.1, Bande Mataram, Early Political Writings (Pondicherry, 1972). 18 1B Library, ‘Note on the Growth of the Revolutionary Movementin Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam and United Bengal’. 19 A. C. Banerjee Papers, Sarala Devi to A. C. Banerjee (in Bengali), 26 October 1902. 20 Ibid., P. Mitter to A. C. Banerjee, 29 February 1904. 21JB Library, no. 55, ‘An Account of the Revolutionary Organization in Eastern Bengal with special reference to the Dacca Anushilan Samiti’.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Imperial offensive These intangible changes in social psychology—the growing racial animosity, the keener feeling of economic exploitation, the reborn belief in the worth of indigenous culture??—would no doubt have brought about a structural alteration of politics in course of time. What abruptly precipitated a revolutionary change in Bengal pollitics was an offensive mounted by the commercial and administrative arms of British imperialism on the position already acquired by the educated Bengalis in the constitutional structure of the Raj. Between 1899 and 1905 a sharp confrontation of opposing political forces loosened the close ties of loyalty which had bound the educated Bengalis to the British in the nineteenth century. The force of its impact wasto drive the established leadership of the Bengal Congress from constitutional agitation to passive resistance. Combined with the emergence of the extremist challenge, this radicalization of the liberals was to changethe entire content of Bengalpolitics. It brought into existence in Bengal a Swadeshi coalition consisting of diverse factions competing for power within the Congress, but united in their determination to force the British to give way to Bengali aspirations. The administration of Lord Curzon saw the implementation of three unpopular measures which were intended to reduce the influence of Bengali politicians in the liberal institutions created by the British. These measures were the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act of 1899 which destroyed the powerof the Bengalis in the Calcutta Corporation, the Indian Universities Act of 1904 which sought to reduce Bengali influence in the Calcutta University, and the partition of Bengal which, together with the two previous measures, undermined the Bengali position in the Bengal and Imperial Legislative Councils. The destruction of an important part of the institutional complex through which the established Congress leaders had exercised influence revealed the inadequacy of their existing political organization. A new andtruly provincial network ofpolitical institutions had to be created that would operate,as far as possible, outside the formal framework of the Raj. The result of this effort was the 2 For a full discussion of this last point, see Amales Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge: India between 1890-1910 (Calcutta, 1967), chapters 2 and 7; Barbara Southard, ‘Neo-Hinduism and Militant Politics in Bengal 1875-1910’ (Ph.D. thesis, Hawaii, 1971).

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Swadeshi movement and the terrorist campaign which threw up political institutions that were independent of the constitutional— administrative structure of British rule. | Special circumstances during the eighteen-nineties convinced the non-official Europeans of the necessity of recapturing the Calcutta Corporation where they had been reduced to a minority in 1876. During the nineties the stake of foreign capital in the city increased enormously, as Calcutta’s exports rapidly swelled in volume, widening the margin of exports over imports.” Particularly impressive was the growth of the export-oriented jute trade and industry which now required greatly increased storage, processing and shipping facilities. The prompt and adequate provision of these facilities was obstructed within the Calcutta Corporation by native commissioners who were not prepared to make special concessions to colonial interests at the cost of the public. Within this decade of over-all expansion of foreign trade, moreover, there was in 1897 a plague scare that threatened temporarily to arrest the city’s commercial expansion. European commercial interests, especially the trading interests in tea and jute, wanted brutal and dehumanizing plague control measures which no popular municipality would countenance."4 This brief crisis within a period of rapid expansion further sharpened the need felt by the big European managing agencies for effective control of municipal policy. The difficulties of the managing agency houses arose from an important change in the equations of power inside the Corporation during the nineties. The Chairman of the Calcutta Corporation, who was invariably an ICS officer favourably disposed towards the big houses, found himself rendered increasingly ineffective by the growing power of the committees. A tightly-knit group of Bengali Hindu commissioners directed by a body of five lawyers, two journalists, one ground landlord, one piece-goods dealer and an attorney’s clerk captured the committees and used them for blocking the Chairman’s action.° In one instance the Chairman wantedto give a licence for a jute godownto the powerful Finlay group, but the dominant party *8 Exports rose from an average of Rs 37 crores to Rs 48 crores during the

decade; the export surplus, i.e. the tribute of the colony, increased from Rs 118 lakhs to Rs 166 lakhs. Bagchi, Patterns of Regional Growth.

24 GI, Home Municipalities (B), April 1899, nos. 10-11, resolution of the

Bengal Chamber of Commerce with regard to the Calcutta Municipal Bill and also with reference to the sanitation of the town. 28 Indian Municipalities Proceedings, January 1898, nos. 28-35.

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of elected commissioners delayed the granting of the licence by three years. They were seeking to protect the inhabitants of the area where the Finlay group proposed to build a godown which was likely to foul the atmosphere with jute dust. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce was so provoked by this delay that it got the Government of Bengal to take the licensing power away from the commissioners and to vest it in the Chairman of the Corporation.*6 There was growing impatience with the state of things in the Corporation, where a ‘small caucus’ was said to be deciding all municipal questions ‘in a private conclave’.*? The Bengal Chamber of Commerceset about remedying this state of affairs and found a powerful ally in Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. He had close connections with the European business world of Calcutta through his brother, D. F. Mackenzie, who was a partner of the leading Calcutta firm of Messrs Burn & Co. and a representative of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce in the Bengal Legislative Council. Sir Alexander’s government, which had earned the gratitude of the non-official Europeansfor ‘persistently advocating the wants of the European community’,”® not surprisingly took the view that Europeans‘ought to have a predominant influence in the affairs of the town’ and expressed the resolve to alter a constitution under which municipal power had ‘passed into the hands of the educated middle class Hindu’.*® With the assurance of‘cordial and continued support’ conveyed by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce,®® the Government of Bengal under Sir Alexander Mackenzie brought forward a bill for reconstituting the Calcutta Corporation, and his brother D. F. Mackenzie stirred up an agitation amongthe tea planters and the jute merchants in its favour.*! The interests of Indian commerce were rudely ignored in the new scheme of representation in the Corporation. Commercial representation was given only to ‘the members of those two excellent bodies—the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the Cal°° CC, Proceedings of the adjourned special meeting of the Commissioners, 25 April 1893. *7 Indian Municipalities Proceedings, January 1898, nos. 28-35. *8 EADA, Annual Report 1897, proceedings of the annual general meeting, 16 March 1898.

*° Indian Municipalities Proceedings, January 1898, nos. 28-35, 8° GI, Home Municipalities (B), April 1899, nos. 10-11. 31 Bengalee, 2 September 1899.

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cutta Trades Association’. The scheme, when submitted by Sir Alexander Mackenzie to Lord Curzon, was even more drastically revised by the Viceroy in favour of colonial economic interests. ‘My scheme’, wrote Lord Curzon to Mackenzie’s successor Sir John

Woodburn,‘gives the European a general and adequate security that his views will prevail. If he is diligent and tactful he will win in seven cases out of ten,’®8 Here was a real issue involving the substance of power which revealed in a momentary flash of truth the real divisions in colonial society, for it served to bring out the basic cohesion of political Bengal against the white ruling power. There were numerous factional groupings among the elected commissioners of the Calcutta Corporation, but on this issue they were united. It is true that for a brief moment the old rivalry between Surendranath Banerjea and Motilal Ghosh exploded. The Amrita Bazar Patrika accused Banerjea of tactical blunders in the campaign against the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill, and the Bengalee in turn commented acidly: ‘If ever there was a time whenall personal dissensions should be hushed and personalstrifes buried out of sight, it is now. A journalist who contrives by his writings to fan into a flame the embers of personal bitterness and resentment does a distinct disservice to his country, no matter under what cloak he maytry to hide his guilty intentions.’*4 Clearly, however, the dispute concerned only the leadership of the campaign, and not its objects. Surendranath Banerjea was the preeminent leader of the agitation against the Mackenzie—Curzon scheme, and it was this that the Patrika found distasteful. That did not prevent a concerted campaign in the native press of Calcutta against the unpopularbill. The Chairman of the Calcutta Corporation privately brought to the notice of the Viceroy how the elected members of the Corporation had pooled their connections with the press to mount a combined offensive. The paperscriticizing the bill were either edited by elected commissioners or were closely connected with them. The Indian Mirror was edited by Narendranath Sen; the Hindoo Patriot had a frequent contributor in Radha Charan Pal; the Amrita Bazar Patrika was a rabid anti-government, though 82 BMP, Municipal Branch, May 1900. ‘A few observations on the Calcutta

Municipal Bil? by Manmatha Nath Datta. 33 Curzon Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 111.119, January 1899, appendix 1 ofletters from Viceroy. 34 Bengalee, 29 July 1898.

Curzon to

Woodburn, 12

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reactionary, paper; the Bengalee belonged to Surendranath Banerjea; the Indian Nation was edited by N. N. Ghose.*® The Calcutta Corporation wasthe political base of the top leaders of the Indian Association, including Surendranath Banerjea, who wasfirst elected to the Bengal Legislative Council from the Corporation. Most other committee membersof the Indian Association were also, like him, elected commissioners of the Corporation. It was

natural that the Indian Association should take the lead in forming a provincial committee for organizing a public agitation against the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Bill. What was more remarkable was the participation of other groupings, within and outside the Corporation, in the agitation. The Indian Association deputed its Secretary to organize concerted action between the big landholders and the middle classes.2° After some initial hesitation, the British

Indian Association joined the campaign. Upon thepassing ofthe bill a remarkable demonstration of Indian unity took place. Twentyeight elected commissioners, headed by leading Congressmen like Surendranath Banerjea, Bhupendranath Basu and J. Ghoshal, resigned in a body from the Corporation. They carried with them a wide range of public men outside the Congress forum, such as Kalinath Mitter, a keen rival of Surendranath Banerjea for leadership in the Corporation, Radha CharanPal, leader of a conservative propertied group inside the Corporation, Kumar Manmatha Nath Mitter, scion of an aristocratic family, Maulvi Shamsul Huda, a Muslim politician who had no Congress affiliation, Nalin Behari Sircar, a leading business man connected with European commercial organizations, and so on.*” There followed a boycott of the next municipal election; in four wards no candidate came forwardatall and in most wards nonentities were elected uncontested.*8 Under the revised constitution Europeans were able to secure a majority in the Corporation. At once they turned it to private advantage. European Commissioners, systematically violating wellestablished rules, used their position to secure lucrative contracts for their firms. A municipal contracts scandal, in which the President *5 Curzon Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 111.119, no. 77, W. R. Bright to Lawrence, Private Secretary to the Viceroy, 4 September 1899. JA, Manuscript proceedings of the committee of the Indian Association, 8 April and 15 July 1898. 3? BMP, Municipal Branch, December1899. 38 RNP 1900: Hitavadi, 23 March.

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of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce himself was closely involved, brought muchdiscredit to the reconstituted Corporation in 1903.%9 Notwithstanding this scandal, a close and unsavoury connection was formed between the officially appointed Chairman of the Corporation and the Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. This connection was close enough for C. G. H. Allen, the Chairman of the Corporation, to attend secretly a closed-door meeting of the Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, where he urged that no seats of the Chamberin the Corporation should lie vacant even temporarily. The minutes of the special meeting recorded: He had noticed, repeatedly, in the three years during which he had been on the Corporation, that the business element commanded the situation. Power had been wrested from the other side and was nowin their hands. In the General Committee they werein still stronger position; there they had matters all their own way. The Indian element was in a distinct minority ... Moreover, the work was interesting to businessmen; the Corporation had the expenditure of a great deal of money, and the organisation and control of very large schemes.*° Lord Curzon’s prediction that the Europeans would win in seven cases out of ten had been morethanfulfilled. A similar desire to hand over power to the European elementinspired Lord Curzon’s attempt to take over the other institution which had always provided a secure constituency for the Bengal Congress. This was the Bengalidominated Senate of the Calcutta University. Since the enactment of the legislative reforms of 1892, the Calcutta University had returned Congressmen in successive elections to the Bengal Legislative Council: W. C. Bonnerjee in 1893, Ananda Mohan Bose in 1895,

Kali Charan Banerjee in 1897.*1 For the Senate of the Calcutta University had fallen into the hands of nationalist politicians who had convertedit into a principal arena of public discussion.* Inevitably British officials had come to look upon the Calcutta University as a breeding groundofpolitical agitators. They wanted to put a halt to the practically unchecked expansion of higher education under the University. These views were shared by non-official Europeans, 89 Bengalee, 13 June 1903; RNP 1903: Sanjivani, 18 June. 40 Bengal Chamber of Commerce Proceedings, 19 April 1907.

41 BIA, vol. vm, appendix A to letter from Secy., BIA to Chief Secy., GB, 30 April 1898, p. 321 (list of elected members of the Legislative Council). 42 Calcutta University Commission Report 1917-19, vol.1 (Calcutta, 1919), p. 63.

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who seldom let slip an opportunity to decry the higher English education being given to the Bengalis. These official as well as nonofficial views within European society coincided with Lord Curzon’s imperial vision of a strong centralized governmentin absolute control of the complex processes of modernization in India and supremely independent of the English-educated Bengalis whose control over important areas of modern institutional activity had imposed unacceptable limitations on the powersof the Raj. To restrict higher education and to bring it underofficial control, Lord Curzon resolved to appoint an all-white Universities Commission. An Indian member, Justice Gurudas Banerjee, was ultimately

included in the Commission because of vigorous protests in the Indian press, particularly in the columns of the Bengalee. The Commission, after a brief deliberation of five months, produced a report with a dissenting minute from Gurudas Banerjee. Curzon suspected him of holding a brief for ‘the poorer and unworthierclass of Bengali students whom we want politely to suppress’.*? The report of the white members of the Commission provided the basis of a bill which Lord Curzon described with characteristic pomposity as ‘the elixir of a new resurrection’. The Bengali press thought otherwise.** Curzon’s scheme wasregarded as an attempt to underminethe very basis of the educated Bengali society. The Universities Commission proposedto fix a minimum rate of fees (which really meant making college education more expensive), to abolish second grade colleges (in which proprietors had invested their money), to centralize the teaching of law and to abolish law classes in the colleges (which were a lucrative business for owners of private colleges). There was a large numberof private colleges in Calcutta, and the owners of these colleges were influential citizens. Surendranath Banerjea was the owner of Ripon College, which was doing a profitable business in law classes.*#? Ananda MohanBose, another prominent Congressman and leader of the Indian Association, owned the City College. Once more,therefore, it was the Indian Association which took the lead in organizing an agitation against Curzon’s scheme for higher education. Significantly this agitation included groups outside the Congress orbit. It thus demonstrated again the cohesion of educated “8 Quoted in Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education and Political Development In India 1898-1920 (Delhi, 1974), p. 18. 44 RNP 1904: Mahima, 19 February. 4° Surendranath Banerjea, A Nation in Making, p. 109.

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Bengali society against the attempt of the alien rulers to restrict the opportunities already conceded to their subjects. A meeting organized by the Indian Association in the Town Hall was presided over by Raja Pearymohun Mukherjee of Uttarpara, who brought with him the support of big landed aristocrats. Among the speakers figured Maulvi Abul Kasim, a delegate from the Burdwan Muhammadan Association, who proclaimed that the new scheme would be ten times more injurious to Muslim youths than for Hindu students.*® The graduates of Calcutta University, irrespective of religion, met next monthin the Senate Hall to register a unanimousprotest.*’ The force of the agitation induced the government to make some concession to the clamour. It conceded that second grade colleges fulfilled a useful function in the educational system and need not be abolished. Ripon College was allowed to continue its law classes, but other colleges in Calcutta had to discontinue them. The private college owners’ interest thus obtained a reprieve. But at the top, the structure of the Senate of the Calcutta University was greatly altered. Here the government reserved the right to nominate 71 fellows. Together with 9 ex-officio members, they constituted a solid bloc of 80 government supporters against only 20 elected fellows. The government used its power of nomination to increase the number of Europeans at the expense of Indians on the Senate, reducing the latter to a minority.*® To this injury, Curzon added insult by proclaiming, in a typically bombastic address to Calcutta University, the superiority of Western values and ideals of truth. This speech caused deep and widespread bitterness at all levels of educated society in Calcutta.*® Onthis changedpolitical scene, news of Curzon’s decisionto partition Bengal burst like thunder.®° Ostensibly the government was guided by considerations of administrative convenience, but these were inextricably mixed with calculations of political advantage. As the Home Secretary to the Government of India put it, ‘Bengal united is a power. Bengal divided will pull several different ways .. . one of our main objects is to split up and thereby to weaken solid 48 Bengalee, 27 August 1902. 47 Ibid., 5 September 1902. 48 Amales Tripathi, p. 56. 49 Bengalee, 12 March 1905. 50 For detailed discussion ofthe partition plan, see Amales Tripathi, chapter3, and Sumit Sarkar, chapter 1.

11

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body of opponentsto ourrule.’5! This did not at first imply a desire to drive a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims, thoughlater on that becamethe principal aim. Rather, Curzon had in mindat the start ‘the advantage of severing these eastern districts of Bengal, which are a hotbed of the purely Bengali movement, unfriendly if not seditious in character and dominating the whole tone of Bengal administration’.>? He expected that partition would ‘permit independent centres of activity and influence to grow up’ and would thus ‘dethrone Calcutta from its place as the centre of successful intrigue’.®? Far from producing this intended effect, Curzon’s measure cementedan alliance between the leaders of Calcutta and their followings in East Bengal. Hitherto they had usually come together only twice a year, at the Bengal Provincial Conference in April and the Indian National Congress in December. But in the agitation against the partition of Bengal they established a sustained liaison throughout the year. This was nothing less than a revolution in the political structure of Bengal society; and it could hardly have been brought about so suddenly but for the intense feeling of wrong and injury aroused by the threat to the unity of Bengali culture. Indian counter-offensive The agitation against Curzon’s measure came to be called the Swadeshi movement. Its principal objective was to boycott the use of British goods and develop reliance on indigenous products. This was to be a form ofpolitical protest against an unpopular measure. But the movementsoon outgrew the limited aimsofits inception to embrace a much larger range of economic, social and political issues. In the longer view, the Swadeshi movement was not merely anagitation for the revocation of the partition of Bengal.*4 It was a movement to create new opportunities for an aspiring people hitherto artificially confined to a narrowsector of the economy.Its motive was to break the system of foreign monopoly capitalism and to enable the educated Bengalis to break out of the narrow confines of service 5! GI, HomePub. (A), February 1905, nos. 155-67, Risley Note, 8 February 1904, 52 Quoted in Sumit Sarkar, p. 17.

53 Quoted in Amales Tripathi, p. 98. ** 1B 1912, ‘Note on the agitation in the Kishoreganj Subdivision, Mymensingh’.

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and professions into the wider fields of commercial and industrial enterprise. Living on an inelastic income derived partly from landed property and partly from clerical service in government and mercantile offices, the majority of the educated Bengalis found their economic horizon extremely limited. They were eager to enter the world of business and industry, but lack of capital stood in their way. The big landlords and the successful lawyers and doctors who werein a position to supply the capital were reluctant to put moneyinto the hands of young and untrained persons, and even a man with sometraining found it difficult to raise sufficient capital partly because of the poverty of the people and partly because of the fear of powerful foreign competition.®*> The fear was real and was bred from experience. Rabindranath’s brother, Jyotirindranath Tagore, started an Inland River Steam Navigation Service in 1884 to break the exclusive European monopoly of river navigation. His swadeshi venture, however, collapsed from the unequal and unfair competition which he faced from the Flotilla Company managed by the Hoare Miller group. This pathetic yet magnificent gesture by the grandson of Dwarkanath Tagore taught educated Bengalis the lesson that swadeshi ventures were extremely likely to end in debt and financial ruin.*® It was this monopoly of foreign capital, this enforced narrowness of economic opportunities that the educated Bengalis strove to break during the Swadeshi movement. None ofthe principal leaders of the movement was a merchant or manufacturer.’ They were usually lawyers, journalists and educationists, drawing support from the entire range of educated society in Bengal, including some rich nationalist landlords. A considerable number of people from these classes spent small sums of money in buying shares in the new enterprises started during the Swadeshi movement.** 55 MA 1923, from the Assocn. to the Unemployment Committee, Bengal, . 23 March 1923. 56 Rabindranath Tagore, Jivana-Smriti, in Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 10, pp. 116-17; Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry 1887-1962, p. 35. 57 The Bengal National Chamber of Commerceparticipated in the inception of the movement, but soon dropped out of it due to a quarrel between its Secretary Sita Nath Roy, and Surendranath Banerjea, GI, Home Pub. (A), June 1906, nos. 169-86. 58 See the diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, 2 January 1913, 5, 13, 21 July,

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The endeavour of the educated community to venture forth into business and industry derived its urgency from a sudden increase of economic pressure on their inelastic incomes between 1905 and 1908. Grain harvests, especially of rice, were poor in four successive years. By the autumn of 1907 the ruling price of rice was 58 per cent above the normal level. There was a significant rise in the cost of living which became permanent.*® The impactof this rise was most severe on small and fixed incomes derived from clerical service in the government and mercantile offices. The smaller gentry were also hit by thisrise in prices, for they could not raise rents to the same extent. It was now practically impossible for weak and small landlords to carry out any survey of their estates in order to determine the increased grossassets resulting from rise in prices of agricultural produce. In any case the smaller gentry included a large number of people who received a fixed amount of rent because their property was leased out in permanent tenures. During a period when prices of food and other items were rising very steeply, the money income of the majority of the rural gentlefolk remained stationary. The settlement officer for Dacca, F. D. Ascoli, reported that the result of these conditions had been ‘the creation of an extensive body of men, sprung from respectable families, whose energies are perverted to the abolition of law and order. To those who knowthe petty landlord classes of Dacca, there can be no doubtthat the anarchist has been bred from the accumulation of this economic impasse.’® Not surprisingly the political leaders of Calcutta found among the smaller gentry of East Bengal an excitable element whichthey used effectively for driving the Swadeshi movementinto rural areas. It was a situation which would no doubt have led sooneror later to a more active political opposition from a wider range of people. But the partition of Bengal, a matter of sentiment that deeply moved all sections of educated society in Bengal, provided the issue which could draw this discontent into a new movement.* Initially the 13-14 September, 16 September, 28 December 1914; GI, Home Poll (A), June 1909, nos. 125-8. °° The Administration of Bengal under Sir Andrew Fraser 1903-8, pp. 30-1.

60 Final Report on Dacca,p. 45. * Bengali historical scholarship, not unexpectedly, has devoted special atten-

tion to the Swadeshi movement. The older account of this movement by Haridas. and Uma Mukherji, India’s Fight for Freedom, or the Swadeshi Movement 1905~

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government proposed (1903) to transfer only the divisions of Dacca and Chittagong to Assam. At this stage (1903-1904) well-tried methods of agitation were employed throughthe established associations. Twoprincipal associations, the Bengal Landholders’ Association®** and the Indian Association, directed the agitation from Calcutta. Circulars were issued to the associations in the affected districts, instructing the local leaders how to foster the movement. In accordance with the advice from Calcutta, the district leaders held

meetings, adopted resolutions and submitted petitions. Telegrams were sent to leading newspapers in Calcutta on these local demonstrations.®* This anti-partition agitation swiftly grew into the Swadeshi movement uponthe publication of the final plan (8 July 1905) to partition Bengal right down the middle. The established, moderate leaders brought about this transformation, an achievement for which they have not always been given due credit. Surendranath Banerjea took the first practical step towards

passive resistance when he suggested the use of boycott on 17 July

at a meeting of leaders and students at Ripon College. Firmly placing the boycott of British goods in the context of passive resistance, he wrote in an editorial of the Bengalee: ‘Hitherto we have confined ourselves to recording resolutions and making speeches. Wefind, however, that our rulers are in no moodtolisten to us and the British

public are supremely apathetic. We have been driven to a policy of passive resistance to attract attention to our endless grievances.’”® To mobilize province-wide opinion in favour of boycott, notices were sent to the districts for a mass meeting in Calcutta, which was held on 7 August 1905 with the Maharaja of Kasimbazar in the chair. Boycott was inaugurated with the support of the district leaders at 1906 (Calcutta, 1958) has now been replaced by Sumit Sarkar’s work. Only a short summary of the movement will be attempted here, using some IB sources hitherto untapped. 8 The Bengal Landholders’ Association was formed by landlords, predominantly district-based, who had broken away from the Calcutta-dominated British Indian Association in 1901. It had the support of the professional classes and was nationalist in tone compared to the loyalist British Indian Association. Bengalee, 9 and 22 August 1901.

88 TB Library, no. 47, ‘Note on the Growth of the Revolutionary Movement in Bengalby F. C. Daly 17.8.1911’; GI, Home Pub. (A), June 1906,nos. 169-86. 64 Sumit Sarkar tends to underestimate the role of the moderates in the Swadeshi movement. Amales Tripathi emphasizes their lack of success. 8 Bengalee, 25 August 1905.

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this meeting, an act that formally marked the beginning of the Swadeshi movement.®* Surendranath Banerjea and Bhupendranath Basu recruited students to organize a picketing system in Calcutta, andleaders in thedistricts followed suit. The unrest among the educated classes in the autumn of 1905 coincided with a large numberofstrikes, caused by the lagging of wages behind prices. For the first time politicians took up the task of organizing trade unions and soughttentatively to harness them to the national movement. Bengali clerks in European firms, and printers and compositors in the governmentpresses, led the way. The first strikes, which occurred among these white collar groups, were a form of protest against the partition of Bengal. The political motive was not so strong in the strikes which followed among the mill workers, but was not altogether absent. Bengali workersin thefirst mill to be affected wore rakhis (red threads of unity), shouted ‘Bande Mataram’ and ‘provoked’ the Europeanassistants on 16 October, the day of partition.®’ The jute mills lying to the north of Calcutta up to Budge Budge were organized by A. C. Banerjee into a millhands union, which claimed to include 50,000 workers.*8 He started

one of the first organized labour movements in India and supplied a link between the industrial and political unrest.®® Workers were never more than peripheral to the Swadeshi movement, though there were touching instances of ordinary daylabourers contributing the whole of their day’s earning to the National Fund.” At the spearhead of the Swadeshi movement stood the school and college students, especially those who enrolled in national schools. Soon after the partition was given effect, official circulars in both the old Bengal Presidency and the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam sparked off a series of revolts among the students. These circulars sought to check the growing participation of students in the anti-partition agitation by prescribing severe disciplinary measures. In Calcutta an Anti-Circular Society was set up by Krishna Kumar Mitra, which took the lead in opening national 8° GI, Home Pub. (A), June 1906, nos. 169-86; IB Library, no. 47. *7 Ibid; IB Library, no. 47; GI, Home Pub. (B), October 1905, nos. 275-83; The Administration of Bengal under Sir Andrew Fraser, pp. 26-30; Bengalee, 10 January 1906.

68 A. C. Banerjee Papers, biographical notes (handwritten), no. 2. 69 Tbid. 70 See the memoirs of Abanindra Nath Tagore in Gharoa. Abanindra Rachanavali, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1975), p. 70.

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schools for expelled students. It set up the first National School at Rangpur in November 1905. At various district towns, especially in East Bengal, there sprang up several schools which were neither affiliated with the Calcutta University nor recognized by the government. There then arose a cry for a national university to which these schools could be affiliated. With princely grants from several rich zamindars the National Council of Education was set up in March 1906 as the highest educationalinstitution controlling and financing the national schools.” The typical national schools were secondary schools in towns, distributed throughout the new provinceat strategic points. There were aboutforty national schools in East Bengal and Assam in 1909, and the number of students at these schools was estimated to be about 2500 to 3000. They provided the natural rallying points for the political agitation in the province. The local leaders as well as political orators from outside drew upon the national schools to pack their meetings. The national schools served also as centres of propaganda, from which emissaries went out to preach swadeshi in neighbouring areas and villages. Finally, the national schools were centres of physical training, and constant exercise in lathi, sword and dagger play was a prominent feature of the curriculum. This activity was closely connected with the volunteer movement, many pupils being enrolled in the samitis as volunteers.** Therise of the national schools and their growing connection with the samitis made for a far more widespread and closely knit mesh of political activity, whose threads ran from onelocality to another, tying them more effectively than before into an interlaced political structure stretching across the whole of the divided province. The emergence of the national schools provided the necessary impetus for the organization of the volunteer corps that began to attract the notice of the police in 1906. Here lay the moststriking and original contribution of the Swadeshi movementto the development of organized nationalism in Bengal. Forthefirst time in the history of the national movement, full-time cadre-based political activity becamepossible. It was at the Bengal Provincial Conference at Barisal in April 1906 that the volunteer movementfirst came into prominence. In the town itself 200 volunteers were locally recruited by A. K. Dutt from the 71 GI, Home Poll (A), March 1911, nos. 5-7. 72 GI, HomePoll (A), March 1909, nos. 10-11.

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Swadesh Bandhab Samiti of Barisal.”* In addition to these local volunteers, Surendranath Banerjea’s party brought from Calcutta a large number of volunteers belonging to the Anti-Circular Society. These outsiders proved less amenable than the local recruits to obeying police orders, and by violating an order prohibiting the singing of Bande Mataram onthestreets, deliberately sought a con-

frontation with the police. The conference was broken up bya brutal police operation in which Surendranath Banerjea himself was arrested. The incident aroused nation-wide indignation. All over the country demonstrations were made in protest against the police barbarities.”* Alarmed by these developments the Governmentof India got rid of the unpopular ruler of the new province, J. B. Fuller, who, with

the help of such determined collectors as J. C. Jack of Bakarganj (popularly known as Jack the Giant Killer), had let loose over East Bengal what wascalled a Fullerloo. Fuller’s resignation was naturally regarded as a triumph for the agitation in East Bengal. The local leaders began to mobilize the entire volunteer organization, which now operated through a dense network of samitis spread all over East Bengal, to enforce an effective boycott of British goods. This campaign was marked by several new features: the formation of a party using physical force, the social excommunication of persons loyal to the government, pressure on the Muslims and the Namasudras to renounce the use of foreign articles, and on the Marwaris and the Sahasto stop marketing British goods.”® Wemaypause here for a momentto trace the outlines of the new political framework imposed on Bengal by the impressive growth of the national volunteer corps and the perfecting of the organization of Swadeshi propaganda.”® The older associations, organized on borrowed European models, were overshadowed during 1906 by the new samitis, which were deeply indigenous in inspiration.’”? Hitherto district associations had tended to consist of committees of lawyers, 73 GI, Home Poll Deposit, October 1907, no. 19. 74 For a detailed account of the incidents at Barisal, see Gordon Johnson,

‘Partition, Agitation and Congress: Bengal 1904 to 1908’ in Locality, Province

and Nation.

* GI, HomePoll Deposit, October 1910, no. 20.

6 For a fuller discussion, see Sumit Sarkar, chapter vm. 7 The contrast is well drawn by J. H. Broomfield, ‘Social and Institutional

Bases of Politics in Bengal 1906-1947’, in Rachel Van M. Baumer(ed.), Aspects ofBengali History and Society (Hawaii, 1975).

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who from time to time arranged conferences and passed resolutions. The samitis that now sprang up were permanentbodies of volunteers, engaged in picketing, political propaganda, and constructive social work. It was in Calcutta that the volunteer corpsfirst came into evidence, organized in such bodies as the Anti-Circular Society, the Bande Mataram Sampradayand the Brati Samiti. Apart from Calcutta, the national volunteer movement madelittle progress in West Bengal. Butin the districts of East Bengal, the samitis proliferated in 1906-7. The most important among these new organizations were the Swa-

desh Bandhab Samiti of Barisal, the Faridpur District Association,

the Brati Samiti of Faridpur, the Dacca Anushilan Samiti and the Suhrid Samiti of Mymensingh. By 1907 every district of East Bengal (in sharp contrast with West Bengal) had its volunteer organization. The total number of volunteers, though not exactly ascertained, certainly exceeded 10,000 men and constituted, as the Home Department acknowledged, ‘a formidable force to contend with’. Yet this force was not evenly distributed throughout the new province, but was overwhelmingly concentrated in what might be described as the Greater Bikrampur area, consisting of the Munshiganj subdivision of Dacca district, the Madaripur subdivision of Faridpur district and the northern half of Bakarganj district. The whole of this tract was thickly settled by numerous Hindu gentlefolk of high birth, small property and good education. Not surprisingly, therefore, among the 8485 volunteers listed by the police in Eastern Bengal and Assam in June 1907, 6263 were from these three districts alone. Where the rural gentlefolk were thin on the ground, as in the northern districts of the new province, the volunteer corps were correspondingly weaker.”® The impact of the Swadeshi movement was deepest on Bakarganj, where the volunteer organization penetrated further into the interior than anywhere else.8° This organization was built up by the local landlord, Aswini Kumar Dutt, who owned the Braja Mohan College. Dutt was a well-known extremist exercising undisputed leadership in his own district. He had a really effective agency for spreading his political views among the teachers and students of his college. The 78 GI, Home Poll Deposit, August 1909, no. 26. 79 Ibid. 89 GB, Public Political (A), October 1908, no. 14; Bengalee, 15 November

1907.

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college was the centre of the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti, which had 175 branches in the interior.*? In its campaign of mass contacts, the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti made an imaginative use of indigenous values, customs and institutions which were successfully combined with older methodsof agitation through the press and the platform.®? From the very beginning of the anti-partition agitation, weekly rallies were held at Raja Bahadur’s Haveli in Barisal town underthe auspices of the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti. During the excitement caused by the Barisal conference, the samiti was instrumentalin bringing out a local extremist paper, named Barisal Hitaishi.8? The samiti organized a Swadeshi Jatra party which toured several districts to perform its repertoire of folk operas with a patriotic content. The members of the samiti performed patriotic plays, such as Pratapaditya, Siraj-ud-Daula and Prithvi Raj, to show that their countrymen had fought for the motherland before the British took possession of the country. Volunteers staged demonstrations, sham fights and parades. But there was also more solidly constructive work to the credit of the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti. It was an important faminerelief organization. During the famine of 1906, rice worth Rs 80,000 wasdistributed at the minimum

cost of Rs 1000 by Barisal volunteers. They brought medical relief to the villages during cholera and smallpox epidemics. Village samitis, formed primarily for spreading boycott, preached self-help to the villagers. Many Namasudravillagers were persuaded to avoid costly litigation andto settle disputes by arbitration.8* In one otherdistrict of East Bengal a genuine effort was made by the nationalist organization to win over the low castes and the peasantry. This was Faridpur, where the moderate pleader, Ambika Charan Majumdar, enjoyed a position akin to that of A. K. Dutt in Bakarganj. Under his leadership the Faridpur District Association wasset up in 1907. It was a smaller organization than the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti, with only about two hundred members. But it had twelve very active preachers (including three nationalist Muslims) and fairly ample funds which it turned to good use by patronizing 51 GI, Home Poll Deposit, July 1904, no. 13. 82 7B Library, no. 672, ‘Report on Samitis in the Dacca Division, Eastern Bengal and Assam, 1908’, describes these techniques in detail. 83 Thid. 8 GI, HomePoll Deposit, July 1909, no. 13; Home Poll Deposit, April 1909, no. 2.

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a large number of village schools.8> Closely connected with the Faridpur District Association was a volunteer organization called the Brati Samiti. It was founded in 1907 by a dismissed policeofficer named Brahma Mohan Ghosh to enforce boycott throughout the district. Initially the Brati Samiti was guided by Ambika Charan Majumdar, but its apparatus was soon to be absorbed by the Dacca Anushilan Samiti, a rising extremist organization.®® Ambika Charan Majumdar himself staunchly maintained his connection with the moderate leadership in Calcutta, being a close friend of Surendranath Banerjea. In course of the Swadeshi movement the connection between the nationalist organizations in Faridpur and Calcutta became exceptionally close. Ambika Charan Majumdar,noted an intelligence report, kept in close touch throughout the various phases of the Swadeshi movement with the leaders of thought in Calcutta, and he was apparently the first of the district leaders to conceive the idea of inducing political orators from Calcutta to visit the districts.” At his invitation Surendranath Banerjea, Krishna Kumar Mitra and Ashutosh Chaudhuri visited Faridpur in September 1906 and initiated a drive for boycott, extremely effective until the end of 1908. In 1909 the boycott programmebegan to showsigns of collapse. Not daunted bythis failure, Ambika Charan Majumdarstarted a campaign in 1910 to win over the Namasudrasof his district by promises of upliftment to higher social rank. The sameintelligence report noted that in no other district was the attempt to win over the Namasudrasso strongly and systematically undertaken. Majumdar, the pioneer of the campaign, lent it all his ardour and prestige, but success, as in Bakarganj, was limited.®® In Dacca, as in Faridpur, the swadeshi organization developed a fairly close connection with the leaders of thought in Calcutta, but this time with those of the extremist group. In September 1906 a party of extremist leaders from Calcutta, including Bipin Chandra Pal and P. Mitter, visited Dacca, delivering inflammatory speeches and inciting public demonstrations. With their assistance, Pulin Behari Das, a local school teacher who wasalready running several gymnastic clubs, organized the volunteers of the district into the 85 Sumit Sarkar, pp. 391-2. 86 TB 1915, ‘Brief History of the Political Agitation in the district of Faridpur’. 87 Tbid. 88 Tbid.

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Dacca Anushilan Samiti.8® The Anushilan Samiti of Dacca was an independent organization, but wasclosely connected with P. Mitter’s Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta.2° With the founding of this samiti, ‘Dacca rapidly became the headquarters of the unrest in East Bengal’.®! Not only did its organization spread through the whole district of Dacca, it penetrated almost every other district of East Bengal. The Swadesh Bandhab Samiti of Barisal was the prototype of the open mass organization, the Dacca Anushilan Samiti of the revolutionary undergroundsociety. From the beginning the latter was a tightly disciplined para-military organization which gave equal emphasis to the spread of swadeshi principles and the physical training of youth. It was well organized for the purposes of its mission: its rapid growth, the great power it came to wield and the cohesion of its ranks which enabled it to adapt to changing circumstances, was due partly to the excellence of its system and partly to the energy with which Pulin Das and his successors administered it. It was built on a scheme which combined the qualities of order, method and eminentpracticality with an appeal to Hinduspirituality and religion in the form of initiation vows, regular Gita classes and obligatory reading of the works of Swami Vivekananda. At the head of this extensive organization,residing in the central samiti at Dacca, was the ‘captain-general’ of over 3000 volunteers, who enforced absolute obedience among his followers.®* Numerousas these cadres were, Pulin Das was nonetheless careful to lay down restrictive

policy of recruitment which strongly contrasted with the efforts of the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti to enrol the Muslims of Bakarganj. In a Muslim majority district, Pulin Das’s decision to exclude Muslims, automatically guaranteed by the strictly Hindu religious vows at initiation, ruled out the development of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti as a broad mass-based organization.® The volunteers came overwhelmingly from the households of the educated gentlemen of small means.®4 The extent of the commitment 8° TB 1913, ‘History of the Political Agitation and bhadralog crimein thecity of Dacca from 1905 to 1913’. * GI, Home Poll Deposit, April 1909, no. 2. "IB 1913, ‘History of the Political Agitation and bhadralog crime in the city of Dacca’, ® IB Library, no. 55, ‘An Account of Revolutionary Organization in Eastern Bengal with special reference to the Dacca Anushilan Samiti’, vol. 1.

3 Tbid.

4 Toid.

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of these educated gentlefolk to the Swadeshi cause can be gauged from the heavy involvement of their children and women in the movement. Schoolboys of nine to twelve were extensively enrolled in the Dacca Anushilan Samiti. From 1906, moreover, women from the educated households began to appear at the swadeshi meetings. At the meetings held in Dacca between 1906 and 1908 women attended regularly, participating in the proceedings, contributing their ornaments to the swadeshi funds andsinging patriotic songs. In those rural areas of Dacca where the Hindugentlefolk were preponderant, such as Bikrampur, hardly any foreign goods were sold during these years.°* The principalactivity of the samiti was, however,drilling, gymnastics and exercise with weaponswith the ultimate object of expelling the British by physical force. The Anushilan Drill Manual taught various exercises with daggers, swords, lathis and bamboo spears, which impressed the district magistrate of Dacca, B. C. Allen (one of the first officials against whom there was an attempt at assassination), by their ‘bloodthirsty character’.®’ The transition of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti from a national volunteer corps to an armed underground society was inherent in the very nature of its organization. In 1908, when there were several political crimes, Pulin Das was deported. Next year the Samiti was banned and it becamea secret terrorist society. It will be evident that the local organizations formed in course of of the Swadeshi movement varied greatly from district to district. Boycott was only partly effective and its success or failure was determined by local circumstances. The fact that politica] initiatives in the localities were not co-ordinated effectively by means of a single organization for the whole of Bengal goes a long wayto explain the patchy character of the Swadeshi movement. This was more advanced in the new province than in West Bengal, and within East Bengal was mainly centred in Dacca, Faridpur and Bakarganj. Nonetheless, it is also evident that the Swadeshi movement

witnessed muchgreater political exchange between Calcutta and the mofussil and between the districts in the interior. The leaders from Calcutta, often in rivalry with each other, began frequent touring of % Thid. 96 TB 1913, ‘History of the Political Agitation and bhadralog crime in the city of Dacca’. 97 GI, HomePoll Deposit, April 1909, no. 2.

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the districts: the rival tours of Surendranath Banerjea and Bipin Chandra Pal to East Bengal in September 1906led to a great stepping up of volunteer activity in the areas they visited. There was frequent drafting of volunteers from one place to another; and a few samitis cameto span several districts. Those extremists who challenged the established leadership in Calcutta, issued appeals to the districts ‘to liberate themselves from Calcutta domination’. But although the districts in East Bengal ‘outran the capital in the swiftness and thoroughnessof their activity, they always waited for an intellectual initiative and sanction from the leaders in Calcutta’.%® If nevertheless the Swadeshi movement could not sustain itself after 1908, the reasonis to be sought partly in the defects in its organization. These gaps are especially evident in comparison with the political organization that the extremists, having captured the Bengal Congress under the leadership of C. R. Das, built up in the province between 1918 and 1921.°° During the non-co-operation movement there was a chain of command going down from Calcutta through the districts to the villages, and the local organizations, while retaining a great deal of initiative within their respective districts, formed part of a single Congress hierarchy, tightly knit at the top undera single leadership. This was not so during the Swadeshi movement in Bengal from 1905 to 1908. There was no single legitimate central organization to which the district organizations could be affiliated through a hierarchical system covering the whole of Bengal. It is interesting to note that one section of Congressmen— the extremists—advocated ‘the creation of a strong central authority to carry out the will of the nation, supported by a close and active organization ofvillage, town, district and province’.1° Whythis plan could not be realized during the Swadeshi movementis part of the story of their unsuccessful bid to capture the Congress from the moderates, which will be dealt with below. From the study of the districts where the movement wasstrongest, one further defect of its organization should already be evident: even at its best that organization never moved far beyond the reaches of respectable, educated society. Even where the samitis reached deep into the villages of East Bengal, they never attracted active peasant participation. Several narrowly averted clashes and actualcollisions ** Karmayogin, 8 January 1910, reprinted in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 2, pp. 342-3.

%° See chapter 4.

100 Bande Matarain, 23 April 1907.

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between bandsof volunteers and lower class Muslimsin the towns of East Bengal were indicative of the social boundaries within which the national volunteers movement remained confined. The perceptive short stories written in the Prabasi magazine by Prabhat Mukherjee in 1907-1908 show how widespread and deeply rooted were nationalist sentiments among the educated men andtheir wive. and boys, and yet how incomprehensible were these sentiments to the lower classes.1°! The communication gap is nowhere moreironically conveyed than in a passage in ‘His Release’!°? in which the boys are crushing imported biscuits under their feet and shouting ‘Bande Mataram’ (Hail Mother), while an uncomprehending servant asks, ‘Whatare they saying? Banduk Maram (Fire the gun)?’ andis told by another manin thestreet, ‘It must be a term of abuse. Nowadays the boys say it whenever they see a sahib.’ These limits in popular mobilization explain the relative ease with which the authorities managed to dismantle the open apparatus of Swadeshi propaganda. The samitis were banned in 1909; the labour unions, with which the volunteer corps never achieved any effective link-up, disappeared without leaving a trace; and the national schools were moribund within a few years. These were the conditions in which a revolutionary campaign of assassinations gathered momentum.1° On the economicfront, as on the political, the Swadeshi movement

came to a grinding halt. At the height of Swadeshi enthusiasm, a large number of Indian companies for the manufacture of pencils, machines and soap and for cotton weaving, hosiery and tanning were floated. The Marwaris prudently stayed away from these schemes, but considerable sums were subscribed from the savings of the educated Bengalis who saw in industrial development a new field of employment and less congestion in the professions. The majority of these concerns had to be closed down in a few years. This was due both to lack of experience and lack of capital. Since Indian enterprises found it difficult to get credit from banks or from the suppliers of raw materials, they needed more capital than European firms enjoying the usual banking facilities. In almost every case, 101 See especially ‘Ukiler Buddhi’, ‘Hate Hate Phal’, and ‘Khalas’ in Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee, Prabhat Granthavali, vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1373 B.S.).

102 ‘Khalas’, originally published in Prabasi, 1907, and subsequently translated

by Prabhat Mukherjee in Modern Review as ‘His Release’.

103 Reprinted in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 2, p. 383.

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however, the Indian companies hadinsufficient paid up capital, could not cover initial losses and thus lost their shareholders’ confidence. Moreover, few Bengalis were fitted by training or experience to manage companies; even wherethe recruits had technical training (usually from abroad), they would have little practical or business experience.14 In these circumstances it was not surprising that the import of foreign goods was practically unchecked by the boycott. As the President of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce, Reshee Case Law, pointed out, the attempt to stop the import of cotton goods by promoting cotton mills was to some extent a misdirected enterprise. For Bengal wasdeficient in raw cotton and the introduction of the most up-to-date machinery and the severest economy could not place her in the same favourable position as Bombay. He suggested that it would be better to go for jute manufactures, since Bengal had a monopoly of raw jute with plenty of cheap labour and skilled overseers.?°> There was no attempt to carry out this interesting suggestion during the Swadeshi era. Any venture in the jute mill industry, which was a collective monopoly fiercely maintained by the European business houses, required a huge outlay of initial capital that could not be raised from the limited incomes of middle class Bengalis. At the end of the Swadeshi era the interlinked complex of European tea, jute and coal interests wasstill dominating the economy of Bengal and Swadeshi enterprise had not succeeded in penetrating these closely guarded preserves of foreign capital.1°° Congress in disarray The Swadeshi movement was an opportunity for the Congress to transform itself, but implicitly the movement also posed a threat to shatter it. In Calcutta the dominant Banerjea group faced a growing challenge from younger extremist politicians who called themselves Nationalists. These political divisions in Calcutta produced a profound uncertainty of leadership. The consequentloss of central direc104 J, A. L. Swan, Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal (Calcutta, 1915). 105 BNCC 1908, Proceedings of the annual general meeting, President’s address. 106 Bengalis owned somesecond class collieries in Raniganj and low grade tea gardens in Jalpaiguri, but these offered no competition to European managing agencies which concentrated on better products. There was no Bengali-owned jute mill.

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tion was debilitating for a movement which looked for ideological and organizationalinitiative to the metropolis. The Congress,for its part, divided as it was, could not align itself effectively with the Swadeshi movement. It was thus cut off from a source of dynamic growth as a country-wide mass organization. To understand the failure of the Swadeshi movement, which had acquired a fairly wide

basis in manylocalities, it is necessary to take into account the adverse developments at the centre. Among these adverse developments, one was the emergence of fierce factional rivalries that threatened to split the Congress. Not merely was there a battle for control of the Congress between the groups labelled ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’, but in Bengal there were purely factional divisions within each camp due to disputes over leadership. In the moderate camp the Banerjea group somehow remained preponderant in spite of the fact that Surendranath’s lead was not followed by N. N. Ghosh of the Indian Mirror, Ashutosh Chaudhuri of the Bengal Landholders’ Association and Rash Behari Ghoshof the National Council of Education. At any rate the Indian Association, which Banerjea controlled, provided a focus for the Bengal moderates. In the extremist camp there was no such focus. Bipin Pal and Aurobindo Ghose led rival factions in the extremist world of Calcutta, A. K. Dutt had his own separate following in Barisal, and Motilal Ghosh of the Amrita Bazar Patrika stood on

his own. All these factional groups adopted, because of the compulsions of the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, a position more advanced than that of the Congress organizations in other parts of India. This tended to isolate political Bengal from the rest of the nation. The conflicts which arose from these regional political differences resulted finally in the Indian National Congress deliberately cutting itself off, under the guidance of the dominant Bombay group, from the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Bengali patriotic sentiment was sufficiently strong to producefitful alliances between the antagonistic moderate and extremist groups in Calcutta against the Congress high command. But both groups remained as far as ever from capturing the crucial positions within the Congress that would enable them to fit the provincial Swadeshi organization into the all-India Congress framework. In their attempt to outbid each other for popular support, both the moderates and the extremists had to adopt extraordinary mea12

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sures in Bengal. Surendranath Banerjea hardly proved himself less extreme than Bipin Pal or Aurobindo Ghose in his methods of agitation during the Swadeshi movement, nor did he lag behind Aurobindo Ghose in appealing to religious sentiments.?” It is true that originally he intended to use boycott as a weaponlimited to the purpose of drawing the rulers’ attention to Bengal’s grievances. But as early as September 1905 a truculent note crept into his speech whenat Telinipara in Hughly district he explained that for himself he had neverasked any favours of the English, but for his countrymen’s sake he had placed his hands on their feet. Since the favours he had sought had not been granted, he had now adopted the plan of placing his hands ontheir necks and had foundit the best way of making them pay attention.1° On his return from Barisal next year, Banerjea started a policy of selective non-co-operation with the government, a policy already foreshadowed by his resignation from the Corporation in 1899. He resigned his post as Honorary Presidency Magistrate in a letter to the Chief Presidency Magistrate dated 30 April 1906: ‘Having regard to the recent events at Barisal, and the unconstitutional methods which have come to be associated with British rule in India, it is

impossible for anyself-respecting person to serve the Governmentin any honorary capacity.°? On the previous day his paper, the Bengalee, had announcedthat the agitation was not merely against the partition, and that the people would not stop at anything short of self-government. He asserted that a revolution was inevitable, although he would try his best to make it a silent and bloodlessrevolution.™° Oneinteresting feature of Surendranath’s strategy, which he shared in common with Aurobindo, was to tap the energies of religion for the Swadeshi movement. But with a refreshing difference from the extremists he thought of both Hinduism and Islam. To a Chandpur extremist, Hardayal Nag, he suggested, for the boycott anniversary of 1907, ‘a religious ceremony on the 7th August such as Sakti Puja, Kali Puja and ... seditious katha or jatra and Swadeshi conversation ... Give a religious turn to the movement. As for the Mohammedans, if you can get them on your side why not have a waz for boycott and Swadeshi preaching.’!41 It would thus be underestimating the united resolve of nationalist 307 RNP 1907: Indian Nation, 24 September. 108 GI, Home Poll (A), February 1913, nos. 9-35. 109 Thid. 110 Tbid. U1 Ibid.

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Bengal to obtain self-government if one were to accept the view, expressed by a historian critical of the moderates, that they wanted merely to remove the un-British aspects of the British Raj—‘a modest ambition to which prayers and petitions were admirably suited’—unlike the extremists who were bent on removing British rule itself.47* The British saw things more clearly when they regarded both the moderates and the extremists as an ‘advanced party’ instead of reading too muchinto their ideological differences. ‘It would be more correct to say that their objects are identical, though their methodsare different ... The moderate party adopt a morediscreet but almost as objectionable a policy. They want home rule... the form of Governmentofa self-governing colony.’! The challenge to Banerjea’s leadership of the so-called ‘advanced party’ in Calcutta was thus as mucha struggle for poweras a dispute over policy. There had gathered in Calcutta an assemblageofless established politicians, mostly journalists, who were outside the inner circle of power. They had new ideas about politics and they were attracted by the opportunities of the Swadeshi movement to compete for political leadership. In this enterprise they secured the support of Banerjea’s ancient rival in journalism and politics, Motilal Ghosh. The contest started over the leadership of students in Calcutta as soon as the so-called Carlyle circular prohibiting the participation of students in politics was published in the Statesman on the dayof the partition. Immediately after the publication of this circular a minor speaker at a meeting in Shyampukur in north Calcutta criticized Surendranath Banerjea and Rabindranath Tagore, both of whom had reservations about boycott of government-supported educational institutions. The new politicians who were trying to capture student support—Bipin Pal, Shyamsundar Chakravarti and Hemendra Prasad Ghosh—held meetings at the Field and Academy Club to discuss the weakness of the older leaders at this crisis of affairs. Through these gatherings the extremist faction took shape in the last two months of 1905.14 The newly emerging extremist faction, which lacked an institutional frameworklike the Indian Association of the moderates, found its focal point at first in the vernacular paper, Sandhya.Its style was 112 Firendranath Chakravarti, p. 397. H3 L/P & J/311/1941, 1650, Govt. of India to Secretary of State, 21 March 1907. 114 Femendra Prasad Ghosh, Congress (2nd revised Bengali edition, 1921-2), pp. 122-8; GI, Home Pub. (A), June 1906, nos, 169-86.

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too sensational for some extremists, who describedit as a ‘filthy rag’ full of untruths, half truths and personal calumnies.4> The extremists felt the need for a more respectable English language newspaper for their party and Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, the editor of the Sandhya, himself initiated the move for bringing out a weekly called the Bande Mataram. The editorial staff of this paper included B. C. Pal (who wasthe chief editor), Aurobindo Ghose (who had comeover to Calcutta from Baroda as a college lecturer), Hemendra Prasad Ghosh (who, in addition to a zamindari in Jessore, had a literary and even poetical reputation), Shyamsundar Chakravarti (who wasthe only true orthodox Hinduin this group of extremists), and B. C. Chatterjee (who wasa son-in-law of Surendranath Banerjea but by no meansan obedient one). Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, who for the first few months had the management of the Bande Mataram in his hands, was soon edged out of this position by Aurobindo Ghose, who provided out of his own pocket Rs 200 with which the staff, who had been unpaid for two months, were paid. The next to go was Bipin Chandra Pal. An antagonism thus developed between Aurobindo and his surviving Bande Mataram co-editors on the one hand and Bipin andthe editor of the Sandhya on the other." Pal and Upadhyaya now concentrated their energies on sabotaging the Bande Mataram. In the first week of January 1907 Hemendra Prasad Ghosh entered in his diary the following commentary on the prevailing state of affairs: Evidently Babu Bipin Chandra Pal and the Editor of the Sandhya are bent on mischief. They are circulating all sorts of things to degrade the Bande Mataram in public estimation. Both are ‘excellent?’ men. Babu Bipin Chandra defalcated Rs 500 as a licence inspector of the Calcutta Corporation— the amountwaspaid by three brotherofficers to save him... A gentleman had sent Rs 20 to him as Editor for two shares in the Bande Mataram Ltd. This moneyhehasnot yetpaid to us. As for Upadhyaya the Jesuit—well it is too long to tell his history. These are the men who wantusto follow their lead.™” 46 Diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, 31 May 1907.

. 48See the Diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, 1906-8 for the personalities and politics inside the Bande Mataram. 47 Diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, 7 January 1907.

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Forall their factional quarrels, however, the Bengali extremists managed to form a working alliance with the Tilakites in western India, which enabled them to pose a formidable challenge to the established Congress leadership.18 S. N. Banerjea, in order to maintain his influence over the educated Bengalis against the mounting pressure of the extremists, was driven to adopt more and more radical postures. The effect of this competition for popular support was, paradoxically, to bring the two groupscloser in their position. On the eve of the Calcutta Congress of 1906, one Bengali Congressman indicated this to Gokhale: ‘You are well aware that Bengal is very keen about Swadeshi, boycott, Partition and National Educa-

tion. The feeling is not confined to the Extremists but is shared by the Moderates also.’At this Congress there came into existence an implicit understanding between the moderates and the extremists of Calcutta to push the political demands of Bengal against the conservative Congress high command. The basis of this informal understanding was the fact that Bengal was politically far more discontented than the rest of India. Although the leaders of other provinces of India had expressed sympathy with Bengal in her predicament, they were not prepared to go to extreme lengths ofagitation to obtain the revocation of the partition of Bengal. The Bombay moderates under Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, who constituted the most

powerful group inside the Indian National Congress, had no patience with what they regarded as a provincial grievance of the Bengalis. The Banerjea group valued their connection with Bombay, but Aurobindo Ghose was spoiling for a fight with the ‘Mehta—Wacha Clique’. On the eve of the Calcutta Congress he advocated through the Bande Mataram a revision of the programme, and a remodelling of the organization, of the Indian National Congress.1° Strongly rejecting this demand, G. K. Gokhale, the spokesman of the Bombay group, said: ‘There will be absolutely no change in the programme of the Congress. The advocates of self-help demand a change but they are neither here nor there. Responsible leaders from every quarter of India do not desire a change and there will consequently be no change. The Congress belongs to the whole of India and not the Bengalis. If any turbulent spirits among them propose to meddle with the up to nowsettled programme of the Congress, the Congress will 118 Thid., 29 May-12 June 1906. 119 Gokhale Papers, Satyananda Bose to Gokhale, 16 December 1906. 120 Bande Mataram, 13 September, 3 October 1906.

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not fail to protest strongly and effectively against their action. The Bengalis alone have no right to change the programme of the Congress whichis ofall India.’1*4 To make upforthe initial mistake of the choice of Calcutta as the venue of the Congress of 1906, Pherozeshah Mehta brought from Bombay a strong contingent of a hundred delegates to defeat the boycott resolution of the Swadeshi leaders of Bengal. But the Bengalis combined against the Bombayleaders on this vital issue, and the boycott resolution was carried by the vote of the Bengal

moderates, who stood far to the left of moderates elsewhere in India.

On the partition issue, Pherozeshah Mehta proposed an enquiry committee to put the question in cold storage, but the partition resolution was carried in spite of this.12? Mehta, insulted by the rudeness of young menin the Calcutta Congress, slipped away from Calcutta quietly without saying goodbye to the Bengali leaders.1*4 A breach thus occurred between the Bombay moderates and the Bengal leaders at the Calcutta Congress of 1906. For the moment Bengal had won a substantial victory. Four important resolutions passed by the Calcutta Congress—in favour of Swadeshi, boycott, national education and Swaraj—had firmly associated the Indian National Congress with the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Henceforward Pherozeshah Mehta’s strategy was to cut the Congress adrift from this radical movement by suitably modifying or entirely 1evoking the four Calcutta resolutions. That he had to give in at Calcutta was due to the unity of all Bengali politicians—moderate and extremist—in favourofthese resolutions. Not that the factional rivalries in Calcutta were suspended. Only a few months after the Calcutta Congress, Surendranath met Lord Minto privately, ‘inveighing against the extravagances of Bepin Chandra Pal’.1*4 But Minto was too hasty in congratulating himself on the prospect of collaboration from the Bengali moderates. The objective fact of the situation was that both moderates and extremists in Bengal were united behind certain minimumgoals, formally accepted by the Calcutta Congress of 1906 as Congress objectives. Behind 121 Tbid., 9 October 1906. 122 Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, Congress, pp. 180-4. 128 Pherozeshah Mehta Papers, item no. 8, Bhupendranath Basu to Mehta, 14 January 1907. 124 Minto to Morley, 17 March 1907. Quoted in Gordon Johnson, ‘Partition, Agitation and Congress’.

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these objectives the Bengali politicians, forall their factional quarrels, wereto stay consistently together. But Bengal’s fragile unity!®> behind the four Calcutta resolutions was powerless to check the fierce rivalries in the Deccan over leadership in the Congress. The 1907 session of the Congress, which met at Surat, witnessed a contest for power between two men of iron will, Tilak and Mehta. Tilak gathered under him a large body of delegates from Poona, Nagpur and Madras. In addition, but not quite in his control, were the

Calcutta extremists collected by Aurobindo Ghose (Bipin Pal being in jail), as well as the extremists from East Bengal under Aswini Kumar Dutt of Barisal, who took an altogether independentline.!** In all, the extremists numbered about 600 among the 1300 odd delegates. The moderates were numerically superior and had the advantage of the decisive leadership of Pherozeshah Mehta. However, in the moderate camp, too, the Bengali delegates stood apart.

Before departing for Surat, Surendranath Banerjea had given a call for Congress unity on the basis of the Calcutta resolutions of 1906.1?” This attempt to associate the Congress with the radical line in Swadeshi Bengal was distasteful to the Bombay leaders, who were determined to halt and reverse the Congress policy adopted under Bengali pressure in 1906. Pherozeshah Mehta initiated the struggle by manoeuvring to use the Reception Committee at Surat (largely composed of his own followers) as a means of excluding the four controversial Congress resolutions of 1906 from the Congress agenda. A conference of about 500 extremist delegates under the chairmanship of Aurobindo Ghose resolved on 24 Decemberto resist the retrogression from Swaraj, Swadeshi, boycott and national education by opposing, if necessary, the election of the moderate nominee, Rash Behari Ghosh, as President of the Surat Congress. A. K. Dutt and Lajpat Rai, who stood for conciliation and compromise, were against this, but were overruled by Tilak. A numberof Bengal delegates, including S. N. Banerjea, A. K. Dutt and Motilal Ghosh, met Tilak on the

125 The unity of the Bengal politicians was damaged bya split between Surendranath Banerjea and Aurobindo Ghose at the Midnapore District Conference on the eve of the Congress of 1907. They held rival sessions at Midnapore, indicating the shape of things to come. Bengalee, 8 and 11 December 1907; Bande Mataram, 14 December 1907. 126 The following account is based on the Bengalee, 1-8 January, 18 January

1908. 127 Bengalee, 18 December 1907.

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night before the opening session and were told that his followers would opposethe election of Rash Behari Ghosh unless an assurance was given jointly by Gokhale and Banerjea that the four Calcutta resolutions would not be dropped. Surendranath readily gave this assurance on his own behalf, but his mission to obtain the assurance

from Gokhale failed. This unresolved issue led to a violent dispute over the election of Rash Behari Ghosh in the formal session of the Congress, and the Surat Congress dissolved in chaos, the pandal being taken over by the police.!28 Tilak was prepared to let bygones be bygones and was indeed anxious for the Congress to reassemble. But Mehta had now

resolved to rebuild the Congress on an exclusively moderate basis, purged of the new features it had acquired in association with the Swadeshi movementin Bengal.!”° The broader issue behind this factional confrontation was the question posed by the Swadeshi movement regarding the future shape of the Congress: was the Congress to expand into a dynamic mass movement by incorporating the radical dissidence in the country, or was it to let these dissidencesstrictly alone, confining itself to the constitutional path of accomplishing the reforms hinted at by Morley and Minto? Adoption orrejection of the four Calcutta resolutions on Swaraj, Swadeshi, boycott and national education was to be the test whether or not the Congress was to take the new road indicated by Bengal. The split was thus a disaster not merely for the extremists, but for all Bengali politicians, including the moderates led by Surendranath Banerjea. After the Surat split Bengalis of both camps came together at the Bengal Provincial Conference at Pabna under the presidentship of the universally respected poet Tagore and passed a resolution demanding the resummoning of the Congress on the basis of the last Calcutta Congress of 1906. At this stage, however, the masterful personality of Sir Pherozeshah Mehtaandhis large andsolid following in Bombay became the determining element in shaping the course of the Congress. The Bengali moderates were brought to heel, and the extremists were relentlessly outmanocuvred by Mehta at every step and driven out 128 7B,‘ The All-India Standing Committee of the Indian National Congress and the Congress Movementin 1907’, a report from Surat, 27 December 1907. ™9See B. R. Nanda, Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj

(Delhi, 1977), chapter 25; Gordon Johnson, Provincial Politics and Indian

Nationalism, chapter 4.

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of the Congress into the cold.1° At his instance, a Convention metat Allahabad, and there, riding roughshod overthe universal sentiment

in Bengal in favour of a reconciliation between the moderates and the extremists, the other provinces of India drew up a Congress creed expressing firm loyalty to British rule which no extremists could possibly accept.1% Popular feeling in Bengal against the Convention was so strong that the Bengal moderates toyed with the idea of exploiting this feeling and capturing the Congress from the Mehta-Wacha—Gokhale group with the help of the extremists. With the tacit support of the Amrita Bazar group, they approached Pherozeshah Mehta to secure the readmission of the extremists to the Congress.18? Mehta, who dubbed the Bengali desire for unity as ‘a mawkish sentimentality’, harshly rejected their demand that the four Calcutta resolutions be adopted.1* The split between the moderates and the extremists at Surat therefore widened, after the Allahabad Convention, into an

incipient conflict between the leaders of the Swadeshi movement in Bengal and therest of political India. The Mehta Congress of 1908 wasattended only by the moderates and was violently condemnedin the Bengali press as a ‘Pherozeshah Majlis’, a ‘Mehta assembly’. The extremists tried to hold a separate Congress of their own at Nagpur, but were prohibited from doing so by the government.1*4 Under the repressive policy of the government, the extremist ‘Party’, which did not possess an organized base amongthe people to compensate for its lack of power inside the Congress, soon disintegrated. Manoeuvred out of the Congress, Aurobindo Ghoseat first tried his hand ineffectively at armed revolution. The police promptly arrested him but failed to secure his conviction. On his release, Aurobindo claimedin his very first speech to have received the command of God to go forth and preach the Eternal Religion. 130 Bengalee, 13-14 February 1908; GI, Home Poll (A), March 1908, no. 45; Gokhale Papers, file no. 59, J. Chaudhuri to Standing Congress Committee, 7 April 1908. 131 Bengalee, 23 April 1908; Mussalman, 6 November 1908. 132 Mussalman, 20 November 1908; Diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, 6 November 1907; Pherozeshah Mehta Papers, item no. 8, B. N. Basu to Mehta, 1908. 183 Bengalee, 27 November 1908. 184 Minto Papers, Correspondence with Persons in India, July-December, 1908, no. 167, from R. H. Craddock to Minto, 15 December 1908; GI, HomePoll Deposit, October 1910, no. 20; Dharma, 14 Bhadra 1316 B.S.

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F. C. Daly of the Intelligence Branch reported to the Chief Secretary of Bengal on 21 July 1909: ‘His influence among the upper classes and educated men has been considerably diminished by his foolish assumption of the role of a divinely inspired being underthe special protection of God, though the pose seems to have made a considerable impression on immature minds. Level-headed men look upon him with a feeling of pity rather than admiration, regarding him as a once splendid intellect now almost deranged.”1** Since, however, the Intelligence Branch continued to take too active and uncomfortable an interest in his activities, Aurobindo took refuge in French Pondicherry, to contemplate for the rest of his days the Life Divine. His rival Bipin Chandra Pal removed himself to London, valiantly turning out from that more distant refuge political articles like ‘The Etiology of the Bomb’.Bereft of leaders, there remained nothing of the extremist party in Bengal except its revolutionary undergroundcells. The revolutionary terror The impact of the happenings at Surat and Allahabad wasto cut off the developmentof the Congress, in Bengal and elsewhere, as an open mass organization that would direct the latent popular energies in the country to a concerted confrontation with authority. The network of samitis which had brought about a new political integration in divided Bengal could not be fitted into the all-India framework of a remodelled national organization, as the extremists had proposed by their support of the four Calcutta resolutions of 1906. Deprived of shelter under the legitimate national umbrella of the Congress, the Swadeshi samitis in Bengal were soon driven undergroundby police repression. There sprang up revolutionary underground cells, scattered throughout Bengal, which continued to ensure the interconnected nature of Bengal politics at a time (1908-17) when there was no open popular organization expressing the province’s political homogeneity. Certain features of Bengali society and public life, peculiar to the province in comparison with the rest of the country, were emphasized by R. H. Craddock, the Home Memberof the Viceroy’s Council, in 185 GB, Political Department, Political Branch, 205/1909, ‘Aurobindo Ghose’s speeches (between May and June 1909)’. 486 RNP 1908: Sandhya, 20 October; RNP 1909: Daily Hitabadi, 6 November.

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his analysis of terrorism in 1913.18? The first feature which impressed him wasthe excessive sub-infeudation and subdivision ofland rights which had madepossible the existence of large numbersof gentlefolk without any definite occupation. In many other parts of India this class of people was mainly based on the towns, supported byservice. In Bengal they were spread overthe villages and in certain localities, such as Bikrampur, formed a very large elementof rural society. The second feature which alarmed Craddock was the uncontrolled growth of inferior English education, which was increasing the number of unemployable youths. “This evil appears to me to be more pronounced in Bengal than elsewhere. Not only is the number of graduates annually turned out larger than anywhere else, but the numberof failures must also be larger in the same proportion, and the numberof those who learn in the middle and high English schools but go no further must also be greater in Bengal than elsewhere.’ The third feature which Craddock noted with disfavour was the excessive influence of the Bar and the Press upon policy in Bengal. Craddock implied that compared to the UP, the Punjab or the CP, the strength of the Bar was many times more in Bengal and the volumeofthe press had also increased correspondingly. The effect was that government in its beneficent aspect—especially the district magistrate as the father of the people—was not manifested to the Bengalis as to the people of other provinces. ‘There is not a single native paper which does not consistently blame the Government either by carping criticisms, ill-natured imputations of bad motives, or, in the worst cases, virulent calumny. The effect of these outpourings in the press is only confirmed and strengthened by sympathy and supportof the conversation and teachings of the Bar Library, which takes its chief pleasure in thwarting the executive, and by all the dissatisfied among the army of dissatisfied vakils, struggling clerks and schoolmasters et hoc genus omne of persons, who blame everything and everybody but themselves, for their failure to satisfy their ambitions.’ Craddock’s analysis of the material conditions of life in Bengal was true enoughso far as it went, except that he did not appreciate the role of the European monopoly of modern business and industry in producing these conditions. The failure of the Swadeshi movement to break this monopoly and the rapid collapse of the swadeshi enterprises could only lead to an increasing pressure on the existing 137 GI, Home Poll (A), May 1913, nos. 72-5.

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opportunities of employment in service and professions during a period of diminishing incomes from fragmented landed properties. Statistics compiled by the Intelligence Branch showed that the revolutionary cadres were drawn mainly from the smaller landed gentry of East Bengal, who either depended solely on land or took up other pursuits in order to supplement the income from land. The students, who formed the second major group in the revolutionary movement, also came mainly from the landed families of limited means in East Bengal. A third major segment was composed of men supported by clerical service and various professions, as well as business of various kinds, especially money-lending and jute trade.1°6 While all this might explain the material conditions in which the revolutionary movement could flourish, it would be misleading to seek the reasonsfor the actual conversionsto the revolutionary cause in frustrated ambition, as Craddock had done. At his suggestion the Bengal District Administration Committee was appointed to investigate the problem, and the weight of the evidence collected by this body showed that although competition for jobs had become decidedly acute since the beginning of the twentieth century, until the beginning of the First World War employment of some kind was available for persons with an English education who did not set their sights too high. The best informed and the most carefully considered evidence put before the Bengal District Administration Committee unanimously indicated that the revolutionaries were generally impelled, not by economic discontent, but by ‘mistaken idealism’.1*° Economic discontent created the objective conditions for the growth of terrorism, by ensuring the sympathy and support of

sections of respectable society, but to understand its inner drive one must turn to the intellectual origins of the movement. This intellectual background is exceptionally well documented because a sudden search of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti in November 1908 led to the capture of the contents of the library together with the issue register book which indicated the books which were most widely read.1Intellectually and spiritually the revolutionaries subsisted on

8 TB, ‘Bhadralog Crime Directory’. The Directory lists 697 suspects and

mentions the occupation of 214 among them: land 78, land combined with other pursuits 68, students 67, service 44, professions 27, business 23.

189 Bengal District Administration Committee 1913-14: Report, pp. 14, 168. “TB Library, no. 55, ‘An Account of the Revolutionary Organization in Eastern Bengal with special reference to the Dacca Anushilan Samiti.’

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reinterpretations of the Gita (no less than thirteen copies were found in the library and the issue register showed that they were in great demand, especially by the senior members), the printed orations of Swami Vivekananda (also very popular according to the issue register), the historical romances of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (especially Ananda Math and Devi Chaudhurani), the warlike mythology of Chandi (the ten-armed Goddess created by the gods to destroy the demons), manuals of war and revolution (Bartaman Rananiti and Mukti Kon Pathe), and collections of patriotic songs and poems, nationalist newspapers and books on heroes and historical events (especially Rana Pratap Singh of Mewar, Shivaji and the Sikh uprising against the Mughals). The intellectual food of the early revolutionaries was thus chiefly neo-Hinduism, Sakti mythology and highly romanticized historical legends of Hindu rebellion against Muslim rule. Not surprisingly, a revolutionary ideology that expressed itself through aggressive Hindu imagery andritual had strong racial overtones. The emergenceof the volunteer organizations in course of the Swadeshi movement led to an almost miraculous cessation of the murderousassaults on natives by Europeans,and it was the turn of white men and womento suffer at the hands of young Bengalis.1** Early hints ofsacrifice of ‘white goats’ to Kali, the goddess of Power, developed later into open incitement ‘to go and drink the hot blood of the Feringhees’.443 Although most of the victims of the revolutionary terror happened to be Indians (quite naturally informers, renegades and investigators were the primetargets), significantly the first attacks were directed against white men, both official and nonofficial: the unsuccessful attempts in December 1907 to blow up the train of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal and to shoot down the district magistrate of Dacca (which marked the beginning of the terrorist movement); the attempt to murder a white missionary at Kushtia on 4 March 1908 (one of a number of attacks on ordinary 141 Karmayogin, 15 January 1910, reprinted in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 2, p. 361 142 At Chandpur, Captain Anderson was pushedinto the river by five youths in a fairly typically incident of the Swadeshi era. In another incident at Ranchi, a

Bengali youth spat upon an English girl in the excitement following a visit by Surendranath Banerjea in March 1908. GI, Home Poll Deposit, August 1909, no. 26; GI, Home Poll (A), February 1913, no. 9035. 143 Underground revolutionary leaflet, translated into English in GI, Home Poil Deposit, September 1915, no. 34.

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Europeans); the abortive attempt to blow up the Maire of Chandernagore (who had been active in suppressing the nationalists in French territory) in April 1908; and the first assassination in the same month at Muzaffarpur (where two English ladies were killed in a carriage mistaken for that of the Chief Presidency Magistrate).1* There also beganat this time a series of bomb outrages on the East Bengal State Railway by a party of young men of Bhatpara, led by Narendranath Bhattacharya (the future M. N. Roy of Comintern fame). The motive of racial animosity was especially clear in this case: two female relations of Bhattacharya had narrowly escaped assault in a railway station waiting-room by a drunken European.™® Meanwhile, interconnected conspiracies were detected by the police at Maniktala (a suburb of Calcutta) and Midnapur. Several officers connected with the investigation and prosecution—a police subinspector, a public prosecutor and a top-ranking Muslim officer of the Criminal Investigation Department—were shot dead one by one.!4* From this point the terrorist movement turned from attacks on high government dignitaries and non-official Europeans to Indian police officers and informers. Simultaneously there began series of robberies for collecting funds, and later, arms. Eventually the revolutionaries came to be organized in two broad groupings, the Jugantar party and the Anushilan Samiti, with their headquarters at Calcutta and Dacca respectively (later on the Anushilan Samiti shifted its centre to Calcutta on account of locational advantages during wartime). The Dacca Anushilan Samiti was by far the bigger organization atfirst, with branches in almost all districts of East Bengal. The petty jealousies of the leaders of the two parties stood in the way of a central revolutionary society for the whole of Bengal.!*? The two parties had marked differences in their inner structures and broad policies. The Jugantar party was originally a loose confederation of several local bands of young men (dals) led by their own group leaders known as dadas (older brothers). During the First World War they came into a closer union underthe leadership of Jatin Mukherjee in order to implement a broader revolutionary policy than the mere M44 GI, Home Poll Deposit, October 1910, no. 26. 45 TB Library, no. 47, ‘Note on the Growth of the Revolutionary Movement in Bengal by F. C. Daly, 17.8.11.’ M8 GI, HomePoll Deposit, October 1910, no. 26. 47 TB 1923, ‘Translation by the Bengali Translator of Articles appearing in the Bangavani; translation of “Prison Life”? by Sachindranath Sanyal.’

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terrorism of the Anushilan Samiti.148 Jatin Mukherjee planned a large-scale armed uprising with the help of the Germans whopromised arms and ammunition. With this purpose in mind a committee was formed by Jatin Mukherjee with representatives from five groups: Hemen Acharya’s Myrensingh group, Swami Prajnananda’s Barisal group, the Atmonnati group of Bipin Ganguly in Calcutta, the Calcutta Seva Samiti of Atul Ghosh and a breakaway group from Purna Das’s Madaripur party. The Indo-German conspiracy was discovered by the police before any arms could be smuggled into India, and Jatin Mukherjee was killed in an encounter with the police in September 1915. In a looser form the union of the constituent units of the Jugantar party continued underthe leadership of Jadugopal Mukherjee. With the failure of the Indo-German plot the Jugantar party embarked on a campaign of assassinations with Mauserpistols captured earlier by a daring raid on Rodda & Co. A virtual reign of terror in Bengal induced the Government of India to pass the Defence of India Act, which enabled the police to break up the organization of both the Jugantar and Anushilan parties by incarcerating their leaders and interning their rank and file in 1917. The Anushilan Samiti, which had kept aloof frorn the IndoGerman plot, remained wedded to the narrow policy of assassinations and robberies. But for these purposes it was much better organized than the Jugantar party. It was not a loose association of several automonouscells but a centralized, hierarchical organization divided into four administrative zones in the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam.!*9 Pulin Das wasthe head ofthis extensive organization and had dictatorial powers. In the central samiti, where guards were posted day and night and severe punishments were inflicted for the least breach of rules, nothing could be done without Das’s orders. The samiti hadits initial and final vows printed and circulated throughout the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and a District Organizer was appointed from the central samiti to each district. He was instructed to establish a link with every secondary school and college in his district, to disseminate propaganda and recruit boys from every class, and to send a full dossier on every new recruit to the central samiti. He was requiredto 148 Hirendranath Chakravarti, pp. 304-5; Richard Lionel Park, “The Rise of Militant Nationalism in Bengal: A Study of Indian Nationalism’ (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1950), pp. 256-7; Leonard Gordon,pp. 136-58. 149 Gordon, pp. 338-9.

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procure survey maps of his own district and to seize or steal arms belonging to loyalists within his jurisdiction. But there were strict instructions not to mount any major operation without the sanction of Dacca. The District Organizer was required to send quarterly reports to Dacca, including accounts; and captured reports and accounts showedthat this duty wasstrictly enforced. Preachers were sent from the district headquarters to the interior and they in turn had to submit accounts of money advanced to them by the District Organizer for propaganda. For the lowest level of this hierarchy there were elaborately drawn up formsfor-recording in the minutest detail the strength and degree of training of each village samiti, the population, and the natural features of the village. In practice, however, control over this far-flung organization was never complete in spite of Das’s dictatorial powers. His original plan was to avoid a prematurecollision with the authorities, working secretly and quietly until the preparations were complete. The violent acts in the first instance were generally the work of insubordinate members in moments of excitement.1°° Revolutionary organization was plagued by twodifficulties: endemic rivalry among the leaders and the tendency of their armed followers to violate instructions. Nevertheless Jugantar and Anushilan, which maintained a loose co-operation to avoid police raids,represented an impressive feat in organization, reaching out far into the country from their respective headquarters at Calcutta and Dacca and maintaining the political links that had first been forged in course of the Swadeshi movement. At a time when the nationalist organization of the Swadeshi era had been broken up by police repression, the banned samitis, operating underground, kept alive the spirit of nationalism by invoking apocalyptic visions of revolution.1** Grudgingly the Secretary of State had to concede at the height of the terror that the young Bengali had proved ‘more active, more daring and more dangerous than the Baboo at whom for years Englishmen... have... scoffed’.158 150 TB 1913, ‘History of the Political Agitation and bhadralog crime in the

city of Dacca from 1905 to 1913’; GI, Home Poll (A), May 1913, nos. 72-5.

1517TB 1917, ‘Note on the action taken under the Defence of India Act in Tippera District with its results.’ 452 Frome Poll Deposit, September 1915, no. 34. 163 Chelmsford Collection, Letters to and from the Secretary of State, vol. 2, Chamberlain to Chelmsford, 18 December 1916, quoted in Hirendranath Chakravarti, p. 409.

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Thefirst assassinations at Muzaffarpur created a panic among the European community of Calcutta. One of their leaders wanted the city to be placed under martial authority, so that troops could be called out quickly to protect the white residents.°4 There was a sudden change in the attitude of the non-official Europeans, who had not panicked even at the height of the Swadeshi movement. Indeed, there had been a distinct lack of unanimity in their attitude to the Bengali agitation and the Muslim agitation of 1905-7. Some had regretted that the Europeans had taken no active stand on the political issues: ‘By siding with the Mohamedans and opposing the illegal action of the Bengalis, Europeans might have pacified the Mohamedans who had grounds of complaint.’ Others warned that if Europeans took sides, matters would be far worse. They believed that ‘nobody thought anything ofthe agitation’.This complacency withered at the first blast of the revolutionary terror. Until 1908 the non-official European community had opposed the arbitrary powers of the executive, upheld the independence of the High Court and pressed for constitutional reforms that would give them greater weight in the councils of government. With the outbreak of the terror in 1908 their position changed overnight. They now demanded more powers for the executive to deal with crime, independently of the courts.°® Feeling ran high against the High Court wheneverit failed to support the executive.15” Behind the closed doors of the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association the irreconcilable clash of fundamental interests between the ruling white minority and the subject native population was stressed without inhibition:

... Whereas we formerly had a non-official body to fight the Government, we and the Government together have now to contend against the claims (in manycasesirrational) of our Indian fellow subjects. The contest is ceasing to be one between the nonofficial community and the Government, andis rapidly developing into a racial question: the issue now raised is white versus brown. The non-officials therefore closed ranks with the bureaucracy, ‘thus uniting all white forces against the common enemy’.!°§ 154 EADA, Proceedings of the meetings of the Council commencing 26 January

1906 to December 1913. 23rd meeting, 25 May 1908. 185 Ibid., 194th meeting of the Council, 31 August 1906.

156 Tbid., special meeting of the Council, 11 May 1908.

157 Ibid., 222nd meeting of the Council, 27 November 1911.

158 Tbid., 207th meeting of the Council, 21 September 1908.

13

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On the Indian side there was simultaneously a convergence of pressures from far beyond the underground revolutionary circle to thwart the executive. In the grim battle between the police and the revolutionaries, the sympathy of large sections of Bengali society lay with the latter. The lines were thus clearly drawn. Immediately after the Muzaffarpur murders, white members of the Bar Library and the Attorney Library of the Calcutta High Court could sense that their Indian colleagues were on the opposite side of the fence. They reported to the Council of the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association that ‘some of the leading Indian members of the Bar had been very limp in their expression of sympathy with the victims’, and in the Attorney Library, according to a European Solicitor, the opinion of the Indian attorneys was against the police procedure rather than the act of assassination.*® The picture of the boy assassin at Muzaffarpur, Khudiram, was distributed throughout the length and breadth of the country and the corpse of another young man, Kanailal De, who had been hanged for shooting an informerinside the Alipur jail, was followed by sympathetic crowds of men and women to the burning ghat. The governmentwasfinally compelled to order the bodies of executed terrorists to be cremated inside the jail compound.’® The Calcutta Bar and the Bengalpress, while condemning the series of assassinations in ‘set phrases’,!* unanimously opposed the use of extraordinary powers for dealing with terrorism. When a fine was imposed on certain Bikrampur villages for compensation to the families of assassinated men, the Bengalee and the Amrita Bazar Patrika, two papers with no love for each other, at once combinedto raise a furore so that collection had

to be stopped. Faced with the far-reaching influence of the Bar and the press and the virulent opposition to authoritarian government among all sections of otherwise divided Bengali politicians, the Government of Bengal had to tread very carefully.1°* Even the most moderate of politicians were opposed to ‘the spectacle of a great and powerful Government arrayed in all its strength against a band of pitiful youths on the solemn charge of waging waragainst the king’.1® 159 Tbid., special meetings, 4 and 11 May 1908. 160 Bhupendranath Basu Papers, incomplete letter of Basu to Carmichael,

31 May 1913.

161 GI, Home Poll (A), May 1916, no. 172.

182 GT, Home Poll (A), May 1913, nos. 72-5. 468 Bhupendranath Basu Papers, incomplete letter of Basu to Carmichael,

31 May 1913.

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After all, as P. C. Lyon of the Governor’s Council pointed out in

an unwelcome note to the Home Department at Simla, the terrorists’ ‘aspirations to political freedom are the same as those held by moderate and loyal Bengalis and can never be condemned utterly by the British nation’. The same view was echoed by a loyal but patriotic Muslim in the Governor’s Council, Nawab Sir Syed Shamsul Huda, who urged that the terrorists’ aims, irreconcilable

though they were with British rule, could not be ignored altogether, ‘for it must be remembered that they are not a class apart but are interwoven with the rest of the people, who to a certain extent share their sentiments whilst condemning their extreme views and methods.’1*4 These irrepressible sentiments in favour ofself-rule were powerfully stimulated by an ever-increasing hostility to those economic interests that constituted the core of British domination in Bengal. “There is’, reported Carmichael’s governmentin 1913, an enormous amountoffallacy [?] prevalent about the economic drain and the exploitation of India by foreign capital .. . These views are generally shared outside educated circles by the lower middle class . .. The false ideas which are so prevalent among the students therefore receive a great deal of sympathy outside; and the worst excesses of the members of that class are apt to be regardedasafter all only reckless exhibitions of patriotism.1® The psychological effects of the revolutionary terror were thus far-reaching. Recalling the events of 1908, Bhupendranath Basu, one of the most moderate leaders of the Bengal Congress, was to write later that no one who wasnotin the country at the time could ‘form an adequate idea of the excitement that followed these events. Repression and crime followed in a vicious circle and the whole province was in a state of turmoil.’1°* Terrorism was not therefore, as has sometimes been alleged, a narrow, class-bound movement,

though obviously it was not in any sense a mass movement. That government did not collapse in the under-administered delta of East Bengal was due to the fact that the terrorist movement had not affected the cultivating classes. Moreover, the Muslims, who were the majority, shunned the movement, repelled by the Hindu vows 164 GT, Home Poll (A), August 1917, nos. 225-32, 4165 Lome Poll (A), November 1911, nos. 138-9. 166 Bhupendranath Basu Papers, incomplete letter of Basu to Carmichael, 13 May 1913.

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which were obligatory for membership of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti.16? These limitations of the movement suggest the necessity of exploring, howeverbriefly, someof the uglier aspects of the terrorists’ campaign. Forall their undoubted acts of heroism andself-sacrifice, and the wide sympathy which they evoked from educated Bengali society for having established the ‘manly’ character of the muchmaligned Bengali people, there were certain darker aspects of the movement that were hinted at by Rabindranath Tagore in his contemporary novels, and of which there is ample and sometimes startling evidence in the dustyfiles of the Intelligence Branch. The strong religious element in the constitution of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti should have given its members some claim to purity of life. But no serious attempt was madeby the leadership to observe the vows of the Brahmachari—ofchastity and continence— prescribed by the rules of membership. Evidence collected by the police showed that ‘moral perversion of the grossest kind’ was rife among ‘the members of this pernicious society’. Jatin Mukherjee, the leader of the rival Jugantar group, who waskilled in action in Balasore in 1915, owed his pre-eminent position in the revolutionary circles not only to his qualities of leadership but also to his reputation as a Brahmachari with no thought beyond the revolutionary cause. Pulin Das lacked the moral fibre of this man. His intimacy with Suresh Sen—to conceal which he caused the boy Annada Prasad Ghosh (who stumbled upon the intrigue) to be murdered— was by no meansanisolated incident; for during a sudden search of his house in Calcutta in March 1910 he was found with a boy ‘in circumstances that left little doubt as to the relationship between them’. In the Calcutta Anushilan Samiti, Satish Bose was the worst

offender against the Samiti vows with regard to pederasty. Though pederasty was not openly countenancedin the Samiti, it did not carry the stigma that the vows would lead one to suspect. On the other hand, Pulin Das was inflexible in his attitude towards Samiti members having any dealings with women. Sarada Chakraborty who started a women’s wing was thought to have misconducted himself and was consequently put to death in July 1912.18 Nor did all the leaders prove to be over-scrupulous with regard to the finances of their organizations. During the war, not less than three and a half lakhs of rupees in cash and ornaments wassecured bypolitical da487 HomePoll (A), November 1911, nos. 138-9. 188 TB Library, no. 55.

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coities; yet genuine revolutionaries remained very short of funds due {at least partly) to embezzlement by the ‘Organizers’, of which six confirmed cases came to the knowledge of the police. Jitendra Sen appropriated some stolen property, including one gold necklace which he gave to his wife, and cleared a debt of Rs 500 out of the proceeds of the Corporation Street robbery. There was, therefore, something in the view that some of the leaders were using the movement for purposes of personal gain. This might well have been one reason why the ‘Organizers’, who carried off the proceeds, insisted upon the more manly but highly credulous Armed Branch knowing as little as possible and notvisiting them without twenty-four hours’ previous notice.1® The Dacca Anushilan Samiti’s drill manual, moreover, taught the numerous waysin which the body of a human being could be mutilated with revolting cruelty. The whole revolutionary movement was carried on in a psychopathological atmosphere of cruelty, suspicion and treachery, faithfully depicted by Rabindranath Tagore in his novels, Ghare Baire and Char Adhyaya. II. EMERGENCE OF COMMUNAL POLITICS

Divide and control

The imperial government, by its attempt to undermine the basis of Bengali nationalism, had involuntarily given it a well-organized and fully articulate form. The British then set out deliberately to foster Muslim nationalism as a counter-force, but in so doing they released in the sphere of politics a new current which was ultimately beyond their control. Increasingly the thrust of imperialism generalized the political reactions of its subjects, and competing bonds of a wider nature sprang into operationin institutional politics. Before 1905 the East Bengali Muslims had no political leadership and indeed no arena of political activity in which to perceive themselves as a single community. But in a plural society which had been drawn underthe umbrella of a single administration, the power controlling the distribution of resources was in a position to construct provincial boundaries, educational institutions, service rules, municipal and local boards and legislative councils in such a manner as to accentuate or blur communal distinctions. The new government of Eastern Bengal and Assam, by systematically altering the existing constituencies in order to make resources available to individual 16° TB 1917, ‘Information Relating to the Funds of the Revolutionary Party’.

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Muslim competitors as members of a community, gave political shape to the Muslim community of East Bengal, and byselecting the Nawab of Dacca as the representative of this community by virtue of his wealth, title and status, thrust political leadership on the leaderless Muslims. It was estimated by the Intelligence Branch that by 1907 the doctrine of Swaraj or complete self-government had captured the mindsof fully eighty per cent of the educated Hindu population of Bengal.!” It also obtained support from a section of educated Bengali Muslims in Calcutta who were organized into the Bengal MahomedanAssociation in 1906 by A. Rasul, a barrister of Calcutta whoedited, with Mujibur Rahaman, the nationalist Muslim paper, the Mussalman. The Bengal Mahomedan Association was, however,

never very effective in mobilizing Muslim public opinion in favour of the Swadeshi movement. All it did was to ensure a regular body of Muslim delegates from Bengalto the Indian National Congress.” The organization could mobilize this degree of support for the Congress because it enjoyed the allegiance of Muslim politicians in West Bengal towns like Burdwan, where a faction comprising the important Hindus and Muslims of the town controlled municipal affairs. Abul Kasim, an important Congressman, was a lawyer in Burdwan. In East Bengal, however, it was Nawab Salimulla’s separatist party which captured the effective leadership of the Muslim community. The explanation of this developmentlay in a definite shift in British policy which offered important benefits of collaboration to educated Muslims in East Bengal which at this stage they were too weak to spurn. The educated Muslims of East Bengal, including their patron NawabSalimulla, wereat first opposed to the idea of their transfer to the backward and autocratic province of Assam, which would cut them off from the metropolis of Calcutta to which all avenues of powerled. As soon, however, as the British government realized the

true measure of the opposition to the partition of Bengal, there was a subtle shift in the emphasis of their policy from administrative convenience to communaljustice. It was now madeoutthat the creation of a new province was not merely for rationalization of an overextended and overburdened government, but also a step to ensure the material progress of the backward majority community of the 170 YB Library, no. 47. 17. Mussalman, 20 December 1907; Bengalee, 20 December 1907.

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new province. Nawab Salimulla and other Muslim leaders were contacted and assured in both private and public utterances that for them a more secure avenue of power led straight to a new and separate capital at Dacca. In the exercise of power, Hindu and Muslim politicians were perfectly prepared to work together in municipalities; and even in East Bengal, where the potentiality of conflict between the educated sections of the two communities was greatest, Sirajul Islam was elected from the Chittagong Division local bodies to the Legislative Council largely on the Hindu vote. Once, however, it becameclear that the exercise of power would be

facilitated for Muslim politicians in collaboration with the government against the Hindu politicians, the same logic which led to collaboration between men of both communities ensured their growing conflict with each other. With the encouragement provided by the British government, a deputation of Muslim ‘Nobles, Jagirdars, Talukdars, Lawyers,

Zamindars, Merchants and others’, led by the pompous potentate, His Highness the Agha Khan, waited upon the Viceroy, Lord Minto, whotold them, “Your presence here todayis very full of meaning.’ He thanked the Muslim community of East Bengal ‘for the moderation andself-restraint’ they had shown under conditions which were new to them, and was‘entirely in accord with’ the Muslim deputation that the Muslims could not expect a fair share underterritorial representation and that they should have representation not according to numbers but political importance and ‘service to the Empire’.172 That the presence of the deputation at the Viceroy’s darbar in Simla was indeed pregnant with meaning became clear two months later: the Muhammadan Educational Conference at the end of December 1906, under the inspiration of the Nawab of Dacca, assumed by an easy transition the character of a political demonstration in favour of the partition of Bengal and against the boycott of British goods. The Conference delegates at the end of the conference became the delegates of the All India Muslim League organized by NawabSalimulla. The Bengal Mahomedan Association organized in Calcutta a counter-demonstration to Nawab Salimulla’s party by inviting a conference of nationalist Muslims, including M. A. Jinnah, from various parts of India. The conference unanimously resolved that 172 Morley Collection, Question of Muhammadan Representation, October 1906 to November1909, nos. 1A and 1.

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Muslim interests coincided with other communal interests in almost all cases and that the Muslims should join the others in the work of the political and economic advance of the country.1”3 An ephemeral political association called the Indian Mussalman Association was put up at this conference, but nothing more washeardofit. The majority of the educated Muslims in East Bengal who lent their support to the League sharedthe belief of Salimulla that the partition of Bengal would promote their educational interests and job opportunities. In the province of East Bengal and Assam there was in fact a significant expansion of the educated section of the Muslim community underthe fostering care of its new government. Although Bampfylde Fuller, the ruler of East Bengal and Assam, wrote to the Viceroy—‘Wehaveto be careful not to commit ourselves entirely to Musalman interests, or to act in a way which would encourage Musalmanryots to rise against the Hindu landlords,’?’"4—as a matter of fact, the logic of taking the politicial situation in hand made him deliberately weight his policy in favour of the Muslim politicians. The partition, wrote Carmichael to Crewe, ‘made our officers keenly

determined to help Mohammedans; it may have been unconscious, but the bias amongofficials in favour of Mohammedanswasstrong. All Hindus thoughtthis. . . .*”> The Government of East Bengal and Assam laid downthepolicy of giving greater employment to Muslims in the governmentservice and raised the numberof scholarships and hostels reserved for Muslim students.1”* A patient investigation of its confidential minutes showsclearly that it was not merely a case of pro-Muslim bias on the part of local officers or partiality by J. B. Fuller: in fact their very policies in education, employment and other issues were designed to undermine the position of the dominant Hinduelite to the benefit of their Muslim competitors.1”’ The Muslim separatist movementfostered by the Government of East Bengal and Assam was a most welcome development to Lord Minto, who wrote to the Prince of Wales on 13 December 1906: ‘AIl the same the 173 Bengalee, 6 and 9 January 1907. 174 Minto Papers, Correspondence with Persons in India, November to June 1905-6, no. 11, J. B. Fuller to Minto, 26 November 1905. 8 Lord Carmichael of Skirling, a Memoir Prepared by His Wife (London, 1921), p. 169. 46 Minto Papers, no. 127, L. Hare to Minto, 31 October 1906. 7 Richard Paul Cronin, British Policy and Administration in Bengal 1905-

1912: Partition and the New Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam (Calcutta, 1977).

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Muhammedan Movementhas been a mosttelling reply to Bengali agitation, and people can see well now that, if they go too far in backing upthe latter, they run the risk of runningtheir heads against sterner stuff than they are accustomed to deal with. The knowledge ofthis will, Iam sure, have a great influence towards keeping things quiet.’278 The initial impulse behind the new communalism came from administratively engineered competition between educated Hindus and Muslims, and not,as is often assumed,from agrarian tension between

Hindu landlords and Muslim tenants. In the towns of East Bengal an educated circle of service and professional people was being formed among the Muslim community, who foundthe path oftheir progress barred by the entrenched positions of the educated Hindus, especially Bikrampuri babus, in schools and colleges, in courts, in governmentoffices and legal professions, in municipalities and local and district boards. There was no really serious Hindu—Muslim problem, as the Bande Mataram pointed out, except between the educated sections of the two communities. “What are the roots of these jealousies and dissensions?’ asked the paper, and commented: “They are, practically, two: first, competition between the Hindus and the Mohamedans for Government posts; and second, competition between membersof the two communities for Municipal, Local Board or District Board memberships, and, to some slight extent, for seats on the Legislative Council, both Provincial and Imperial.’”9 Becauseofthis rising urban tension between the educated sections of the Hindu and Muslim communities in East Bengal, the longstanding rural discontent which had never until now assumed a communal shape in East Bengal began to supply ammunition to the Hindu-Muslim problem. Competition between urban elite groups gave a communalcolourto the rioting that broke out at many places in East Bengal almost simultaneously in March and April 1907, the mostserious riots occurring in Comilla and Jamalpur. Authority, however, chose rather to nurture the fond belief that the riots were due to the harassment of Muslim raiyats and shopkeepers by Hindu zamindars and national volunteers in order to force them to join the boycott movement. The enforced boycott of British goods, which forced poor Muslims and Namasudras to buy 178 Minto Papers, Letters and Telegrams to Persons in England and Abroad, vol. 1, no. 59, Minto to Prince of Wales, 13 December 1906. 179 Bande Mataram, 10 October 1906.

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Swadeshi articles at higher prices, was, no doubt, as Rabindranath Tagore pointed out, a serious injustice and oppression committed by the higher classes of Hindus. But although the riot in Jamalpur originated in a fracas between Muslim shopkeepers and national volunteers in the bazaar, the disturbances which then spread from Jamalpur town to Dewanganj, Bakshiganj and Phulpur took place in purely rural areas where there was no Swadeshi movement. The Hindu press made much ofthe preaching ofitinerant maulvis sent in by the Nawab of Dacca. The Red Pamphlet, calling upon the Muslims to rise against the Hindus and to take their property and women, did not circulate in Jamalpur before the riots, and appeared in Dewanganj only after the riots had ended. In Bakshiganj thana a maulvi did lead rioters against a levy for the upkeep of Hindu idols, but the levy in this instance was a collection made from Muslim raiyats by Hindu mahajans who habitually charged a compound interest of 50-100 per cent on their loans.1®! There was some amount of preaching by maulvis even before the riots, but the nature of this religious crusade must not be misunderstood. The material interests of the growing number of educated Muslims, who were competing in local boards and government offices with educated Hindus, were responsible for this growth ofreligious propaganda. With the increase of education among Muslims, young men were returning from schools and madrasas in growing numbers to preach a movementfor social and religious reform. The movement madelittle progress before the establishment of the separate province of East Bengal and Assam. Shortly before the outbreak of agrarian disturbances in Dewanganj, a Muslim maulvi and a Hindu convert toured the area, denouncing subscriptions to Hindu festivals and encouraging the raiyats to demandfixity of tenure and rent. The main purpose in holding these demonstrations was to persuade the villagers to elect the preachers to the local board.18* Maulvi Samiruddin, who held these meetings, succeeded in getting elected to the local board, his followers preventing the Hindus from voting by rowdy behaviour. In their growing competition with the Hindus for the capture of the local boards in East Bengal, the educated Muslims were thus trying to tap the source of power inherent in rural economic discontent throughreligious appeals. 180 GI, Home Poll (A), December 1907, nos. 57-63. 181 Tbid. 182 GJ, HomePub. (A), July 1906, no. 124.

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During these disturbances a panic broke out among the Hindu minority surrounded by the majority Muslim population, and this was largely due to the behaviour of the police. The police made a habit of searching Hindu premises on every occasion oflooting and rioting by Muslims. In Jamalpur, after the image of the Goddess Durga was broken by Muslim rioters, the police, in the course of their investigation, turned the houses and offices of the local Hindu zamindars upside down. The intention was to create a panic among nationalist zamindars who had long been marked for their ‘unsatisfactory’ political attitude, especially Brajendra Kishore Raychaudhuri of Gauripur, from whoseestate office in Jamalpur the Swadeshi movement was being pushed by two agents of the Gauripurestate.183 This tactic paid off handsomely, for before long the zamindars, pensioners andtitle-holders, including such well-known Swadeshi leaders as Maharaja Manindra Chandra Nandy, Maharaja Surya Kanta Acharya Chaudhuri and other people who had openly or secretly supported the Swadeshi movement, were rushing to the government with a loyalist manifesto. It was a manifesto of frightened men who had been made to understand the real measure of their dependence on the governmentfor the protection of their vested interests.184 The situation in East Bengal appeared to the frightened Hindu minority to be sliding into a virtual civil war, with the police ranged behind the Muslim rioters. The panic and the exodus from townslike Jamalpur that ensued resulted not only in the withdrawal of the big landlords from the Swadeshi movement, but effectively put an end to the programme of committing the rural masses to the movement except in strongholds of the agitation like Bakarganj, where the movementlastedtill 1908. This momentof truth brought into tragically sharper focus those latent elements of communalism in the Hindu-dominated national movement that were increasingly to vitiate the politics of the province. Wild rumours spread over the country after the breaking of the image of Durga in Jamalpur, and the Hindu press in Calcutta reacted with the most incredible ferocity—the Bande Mataram, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the Bengalee, the Sandhya, the Jugantar and the Swaraj all declaring war in the most undisguised communal 183 Swaraj, 15 and 22 Baisakh, 1314 B.S.; GI, Home Poll (A), February 1908, nos. 102-3.

184 Bande Mataram, 22 August 1907.

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terms.18 The Swaraj reported: ‘Lathi charge on innocent Hindu pilgrims by Musalman gundas, looting of shops, sack of kacharis, might have been said to be very minor oppression. This time, the idol of the Hindus, the image of Basanti, has been broken into pieces, and the chaste wives of the households have been stripped naked,insulted and violated.’48* Aurobindo Ghose’s Bande Mataram,

exhorting the Hindusto use force, asked:

Have we any excuse for inaction? None. Some of us have been saying that the Mahomedansare numerically superior in the districts where the outrages are being perpetrated. But is that a justification for our inaction? Are we not sufficiently provoked, sufficiently agitated, sufficiently outraged to forget cold calculations, and do the bidding of the natural impulse of man to defend his own? The Mahomedans may be numerically superior in some districts, but in India as a whole Hindus outnumber the Mahomedans. And is not this an occasion forall India to take up the cause of dishonouredreligion and outraged chastity ?18” Never within historical memory had the relations between the two communities been so charged with fear, hatred and suspicion. The volunteer corps which figured prominently in the scuffles with Muslims at Comilla and Jamalpur developed a communal mentality in which the idea of revolutionary action by elite groups without involving large numbers of people took root easily. A significant development was the rushing up of volunteers from towns in both halves of divided Bengal—Chittagong, Brahmanbaria, Noakhali,

Barisal and Calcutta—to Comilla and Jamalpurin order to protect the local Hindus. This striking growth of supra-local communal fellow-feeling was a strong indication that the Hindu and Muslim communities of the two Bengals were becoming psychologically valid social categories on an all-Bengal basis.188 The Hindu and Muslim press in Calcutta, Dacca and other towns which witnessed no communalriots circulated stories of desecrated places of worship, dishonoured womanhood and murderous assaults, which prepared 18 RNP: Amrita Bazar Patrika, 30 April, Jugantar, 12 May, Sandhya, 13-14 May, Bengalee, 22 May 1907. 188 Swaraj, 22 Baisak, 1314 B.S. 187 Bande Mataram, 10 May 1907. 388 For a skilful developmentof this argument, see John R. McLane,‘The 1905 Partition of Bengal and the New Communalism’, in Alexander Lipsky (ed.) Bengal East and West (East Lansing, Michigan, no date), pp. 57-60.

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people psychologically and physically for a communal blood-bath of much larger proportions than what actually took place. In Barisal, for instance, Hindu volunteers started patrolling the town at night in order to guard against an assault from the Muslim quarters, though nothing actually happened. A whole rangeofservice, educational and municipal relationships stretching far beyond the relatively small section of people with direct experience of the riots was affected by the communalvirus through the medium ofthepress. The thrust of communalism in these institutional relationships was deepened by constitutional arrangements which built Hindu-Muslim divisions into the representative structure of the Raj. Separate electorates under the Morley—Minto reforms of 1909 gave a permanently institutionalized form to communalfeelings. Although the newly organized Muslim league underits oligarchical leaders like the Agha Khan and the Nawab of Dacca had apparently channelized Muslim political aspirations away from the nationalist movement, the British were disturbed by signs of impatience among the younger generation of sharif Muslims. “I am sure yourealise’, wrote Lovatt Fraser, the Times correspondent, to Lord Minto’s secretary, ‘as keenly as he, the Agha Khan, appears to do, that probably our greatest danger in India is the likelihood of an entente, so much desired by the younger and abler Mohammedans, between Hindus and Mussulmans. Menlike the Aghaplainly feel that, in pressing for large separate treatment for Mohammedans,they are fighting our battle much more than their own. We have moreto lose than the Muslims by an entente between Islam and Hinduism.’* The electoral scheme devised by Minto was a device for perpetuating the separate political identities of Hindus and Muslims. The Constitutional reforms Encouraging Muslim separatism was only one part of Minto’s scheme of reform. The other part was to ensure a place for AngloIndia and its interests in that scheme. From the beginning Minto was anxious not to upset these interests: ‘But in attemptingto introduce any radical reforms one has to consider even though one knows them to be right—the effect they will produce on the Anglo-Indian world—if Anglo-Indian opposition is too bitter. One maystir up 189 Minto Papers, Letters and Telegrams to Persons in England and Abroad commencing from July 1908, vol. 11, from Lovatt Fraser to Dunlop Smith, 20 July 1909.

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racial feeling which would cancel the good of any reform—one must not ride the horse too hard and must be prepared to bide one’s time.’"48 No less anxious on this point were the non-official Europeans themselves, for any scheme of reform was bound to affect a whole range of interests in commerce and industry. Nationalists knew this as well: It has been repeatedly avowed by the Government of India that they desire to draw as much of British capital into India as they can, for the so-called development of the natural resources of the country; and having thus invited British capital here they are morally bound to give it and its agents all the protection that might be needed by them. The ultimate motive that works the exclusion of the Indian representatives from the right to vote on the budget is also to be found here. It is for this reason that we hold that questions of politicial and administrative reforms are organically related with this problem of economiesin India.1% The news of the proposed constitutional changes had theeffect of galvanizing the non-official Europeans. Their political organization, the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, had long been weakened by the deliberate exclusion of the planters from power. Big business in Calcutta, which controlled this body, had taken good care to fill the Council of the Association with the captains of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. The planters now proposed a membership drive in the districts by lowering the fee for admission. The Darjeeling Planters’ Association, the Dooars Planters’ Association, the Assam Branch of the Indian Tea Association, and the Behar

Planters’ Association, all argued that only more extensive backing could give the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association a stronger position before the government. In response the rules were amended to accommodate the planters to some extent, but carefully with a view to maintaining the supremeauthority of the council.192 This reorganization was carried out from the pressing necessity of ‘some influential body to watch over and safeguard the rights and 199 Minto Papers, Letters and Telegrams to Persons in England and Abroad commencing from September 1905,vol. 1, no. 196, Minto to Viscount Middleton, 29 April 1908. 191 New India, 14 October 1901. 1 EFADA, Proceedings of the meetings of the Council commencing 26 January 1906 to December 1913: 206th meeting, 31 August 1908, 209th meeting, 25

January 1908.

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interests not only of Europeans and Anglo-Indians resident in the country but those of the very large number of people in Europe who have invested their money here’. As the President of the Darjeeling Tea Planters’ Association warned,1** reforms would be tolerated only ‘as long as they do not imperil our existence and livelihood here’. He was impelled by the fear that ‘some of ourrulers living in the comfort of their English homes do not view matters from the same standpoint as we do and driven perhaps by Extremists for the sake of quiet they may grant such concessions to natives as will makeit impossible for us to remain and live in the country...’ To thwart such a possibility the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, enthusiastically supported by the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, demanded separate representation for each large section of foreign enterprise in India—commerce, trade, planting (tea and indigo), manufactures and mining.1*4 John Morley’s reception of these proposals was cold, but non-official Europeans had the solid support of . Minto andhis officials. The differences between the India Office and the Government of India allowed the free play of pressure groups in shaping the reforms.1** Minto, who did not sympathize with Morley’s desire to reconcile the moderate section of the Indian National Congress, twisted the latter’s reform scheme into a plan for rallying the landlords, the Muslims and the Europeans against the nationalist cause. His first reaction was to oppose increased Indian representation in the Legislative Councils, since, if it was introduced, ‘the Bengali babu and the “‘pleaders” would immediately get things into their own hands’. Minto’s political solution to the problem was ‘to strengthen the classes who have a real stake in the country—the Ruling Chiefs, the great landowners, the great interests of all sorts’.1°° With this purpose in mind he proposed Advisory Councils composed of the ruling princes and the territorial magnates, while intending to preserve official majorities inside the Legislative Councils. In so far as 193 Tbid., special meeting, 31 July 1908. 194 Thid., 200th meeting, 27 January 1908. 195 Thus in the Indian Councils Bill in Parliament three seats were proposed for European commerce on the Bengal Legislative Council. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce demanded five and under the rules framed by the Bengal officials European commercegot four seats. BCC 1909, vol. 2, nos. 597-1909.

196 Minto Papers, Letters and Telegrams to Persons in England and Abroad commencing from September 1905, vol. 1, no. 196, Minto to Viscount Middleton, 29 April 1908.

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he contemplated expanding the Legislative Councils, it was to moderate the influence of the ‘legal classes’, which had gained an ascendancy under the Act of 1892, by including more loyalist elements.1°7 Morley persuaded him to drop the Advisory Councils, and at his insistence the Indian Councils Act of 1909 as finally drawn up conceded non-official majorities as well as more extended opportunities for discussing the budget (though not of voting onit). On one point Minto dug in his heels: separate electorates for Muslims. He was not prepared to entertain Morley’s suggestion for joint electoral colleges which would ensure weighted representation for the Muslims. The provincial governments and the non-official Europeans put their united support behind Minto on this issue. The Government of Bengal objected to the proposed electoral colleges because ‘owing to sectional jealousies, Muhammadans wouldfindit difficult to act together’ and ‘the votes of the college might be so manipulated as to bring in a Muhammedanof the stamp of Leakat Hussain, a paid agitator, in the interests of one section of the Hindus’.?°8 As expected, the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association echoed this sentiment: ‘Any Mohamedans favourably received by the Congress agents would be partisans of Congress views, and not be true representatives of the Mohammedan communities.’°° The Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam entered the additional objection that the system of electoral colleges would deprive of representation the low caste Hindus who had started taking advantage of education and were beginning to participate in public life.2°° Even in this new province, where the Muslims formed the majority of the population, separate electorates were set up on the ground that although not a minority, they were a backward community.**+ By all kinds of specious reasoning the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy and the European world of commerce guaranteed a separate constitutional identity for the Muslim community, because 197 BCC,vol. 2, nos. 2310-17.

1% Morley Collection, Question of Muhammadan Representation, October 1906 ~ November 1909, no. vim. 199 EADA, Proceedings of the meetings of the Council commencing 26 January 1906 to December 1913, special meeting, 1 February 1909.

200 Morley Collection, Question of Muhammadan Representation, October 1908 - November 1909, no. vit. 201 Thid, no. XXXVI.

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they considered it, as Chief Justice Jenkins told Morley, ‘the most

effective modeof thwarting your scheme’.2°? Nonetheless the Act of 1909, as passed in its bare outline by Parliament, held no comfort for big business. What the captains of commerce had desired was weighted European representation to keep the natives in a minority—a demand rejected by John Morley ‘with a deliberate snub’. The prospect of non-official—i.e. Indian— majorities was so frightening (even with the good chances of Muslim alliance) as to urge a consultation between the European and AngloIndian Defence Association and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce on the advisability of an anti-reform movement by ‘the commercial classes, who would be most injuriously affected by the new changes’.*°8 The President of the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association secretly sought the Reuter Chief’s advice whether

the contemplated regulations under the Indian Councils Act of 1909, the charge of framing which had been given by Parliament to the provincial governments, would secure the European a better deal.?4 Here was a loophole; and Anglo-Indian officialdom promptly came to the rescue of their non-official kinsmen. Under the regulations drawn up for the Legislative Councils of the Bengal Presidency and Eastern Bengal and Assam, the nonofficial majorities were reduced to a sham. In Bengal the non-official majority included four European representatives of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, the Calcutta Trades Association and the

planting community (tea and indigo). In Eastern Bengal and Assam the non-official members included three Europeansrepresenting the Chittagong Port Commission, the tea interest and the jute interest. Taking the nominees of government and the non-official Europeans together, the official bloc numbered 30 in a house of 53, and 27 in a houseof 41, in Bengal and Eastern Bengal and Assam respectively. There were separate constituencies for landlords and Muslims as well, which wouldstill further augmentthe official blocs. In Bengal there were only twelve seats, assigned to municipalities and district boards, to which the nationalists could hopeto get elected, but of 202 Morley Collection, Jenkins to Morley, 15 September 1909, quoted in

B. R. Nanda, p. 350. 208 RADA, Proceedings of the meetings of the Council commencing 26 January 1906 to December 1913, 212th meeting, 31 May 1909. 204 Thid. 14

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these only four belonged to Bengal proper, the other seats being assigned to Bihar and Orissa.2> As an element in the new constitutional structure, Bengali nationalists were all but eliminated. In the Council elections of 1909, only two Bengali Congressmen were eventually elected, Baikuntha Nath Sen and K. B. Dutt. The picture was equally bleak for them in Eastern Bengal and Assam. Here they could contest only from the seats reserved for municipalities, district boards and landholders, nine in all. But the five representatives of the district boards, from the preponderance of Muslims in these bodies in a Muslim-majority province, were likely to be Muslims, the two landholders could not be relied upon to be independent and only three representatives from the municipalities could be expected to be independent men.?°* The Council elections fully bore out these calculations, for Muslims got elected both by virtue of their religion in separate electorates and byelectoral contest in general constituencies. The Bengali Hindus became more communal-minded after being cornered in the new Councils. After the publication of the result of elections in the Dacca division, where all Hindu candidates were defeated, the nationalist daily Bengalee went so far as to ‘point to the clear necessity of creating special electorates for the Hindus’.”°? The constitutional arrangements of 1909 brought into sharper focus the emergence of the Hindus and the Muslimsas distinct supra-local political communities, and gave the Europeans ample scope to manoeuvre between these antagonistic blocs. If the intention behind the reforms (at least of Morley) had been to rally the moderates, that intention was completely defeated in Bengal. Participation in the reformed Councils of the two provinces would have implied recognition of the partition of Bengal, as the extremists pointed out.*° Most moderates, following the leadership of Surendranath Banerjea, refused to contest in the elections in a remarkable demonstration of Bengali patriotic solidarity. By his steadfast non-co-operation at a time of growing revolutionary vio208 Karmayogin, 20 November 1909, reprinted in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 2, p. 280. There were two seats for the Calcutta University and the Calcutta Corporation, but in both these institutions elected Bengalis had been reduced to a minority by Lord Curzon. 208 Thid. 207 Bengalee, 14 December 1909. °8 Karmayogin, 18 September 1909, in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 2, p. 204.

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lence, Surendranath Banerjea compelled the government to give further concessions in 1912 to make the Morley~Minto reforms acceptable to the Bengalis. As a ‘royal boon’ granted on the occasion of the king’s visit to India, Bengal was reunified and separated from Bihar and Orissa on the west and Assam in the east. On the basis of this territorial redistribution, a new Legislative Council was constituted for the reunited province on an apparently broader and more liberal principle. For East Bengal, now merged with West Bengal, a new university was promised at Dacca to reconcile the East Bengali Muslims to the new arrangement. At the same time the seat of the Government of India was transferred from Calcutta to Delhi in ordertolift it above the strong local pressures in Bengal. Forthe first time in the history of popular representation in India, an elected majority was conceded in the Bengal Legislative Council. The ex-officio and nominated members numbered twenty-six and the elected members twenty-seven. As, however, the elected majority included the members returned by the separate electorates for nonofficial Europeans, Muslims and big landlords, the majority was illusory. Because of the solid representation of foreign capital in the new house, it was calculated that the non-official Indian element

would under no circumstances exceed twenty-five in a house of fifty-four .?°° European businessmen pressed for extra seats as compensation for the transfer of the capital to Delhi, in which they were quick to see a loss of leverage over the supreme government.*!° By threatening a hostile agitation (which they agreed to suspend during the royal visit), the non-official Europeansgot practically all they desired. They obtained six seats on the new Bengal Legislative Council (with the likelihood of securing two more by election or nomination) which wasonly oneless than what they had enjoyed in the previous Legislative Councils of the two provinces of Bengal (including Bihar and Orissa) and Eastern Bengal and Assam. Since they now obtained even stronger representation in the newly separated provinces of Bihar and Orissa and Assam, their total position in Eastern India obviously improved significantly. Their organ, the Capital, pronounced complacently that, taken as a whole, European commerce 209 Bengalee, 9 November 1912. 210 RADA, Proceedings of the meetings of the Council 26 January 1906— December 1913, special meeting, 12 January 1912; BCC 1912, vol. 11, BCC to GI, Home Dept, 2 February 1912,

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in Eastern India could not have much quarrel with its share of the franchise.?11 John Broomfield has seen in the reconstructed Bengal Legislative Council a brilliant opportunity for the moderates to secure progressive participation in government by co-operation with the wellintentioned new Governor of Bengal, Lord Carmichael of Skirling.”1” This is to overlook the crucial role of European capital in the new Council, and to underestimate the fundamental contradictions between the vested interests of the empire and the rising, unappeasable aspirations for self-rule that clashed continually in the Chamber of that Council.”"* British thinking and British policy—undertheliberalminded Carmichael no less than his conservative successor Ronaldshay—was strongly moulded by communal categories: bhadralok Bengalis, Muslims and non-official Europeans. An attemptto strike an artificial balance between these categories, rather than a genuine desire to accommodate nationalist aspirations, characterized the formulation and working of the reforms of 1912. The constituencies for the Legislative Council were constructed in such a way as to shore up this artificial balance and to exclude the Bengali Congressmen from most of the elective seats. These distortions would be evident from even a casual comparison of the schemeof representation submitted by the Indian Association (a strictly limited scheme drawn up in accordance with the provisions already laid down by the government’s preliminary circular) and the final distribution of seats arranged by Carmichael and his officials (see Table 4). The Association’s demand for one general electorate for each of the five divisions on the basis of income tax or local rates was brushed aside.*4* Every single electorate finally approved by Carmichael was ‘special’ one, reserved for one or other of the categories he intended to balance. The absence of general electorates forced the group led by Surendranath Banerjea to contest through local bodies, in many of which, especially the district boards, the landlords of local standing had a natural advantage over the candidates of the Calcutta-based Indian Association."As a result several veterans—Ambika Charan Majum211 212 "18 214 218

Capital, 7 November 1912. “A man with a mission’, Broomfield calls him. Elite Conflict, chapter 1. Thebestevidence of this is contained in Elite Conflict, pp. 62-71, 77-9, 86-94. Bengalee, 24 January 1912. This was hinted at in the Bengalee of 6 November 1912.

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TABLE 4 BENGAL LEGISLATIVE CouNcIL 1912 A. Schemeof Indian Association 1. Ex-officio Members

Governor-in-Council 2. Nominated Members Officials Experts

B. Final Composition 4 17 2

19

As in Column A Officials Experts

European Commerce in the Mofussil Indian Chambers of Commerce Others

. Elected Members Generalelectorates

5

5 5 1

Rate-payers of Calcutta

1

Graduates of Calcutta

1

University Muslims Zamindars

1 4 4

Indian Commerce

1

Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Calcutta Trades Association Narayanganj Trade & Chittagong Port

2

1 1 2

22

Municipalities District Boards Calcutta Corporation Calcutta University

16

2 1

Municipalities

6

Calcutta Corporation

1

District Boards

Elected Membersof Calcutta Corporation

Muslims Calcutta University

Zamindars Bengal Chamber of Commerce

Calcutta Trades Association Chittagong Port Commission Tea Planters

5

1

5 1

4 2

1 1 1

28

31 SOURCE AND NOTES: Bengalee, 24 January, 6 November1912. Basically the Indian Association was proposing that government and European Commerce should choose 24 members (officials, experts, Calcutta Corporation, Calcutta Uni-

versity, Chamber of Commerce, Trades Association, Narayanganj trade and Chittagong port), leaving the Surendranath Banerjea group 17 seats to contest (general, municipalities, district boards, Calcutta rate-payers, graduates) and with the hope of some support from 19 members returned by special Indian electorates. Actually government and foreign capital appropriated 29 seats (i.e. including Indian commerce, Calcutta Corporation and Calcutta University), created 9 special seats for Muslims and landlords and left 12 seats which the Banerjea group could contest with the hope of additional support from the specials,

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dar, K. B. Dutta, Baikuntha Nath Sen etc.—were defeated even from those constituencies which the ‘educated middle class’ had regarded as its own.2!6 Only a few candidates of the ‘Popular Party’—Surendranath Banerjea, Abul Kasim, Byomkesh Chakravarti and Surendranath Ray—scraped through.”!” These reverses have been attributed by John Broomfield to the inability of the bhadralokpoliticiansto talk the appropriate language of electoral politics at the grassroots, where there was more concern with local and communalinterests than with those abstract nationalist sentiments that formed the stuff of the restricted vocabulary of ‘phadralok’ politics. But this disjunction between the twolevels of politics—electoral and agitational—was deliberately fostered by the way in which the constituencies had been defined: Europeans, Muslims, landed interests, native commerce, local bodies, etc. These

constituencies had been constructed in such a way that political sentiments did not carry weight, only parochial and communal interests did. The needs of British rule dictated these distortions of Bengal politics, which can only be understood in terms of the continuous pressure of Anglo-Indian bureaucracy and European commerce to deflect politicial developments from normal, healthy channels. To deal with the ‘momentous changes’ of 1912, the non-official Europeans reorganized their association and renamed it the European Association in 1913.248 One factor which stood in their favour wasthat the popular party did not have the same degree of cohesion and discipline. They were united on the basic issue of the transfer of power but not on howit should be shared among themselves. The elections of 1913 were a classic instance of the point. Several candidates of the popular party scrambled for a seat ‘as starving beggars do after a piece of bread’.*!® After the electoral reverses, one of the defeated moderate candidates, Ambika Charan Majumdar, keenly felt the need for a living, well-established organization to restore 218 RNP 1912: Indian Empire, 14 January. "17 Broomfield mistakenly includes in this list the candidate returned by Calcutta University, Devaprasad Sarvadhikari, who, although a Congressman, was supported by the government-nominated majority against the Indian Association’s candidate Heramba Chandra Maitra. Bengalee, 7 January 1913. 218 FA, Calcutta Branch Minutes, 23 April 1918 to 16 December 1924. Ist meeting, 23 April 1918. *18 Indian World, 22 January 1913, quoted in Broomfield, ‘The Vote and the Transfer of Power’.

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sustained interaction between Calcutta and thedistricts. The Indian Association had yielded the initiative in the Swadeshi movementto

localized samitis, and these had since been banned. The banned

samitis, operating underground,did have a network of revolutionary cells throughout the province, but with these the moderates had no connection. :‘Surendranath Banerjea was in no position to tap this revolutionary network for mobilizing electoral support as C. R. Das would do in 1923. In the absence of such anelectorally useful revolutionary connection, the only way was to revive the extensive network of branch associations that the Indian Association had possessed in the 1870s and the 1880s. This was what A. C. Majumdar now proposed with a view to wresting the initiative from the terrorists. He urged that under rule 29 of the Indian Association at least two paid agents be appointed for three months to tourthe districts, organizing meetings and establishing branch associations.?”° But here the moderates were up against a practically insuperable difficulty. In the interior all the dynamic elements of nationalism were practically monopolized by the revolutionary samitis, and it was not possible for the party of constitutional reform to penetrate the districts without their co-operation, muchless against them. Moreover, Majumdar’s ambitious plans required money. The National Fund, which the Indian Association had opened in the heady days of the Swadeshi movement, was on the point of collapse.?* Thus nothing emerged out of Majumdar’s proposals for urgent “practical measures without loss of time’. Even a sympathetic moderatecritic wrote in 1913: ‘The party is a bundle of disjoined units which cannot resist the slightest pressure from without.’ This charge was eventually disproved by the stand taken by the popular party in the Bengal Legislative Council. It showed no sign of wilting under the pressure exerted by the European group. But undoubtedly the large European bloc in the Council exploited the factional rivalries in the popular party as best as it could. The weighted representation built into the constitution of the Legislative Council enabled the Europeans to play a role out ofall proportion 220 TA Committee Proceedings, letter from Ambika Charan Majumdarto the

Assistant Secretary of the Indian Association, dated Faridpur 13 May 1913, with

‘A Note’. Majumdar wasnotpresent, but at his request his letter and note were

read at the meeting of 14 May 1913. 221 TA, Committee Proceedings, 14 January 1914.

222 Indian World, 22 January 1913.

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to their number. The pattern of voting by the non-official members of the Bengal Legislative Council on the occasion of electing two members to the Imperial Legislative Council clearly revealed this. The moderates had staked a claim to those two seats on behalf of ‘the educated middle class’, since Muslims, landlords and European commerce hadall obtained separate representation on the Supreme Council. But due to the adverse European vote, combined with their own lack of cohesion, they could not get more than one of these seats in 1913. The two candidates of the popular party—Surendranath Banerjea and Bhupendranath Basu—might both have won on the nationalist vote in the Council if it had been split in equal halves between them. But as the moderates lacked a solid party organization in the Bengal Legislative Council, their plan to divide the votes equally between the two candidates went wrong in execution: Surendranath won by an unnecessarily large margin while Bhupendranathlost the election to the Maharaja of Nashipur, the loyalist candidate backed by the

Europeans. Bhupendranath, who suspected foul play by his colleague, settled his scores with Surendranath in the next election of 1916. This time the verdict was reversed as between Surendranath and Bhupendranath; but once again the Europeans managed to get their candidate, Sitanath Roy, elected to the Imperial Legislative Council. This episode of ‘Surendra and Bhupendra’ could hardly have taken place if the moderates had been a political party in the proper sense of the term. In 1913 they had tried in vain to ensure joint pooling and equal division of votes; in 1916 there was no party strategy at all. Three moderate candidates—Surendranath Banerjea, Bhupendranath Basu and Baikuntha Nath Sen (not a serious competitor)—fought on their own, trying to capture one another’s votes. The loyalists were also at first divided: the Maharaja of Nashipur and Sitanath Roy of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce were both seeking election. But the Europeansused their solid block of sixteen votes to rally the loyalists behind Sitanath Roy, and the Maharaja of Nashipur was deserted in a body. Against this European-backed candidate, clearly either Banerjea or Basu was likely to lose in the contest. Popular sentiment preferred ‘Surendra’ (Lord of Heaven) to ‘Bhupendra’ (Lord of Earth), but the latter cleverly manipulated this to ensure his own victory. Basu and his canvassers ‘went about telling the voters that Babu Surendranath

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Banerjea’s election was absolutely safe and that he should not be loaded with votes which he might leave to his son as a legacy’.228 The result was a last minute transfer of votes which led to Banerjea’s defeat, to the great indignation of the educated community.?*4 The large number of European non-official members in the Bengal Legislative Council, a factor peculiar to Bengal, greatly circumscribed the power of the moderates to ensure the election of their own candidates. The sixteen solid European votes accounted for Banerjea’s defeat, just as these had brought about Basu’s defeat in 1913.25 In a house where there was no agreement amongthe native members over the sharing of seats, European commerce wassoeffective because of its solidarity as a bloc. Thus British economic interests, working through the non-official European group in the council, were constantly at work, distorting and constricting the process of devolution of power. This, it must be emphasized, was their conscious role, not the mere effect of their divisive presence as a bloc. In the very first session of the reformed Council of 1913, Norman McLeod, the senior partner of a big agency house with interests in jute, denounced the Bengali opposition to police methodsof dealing with terrorism and posed the question, ‘How can anyone expect a reasonable man to admit the possibility of giving an equal voice to such people in the administration of this country ?’2*6 There was thus an inevitable clash of fundamental aims between Europeans and nationalists in the Legislative Council. Patriotic Bengalis might manoeuvre among themselves for various positions of poweralready devolved upon them, but not for a momentdid they lose sight of their common long-term objective, which was to compel the British to withdraw from all thei positions of economic and political control. It did not matter who gained in the short-term manoeuvres, whether—in this instance—it was Surendranath or Bhupendranath who waselected to the Imperial Legislative Council. The eloquent ‘Lord of Heaven’ had indeed made himself a thorn in the side of the administration during the Council sessions of 223 Bengalee, 2 August 1916, correspondence column.

224 Thid., 2, 4and 6 August 1916, Broomfield wrongly concluded that Banerjea’s defeat was a sign of nationalist impatience with the moderates, ‘an ominoussign for the British’, Elite Conflict, p. 90. 225 Bengalee, 1-6 August 1916. 228 Broomfield, Elite Conflict, p. 90.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

1913-15,227 but no less searching and inconvenient were the questions of the cautious and secretive ‘Lord of Earth’ regarding internments under the Defence of India Act from 1916.28 Here, it was clear, was no mutualclinging of straw-filled subjects and stuffed-up rulers. What the Englishman had feared—‘the attacks of a democracy of literati’22°—never ceased for a moment. European non-officials, led by Norman McLeod andaided bythe officials, sought to blunt the edge of the attack by imposing a limit on question hour.?*° But they could not stop the clamorous attacks on increased police expenditure in wartime for dealing with the spreading revolutionary campaign of terror.?34 Revolution of rising expectations The wartime measures for dealing with terrorism brought together the Bengali politicians as nothing else did. In the Bengali press, which condemned the measures unanimously, the Banerjea group as well as the more extreme Amrita Bazar group were united in their criticisms of the government. In the Bengal Council, all sorts of politicians combined to resist the effective implementation of the Defence of India Act,?%? This rapid convergence of disparate and even contradictory forces—the party of constitutional reform, extremists of all kinds and the terrorists—upon a swelling tide of opposition was brought about by the First World War, which fostered in Bengali society what can only be described as a revolutionary mentality. This new mentality had certain distinctive features. In the first place there were visible signs of an explosive impatience with white racial arrogance and a growing determination to put an end to discriminatory treatment.In Presidency College the notorious Oaten incident (in which an English professor was assaulted by several students, reportedly including the young Subhas Bose) indicated the extent of racial animosity even in the best arranged 22? Manoranjan Jha, Role of Central Legislative in the Freedom Struggle (New Delhi, 1972), p. 25. 228 GI, Home Poll (A), August 1917, nos. 225-32.

220 Fuglishman, 25 December 1913, quoted in Broomfield, p. 43. 280 Tbid., p. 63. 231 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.3, Ronaldshay to Chamberlain, 21 April 1917. 282 GI, Home Poll (A), August 1917, nos. 225-32. 88 GI, HomePoll Deposit, July 1915, no. 11.

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207

student—professor relationship. The assault on Oaten, which was ‘premeditated and carefully organized’, apparently followed upon a growing resentment of the off-hand way in which the European professors addressed their Bengali students. One called them ‘barbarians’, another compared them to ‘howling wild beasts’, another complimented them ontheir ‘chattering like monkeys’, and yet another enquired of his students why they had ‘behavedlike coolies’.234 The professors, who were usually affectionate enough, meant no harm— similar terms of endearment were habitually used by Bengali teachers—butthe significant fact was that the students had started looking upon them as the members of an alien and arrogantrace. The war evidently had something to do with this state of mind. Oaten himself had given offence by claiming that the British were civilizing India. At a time when the British papers were all engaged in denouncing the arrogant assumption of superior culture and efficiency by the Germans, it was especially galling that the attitude of the Englishman in India towards the natives had not changed in the least. ‘Generation follows generation and daysroll into centuries, but we cannot escape the assumption of the Anglo-Indian that Indians will never have the culture or efficiency of the Western races, and must be keptin their place for their own good.’**® The second feature of the revolutionary mentality was a widespread belief among the mass of ordinary people that the Germans were, contrary to the reports from Britain, winning the war. Undergroundleaflets circulating in Calcutta and elsewhere whispered that the English were hiding the true facts. One such leaflet, ‘Arise’, claimed that England’s naval power had been destroyed in the North Sea.?° These wild rumours and insinuations had considerable power over the commonpeople, who refused to believe any newsofallied success coming from British sources.?37 Rumours that the British empire was on the point of collapse (or had indeed collapsed) gripped

credulous, uninstructed minds, and the eagerness with which these

stories were received was a measure of the depth of antipathy to the alien regime. A congenial atmosphere for the spread of these rumours was 284 GI, HomePoll Deposit, May 1912, no. 12.

235 Bhupendranath Basu Papers, Basu to Charles Roberts, 13 August 1915. 236 GI, Home Poll Deposit, September 1915, no. 34. 237 For instance, Tagore to C. F. Andrews, 24 April 1919, Rabindranath Tagore Papers.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

provided by the unprecedented social distress in town and country. As early as August 1914 there was an alliance among speculators in commodities to push up prices, and the poor and middle classes began to feel the pinch of want as they had neverfelt it before.?88 A gloom settled over the whole country which did not lift even in October during the festival of the Durga Puja, a season of universal joy in Bengal.?3° The growing mass discontent was notyet associated with the political agitation, but both government and politicians were acutely conscious ofthis feeling of want and deprivation. This constituted the third feature of the revolutionary mentality. The disastrousfall in the price of raw jute, on which the peasants in East Bengal had cometo rely for ready cash, caused great anxiety to the Government of Bengal. Lord Carmichael was unable to offer constructive help to the East Bengali peasantry because of European opposition to any relief operations in East Bengal. The European jute dealers, in fact, abused Carmichael for imaginary steps to prevent panic-stricken peasants from selling the jute crop at ridiculously low prices.24° To scotch the move for the appointment of a committee on prices, the Narayanganj Chamber of Commerce adopted a systematic policy of not buying jute in season as a means of creating pressure.*41 The fall in jute prices coincided with the political excitement over the Khilafat issue, and Lord Carmichael considered the situation in East Bengal so grave that he requested the Viceroy not to move the troops posted there for the time being.?** In this atmosphere of social distress the political climate became charged with expectations that gripped all politicians, moderate and extreme. The most important component of the wartime revolutionary mentality was a growth of aspirations that far outpaced events as well as possibilities. An inevitable corollary to this was a widespread alarm that when the momentarrived, the British would back out of their promise to recompense India for her splendid service in the war. To test British goodwill the leading Bengal moderates, Surendranath Banerjea, Bhupendranath Basu andS. P. Sinha formulated specific reform proposals which defined self-government *38 Bengalee, 11 August 1914. #39 RNP 1915: Amrita Bazar Patrika, 16 October.

40 Hardinge Papers, vol. 88, no. 228, Carmichael to Hardinge, 12 October 1914, and no, 231, Carmichael to Hardinge, 6 September 1914. #41 CC, 11th ordinary meeting of the Corporation, 28 August 1918. *42 Ibid., no. 85, Carmichael to Hardinge, 5 August 1914, and no. 115a, Carmichael to Hardinge, 11 August 1914,

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within the empire as the goal, and as means towards this end, the introduction of a larger Indian elementinto the Indian Civil Service, autonomy for the provinces and financial control for the legislatures."48 The unfriendly reaction of the officials to these specific proposals of reform, which the Bengal moderates pressed the Congress into accepting in 1915, aroused great apprehensions. The immediate political consequence of this psychological transformation wasa striking consolidation of nationalist forces all over the country. The revolutionary mass discontent was yet to be harnessed to the machineryofpolitical agitation, but underthe stimulus of war ‘the vast majority of the educated classes and almost every student whothinks of public questions at all’ were deeply imbued with the spirit of nationalism. Moreover, these classes could no longer be regarded as an isolated and insignificant minority of the population. With prophetic insight P. C. Lyon, the most liberal Member of Lord Carmichael’s Executive Council, commented:

‘They are already learning to identify themselves with the masses, and are spreading their own distrust of British rule amongst them, and they will ultimately carry the people with them in their demands that nationalist views should be introduced into the government of the country.’*** The difficulties which had impeded the political efforts of the Swadeshi era were overcome one by one in these changed circumstances. The rest of India got into line with Bengal; the extremists regained admission to the Congress with the support of the moderates; and the Muslim League combined with the Congress to demandself-government within the empire. Toall these remarkable developments the Bengal moderates made solid contributions. Forall his deficiencies as a party manager and organizer, Surendranath Banerjea showed himself once again, as in his first era of non-co-operation from 1899 to 1911, a masterly political strategist. He of all moderates in India saw first and most clearly what needed to be done to harness the revolutionary feeling to a concrete programmeof action. The demandforself-government, he saw, could only be effective if political India was united behindit. He therefore proposed that an understanding be reached by the Congress with Muslim politicians, extremists be once again accepted as partners within the Congress, and these combined forces be mobi243 Bengalee, 2 July 1915; Bhupendranath Basu Papers, Basu to Theodore Morrison, 23 December1915.

244 GT, HomePoll (A), August 1917, nos. 225-7.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

lized, if necessary, for a campaign of resistance.2* Soon after the outbreak of war, Bengal once again initiated the move for a united Congress. Bhupendranath Basu,the President of the Madrassession of 1914, took with him the self-appointed extremist negotiator Motilal Ghosh, to negotiate the re-entry of the extremists to the Congress. But for the moment the move was blocked by the dominant Bombay group, led by Mehta and Gokhale.?# Foiled in their plan for a united Congress, the Bengal moderates quietly extended their support (despite Bombay’s disapproval and warnings from the British Committee of the Congress) to the Home Rule movement launched by Annie Besant,”4? which succeeded within a couple of years in radicalizing the rest of political India. In the meantime Pherozeshah Mehta and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who had so long controlled the Congress, died. There no longer remained any obstacle to Congress unity. At the historic Lucknow session of the Congress in 1916, the extremists rode back to the Congress on the crest of the Home Rule agitation. At the same time the Muslim League held its session in Lucknow. A pact was made betweenthe Congress and the League which laid down in detail the proportion of Muslim representation in each province. It was in effect a joint scheme of reform expressing the united demand of India for representative government and dominion status after the war. The complexion of Indian politics was profoundly changed. The formation of the Lucknow Pact immediately led to the building up of an explosive situation. The All-India Congress Committee and the Council of the Muslim League held a joint session in Bombay to consider a passive resistance campaign to enforce the Congress— League reform scheme on the British government.*4* The question wasreferred to the provincial Congress committees, and in Bengal the Banerjea group at once threatened ‘a raging and tearing scheme of agitation in connection with our demandforself-government’.249 Within the Bengal Legislative Council they apparently carried with them a great manyotherlegislators in their demand for responsible 45 Bengalee, 2 July 1915, 27 May 1917.

48 See Bhupendranath Basu Papers, correspondence with Annie Besant, Gokhale, N. Subba Rao and Motilal Ghosh from November 1914 to January 1915; Bengalee, 8 January 1915.

*47 Bhupendranath Basu Papers, Wedderburn to Basu, 10 November and 15 December 1915. 248 GI, Home Poll Deposit, February 1920, no. 57. 249 Bengalee, 27 May 1917.

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government. Outside the Legislative Council the Banerjea group closed ranks with the extremists, and in the process they admitted into politics younger politicians with new views wholater seized the leadership of the nationalist movement in Bengal and gave it an entirely different turn. In the Bengal Provincial Conference of 1915 Banerjea himself proposed to the chair his old rival, Motilal Ghosh, whodelivered a presidential address that altered the tone of Bengal politics.° Then in the Provincial Conference of 1917 Banerjea took the momentous step of proposing to the chair the man who was destined to displace him, Chittaranjan Das. C. R. Das had been oneofthe lesser leaders of the extremist camp in the Swadeshi era. He had subsequently abandoned politics to concentrate on his legal practice. Within a decade he became the most successful barrister of the High Court in his time. Upon reentering politics as the President of the Bengal Provincial Conference in 1917, C. R. Das delivered an address which, moving further along the lines indicated by Motilal Ghosh’s previous address,?*! virtually defined a new extremism which wasdifferent in many respects from that of the Swadeshi era. “We boast of being educated; but how many are we? What room do we occupy in the country? What is our relation to the vast masses of our countrymen? Do they think our thoughts or speak our speech?’ These were some of the disturbing questions C. R. Das raised. “We are proud of our education, proud of our wealth, proud of our caste; and this three-fold pride has so deadened andblindedoursensesthat, in all our essay and endeavour we quite leave out of account those whoare the flesh, blood and backbone of the land,’ he declared.*? Das drew attention to the

peasants and to their massive poverty and indebtedness. He spoke of village depopulation and the consequent overcrowding of the 250 Thid., 4 April 1915. 251 For comparison between the addresses of Motilal Ghosh and C. R. Das see the Bengalee, 22 April 1917, which pointed out the similarities: a common emphasis on village rehabilitation and ‘bridging the gap between the educated community and the masses. Thus C. R. Das’s address was not, as the Bengalee of 24 April 1917 commented, ‘unique in the sense that it was a departure from similar speechesin the past’. 252 This statement created a sensation and caused uneasiness among the moderates. The Bengalee of 26 April 1917 pointed out that the history of constitutional agitation in every country showed that it began with the educated classes. ‘It is not open to any oneto say that the political work of the last forty or fifty years has been labourlost . . .”, commented the paper.

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cities, of the need to rehabilitate the villages by making them sanitary and free of malaria. He warned against the modern tendency to seek a solution to the problem of poverty through industrialization, which had broughtinits train ‘frightful moral degradation’. He also condemnedthe entire structure of top-heavy English education. Finally he outlined a schemeofvillage reorganization that could be pursued independently of the British administrative framework, with its existing networkofdistrict and local boards. This was a three-tier scheme: all the villages in a district to be grouped into a number of unions, the adult males of each village to form an assembly andelect a Panchayat looking after sanitation, water-supply, night schools, industrial and agricultural education and petty civil and criminal disputes, and at the top, a district assembly of village groups exercising general supervision.”°? C. R. Das was not destined to undertake this work of village reconstruction, for the exciting task of organizing mass resistance against British rule left him with no timeforit. This is not surprising in view of the predominantly political temper of Bengal’s publiclife, for in the earlier extremist movement, too, the emphasis had shifted

from Rabindranath Tagore’s doctrine of atmasakti (i.e. constructive swadeshi without political agitation) to Aurobindo Ghose’s doctrine of passive resistance (which Tagore had disapproved). Already in 1916 rising extremist politicians had started a Home Rule League in Calcutta. Its office-bearers were a younger generation of extremists like Byomkesh Chakravarti, I. B. Sen and Hirendranath Datta, some of whom had formed the second rank leadership of the extremist movement in 1905-8.*5* Their ranks were greatly strengthened by the entry of an importantbarrister like C. R. Das. During the Swadeshi movement the extremists had no formal organization of their own to match the Indian Association of the moderates. Now, regimented into a collective body through the Home Rule League, they launched 258 Bengalee, 22 April 1917; Bengal Provincial Conference 1917: Calcutta Session (compiled by Yatindrakumar Ghosh, Calcutta, 1972). The strong resemblance on certain points with Gandhi’s programmeof regeneration will not have escaped the discerning reader. John Broomfield, who draws a sharp contrast between C. R. Das’s bhadralok approach and Gandhi’s mass approach, dismisses this notable speech with the comment that it was seen to be an appeal to the ‘lower class’ bhadralok against the Anglicized Babus. Elite Conflict,

pp. 163-4. From the text of the speech this appears to be impossible and Broomfield does not mention any contemporary who so misinterpreted it. 254 TB 1917, “The Home Rule Movementin Bengal’.

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a new agitation which was more broadly conceived. It avoided the exclusive Hindu idiom which had earlier antagonized the Muslims and issued its appeal in terms that were designed to attract the restive Muslim politicians. It was affiliated to a wider Home Rule movement throughoutIndia, led by Annie Besant and B. G.Tilak, and thus transcended the Bengali parochialism of the earlier Swadeshi movement.**> The internment of Mrs Besant in 1917 led to a stepping up ofthe agitation, and opinion among Hindu and Muslim, moderate and extremist, politicians throughout India, seemed to be forming in favourof passive resistance. The situation wassliding out of control when Montagu’s historic declaration of 20 August 1917 promising gradual realization of self-government calmed the atmospherefor the moment.5* Montagu’s declaration, followed by the announcement that he would personally visit India for consultations on reform, had the effect of splitting the moderate-extremist coalition in opposition to Mrs Besant’s internment. The internment, accompanied by several official pronouncementsseeking to dispel exaggerated hopes of postwarreform, had convinced Indian politicians that the British would concede nothing except under pressure. Overthe issue of transfer of further power they were all united. But Montagu’s proposed visit changed the whole issue: the question that came to the fore was how the powerto be transferred was going to be shared. The question rapidly developed into a fierce struggle for power within the Congress, in which the respective demandsofthe rival parties for Home Rule and Colonial Self-Government were used as mere slogans without any concrete meaning.”>” That was the logic of nationalism in a plural society: combination over the long-term aims of the movement, in-fighting after each advance towards those aims. In Bengal the dispute inevitably reflected the endemic rivalry between the two leading journalists of the province. The agitation against the internmentof Mrs Besant had united the various factions in Calcutta,

so much so that at the conclusion of a speech by Surendranath Banerjea in the Town Hall ‘Babu Moti Lal Ghoshrose in his place and expressed a desire to embrace the speaker, whereupon Babu Surendranath Banerjea graciously submitted to the ordeal and was 256 Tbid., C. R. Das’s speech at Barisal on 14 October 1917. 256 Bengalee, 28 August 1917.

25? Sabuj Patra, Asvin and Kartik 1324 B.S., article by Birbal (Pramatha Chaudhuri) entitled ‘Congresser daladali’, 30 September 1917. 15

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

publicly kissed by his enthusiastic—and as subsequent events went to show—hypocritical admirer.’*8 This unity dissolved over the issue of the election of the President of the Calcutta Congress of 1917, the struggle over which madethe current issues of the Bengalee and the Amrita Bazar Patrika ‘worth reading’. ‘It is a case’, pronounced Ronaldshay, ‘of Moti Lal, Byomkesh Chakraborty & Co. versus Surendra, Baikuntha Nath Sen & Co.’*°° In this struggle the Home Rule Leaguers enjoyed the advantage of backing from the extremistdominated AICC and other PCCs, the local support of Muslims and Marwaris in Calcutta and the support ofa large numberof provincial politicians in Bengal. Seven provincial Congress committees nominated Mrs Besant for the Presidentship of the Calcutta Congress, but the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee, which was under the complete control of the Indian Association (the association hadthe right of nominating the majority of the members of the BPCC), nominated the Raja of Mahamudabad by a majority of votes. Next day the angry Besantists gathered in great force with a number of upcountry hirelings at a meeting of the Congress Reception Committee, where the BPCC’s nomination of the Raja of Mahamudabad cameup for confirmation. Disturbances reminiscent of Surat broke out in the hall when the extremist lawyer, Hirendranath Datta, began to shout. Dissolving the meeting, the Chairman of the Reception Committee, Baikuntha Nath Sen, and the other moderate leaders stormed out of the hall,

leaving it in the possession of ‘the Rump’ who declared Mrs Besant elected president. They went into the office in the next room, captured a number of records and documents and resolved that the office of the Reception Committee be transferred to the chamberof Byomkesh Chakravarti.?® To legitimize this dubious proceeding, B. Chakravarti, Motilal Ghosh, C. R. Das and Hirendranath Datta went to the Tagore residence at Jorasanko to persuade the poet to become the Chairman of the Reception Committee. Rabindranath agreed, hedging his consent by two conditions, that Baikuntha Nath Sen should resign of his own accord and that the AICC should ratify the action of the Reception Committee.?*! *68 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.3, Ronaldshay to George V, 3 October 1917. *89 Tbid., MSS. Eur. D. 609.1, ‘My Bengal Diary’, 25 September 1917. *80 Bengalee, 1 September 1917; Mussalman, 7 September 1917. *61 Rabindranath Tagore Papers, Tagore to Motilal Ghosh, 10 September 1917.

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Because of the intervention of Tagore and the refusal of Sen to resign, affairs in the Bengal Congress reached an impasse. Several compromise proposals were mooted, but ultimately Tagore himself cut the Gordian knot byretiring in favour of Sen on the condition of Besant’s nomination.”® This solution was suggested by a conference of district leaders in Justice Chandra Madhab Ghosh’s house.*68 The election of Mrs Besant, who was received in Calcutta

with great ovation by Muslims and Marwaris, formally signified the ascendancy of the extremists in the Indian National Congress.?*4 The quarrel inside the Bengal Congress was patched up for the time being, but the compromise did notlast long. During the Reception Committee dispute in Calcutta, the decisive intervention by the conference of district leaders had shown the power of the mofussil. This was the sign of a new awakening in the interior, for during the previous ten years the district leaders had played nopart in the politics of the province, which was dominated by the oligarchy of the moderate leaders in Calcutta who controlled the political organizations of Bengal. The extremists in Calcutta decided to tap this new source of power in order to gain the upper hand in the city, and district leaders were urged to organize committees in their respective towns to carry on Congress and Home Rule propagandain the interior. C. R. Das himself held meetings in Dacca and Mymensingh to organize provincial support for the extremist version of the reform scheme.** Having realized during the Reception Committee dispute that the moderate domination of Bengal politics rested on their control of the BPCC throughthe Indian Association, the extremists in Calcutta conceived the strategy of a two-pronged attack on these twoinstitutions of moderate domination. Soon after the settlement of the dispute, the extremists called a political conference of delegates from the provincial townsto coincide with a BPCC meeting in December, where the legitimacy of the BPCC,in which the districts were underrepresented and the Indian Association wasall in all, was called into question. The moderates decided, wrongly, to have nothing to do with either the conference or the BPCC meeting, and taking ad262 Rabindranath Tagore Papers, draft of letter from Tagore to S. N. Banerjea sendingin his resignation, and Banerjea to Tagore, 1 October 1917, thanking him for the resignation. 263 Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1 October 1917. 264 Tbid., 6 October 1917. 265 Tbid., 11 and 15 October 1917.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

vantageof their absencethe extremists nominated a bodyofdelegates to the AICC which excluded the moderates. The extremists next attempted to capture the Indian Association at its annual general meeting where they put forward Byomkesh Chakravarti as their candidate for the Presidentship of the Indian Association against Surendranath’s nominee, Baikuntha Nath Sen. Banerjea won a thumpingvictory in this contest,2** but soon the extremists riposted by calling an extraordinary general meeting of the BPCC to discuss the unrepresentative character of this body. The moderates, who held all the executive posts of the Committee, refused to call the meeting on a day convenient for the provincial delegates, on whom the extremists relied for support.?6? So the extremist politicians in Calcutta—C. R. Das, B. C. Pal, B. Chakravarti, Hitendralal Banerji, Mujibur Rahman, Motilal Ghosh, Hirendranath Datta, I. B. Sen

etc.—organized a rival BPCC meeting of their own, where the quota of seats allotted to the Indian Association on the Committee was reduced to make room for the representation of the districts.6° With this dubiously earned control of the BPCC the extremists launched a propaganda offensive against the reform proposals which were being canvassed by the government. The extremists called a special session of the Congress in August 1918 to consider the Montagu-— Chelmsford Report. The moderates, who knew that they would be hopelessly outnumberedthere, did not attend it.76® Instead they held in November an All-India Moderate Conference in Bombay with Surendranath as its President. The Conference expressed support for the reforms.?” The schism, final and irrevocable, had taken place.

This time it was the moderates who left. They went out of the Congress and into the Councils. The exit of the moderates cleared the way for a radical restructuring of the Congress in Bengal, which began with the provision of district representation on the BPCC in 1918 and was completed by the organization of district and lower level Congress committees in every district of the province by 1921. This was eminently the achievement of C. R. Das. Under his leadership the institutional links 88 The Statesman and Friend of India, 18 January 1918; Amrita Bazar Patrika, 17-18 January 1918. 28? Ibid., 14 February 1918, correspondence column. *68 Tbid., 9 and 18 February 1918; Pioneer, 20 February 1918; The Statesman and Friend of India, 12 and 17 February 1918. 269 74, Annual Report 1918, telegram to the British Press through Reuter. 270 Bengalee, 13 August 1918; Surendranath Banerjea, pp. 282-5.

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between Calcutta and the districts, which had snapped after the collapse of the Swadeshi movement, were once again restored. As for the secret links forged by the terrorists throughout Bengal since 1908, these were also drawn by C. R. Dasinto the interlocking mesh of politicial relationships that now began to bind locality, district and province. The support of the Jugantar and Anushilan cells, which were located at strategic towns and hamlets, was of crucial importance to C. R. Das in first building up the new Congress machine in Bengal and then employing it successively in organizing the non-co-operation movement and fighting the elections,?”! This reformed BPCChad several advantages over the Indian Association. The BPCC wasanintegral part of an all-India organization, marching in step with the rest of nationalist India; and it provided a single framework through which the districts could participate in the nationalist movement. It was sufficiently radical to incorporate the revolutionaries, and open enoughto attract the Muslims. As weshall see, the Muslim politicians who participated in Congress politics in Bengal were careful to keep a separate identity for themselves through the Muslim League and the Khilafat Committee. But even so the increasing Muslim participation in nationalist activity would have been inconceivable a decadeearlier. From collaboration to confrontation By deliberately encouraging politicization of the backward Muslim community of East Bengal, the British initiated a process over which they were boundto lose control in the end. Just as educated Bengali Hindus had earlier acquired the strength to challenge imperialism by co-operation with the British after the Mutiny, so did the East Bengal Muslims become an independentpolitical force by collaborating with the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam. There was a substantial expansion of the Muslim administrative and professional classes in the towns of East Bengal underthe active patronage of the government.?”2 Similar processes were at work in Calcutta as well as in the towns of north India, as indicated by the Aligarh Muslim University movementled by the Agha Khan. Thatis not to 271 Public & Judicial, L-P&J-7-242-1931; IB 1923, ‘Action against certain ExState Prisoners, Ex-Detenus and Ex-Absconders for Resumed Revolutionary

Activity’. 272 Sufia Ahmed, Muslim Community in Bengal 1884-1912 (Dacca, 1974), especially chapters 1, 2 and 4.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

say that a tightly-knit educated Muslim middle class was emerging from the dispersed Muslim communities of the subcontinent. The East Bengali Muslims, who wanted money spent on education in their own province rather than on a Muslim University elsewhere, refused to subscribe to the Aligarh Muslim University movement until the Agha Khan placated the Nawab of Dacca with a Rs 65,000 interest-free loan for a hostel at Dacca.?’3 But gradually local particularist ambitions, which would politically benefit the British, flowed into a more universal aspirationforself-rule. By the time the partition of Bengal was annulled in 1912 as a royal ‘boon’ to the Bengalis, there was a growing younger generation of sharif Muslims in India with a more widespread English education who had sprung up as a new groupwithin the All-India Muslim League. The younger generation of nationalist Bengali Muslims, such as Fazlul Huq and Abul Kasim, belonged to a well-knit circle of sharif Muslims which contained loyalist Muslim oligarchs like Nawab Syed Mohammed and Nawab Abdul Jabbar, to whom the former two wererelated by marriage ties. What distinguished the younger Muslims from the elder generation was the fact that their political influence derived more from professional competence than from British patronage. Unlike the oligarchical sharif leaders of Calcutta, Huq and Kasim, who camerespectively from the provincial towns of Barisal and Burdwan,fully appreciated the value of mass agitation and mofussil support.

Reunification of the partitioned province, received with joy by the Bengali Hindus, alienated the East Bengali Muslims, who sank into a mood of morose and gloomy watchfulness. The British tried to blunt their opposition to the abolition of the province of East Bengal and Assam by proposing to found a Dacca university as a sop to their injured sentiments. Even this concession to Muslim interests wasstrenuously opposed by the Hindu press in Calcutta,?’4 and the proposal hungfire for nine years until it was put into effect in 1921. For Nawab Salimulla, who for six years had stayed very close to the centre of power in the province of East Bengal and Assam, the Delhi announcement wasa personaland shattering blow. He had no locus standi in Calcutta and could never exercise in a reunified province the power and patronage which had beenathis disposal for *78 Hardinge Papers, vol. 81, no. 196, Butler to Hardinge, 4 April 1911, and no. 182, Hardinge to Butler, 9 April 1911. 274 Benealee, 27, 29 March 1912.

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six years in Dacca. He was, however, brought roundbythe newtitle of G.C.LE. and by promises of special guarantees of Muslim interests in unified Bengal.?”> The influence which he exerted in order to check the violence of Muslim feeling against the new arrangements could not altogether prevent disturbances. In one place in Dacca district a Hindu demonstration celebrating the announced changes wasattacked by a party of Muslims, and in the scuffle a portrait of His Majesty was broken and torn.?’* But the Muslims were not yet sufficiently organized politically to put up any sustained agitation against the territorial redistribution of 1912 and in the end they sullenly accepted the Royal Proclamation. The frustration felt by the Muslim community led paradoxically to an overture by Muslim politicians in Calcutta to the Hindu politicians of the city for a united front. Calcutta being now the centre of politics in reunified Bengal, the Nawab of Dacca was not able to exercise sufficient influence to keep the politics of his community firmly on the path of loyalty. There was a scuffle between his followers and those of the Nawab of Murshidabad at the Bengal Provincial Muhammedan Conference (held in March 1912) as to which Nawabshould preside at the conference, and although Nawab Salimulla’s party, composed mainly of roughs, won the battle, the Nawab’s hold on his community beganto slip as he becameseriously ill from about this time. Muslim politics in Bengal, which now centred in Calcutta, came to be dominated by educated Bengali Muslims of lesser rank, many of whom were formerly hisclients. Pre-eminent among the clients patronized by Nawab Salimulla wasthe pleader, A. K. Fazlul Huq, who wasafforded an opportunity by the reunification to carve out an independentposition in politics. He hadleft his legal practice after the partition of Bengal and with the recommendation of the Nawab secured the post of a deputy magistrate under the Government of East Bengal and Assam. Soon after the reunification he gave up his job and rejoined the Bar. From his base in the High Court of Calcutta he took up politics.The transfer of the capital of East Bengal from Dacca to Calcutta underminedthe oligarchic leadership of the Nawab of Dacca and pushed into prominence popularleaders like Fazlul Huq who possessed the

crucial political base in the metropolis which Salimulla, now sick and

275 Hardinge Papers, vol. 82, no. 381a, Nawab of Dacca to Hardinge, 17 April 1911. 276 GJ, Home Poll (A), February 1913, nos. 1-2.

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dying, lacked. Theclass of people Huq represented felt betrayed by the annulmentof the partition and by the confinement of the scope of the projected University of Dacca to Daccacity as a concession to the Hindu clamouragainst a separate university for East Bengal.®”” The Mussalman, a nationalist Muslim paper of Calcutta, crisply pointed out the moral: agitate and you will get what you want; be calm and you will have your head choppedoff.?’8 The feeling gained ground among the Muslim politicians that in these days loyalty did not pay; that political concessions were not made out of grace but yielded under pressure; that however much the government might frown upon the Indian National Congress, it had not been able to resist the demands of the Congress Party. Muslims must therefore agitate and organize, and if possible, strike an alliance with the Congress. This was the new creed of the younger Muslim politiclans and Fazlul Huq was the ablest exponent of this creed in Bengal.?” Fazlul Huq openly declared in the Bengalee of 26 April 1913: ‘Our quarrel is not with the Hindus but with theofficials.’ His defection to the nationalist camp was a big blow to the Commissioner of the Dacca Division, who wrote ruefully to the Chief Secretary: “This is from a man who was Deputy Magistrate a few months ago and whose father (an old personal friend of mine) was a staunch supporter of Government.’°° The former deputy magistrate, in his bid for an alliance with the Hindus, in fact went so far as to support before the Islington Commission the Congress demand for simultaneous examinations in England and India for recruitment to the Indian Civil Service. He considered it repugnant to the self-respect of the Muslims that they should for ever remain a deadweight on other advancing communities instead of standing on their ownlegs.?®! Because of the activities of young men like Huq inside the Muslim League, old guard leaders like Ameer Ali left the League in disgust. This left Fazlul Hug unmoved. The one definite policy to which the Moslem League is now committed [he declared calmly in a press interview] is the policy 277 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 67/1913, ‘The Political Situation in Bengal’. 28 RNP 1912: Mussalman, 12 January. 279 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 66/1913, ‘Report Regarding the Present State of Muslim Feeling in Bengal’. 280 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 67/1913. 281 RNP 1912: Muhammadi, 10 January.

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of co-operation with all other advancing communities in working out the commonweal of our mother country. If there are men who think that the salvation of Moslemslies in maintaining anattitude of perpetual warfare with the other communities, they must step out of the League or one daythey will be forced to go.28? As a result of pressure from the younger English-educated Muslim politicians, the Muslim League at the end of 1913 declared colonial self-government as its political aim. At the same time the largest ever number of Muslim delegates—one hundred and sevenin all— attended the Congress session at Karachi in 1913.88 The outbreak of the First World War hastened the rapprochement between the Hindus and the Muslims. Although liberal and enlightened, the educated Muslim politicians of the Leagueall felt in some measure the tension of the loyalties which the involvement of Turkey against Britain posed for their community. They also understood that this was the time for pressing the demand forrepresenta-

tive government. This necessitated the reaching of an understanding with the Hindusaboutthe distribution oflegislative seats. A pact was

hammered out at Lucknow at the end of 1916, when both the

Congress and the League held their annual sessions there. The League session was attended by Congress leaders like Tilak, Annie Besant, Gandhi and Banerjea. The Chairman of the Reception Committee expressed militantly ‘the determination of the Musalmansto tread the path of duty fearlessly and with unfaltering steps, undeterred and uninfiuenced by the intrigues of reactionary cliques and vested interests or the vulgar escapades of their hirelings’. Jinnah’s presidential speech, asking for immediate steps after the war to introduce reformsgiving self-governmentto India, not at some future indefinite date but within a reasonable time, might as well have been delivered from the presidential chair of the Indian National Congress. A. Rasul, the Muslim barrister from Calcutta, moved that the All India Muslim League submit its scheme of reform in conjunction with the Indian National Congress to the government. Its implementation after the war was to be the first necessary step towards the establishment of complete self-governmentin India. Fazlul Huq seconded the resolution in Urdu.?84 The agreed basis of representa282 Bengalee, 6 November 1913. 283 Thid., 30 December 1913. 284 Thid., 2 January 1917; Chelmsford Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 264.18, no. 14, Sir James Keston to Chelmsford, 11 January 1917.

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tive government, as laid down in the Lucknow Pact, was that in

seven Hindu majority provinces the Muslims would be overrepresented while the Hindus would be over-represented in the Muslim majority provinces of Bengal and the Punjab. The bargain which Fazlul Huq brought back for the Bengal Muslims was not good. Although constituting 52.6 per cent of the population, the Muslims of Bengal were to get only 40 per cent of the legislative seats. Consequently there was much dissatisfaction with the Lucknow Pact in Bengal among the Muslims. Those dissatisfied with the Pact left the Muslim League to join the Central National Mahomedan Association, a purely loyalist body. Another body, the Indian Moslem Association, was also set up to oppose the Bengal Presidency Muslim League, now dominated by Fazlul Huq. To protectits flank the Bengal Presidency Muslim League began to advocate revision of the Pact and all these associations demanded more generous treatment for the Muslims when Montagu came to

visit Calcutta.?8

While the educated Muslim politicians of Fazlul Huq’s kind trod the broad highway of constitutional agitation for reforms, there already existed among the Urdu-speaking immigrant community of Calcutta an undergroundrevolutionary movementover the question of Turkey, which had become prominent in Indian politics from 1913. This community—consisting of Muslim traders, artisans and labourers from Bihar, UP and the Punjab—wasviolently disposed and responsible for the Calcutta riots of 1910 and 1918, in which the Marwaris of Barabazar and Colootola were the chief victims.?** They had among them a religious leader of all-India stature with inter-provincial appeal—Maulana Abul Kalam Azad—who came of an old renowned family of religious leaders domiciled in Calcutta for forty years. His father was one of the most respected religious leaders of his time in India, with a large numberofdisciples among the Urdu-speaking Muslims in Calcutta and elsewhere in India, and Azad naturally possessed considerable influence among them. An eloquent writer and speaker of Urdu, the Maulana,although a young 785 Broomfield, Elite Conflict, p. 116. 86 For a detailed account of the society and politics of Calcutta Muslims, see Kenneth McPherson, “The Muslims of Calcutta, 1918 to 1935: a Study of the Society and Politics of an Urban Minority Group’ (Ph.D. thesis, Australian

National University, 1972), subsequently published in a shorter version as The Muslim Macrocosm: Calcutta 1918 to 1935 (Wiesbaden, 1974).

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man, was regarded by thousands of Muslimsas theirspiritual guide. During the Balkan warin 1913, Azad wasediting in Calcutta the extremist Urdu paper al-Hilal which had an all-India circulation like the Comrade edited by the brothers Mahomed Ali and Shaukat Ali. Actively preached by the al-Hilal, the idea of boycotting European goods as a protest against the Great Powers’ hostility to Turkey was gaining ground among the Muslims. At mass meetings attended by Calcutta’s Urdu-speaking Muslims, Azad delivered inflammatory speeches on the Balkan war. Among the Bengali Muslims, in and outside Calcutta, there waslittle excitement. In a few places itinerant Bengali preachers like Maniruzzaman Islamabadi, Ismail Husain Shirazi and Munshi Meherulla tried to stir up trouble among the people, but they were kept well in hand by the

Nawab of Dacca. In Calcutta, where the Nawab had no local in-

fluence and where there was a considerable non-Bengali Muslim population responsive to the appealofthe all-India ulema like Abdul Bari and Azad, the situation was different. Feeling was acute, particularly among the Muslim trading community in and around Colootola, among whom somewererich and influential men connected with Cawnpore. Azad’s violent advocacy of the Cawnpore Muslims in a mosque riot involving brutal police action stirred them up.”8? In 1913 Azad started a society called the Jamiat 1 Hazbulla, a PanIslamic body inimical to the British Government. Promoted by the immigrant Muslim merchants, shopkeepers and contractors of Calcutta, this society sent out itinerant missionaries to travel all over India and outside to spread Pan-Islamic doctrines.**® This society fell into neglect when towards the latter part of 1915 Azad organized a residential college called Darul Irshad in his home at 45 Ripon Lane with only a few select students from each province. Unlike the Jamiat i Hazbulla, this was not an open institution, no outsiders being allowed, and it caused muchgreater worryto the Intelligence Branch because of its planned methods of propaganda. Azad selected students for different parts of the country and each student got acquainted with the persons residing in Calcutta who belonged to the province to which he wasassigned.?%° 287 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 66/1913. 2887B 1917, Jamiat i Hazbulla Society by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in Calcutta’. 289 TB 1916, ‘Objectionable Lectures Made in the DurulIrshad, Calcutta’.

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The deportation of Azad took place in the middle of 1916 and his paper was also banned along with three other Urdu papers of Calcutta—Igdam, Tarjoman and Risalat. The Urdu-speaking community of Calcutta was left leaderless and an easy prey to the inflammatory mob oratory of irresponsible Urdu journalists like Habib Shah of Punjab (editor of Nagqash), Jafar Husain Kalami of Madras (sub-editor of Millat) and Fazlur Rahman of Bihar (subeditor of Jamhur), who instigated the Calcutta riot of 1918 in the Barabazar and Colootola area. The Bengali Muslim leaders who urged restraint, Fazlul Haq and Abul Kasim, simply had no control over the excited upcountry mob, which fought pitched battles with the police.2% The riot, although it created a panic among the Marwaris, was not primarily a communal riot and did not prevent the growing fraternization between Muslims and Marwaris which came into evidence after the war to the surprise of the police.*®! It should be noted in this context that the Urdu-speaking Muslims in and around Calcutta were the first group to respond in Bengal to the Khilafat agitation after the war. 290 Report of the Non-Official Commission on the Calcutta Disturbances 1918 (Calcutta, 1919); IB, ‘Muhammadan Meetings in Calcutta on 8th, 9th and 10th September Proposed by the Anjuman i Maynul Islam to Protest against Alleged Scornful Attacks on the religion of Islam—Bengal Govt, Prohibition against Holding—and Consequent Riot’; Essayez, The Memoirs of Lawrence, Second Marquess ofZetland, p. 112. 291 Broomfield, in Elite Conflict, chapter 3, as well as in his essay ‘The Forgotten Majority: the Bengal Muslims and September 1918’, in D. A. Low (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History (London, 1968), portrays the disturb-

ances as a communalriot, a Jandmark in Hindu-Muslim relations in Bengal. As a matter of fact the riot involved no Bengalis of either community, nor was it motivated by anti-Hindu feeling. McPherson’s meticulously careful analysis showsit to be anti-British and Pan-Islamic. See his thesis, chapter 2.

CHAPTER 4

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

(1918-1922) I. The Gathering Storm. Impact of war on foreign and indigenous business—thepolitics ofreform—the Namasudra breakaway—aliberal reform scheme distorted by foreign capital—reform, repression and unrest—Jallianwallabagh and rejection of reforms by Congress—the politics of non-co-operation—Calcutta and Nagpur Congress 1920— organizing for non-co-operation,

Il. The Storm Breaks. Post-war social distress—masses on the move—

on the brink of chaos—cry halt.

I. THE GATHERING STORM

The outbreak of war between Britain and Germany in August 1914 made for momentous developmentsin the business world of Calcutta, the mostsignificant of which was the breakthrough of Indian capital in the productive enterprises. There was an extraordinary boom immediately after the war, which led to majoralterationsin the racial composition of the corporate sector. In contrast with joint-stock European rupee capital in India, which increased by 152.54 per cent between 1914 and 1922, joint-stock Indian rupee capital increased by 507.18 per cent and joint-stock Indo-European rupeecapital by 251.56 per cent during the same period.! The result was that the percentage of capital controlled exclusively by Indian entrepreneurs or jointly by Europeansand Indiansshot up from 34.64 percent in 1914 to 51.50 per cent in 1922. Not only were the Indian entrepreneurs acquiring more economic power, but European businessmen 1 This takes account of only joint-stock rupee companies which offered their shares to the stock exchanges of Calcutta and Bombay, and by no meansall companies of even this category. Some of the giant companies managed by Tatas, for instance, are left out because they are not mentioned in the somewhaterratic Investor’s India Year Books, from which thesestatistics are drawn.

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were being forced to admit Indians into partnership. Their exclusive share in the managementand controlof paid-up capital of companies registered in India had come down from 65.35 per cent before the war to 48.49 per cent afterit. TABLE 5 RAcIAL COMPOSITION OF CAPITAL INVESTMENTS IN INDIA, 1922 SHOWING ITS REGIONAL DIVERGENCE

European Mixed Indian

Calcutta

Bombay

Rest of India

India

65.649 17.818 16.531

28.182 11.809 60.008

78.421 4.612 16.958

48.497 14.184 37.318

100.00

100.00

100.00

100.00

Source: Investor’s India Year Book, 1922. Sterling capital not included. TABLE 6 PERCENTAGE OF INCREASE OF CAPITAL INVESTMENT IN INDIA BETWEEN 1914 AND 1922

European Mixed Indian Total

Calcutta

Bombay

Rest of India

India

140.30 234.22 1609.04 197.40

193.87 420.03 434.35 333.06

135.02 43.61 194.16 111.35

152.53 251.56 507.18 240.30

Source: Investor’s India Year Books, 1914 and 1922.

The change wasespecially sharp in Calcutta, where the investments of Indians showed the fantastic increase of 1609.04 per cent, a sixteenfold increase achieved nowhere else in India. Whereas the Indians controlled only 2.87 per cent of Rs 23 crores invested in Calcutta in 1914, they came to control 17.81 per cent of Rs 69 crores invested in Calcutta in 1922. However, the total increase of capital investments in Calcutta did not compare favourably with the corresponding increase in Bombay. There was a remarkable correlation between the extent of European domination and the rate of growth in the different parts of India—the rate of growth being in inverse ratio to the strength of European capital. The reason for this varia-

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tion is not far to seek. Unlike the mill-owners in Bombay, who invested almost the entire profits of the war in new enterprises like the Scindia Steam Navigation Company, whichat long last brought to an end the European monopoly of India’s overseas shipping, the European managing agencies in Calcutta did not reinvest the whole amount of the considerable profits they made during the war, but transferred a large portion of these profits to England. While Bombay seemed poised for further growth under Indian enterprise, the European domination of Calcutta’s economy continuedseriously to hinder its expansion. In Bombay the Indian capitalists now controlled 60 per cent of the total capital investments, but in Calcutta the European houses werestill in exclusive control of 65 per cent of the rupee capital invested in the city, apart from the vast amount of sterling capital in Asia for which also Calcutta was the focus of concentration. Immediately after the war the firms in Calcutta, propelled by a desire to remit ‘home’ their huge wartime profits, created a keen demand for remittances to London. This demand wasso pressing that they extended their support to the Government of India’s policy of fixing a higher rate of exchange for the rupee, a policy against which Indian exporters were agitating vigorously. One might have supposed that European businessmen would similarly want a lower rate of exchange for the rupee to promote their jute and tea exports, but this consideration was outweighed bythe desire to get moresterling at home for every rupee remitted from India. Scared by the disappearance of the favourable pre-warpolitical climate, by the increasing transfer of power to Indians through constitutional reforms and by the fighting mood of the Indian business and professional classes, expatriate businessmen were abandoning long-term policies of reinvestment of profits earned in India and were bent on transferring its gains as quickly as possible to England. Up to the beginning of the war there had been a net importof privately invested British capital in India; after the war, the returns on formerinvestments withdrawn from the country often exceeded the falling amount of fresh private investments from Britain. This trend adversely affected the economy of eastern India in general, and its centre, Calcutta, in particular. At the end of the war, therefore, the economic exploitation of India by foreign capital appeared to have become much more intense in terms of the transfer of financial assets to Britain; and at

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the same time indigenous capital seemed to be growing in strength in relation to foreign capital. During the war, the Indian businessmen of Calcutta—especially the Marwaris of Barabazar—made huge profits. In the words of a historian of the Marwari community, wealth ‘literally’ began to shower on Barabazar.? Extensive speculation, which began to disrupt the monopolies of big European houses in Calcutta, put large fortunes into the hands of the Marwaris.? These increased liquid assets and capital reserves in turn strengthened their ability to challenge the established European monopolies in Calcutta business and industry. Here was a remarkable instance of a subservient merchant community turning into an aggressive business group. From the middle of the nineteenth century, migrating Oswal, Agarwal and Maheshwari traders from the arid tracts of Rajasthan (collectively known, for no good reason, as Marwaris) had settled in increasing numbers at Barabazar, a banking and trading centre of Calcutta, and had slowly replaced the Bengalis as the principal collaborators of the expanding British business houses. They were the principal distributors of Manchester piece-goods in eastern India and they were also prominent in the supply of grains, oil-seeds, raw jute and other unprocessed goods which formed the staple products of the export economy controlled by the large European managing agencies. During the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, the Marwaris kept to their traditional trading preserves and left the new industrial venturesstrictly alone. But the First World War, which loosenedthe grip of the European managing agencies on the business and commerce of Calcutta, brought about a sudden andstriking change in the role of the Marwaris. From collaborators they turned almost overnight into 2 Balchand Modi, Desh ki Itihas me Marwari Jati ka Sthan (Calcutta, 1926), pp. 541-2. >To take a few instances, the Bangur Brothers started as ordinary share brokers in the share market. During the war when jute mills made huge profits and jute shares rose in value, they became millionaires in jute speculation. Surajmull Nagarmull started as raw jute hoarders and the firm later branched into more enterprising activities by buying a jute press, a hessian mill and a sugar mill. At the same time the firm remained active in speculation in which it continued to make much money. Kesoram Poddarwas another speculator who rose from ordinary conditions to become a millionaire during the war. Hestarted his career in a Goenka firm, then went into the sugar business by selling sugar to Ralli Brothers. He then became a dalal and banian to a Japanese firm. During the war he started business and speculation in hessian, jute, oil-seeds, etc., and in this way made twoto four crores. Ibid., pp. 560, 576-9.

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competitors. In the course of the war they seized control of the share market. Their increased speculative activity threatened to disrupt the established channels of trade and commerce. The whole organization of commercialactivity which had hitherto guaranteed the monopoly of the British business combines was throwninto uncertainty. The most dangerousaspect ofthis speculative activity from the European point of view was the expanding Marwari control over the supply lines which had so long sustained the European-controlled export economy of Calcutta. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce showed growing concern over the extensive gambling in wheat, seeds, cotton and jute that was going on in Barabazarto the detrimentof‘legitimate business’. It held consultations with its subsidiary organizations

—the Indian Jute Mills Association, the Calcutta Baled Jute Associa-

tion and the Calcutta Wheat and Seeds Trade Association—to devise measures for checking the rampant speculation which wasthreatening to disrupt the supply lines in the export business.* But soon there appeared an even greater threat : the use of the speculative fortunes to breach the manufacturing monopolies hitherto enjoyed by the European managing agencies. At the end of the war many Indian businessmen.in Calcutta, especially Marwari speculators and merchants, had sufficient liquid resources to finance new ventures. Naturally they sought openings for investment in the more productive forms of enterprise from which they had hitherto been excluded by the Europeans. An unprecedented numberof joint-stock companies were floated in Calcutta with large amounts of capital. In contrast with the Swadeshi period their shares were subscribed within a short time, proving, unmistakably, the interest of the public in such ventures. The most promising feature of the post-war industrial development was that almost all the ventures were in the hands of practical businessmen with sound experience. Bengali businessmen started tannery and leather works, engineering works, chemical and pharmaceutical works, pottery and cement works and coal mines.’ But it was the Marwaris with their greater financial resources who led the way in breaking into the most closely guarded preserve of European enterprise, the manufacture of jute. Construction of the first Indian Jute Mills—-Birla and Hukumchand—began in 1919. 4 Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, Minutes of Proceedings commencing from 7 August 1919. Meeting of 25 November 1919.

5 BNCC 1918, Proceedings of the annual general meeting, 28 August 1919.

16

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Naturally the Marwaris were fiercely opposed by the entrenched

foreign interests and were subjected to systematic racial discrimina-

tion by the European business houses. Their response to this was to extend a solid measure offinancial support to the nationalist movement under Gandhi. Three big Marwari capitalists of Calcutta— G. D. Birla, Kesoram Poddarand Sukhlal Karnani(all of whom had made huge fortunes during the war)—becamethe principal patrons of the Congress in Calcutta.* The Marwari Chamber of Commerce wentso far in support of the ensuing non-co-operation movement as to help enforce the boycott of British piece-goods.” Engaged in prolonged and bitter economic war with the British managing agencies, the Marwaris of Calcutta took of necessity an aggressively nationalist stand in politics. What stiffened their will in the fight against European monopoly enterprises was the possibility of largescale changes in the structure of government after the war. The

proposals of constitutional reform emboldened Indian merchants

and speculators to put their war profits into enterprises from which they had so far prudently stayed away. Under the encouraging con-

ditions of the new constitutional and administrative set-up devised

by Montagu and Chelmsford, Indian entrepreneurs were looking forward hopefully to a period of commercial and industrial expansion in the near future.® The politics of reform At the time of this new challenge to the dominance of the European managing agencies, the Montagu declaration of 1917 served the British business community in India with notice of imponderable constitutional and administrative changes. The result was a sustained political effort by the non-official Europeans to distort and divert the progress towards self-government. Normally the non-official Europeans, immersed in business affairs, intervened only occasionally in politics. In 1883, 1908 and 1912 they had mobilized when there were specific threats to their interests. But on the whole these interests were protected effectively by the bureaucratic framework of governance. As a prominent jute magnate of Calcutta, Archie Birkmeyre, put it, ‘We have alwaysfelt that our interests were being safeguarded by our rulers, who, after all, are kith and kin with ® 1B 1917, IB Bulletin, Head of IB to Chief Secretary, 20 December 1920. 7 MCC 31 March 1920 to 30 June 1924.

8 BNCC 1918, President’s speech, annual general meeting, 28 August 1919.

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ourselves.’® But the ‘old paternal Government’, it now appeared, was about to be abolished, and necessarily professional politics had to take its place.!° ‘Times are .. . changing’, said a leader of the newly reactivated European Association, ‘and in the future the nonofficial community will have to protect its interests and take a greater part in public affairs than it has been allowed to do in the past." At every step from the Montagudeclaration of 1917 to the final framing of regulations under the Act of 1919, the non-official Europeans fought tooth and nail any proposal in the direction of self-government. Fear was expressed that the grant of self-government under the pressure of Home Rule propaganda would jeopardize the investments which had been made in India on the security of British rule and the European character of the public services. What security could these investments enjoy under a Home Rule regime whose leading advocates today are the declared and vehement enemies of the mercantile interests that have been established here? Not only would the public services suffer by reason of the bitter racial campaign that would inevitably characterize a Home Rule Government of the Besant—Congress type, but there would be no encouragement, on the contrary a frank and brutal discouragement of those investors and pioneers to whom India owesthe entire fabric of her moderntrade and industry.?? The British interests for which the European Association demanded protection were,first, the imperial interests, by which was meant the maintenance of the European character of the administration; second, British economic interests represented by the large amount of capital invested from Britain in India; and third, the interests of the British community residing in India.1® These were vast interests, though the numberof non-official Europeans might be small; and on that ground the European Association claimed a right of veto on any proposals that might damagetheseinterests: § Englishman, 10 November 1917, 10 RA, Calcutta Branch Minutes, 23 April 1918-16 December 1924, 8th meeting, undated. 11Tbid., speech of A. J. Pugh. 12 Enelishman, 5 February 1918. 13 FA, Calcutta Branch Minutes, 23 April 1918-16 December 1924, 8th meeting.

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The enormousinterests of the British community entitle it not only to influence the course of constitutional change, but also to participate in any extension of the association of the people of India with the administration, and to doso, as they are prepared frankly to assert, to a degree in excess of their actual numerical proportion ... Itis therefore the right of the non-official European community in India carefully to scrutinize all proposals for constitutional change by which their interests may be affected, not only on their own account but also in the interest of those British subjects, merchants and others, residing in many ofthe large cities of the United Kingdom, whosefinancial stake in India is enormous and who have direct business relations with it, more especially in connection with the jute, cotton and tea industries.™* In this battle against self-government the non-official Europeans in Calcutta had a solid ally in the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy of Bengal. Even before the Montagu declaration, while the question of reform was being discussed at the official level in 1916, the Chief Secretary of Bengal had emphasized: “The facts of history and the role which non-official Britons have played and are playing in thelife and work of India, perhaps particularly in Bengal, must be fully recognized; and this must be borne in mind in any modification of the schemes of government in India.”45 When Montagu visited Calcutta in December 1917, Bengal officials, on the advice of the Viceroy himself, arranged for the full exposure of the Secretary of State to all kinds of special interests and conservative elements.1® In their evidence to Montagu, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, the Calcutta Trades Association and the European Association unitedly opposed anystep in the direction of responsible government in the provinces, for which the time was declared to be inopportune. At most they were prepared to recommendthe developmentof local self-government, the development of the provincial legislative councils on purely advisory lines, and a measureof decentralization as between the supreme and provincial governments.?” 44 FA, Annual Report 1917, appendix B, Memorandum on constitutional changesin India submitted on behalf of the European Association. 15 GI, Home Poll (A), August 1917, nos. 225-32, Chief Secy. GB to Home Secy. GI, 21 September 1916. 46 Broomfield, Elite Conflict, p. 101. 7 EA, Annual Report 1917, appendix B.

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The Namasudra breakaway

The European Association arguedthat a grant of anything approaching self-government would ‘place the many of the lowercastes under the heel of the few of the higher castes’ and would snap ‘thattie between the British and Indian peoples to which the lowercastes look for their ultimate emancipation’.18 To lend substance to this argument the Europeans turned to exploiting the fissures in Bengali society. For the moment no help could be expected from the influential Muslim politicians who had lent their voice to the rising demandforself-government. Casting aboutforallies against ‘catastrophic change’, the Europeans of Calcutta contacted some leaders of the Namasudra community in East Bengal. Here they found a favourable response. The tiny educated section of the Namasudra community, largely dependent on the Christian missionaries for acquiring English education, was as yet extremely weak (far weaker as a Class than the educated Bengali Muslims). For them the Muslim strategy of combining with the Hindusin order to press demands on the government made nosense, for they were not yet in a position to benefit from the concession of these demands. Some Namasudras were zamindars and an increasing number were finding their way into the professions by acquiring English education. Christian missionary influence was strong among them,for the Baptist missionaries materially helped them in acquiring English education. The Namasudras did not become Christians, but separatism as a political force grew among them just as it had among the Muslims. The reason wasthe same: the high caste domination of the level of the economy to which they could aspire by virtue of their English education. In 1906 an assembly of some Namasudras in Bakarganj under a local Namasudra zamindar‘prayed most earnestly that the Hon’ble Mr. Hare [Lieutenant-Governor of Eastern Bengal and Assam] will bestow the same rights and privileges upon the Namasudras as have been done upon the Mahomedans, inasmuchas the Namasudras and the Mahomedans are the predominating communities of East Bengal, and the latter unlike the Hindus possess a good deal of sympathy for the Namasudras’.!® Jn a quarrel over the performance of a religious ceremony in a village near Khulna, the Muslims and the Namasudras combined against the Brahmans and 18 Thid.

19 Quoted in Sufia Ahmed, p. 257,

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

the Kayasthas of the village and, armed with sticks, spears and shields, attacked a police party.”° Three years later, however, the Muslim and the Namasudra peasants fell out among themselves; and there was terrible riot in Khulna and Jessore between the two communities in May 1911 over fifty miles of territory. Relations between the two agricultural communities had never been easy, and the immediate occasion ofthe riot was a dispute over the possession of a piece of land. But the respectable classes of both communities became closely involved in this agrarian dispute and took a handin organizing the attacking parties. In Jessore the pukka house of the Namasudra leader, Umesh Chandra Sardar, was partly burned and two respectable Muslims, who‘rode about in ponies directing the operation’, were arrested in this connection.*? The Hindupress saw this opportunity to win over the Namasudras by supporting their cause and condemning Muslim rowdyism. A Depressed Classes Mission was opened at about this time by the caste Hindus to spread education among the Namasudrasof Jessore and Khulna. The intention was to counteract the propaganda of the missionaries who were trying to win over the Namasudras and to instigate them against the higher classes of Hindus. C. S. Meade was publishing from Faridpur a paper called the Namasudra Suhrid, which was regarded as venomously anti-Hindu.” But the record of the Depressed Classes Mission was poor compared with the Baptist effort and it was openly admitted at an annual meeting of the Depressed Classes Mission in 1911 that the Mission had not made much progress because it lacked funds. A fairly large number of young Namasudras were students in colleges in Calcutta by the beginning of the First World War, and they werefindingit difficult to get accommodation because of their ‘untouchability’. The only remedy that the Hindu press could suggest for this problem wasthat the government should open a hostel for the Namasudras, as had been done in Dacca. The acquisition of a small local base in Calcutta through these Namasudra students enabled some leaders of the community, with the help and encouragement of European businessmen,to stage a provincial political demonstration for the first time in the winter of 20 Mussalman, 24 May 1908. 2 Bengalee, 26 May 1911.

22 RNP 1908: Khulnavasi, 13 January.

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1917. About thirty Namasudra representatives from variousdistricts of Bengal, elected at special meetings, held a meeting in the Dalhousie Institute (a European institution), where they declared that the transfer of power from the government to a few political leaders under the reforms would make the future progress of the backward classes impossible. Several meetings followed in the districts of East Bengal, organized by the Baptist missionaries, which supported the resolutions passed in the Dalhousie Institute.2? Between them Calcutta businessmen and Baptist Missionaries had succeeded in getting an agitation going against Home Rule. These political demonstrations, the nationalist newspapers unanimously declared, were the work ofself-interested non-officials seeking to mobilize political support against Home Rule in view of Montagu’s visit to India. The alarm felt in nationalist circles at the revolt of the educated Namasudras wasreflected in the half-contemptuous remarks of a moderate newspaper urging them not to be precipitate. “Let the Namasudras wait a few years more and have more education, and their ambition will be satisfied in due course. No one can jump at the top of the tree: he must climb it in a regular way.’ The non-official Europeans were naturally delighted, and the Englishman, which gave great prominence to the Dalhousie Institute meeting, declared: It is not only the Europeans in India that are aroused to the dangers of the situation. They have given a lead to many millions of other people who have been contenthitherto to treat the aspirations of the extremists as idle dreams, but who perceive now that the pretension to Home Rule must be exposed and the government must be convinced that to hand India over to the noisy faction led by MrsBesant and her friends would befatal to the continuance of public order and to the maintenance of those broad principles of religious toleration and civil justice which everywhere form the foundation ofBritish rule.” A liberal scheme distorted

Whenin spite ofall this the Montagu-Chelmsford report was published in 1918, it held no comfort for British business interests in India. By proposing rapid Indianization of the services, territorial 28 TB 1917, ‘Home Rule Movement in Bengal’ (part m1). 24 Bengalee, 10 November 1917. 28 Englishman, 8 November 1917.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

representation whereverpossible, and introduction of diarchy in the provinces, it sent all the alarm bells ringing in Clive Street.°* The Bengal Chamber of Commerce invited comments andcriticisms on the reform scheme from its constituents; the constituents, in their

reply, condemned the scheme in no uncertain terms. The Montagu— Chelmsford report had disapproved of separate electorates and had advocated territorial representation in Muslim-majority provinces. Hoare, Miller & Co., in their note to the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, opposed this on the ground that territorial representation would encourage the ‘carpet baggers’ and the ‘professional agitators’. What they wanted wasstraightforward communal representation. Martin & Co. expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of attention in the report to ‘undoubtedly great European business interests’. James, Finlay & Co. urged the continuation of ‘beneficent despotism’ as the most suitable form of government for India. Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. contested the assumption that representative government on the English model was the best form of government for India. McLeod & Co. opposed the proposal of forty-eight per cent Indianization of the ICS in ten years. They feared that the Bengalis ‘by their unique powerofassimilation and ability to “‘cram’”’ for examinations’ would practically monopolize the Civil Service. Antipathy for the Bengalis and for all nationalist aspirations was thus one commonelementin all these responses.?” Strengthened by these replies, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce set about building up pressure for suitable modification of the Montagu—Chelmsford reform scheme in the interest of European business. A general meeting was summoned on 2 October 1918 to define the Chamber’s views on the reform scheme.*® Here it was agreed that there should be no changes in the Governmentof India until the results of the experiments in the provinces wasclear. As for Bengal, it was agreed that certain important subjects affecting business interests should be reserved and not transferred to Indian ministers under the schemeof diarchy. The necessity of far greater Europeanrepresentation than that provided for by Montagu and Chelmsford in their report was strongly emphasized. Finally, great *8 Most of the big European managing agencies were located in Clive Street, a name which stood for big European business in Calcutta. 27 BCC 1918, vol. u1, letters to the Bengal Chamber of Commerce on the reform

scheme, pp. 86-118. 8 BCC 1918, vol.1.

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anxiety was expressed regarding the proposed rapid Indianization of the services. The subsequent Europeanagitation was directed mainly at securing two objectives: first, to arrange representation in the legislature on communal rather than territorial lines; second, to divide the functions between the reserved andtransferred halves of government in such a way that their privileged position was not destroyed by changes in governmental structure. The government had appointed two committees, the Franchise Committee and the Subjects Committee, to deal with these matters. It was being proposedthatcertain matters vitally affecting business and industry—factories, dangerous

trades, river steam vessels, petroleum, sanitation, river conservancy,

light railways, etc.—should be transferred from the centre to the provinces, to be managed by Indian ministers. The European business community argued that these wereall subjects with which they were closely concerned and which could beaffected adversely under Indian control.?® The ministers might take dangerousaction, for the great majority of leading Indians were known to be protectionists, and Mrs Besant in her Congress Presidential address had even pronouncedthatthefirst thing an Indian finance minister would do would be to tax heavily the exports of Indian monopolies—jute and indigo—both of which were in European hands.*° Naturally the European business community was alarmed by these trends. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce therefore opposed to the last the decision to make industry a provincial and transferred subject: ‘Bengal politicians are not, with a few most notable exceptions, industrialists and . . . we are justified, in Bengalat anyrate, in fearing the effect on industries of the transference of their control to a com-

munity which knowslittle or nothing ofits subject.’*4

Equally important was the matter of representation. The Europeans pressed for communalrepresentation of Muslims and nonBrahmans, as well as for themselves.*? They had the solid support of the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy. By mobilizing politically, the Europeans got their point: the President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce was nominated as one of the co-opted members of the 29 BA, Calcutta Branch Minutes, 25 April 1918-16 December 1924, 8th meeting, undated.

20 Thid. 31 BCC 1919, Proceedings of the annual general meeting, President’s speech. 82 BA, Calcutta Branch Minutes, 1918-24, 8th meeting.

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Franchise Committee during their consideration of the Bengal franchise.3? The eventual composition of the Bengal Legislative Council reflected this strong European commercial influence. The Montagu-Chelmsford report had recommended the abolition of separate electorates in Muslim-majority provinces like Bengal. The Franchise Committee, however, came round to the view that

separate electorates must be provided for Muslims in Bengal. The Government of Bengal also madeprovision for the nomination of a representative of the Depressed Classes in the Bengal Legislative Council. But more important than that, it arranged for the representation of a solid bloc of non-official Europeans who would be able to hold the balance between contending groups of Hindu and Muslim MLCs. Commercial interests were specially favoured. The distribution of seats for European commercewasdecidedin close consultation with the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. The Bengal Chamber of Commerceitself obtained six seats, and its subordinate bodies four more

seats: the Indian Jute Mills Association two, the Indian Tea Association one, the Indian Mining Association one. One seat was reserved for the Calcutta Trades Association, and five seats were created for

the European community on the principle of communal representation.3* By constantly playing on the communalfactor with the help of the British officials, the non-official Europeans thus succeeded in shaping a Reforms Act that was different in fundamental respects from the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme of 1918. By so distorting the process of transfer of power, they managed to obtain what they grudgingly called ‘fair representation’,* that is to say, eighteen seats (including two Anglo-Indians) in a house where all non-Muslims together had forty-six seats and Muslimsthirty-nine seats. This was weighted representation, far in excess of their numerical proportion in the population. The Indian Association protested: “The overrepresentation of Europeansis out of place in this schemeforselfgovernment. It will lead to a perpetuation of the existing order of things in another form.’** But that was, indeed, the whole purpose 38 Zetland Collection,

MSS. Eur. D. 609.3,

Ronaldshay to

Montagu,

10

December 1918. 54 BCC 1919, vol. 1, GB Appointment to BCC, 8 January 1919; BCC to GB Appointment, 12 February 1919; BCC 1920, vol. u, special general meeting,

12 October 1920. . %° BCC 1923, vol. 1, annual general meeting, 29 February 1924, President’s

speech.

36 TA, Annual Report 1920.

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TABLE 7 CONSTITUTION OF THE BENGAL LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL UNDER THE REFORMS ACT OF 1919

Elected Members Non-Muslim urban Non-Muslim rural Muslim urban Muslimrural Landholders Universities of Dacca and Calcutta

European General European Commerce Anglo-Indian Indian Commerce

Nominated Members 11 35 6 33 5 2

5 11 2 4

Indian Christians Depressed classes Labour Others notless than Officials not more than

1 1 2 2 20 —

26 Grandtotal

140

114 Source: Government of Bengal, Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution in Bengal 1921-1927 (Calcutta, 1928), pp. 136-7.

of the exercise so far as the European community—‘small in numbers yet vast in interests’®’—-were concerned. They consciously realized and openly acknowledgedthis: During the three years that have elapsed since that fateful 20th day of August 1917 we, as representing European Commerce and Industry, and also as members of the European community, have fought for adequate representation of our interests in the new Council. As a result of long-drawn-out enquiries and negotiations,

special constituencies have been created for our benefit. It is up to

us now to make full use of our opportunities. Some of you may think these too limited to permit our representatives exercising any material influence in public affairs. As compared with the large numberof Indians in the new Councils the seats at our disposal appear too few and notin proportion to ourinterests in the country. But in my opinion the influence of Europeansin India has never been dependent on their numbers and never will be. It is my firm belief that we must rely more than ever on those qualities of race that in the past have served India to such good purpose. 87 GB, Appointment, March 1919, nos. 10-19 (A).

38 BCC 1920, vol. u, Proceedings of a special general meeting for the discussion of the question of representation of commerce and industry in the new Legislative Councils, President’s speech.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Such an air of easy confidence was possible to maintain because, as it turned out, the rate of Indianization of the higher ranks of the bureaucracy—wherethe crucial decisions continued to be shaped— was far slower than what the non-official Europeans had feared in 1918. One instancewill show the extent to which the Bengal Chamber of Commercestill commanded the deference of the upper echelons of the government. The matter concerned the Racial Distinctions Bill. Immediately after the implementation of the Montford reforms this bill was brought up in the Legislative Assembly of India by Indian MLAs desirous of eliminating racial distinctions in the criminal procedure. For white businessmen, dependent on their privileged position in law and government, this was a grave menace: as the President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce putit, ‘a question of life and death’.®° Amidst these uncertainties, the Chamber could still rely on the secret help of white officials in crucial positions: on this occasion a man noless than the Advocate-General of Bengal. T. C. P. Gibbons, the Advocate-General, was adroitly inducted into the Racial Distinctions Committee along with the Chamber’s representative, W. L. Carey. The confidential proceedings of the seemingly omnipotent Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce reveal that along with Carey, the Advocate-General attended a closed meeting of the Committee to decide the line to be pursuedin the Racial Distinctions Committee. The minutes of the Committee of the Chamber recorded that the Advocate-General had sought ‘instructions’ from the Committee. One of the members of the Committee pointed out the impropriety of the chief legal representative of the governmentseeking ‘instructions’ from a private commercial association. The other members drew his attention to the fact that ‘the Advocate-General himself came and asked what we wanted him to do’. However, the point was taken: the word ‘instructions’ was crossed out and ‘guidance’ was substituted forit.*® Eventually a compromise formula was worked outin the legislature which metthe principal objections of the European community. A genuine scheme for advance towardsself-government, as embodied in the Montagu-Chelmsford report of 1918, was twisted into an Act which,in its final shape, contained essential safeguards for protecting vested imperial interests. At the centre, the government still remained bureaucratic and responsible to little outside itself. In 8° BCC 1921, voi. 1, President’s speech, 28 February 1922. *° BCC Committee Proceedings, 7 February 1922.

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the provinces, the most crucial areas of government—such as law and order—were still reserved for the bureaucracy. The subjects ‘transferred’ to Indian ministers were not the most important. The dangersinherentin this limited transfer of power were to be counteracted by three factors: the predominantly white composition of the upperechelons ofthe bureaucracy, the weighted representation ofthe European communityin the legislature and the fragmentation of the Indian electorate into communalcategories. Reform, repression and unrest Naturally the reforms act of 1919, in its final distorted form, failed to satisfy the rising expectations of the educated Indian public. Nonetheless the eventual rejection of the reforms by the Congress was by no means a foregone conclusion. In Bengal, the moderates, though dissatisfied with the reforms, were prepared to work them. The extremists, while condemning the reformsin the hope of obtaining more concessions, were notat all eager to reject them wholesale. Forall its limitations the Act of 1919 did involve large-scale reshuffling of the equations of power. But if ineptness of manner could killa proposal, then the mannerin which the Montford reforms werepresented to the Indian public could not but doom the reformed constitution from the start. Montagu and Chelmsford dangled their bait for the Indian politicians at the end of a very big stick indeed—the Rowlatt Bill for the suppression of sedition. The extremist Congress met in a dangerous moodat the end of 1918 in Delhi and sent an angry telegram to the Secretary of State demanding Dominionstatus for India, representation of India at the Peace Conference (Gandhi, Tilak and Hasan Imam being namedas representatives of India), liberation of all detainees and political prisoners, release of Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali and repeal of the legislative measures intended to be taken on the Rowlatt Committee report. There was a major change in the composition of the Indian National Congress in Delhi, which issued 700 free delegates’ tickets to peasants at a loss of Rs 7000 and exempted the peasant delegates from paymentoffees at the next Congress.“1 These signs of mass participation in the political process indicated the coming of a stormy transformation of Indian politics. It was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, bracketed at this stage with the moderates, who confounded everyone by bringing about 41 AICC 2/1919.

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this transformation throughhis call for passive resistance against the Rowlatt Bill. In the spring of 1919, while exhausted Europe was negotiating peace, there was such social misery in India as had seldom been experienced even in this poorest country of the world. This was at a time when enormous fortunes were being made in the boom following the war. Thescarcity of cloth wasso acute that clothshops were being looted in the countryside.*? While the prices of salt, cloth, sugar, kerosene oil—the necessities of life—had rocketed, the

price of jute—on whichthecultivators relied for the cash with which to buy essentials—hadhit rock bottom.** The patience of the people of India, who for centuries had been resigned to their state of degradation, was coming to an end. Few understood anything about the Sedition Committee Report or the Rowlatt Bill, but the poor people felt, for the first time, that they were suffering beyond the limits of tolerance and that Mahatma Gandhiwasoffering a way out of this suffering. In Bombay, in Delhi and in the Punjab, they responded massively to Gandhi’s call, far exceeding the bounds of passive resistance. The waveof mobviolence in upper India touchedoff, surprisingly, only a ripple in Bengal.44 The misery was not less acute in this province than elsewhere in India, but the Bengali extremist leaders who were in control in Calcutta showed a strange half-heartedness in organizing passive resistance, and in any case they had as yet no organization in the interior to launch a widespread mass movement at short notice. It was only in Calcutta, where there was an immigrant population susceptible to the appeal of the all-India leadership, that there was any real response to the Satyagraha movement. The observances prescribed as a protest against the Rowlatt Act on 6 April passed off without any disturbance in the city. On the 10th arrived a 42 There were thirty-eight hat and bazar looting cases in Noakhali, Chittagong, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Khulna, Jessore and 24 Parganas, and 859 persons were convicted during the year 1919-20. Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 4 August 1920. There were cases of suicide by two widows in Pabna for want of

cloth, one of whom was shamed because she could not in her naked condition appear before her son-in-law. In Khulna two women who wentto sell fish were stripped naked on the main road, and the cloth of a respectable woman was similarly taken off her while she was fetching water from the pond by her house. Nihar, 16 April 1918. “8 Nihar, 22 January 1918; IA Annual Report 1918, Secy. IA to Chief Secy. GB, 16 January 1918. “4 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609, Ronaldshay to Montagu, 14 April 1919.

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report that Gandhi had been arrested by the Government. On the next day shops were closed in the northern part of the town by Marwaris and Hindustanis, and trams were stopped by rowdy demonstrations in which Marwari youths took the principal part. Bengali Hindusvirtually took no part in the demonstration against Gandhi’s arrest. In the afternoon a large crowd gathered in the Nakhoda mosque, composed of Marwaris, Bhatias and Muslims whoall took refreshments and observed no distinctions of caste. Things took a moreserious turn on the 12th, mob violence breaking out in the city with Marwaris and Muslims attacking police cars. It was not until the 14th that Calcutta became normal again. The striking features of the disturbances werethe insignificant part taken by the Bengalis, the involvement of the Marwaris andthe fraternization between the Hindus and the Muslims.*® There was hardly any stirring in the interior.** It was the lack of rapport between the political leadership in Calcutta and the newly emerging all-India leadership which wasresponsible for this development. It was the aftermath of the Rowlatt Satyagraha—the news of the Amritsar tragedy—which proved a more traumatic experience for the educated community in Bengal than the movementitself. The whole of educated India received the news in mute anguish. Its psychological effects were far-reaching and imponderable; it was as if something had snapped and would not mend again. It did not come all at once, asif at a stroke. It was a gradual and enduringrealization that slowly burnt throughthe layers of consciousness of the educated community, leaving a memory of everlasting bitterness. The Indian poet, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, first broke the spell of stunned silence by the noble and appropriate gesture of resigning his knighthood in a letter to the Viceroy, expressing the voice of a suffering nation. C. F. Andrews, the Christian missionary and friend ofIndia, wrote to him from Lahore: I want to tell you, my dearest, dearest friend, in conclusion, how

all the poor and the oppressed in this Province are blessing you

45 This last aspect struck Ronaldshay as ‘unpleasant’ and he wrote to the King: ‘A disconcerting feature of the trouble was the way in which the Mahamadans fraternised with the Hindus.’ Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.3, Ronaldshay to George V, 6 May 1919. 48 TB 1919, ‘The Satyagraha Movement in Bengal’; IB 1919, ‘Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal for the year 1919’; GI, HomePoll (B), May 1919, nos. 514-15.

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and thanking God for the deliverance that was wrought for them by your one supreme act of courage in their hour of danger. Everyone knowshow,from that time forward, the reign of terror was broken; the insidious dread, which was hanging over them like a pestilence, was lifted from them. They are blessing your name, night and day, as their deliverer and saviour, and in the midstofall that I am daily seeing and hearing, which fills me with shameandindignation,this is a constant source ofjoy.*’ Tagore himself wrote from Santiniketan, the Abode of Peace in quiet Birbhum, to Andrews immediately after the tragedy: Of one thing our authorities seem to be unconscious—it is that they have completely lost their moral prestige. I can recall the time when our people hadgreat faith in the justice and truthfulness of British government. But I am positive that now there are very few individuals in [the] whole of India who sincerely believe in its promises, communiques, avowed motives and decisions of its commissions. It was almost ludicrous to find how our masses during the late war refused to accept as true every newsof success

of the allies that came to them from the English source. This loss of faith in their rulers may or may not be justified, but it is a

significant fact, and if our rulers have any statesmanship left in

them they ought seriously to consider it. They have far too much been taken up with keeping up their prestige of power which is the biggest rift in their armour. For the mere sight of powerin itself is insufferable to man and Godalike unless it stands upon the truth of moral law.*®

Andrews wrote back to Tagore, commenting on the samesignificant themeof the broken spell of British moral prestige: T had very long interviews with various leading governmentofficials who wereresponsible mostofall for the conduct of administration in India and what J told them aboutthe state of indignation in the country came as a shock to them. I had my own experiencesat Delhi as to the strain and tension, and they listened carefully to all I said. But as you so truly said in yourletter they are parts of a machine and are not allowed to use their humanfeelings. To give one instance—I found that the appeal to the Viceroy about the public whipping had hadtheir effect and that it had been stopped— . but the public were not to be told this, because it was important not to weaken the prestige of the martial law. The truth simply is 47 C. F, Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 1 October 1919. ‘8 Rabindranath Tagore Papers, Tagore to Andrews, 24 April 1919.

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that they rely on brute force, because it is so amply to their hand, and not on moralforce at all. I said to one of them that never in this country had the moral prestige of the India Government been lower. He answered me on the next day, ‘I thought over what you said, and I would wager a considerable sum that it has never been higher.’ He simply did not know what moral prestige meant. I answered him, ‘If you mean that the people had never been so cowedinto submission—there might be something in it—but even then I think you are wrong. But moral prestige in India means goodness, not brute force.’4° The ‘universal sense of racial abasement engendered by the Punjab happenings’ provided what Valentine Chirol described as the ‘real working capital’ of the next stage of Gandhi’s movement— the non-co-operation campaign.Throughout July and August there wasa Steady rise of national indignation over the tragedy ofAmritsar. ‘No’, wrote Andrewsto Tagore, ‘there is no doubt the whole country

is rising with the onecry, and it is not shrill and clamorous, but deep and silent, the cry for the impeachment of those who have done these things, and the Government which has dishonoured every Indian in his own eyes and madethe iron of subjection enter into his soul.’®4 Wherever he went, Andrews found every Indian crying, “Take away your d—d Reforms; we don’t want them and we won’t have them.’ Confronted by an intensity of feeling they had never encountered before, the British Government were in full retreat by the middle of August. The Secretary of State assured V. J. Patel, on deputation to London from the Indian National Congress, that a general amnesty would beissuedto all persons convicted in the riots on the passing of the Montford reforms and that the Rowlatt Act would remain a deadletter.*? The AICC met on 18 and 20 July in Calcutta, attended by several extremist delegates from Bengal: Mujibur Rahman, Abul Kasim, B. Chakravarti, C. R. Das, Hirendranath Datta, J. B. Sen, Rai

Yatindranath Chaudhuri, Lalit Mohan Das, Srish Chandra Chatterjee, Jitendralal Banarji, Motilal Ghosh and Fazlul Hug. The Committee resolved at whatever cost to hold the Congress in Amritsar, in 49 C, F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 1 May 1919. 50 Chelmsford Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 264.26, no. 12, Chirol to Chelmsford. 5 January 1921. 51 C, F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 1 May 1919. 52 ATCC 3/1919, parts 2 and 3. 17

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spite of the situation in the Punjab.5* Among the delegates from Bengal to Amritsar, there was significantly a very large number of Marwaris and Hindustanis from Barabazar, people who had never been greatly involved in politics.54 The Congress met in an ugly mood, in spite of the calming influence which Gandhi and Mrs Besanttried to exercise. Gandhi, who had not gone overirretrievably from a moderate stance, himself proposed and carried through a resolution condemning mob excesses in the Punjab. But the extremists hooted out Mrs Besant’s resolution welcoming the Reforms Act. According to a resolution moved by C. R. Das, the Indian National Congress declared the reforms ‘inadequate, unsatisfactory and disappointing’.®® The politics of non-co-operation During the Amritsar Congress at the end of 1919 Gandhi had pleaded for serious consideration of the Montford reforms, and the extremists

had dismissed these reformsas of no value. At the Calcutta Congress in September 1920 their roles were reversed, and Gandhi wasagainst the reformed Councils while the extremists were casting about for excuses to enter the Councils.** For in the meanwhile Gandhi had formed analliance with the Khilafat leaders and had chalked out a programmeof non-co-operation including boycott of Councils. The programme was not received with acclamation in Bengal, except among the Urdu-speaking group of pan-Islamists in Calcutta, who rallied enthusiastically behind the Khilafat.5? At the root of this political disagreement between Gandhi and the Bengal leaders was a Clash of cultural values. The asceticism of Gandhi was alien to the pride of intellect of educated Bengalis. Their faith in the richness and pre-eminence of urban Bengali culture was naturally opposed to his austere ideals of rustic simplicity. Very few were eager to take up village work actively and thoroughly. The charkha could not attract for long and Hindustani did not appeal. These were the plain facts of the situation 53 Tbid., part 1; B. S. Moonje Papers, Moonje to Moti Babu, 20 July 1919. 54 TB 1919, ‘Indian National Congress of 1919”.

55 ATCC 1/1919. 58 For these shifting sandsof politics at the all-India level, see Richard Gordon, ‘Non-cooperation and Council Entry 1919 to 1920’, in Locality, Province and

Nation.

57 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924, ‘History of the Non-cooperation and

Khilafat Movements in Bengal’.

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in Bengal as Andrews saw them. When he approached C. R. Das about village work, Das was doubtful.5* Das had himself advocated village reconstruction independently of Gandhi in 1917, but he had seen it only as part of a broader programmeofcultural regeneration which was quite dissimilar to Gandhi’s rural moralism. ‘To one and all’, wrote Rabindranath Tagore about Gandhi, voicing the dissatisfaction of the Bengali intelligentsia with his philosophy, ‘he simply says: Spin and weave, spin and weave. Is this the call: Let all seekersafter truth come from all sides. Is this the call of the New Age to new creation ?’9 C, F. Andrews wrote to Tagore in October 1920 while the poet was in America: It is remarkable how Bengal has been the one province not to be captured by Mr Gandhi’s personality, though it has been deeply moved. All the best men in Bengal are saying to him ‘we agree with your premises, but not with your conclusions’. But the pity of it is that there is not a single real leader whom the masses of the Bengali people look up to, with reverence and respect, among the politicians. In the country itself there has been an awakening in every province. This we owe entirely to the moral force of Mr Gandhi and his appeal to the instincts of goodness and sacrifice... ... sir Ashutosh Chaudhuri is bravely trying to enter into politics and to stem the non-cooperationtide as it is running today. Not that he feels the humiliation any less than the others—rather the reverse. But he feels that the country is running amuckafter the Sainthood of Mr Gandhi. I met Promotho Babu [Mr Chaudhuri] in one of my visits to Calcutta. He is bitter beyond words and cries out against his countrymen for their folly in following any one who is an Ascetic, as though wisdom must necessarily come from fasting and starving and hungerstriking. But though my intellect went with Promotho Babu and I could never follow Mr Gandhiin his extravagances I could not help contrasting the other side; for there was Promotho Babu and J. N. Roy and Surhit (whom I went to summonfor Barodada) and others in the CamacStreet Club with every single luxury of a London Clublife around them—playing bridge and taking their strong glasses of whisky and brandy. Say what you would to justify it, they were parasites, living on the immense fees taken from others. Andif one had to choose, was not their judgement—their moral judge58 C, F, Andrews Papers, Andrews to Gandhi, 19 February 1921. 59 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Call of Truth’.

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ment—far more warped by luxury and luxurious living than Mr Gandhi’s by starvation ?© Lashing outat the criticism of Gandhi’s philosophy by the Bengali

intellectuals, Andrews commented on anarticle entitled ‘Gandhism

and After’ published in the Modern Review.

‘What kind of Swaraj’, the author writes, ‘will Mr Gandhi give

us, and whatlives shall we lead under his Swaraj?’ The answerrunsas follows:

‘A veritable dog’s life’. He then goes on to explain what he means. There would be no motor-cars, no aeroplanes, no armies, no railways, no doctors, no lawyers.

‘Mr Gandhi’, he states, ‘is a sworn enemyofall civilisation and

all comforts which it brings. There is a wealth of meaning in that one phrase about ‘comforts’ which I haveitalicized. Life becomes a veritable dog’s life—when? When we cannot have our own motor-cars andall the comforts which moderncivilization brings inits train. This view is becoming more and morethe practical outlook of those whoare called the educated classes in India chiefly owing to the prevalent conditions of life under which we spend our days. But have we stopped to consider what these motor-car comforts of the few imply in actual practice, for the many? Mahatma Gandhi has referred again and again to the poverty, vice and misery of our great modern cities. We cannot separate these evils from the wealth and comfort of those segregated areas where the rich and the educated live. We have to go to the slums to understandthe full significance of moderncivilization. Mahatma Gandhi is, out and out, on the side of the poor. That

is why the poor people have recognised him instinctively as their friend and champion.* Following Andrews, modern historians have also seen in this a battle between the poor man’s champion andthe cultured,parasitical rich. According to John Broomfield, the bhadralok wereafraid that

Gandhi’s programme of mass mobilization would endanger their

80 C. F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 5 October 1920. *1 C. F. Andrews, ‘Mahatma Gandhi and Modern Civilization’, in the Modern Review, July 1921.

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social dominance.®? Yet, as the evidence will show, the Bengal Congress underthe leadership of C. R. Das went far beyond Gandhi in instigating a revolutionary mass upheaval during the non-cooperation movement. The real issue was not between masspolitics and elite politics, between non-co-operation and Council entry, but between differing conceptions of the extent and use of massparticipation in nationalism. Gandhi had never wanted a turbulent mass campaign including strikes, boycotts and peasant insurrections. He wanted to maketheinstitutions of government superfluous by constructive work and controlled, limited satyagraha. C. R. Das and his followers, on the other hand, were preparedto take the high risk of unleashing popular furies upon constituted government andat the sametimeto participate in its institutions with a view to capturing eventually total control. These were but complementary means which in the eyes of C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru and indeedall seasoned Congress politicians must be combined in a finely calculated mannerto attain a single end: control over the real levers of governmental power in the shortest possible time. Thus C. R. Das and his followers in Bengal were not ‘opposing’ non-co-operation. What they opposed, in the two Congresses of Calcutta and Nagpur, was the particular shape which Gandhi wanted to give it. Gandhi envisaged, in the first stages of the campaign, withdrawal from government schools, colleges and law courts, resignation from government service, and boycott of the reformed Legislative Councils. He was opposed, however, to economic boycotts, particularly boycott of British manufactures. Such a campaign would be based on theself-sacrifice of the professional and service classes and not on the mobilization of the population at large on economic issues. It was a programme which would hit educated Bengalis but would not demandsacrifices from merchants, traders, artisans and the commonpeopleofall sorts. Exposed to the full heat of European monopoly capital, Calcutta politicians could only conceive non-co-operation as an enmassedassault on the domination of imperial economic interests. A campaign that was not directed against the economic monopoly and racial domination of foreigners did not make sense to them; and they saw no reason why individual service families should be asked to undergo extreme economic hardship and deprivation when the burden of suffering could be thinly distributed among large masses of people by meansof their parti62 Broomfield, Elite Conflict, pp. 151-4.

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cipation in economic boycott. Furthermore, they were notwilling to take the risk of leaving aside, in their struggle for power, such potentially powerful institutions as the reformed Legislative Councils. As an alternative line to Gandhi’s non-co-operation programme, Bipin Chandra Pal enunciated the doctrine of qualified non-cooperation in an open meeting in the Indian Association Hall. Pal opposedcertain items of non-co-operation, such as resignation from governmentservice. Instead he advocated boycott of British goods and denial of services to the European community. To enforce the latter, he unfeelingly proposed the boycott of private servants of the Europeans. Pal pointed out: ‘it may truly be said that you cannot carry on even your physical life if you refuse to absolutely cooperate with the Government’. He therefore suggested that the specific form of non-co-operation could not be determined for all men and all provinces by one man or by any one community or province. ‘The practical shape of non-cooperation will have to be determined by practical considerations. It may take one shape in the Punjab, another shape in Bengal.’® Jitendralal Banarji, a pleader of the High Court who voiced the discontent of the hard-pressed lower middle classes, heckled B. C. Pal at the meeting for trying to modify the non-co-operation programme and demanded full non-co-operation.® By this, as we shall see, he meant a more extreme programme than Gandhi’s, embracing Council boycott as well as revolutionary mass participation. On the eve of the Calcutta Congress, therefore, the Bengal Congress was divided between two factions, the ‘whole-hoggers’ and their opponents. Both factions sprang from the extremist wing of the earlier Swadeshi movement, but while C. R. Das’s party consisted of welloff lawyers and top leaders of the Congress, the whole-hoggers opposing him were less successful men—such as Jitendralal Banarji and Shyamsundar Chakravarti—who wantedto seize control of the Congress. Their opposition to Council entry attracted the support of those sections of the middle classes who were feeling the effects of the post-war economic depression most acutely. By making Council entry rather than the shape of the mass campaign the central issue, Gandhi had pushed Das into an awkwardcorner. Gandhi went to Calcutta with three factors in his favour which gave him victory over Das onthe limited issue of Council boycott. §§ TB 1920, “The Non-cooperation’ by Bipin Chandra Pal, copyin thefile. ** 7B 1920, ‘The Non-cooperation Movement—Proposed Hartal on 1.8.1920°.

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In the first place, the trade depression and the slump in organized industry were now being widely felt in Calcutta, Bombay and other cities of India. There was an increasing economic pressure on large sections of the urban population from which the non-co-operation movementdrew its main support. A constant flow of adherents from the affected urban classes contributed to the steady progress of the non-co-operation—Khilafat propaganda. Secondly, Gandhi’s alliance with the Ali brothers and his ability to manipulate the inflamedstate of Muslim opinion in India over the fate of Turkey gave him a potent instrument of power. It ensured him a comfortable majority in the Calcutta Congress of 1920, which was packed with the angry followers of Shaukat Ali. The last but not the least factor was the personality of Gandhi and his rapport with the poor, ignorant and superstitious masses of India. The motive force behind the non-cooperation movement to which Gandhiwasreally appealing, was ‘the entire force of the depressed humanity in India—not Khilafat, not Punjab—butthe whole misery of a continent, oppressed and crushed by an outrageous system of imperial aggression’. “He has the moral power of personality’, wrote C. F. Andrews to Rabindranath Tagore in October 1920, ‘to awaken the lives of poor people, who form the bulk of the population. They do not understand in the least Non-co-operation; but they do understand that onelittle tiny man, frail in body andall alone, is challenging the great “‘Burra Lord Sahib” himself and bringing him to his knees timeafter time. They only understand one thing, viz. his absolutely fearless and absolutely pure character and they worship that and makehim their hero—both men and women together and the young especially.’® Two contemporary appreciations of Gandhi’s personality by a writer and a politician of Bengal contain revealing insights into Gandhi’s charismatic appeal to the masses. One was by the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who stood against Gandhi’s non-co-operation movement: The movement which has now succeeded the Swadeshi agitation, is ever so much greater and has moreover extendedits influence all over India. Previously, the vision of our political leaders had never reached beyond the English-knowing classes, because the country meant for them only that bookish aspect of it which is to be found in the pages of the Englishman’s history. Such a country 65 C. F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 28 October 1920. 86 ©, F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 15 October 1920.

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was merely a mirage born of the vapourings in the English language, in which flitted about shades of Burke and Gladstone,

Mazzini and Garibaldi. Nothing resembling self-sacrifice or true feeling for their countrymenwasvisible. At this juncture, Mahatma Gandhi came and stood at the cottage door of the destitute millions, clad as one of themselves, and talking to them in their own language. Here wasthe truth at last, not a mere quotation out of a book. So the name of Mahatma, which was given to him,

is his true name. Whoelse has felt so many menofIndia to be his ownflesh and blood ?®” The other appreciation, contained in a book on the non-cooperation movement written by the Comintern agent M. N. Roy in 1923 and smuggled from Germany into India, was even more interesting: No one can know ofthe life and personality of Mr Gandhi and fail to render tribute to him as ‘a saintly man whopurifies us at sight’. In an age of intense individualism, of uncompromising struggle for existence, in which national, racial and class conflicts are hardening for the final battle that will usher in a new era of social relationship and civilization, the golden legend of this idealist and ascetic who has cheerfully given his wholelife to the service of his fellows, upon whose personal character no faintest blemish rests, whose fearless courage and love of truth stand proven before the whole world and who combines the naive purity and innocence of a child with the iron will and unbending principles of a man, such a character will go downto history with the same moral force upon posterity as his saintly prototypes of the past, Thomas Aquinas, Savanarola and Saint Francis of Assisi. Gandhi the individual has impressed, individually, thou-

sands of lives who are uplifted and inspired to better things for having known him. His personal example gives force to his moral precepts, for no man can say of him that he does not practise all that he preaches. Andit is this moral force, dimly radiating beyondthe confines of vast India to the indifferent world beyond, which brought him into prominence as a figure of international

interest. Gandhi the Philosopher, the Politician and Patriot, is but

one of many on the storm-tossed sea of Indian Nationalism, unknownand uncared for by the heedless millions who have long since learned not to tread on the trail of British imperialism. But Gandhi the Saint, here is a spectacle unique in every age and as

*? Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Call of Truth’, in the Modern Review, October 1921.

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one of the great men cast up by the waters of time, he belongs to every country. Thereis in this half-naked, slender brown body, so

completely dominated by the mind within, a strength that dreadnoughts cannot conquer nor machine guns subdue though they shatter it to bits, and out of the respect bred of this certain knowledge, the British Empire leaves him unharmed.*®

The personality of Gandhi made a deep impression on educated Bengalis, but his programme aroused no enthusiasm among them.® The Bengali opposition to Gandhi’s programmecrystallized at the Calcutta Congress in September 1920 underthe leadership of C. R. Das and B. C. Pal. Their position was complex but consistent and, as Pal himself clarified later on at the Barisal Provincial Conference of 1921, must not be confused with opposition to non-co-operation.” At a meeting of the Reception Committee before the Calcutta Congress, Pal moved that non-co-operation should be adopted by Bengal as the only legal weapon in the hands of the people. After heated discussion it was settled that Bengal would opt for a policy of non-co-operation, but the practical working out of the principle of this policy should be left to each province.”! It was thus the practical shape of non-co-operation that was the point at issue, and the real fight over it took place in the Subjects Committee of the Calcutta Congress, where informal discussions, accompanied bylively scenes, clearly defined the attitude of the leading extremist politicians of Bengal.

In the first place, they did not agree with Gandhi’s conception of the non-co-operation movement as a moral and social campaign of reconstruction in which political autonomy was but one among many goals. Indeed, Gandhi had initiated the movementnot on the issue of Swaraj, but to protest against specific ‘wrongs’, such as the dismembermentof Turkey and the brutal repression in Punjab. Das, in his draft resolution on non-co-operation at the Subjects Committee, gave primacy to the political goal of Swaraj.”? Leading extremist 68 1B 1923, ‘One Year of Non-Cooperation’ etc., copy of the book contained in the file. 6° Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.3, Ronaldshay to Montagu, 5 February 1920. 70 Bengal Provincial Conference, Session Barisal 1921: Presidential address by Bipin Chandra Pal (Calcutta, n.d.). 71 TB 1920, ‘The Non-cooperation Movement—Proposed Hartal on 1.3.1920’, part u, letter no. 210. 72 Bengal Provincial Conference 1921.

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politicians, including Motilal Nehru, supported this essentially political interpretation, and after discussions Gandhi agreed to include the demand for Swaraj in his own resolution. Underlying this wrangle over the word Swaraj was the Bengali view of nonco-operation, not as a campaign ofreconstruction, but of opposition to the British. Second, as the primary goal in their eyes was the conquest of power, the Bengali extremists wanted to enter the Councils and to force the government to amendthe constitution. To achieve this object, Das proposed in the Subjects Committee that only Congressmen who pledgedto refuse office should be allowed to contest in the elections; if they won a majority they should work to make government impossible; where they were in a minority, they should resign and seek re-election, and repeat this process with a view to paralysing the government.” Third, the Bengali extremists, supported by a wide range of Congressmen from other provinces, vehemently opposedresignations from government service and boycott of schools, colleges and law courts. Confronted with this solid opposition, Gandhi dropped resignation from government service and interference with recruitment from his resolution and substituted ‘gradual’ for ‘immediate’ boycott of schools, colleges and courts. On the issue of abstention from elections and boycott of Councils, however, Gandhi was unyielding.’* Finally, the Bengali extremists objected to Gandhi’s non-co-operation resolution on the ground that it emphasized non-essential items, such as renunciation of titles, at the neglect of essential steps, such as boycott of British goods and withdrawal of Indian money and labour from British enterprises.*® Economic boycott was something which Gandhi had hitherto opposed as inconsistent with the spirit of satyagraha. Under extremist pressure, he agreed to include boycott of British goods in his resolution, though in his speech in the open Congress he made known his personal opposition to a measure conceived in hatred of the opponent. The conflict over boycott of British goods was part of a wider conflict between Gandhi and Das regarding the tactics of non-cooperation, the full implications of which were to unfold later. Basically, Gandhi was opposed to strikes, hartals and boycotts, *8 Richard Gordon, ‘Non-cooperation and Council Entry 1919 to 1920’, in

Locality, Province and Nation, pp. 144-5.

™ IB 1920, ‘Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal for the year 1920’. 5 Bengal Provincial Conference 1921.

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though willing to concede that these activities were permissible if conducted in a truly non-violent manner. Heinsisted on discipline andtraining in the spirit of satyagraha before resorting to confrontation with authority, and in his eyes the level of such training was to be measured by the extent of constructive work. Das, for his part, was opposedto anyrestrictions on the adoptionofcivil disobedience and at the Gaya Congress of 1922 he said in his Presidential address: ‘I have not yet been able to understand whyto enable a people to civilly disobey particular laws, it should be necessary that at least eighty per cent of them should be clad in pure ‘“‘khadi’’!’” Gandhithusdid not sweepto victory in the Calcutta Congress. He had to make substantial concessions to his opponents by introducing important changesin his original non-co-operation resolution. The modified programme of non-co-operation which finally emerged from the discussions in the Subjects Committee was put forward by Gandhito the Congressin the following shape: 1. Surrenderoftitles, honorary posts, etc. Refusal to attend levees, darbars, etc.

Withdrawalof children from governmentschools. Boycott of British courts by lawyers andlitigants. Refusal of clerical, military and labouring classes to serve in Mesopotamia. 6. Withdrawal from Council elections. 7. Boycott of British goods and encouragement of Swadeshi. Even in this modified form, Gandhi encountered greatdifficulty in having his resolution endorsed by the Subjects Committee. The Subjects Committee resolved itself into three distinct groups. The whole-hoggers—Shaukat Ali, Shyamsundar Chakravarti (formerassociate editor of the Bande Mataram and a memberof the Aurobindo group, now an orthodox follower of Gandhi) and Jitendralal Banarji (a flaming radical who wasreally angling, like Shaukat Ali, for a violent campaign while payinglip service to Gandhi’s ideals)— were entirely in favour of Gandhi’s resolution. Das, Pal and other extremist leaders, with the notable exception of Motilal Nehru, were

opposed to the third, fourth andsixth clauses of Gandhi’s resolution and advocated a plan of action more specifically oriented to economic and social boycotts. M. A. Jinnah, Annie Besant and Jamnadas Dwarkadas (a Bombay businessman) were wholly against non78 Prithwis Chandra Ray, Life and Times of C. R. Das: The Story of Bengal’s Self-Expression (London, 1927), C. R. Das’s Gaya speech, appendix D.

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co-operation in any form. So wasthe only Bengali moderate present,

Ashutosh Chaudhuri, but for tactical reasonshefell back on the line

of Das, for his party carried little weight and the real struggle was between Das and Gandhi. Fazlul Huq,ill at ease throughout the proceedings, would have liked to side with Das but was compelled by Shaukat Ali’s threats to vote for Gandhi.” Gandhihimself was heckled by Das’s followers and was repeatedly asked what he would do if non-violent non-co-operation failed. Das and his followers threw their weight behind an alternative non-cooperation resolution brought up by Pal. This resolution sought to side-track Gandhi’s proposals regarding boycott of schools, courts and Councils and proposed to makethestruggle purely political and economic. That the conflict between Das and Gandhi wasnot on the issue of non-co-operation versus collaboration is evident from the fact that the British found Pal’s resolution no less objectionable than that of Gandhi. Anintelligence report commented onits ‘Bolshevist tendency’.”8 Pal’s resolution was defeated only by a narrow margin of fifteen in the Subjects Committee. In the open Congress session, 1855 voted for Gandhi and 883 for Pal.7® Pal’s resolution was defeated because a large numberof delegates who genuinely wanted to work the reforms, finding its extreme character unacceptable, did notvoteatall. Gandhi’s programme found smoother sailing in the Muslim League which met the next day. There the proceedings wereentirely dominated by the Khilafatists such as Abul Kalam Azad, Abdul Majid, Dr Ansari and Abdus Samad. Confronted with this solid phalanx, the President of the League, M. A. Jinnah, and the local

leader, Fazlul Hug, were on the defensive from the beginning. Indeed the Khilafatists were threatening to vilify Huq for his backsliding and ruin him professionally and socially. Amid cries of ‘shame, shame’ he capitulated. Three amendments, going further than the Congress resolutions, were pushed through the League by the Khilafat leaders: 1. Deletion of ‘gradual’ from the Congress resolution on the renunciation of law courts and governmentschools. 2. Substitution of ‘foreign’ for ‘British’ in the boycott resolution of the Congress. 3. Social boycott of opponents of non-co-operation.® 7 TB 1920, ‘Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal for the year 1920’. 8 Tbid. 79 Thid. 80 TB 1920, ‘All India Moslem League’.

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Underthe persuasion of his personal friend Khan Sahib Muhammad Yusuf of the Criminal Investigation Department, Fazlul Huq soon defected from the non-co-operation party and busied himself with obtainingfatwas from learned maulvis against non-co-operation and giving hints to the district magistrate of Bakarganj (his own district) how to conduct an anti-non-co-operation campaign.*! This was a serious loss to the nationalist cause since Fazlul Hug was the pre-eminent political leader of the Bengali Muslims, among whom Urdu-speaking Khilafat leaders like Azad did not possess much influence. Gandhi’s victory in Calcutta was by no means conclusive. The only immediate consequence of the Calcutta Congress was that twenty-four Bengal nationalists led by Das withdrew from the Council elections in deference to the resolution passed by the Congress. It should be noted, however, that this number was large

comparedto that in other provinces (seventeen from Bombayled by Baptista, eleven from Central Provinces led by B. S. Moonje and N. B. Khare, eight from Bihar led by Mazhar-ul-Huq and Rajendra Prasad).8* Moreover, Das andhis followers had excellent prospects of electoral success. In a province with strong traditions oflegislative politics, this was a measure of their commitment to the national movement and their determination not to divide it. Immediately after the Calcutta Congress Pal told an assembly at Dacca that though the Bengalis had wanted non-co-operation in a modified form, they must abide by the decision of the majority to maintain discipline and concord within the Congress.®? In another meeting at Sylhet he urged the organization of Indian labour andthestarting of trade unions, and underhis Presidentship this conference went a step further than the Congress and deleted ‘gradual’ from the resolution on withdrawal from schools, colleges and courts.

Now that Council elections were no longer an issue and the acceptance of immediate boycott of schools and courts by the Bengal extremists was wholehearted, Das began to mobilize opposition to Gandhi on the basis of a more radical programme. That programme was to impose on the non-co-operation movement the so-called ‘Bolshevist’ character that Pal had advocatedin the alternative non81 TB 1921, ‘The Non-cooperation Movementin Bengal’; IB 1923, ‘Proceedings

of the Khilafat Committee in Bengal’. 82 GI, Home Poll Deposit, October 1920, no. 51. 83 TB 1920, ‘Khilafat-NCO Speeches’.

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co-operation resolution at Calcutta. Das elaborated his plan in a draft statement which wascirculated to leading extremists before the Nagpur Congress.8* His object was to eliminate from Gandhi’s nonco-operation programmeits peculiar moralistic flavour and to turn it into a plan of action that would inflict maximum material losses on the British and would result in concrete constitutional concessions. Das wanted a programme that would involve the population at large, call for sacrifice from the commercial and not merely the professional classes, and make the boycott of schools and courts consistent with the economic survival of the latter. In more specific terms there should be no wholesale withdrawal of students from schools and of lawyers from practice until the full programme of non-co-operation had been put into force. The essence of that full programme, as Das envisagedit in contradiction to Gandhi, wasthe economic boycott of foreign capital. Its inspiration was the festering sense of economic exploitation and racial abasement that had long characterized the politics of Bengal and was now beginningto affect the other provinces as well. In arguing that ‘non-co-operation is the one weapon left to be tried’, Das referred in his circular to ‘the general economic administration of the country in the interests of British capital and British commerce’, the martial law administration in the Punjab ‘subjecting the people to inutterable humiliation and oppression’, and ‘the open support of the action of General Dyer by the general body of the ruling race in India as well as by their friends and supporters in Great Britain.’®> The spirit of racial and economic animosity was evident in each of these clauses. Accordingly, on the lines of Pal’s earlier Calcutta resolution, Das’s circular at Nagpur suggested the withdrawal of men and money from all British enterprises in India, a total economic boycott of the European managing agencies, and a voluntary mass embargo on British goods. Governmental machinery must be paralysed and, in the final stage, taxes must be refused. Exploitation and administration being part of the same duty in the British Government of India, any programme of noncooperation to be effective must be both political and economic. On the political side it includes a boycott of the machinery of the present Government, both legislative and executive, whether ** AICC 2/1920, C. R. Das’s statement enclosed in B. S. Moonje to V.J. Patel, 5 December1920. 85 Ibid.

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the services called for be honorary or stipendiary; on the economic side it means boycott of British goods and of British agenciesin the import and export trade of the country, withdrawal of financial support from British enterprises and of Indian labour from its factories and, in the last resort, refusal to pay taxes.®* To implement this scheme of economic boycott Das suggested planning by a committee of experts and the setting up of committees of traders and consumers to work up the scheme. On the controversial issue of boycott of the Councils Das was careful to keep the option of electoral contest open. Referring to the differences in the Calcutta Congress, he stated: ‘We were divided as to the boycott of the new Councils, but we refrain from saying anything as it is no longer a matter of immediate practical importance.’®” To mobilize the masses in support of his programme, Das proposed an unprecedented extension and restructuring of the Congress organization: enrolmentofall classes of the population through a network of district and local committees, a national fund and a

‘committee of action’ (the future Working Committee of the Congress) that would turn the Congress into a disciplined, fighting organization. The Das circular thus containedall the essentials of the ‘Congress Constitution’ adopted at the Nagpur session. This constitution was to be drafted by Gandhi in consultation with other members of the Constitution Committee appointed by the Nagpur Congress;** but its original impulse came from Das, who prepared the first definitive statement on the subject.59 With this programme in hand Das proposedto win a share in the control of the Congress from Gandhi, a difficult task in which he succeeded brilliantly at the Nagpursession. Far from being an unqualified personal triumph for Gandhi, the Nagpur Congress was marked by the ascendancy of Dasasa leaderofall-India stature, and the emergenceofa collective leadership seasoned by long political experience and firmly rooted in the established Congress tradition (as distinct from the new 86 Ibid. 87 Tbid. 88 The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 19 (Ahmedabad, 1966), pp. 190-8. 88 The Congress Constitution of December 1920 was thus the outcome of a Das-Gandhi pact, and not the brain-child of Gandhi alone, as has often been assumed. See, for instance, Gopal Krishna, ‘The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 25, no, 3, 1966.

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political religion which came to centre round the Sabarmati ashram). For the programmeof Das, which the Nagpur Congress wasdestined to adopt, had two defined and highly practical objectives: to bring irresistible pressure on the British to announce a further dose of constitutional reforms and to secure the support of the newly enfranchised section of the population with an eye to future elections.” Das’s opponents in Bengal, who had supported Gandhi at the Calcutta Congress, did not give him a walk-over in his own province. They mustered forces for the coming session at Nagpur with Muslim and Marwari support. They scored a victory over Das’s party by capturing the Bengal branch of the Home Rule League, which had gone into oblivion. At a meeting of the League just over a week before the Nagpur Congress, Das, the President of the League, and B. Chakravarti, the Vice-President, were deposed, and their places

werefilled by S. S. Chakravarti and J. L. Banarji. In organizing the campaign against Das in Calcutta, the Banarji faction obtained considerable help from the young men of the Marwari community in the city who were devout followers of Mahatma Gandhi. Their leader, Padam Raj Jain, was appointed Secretary of the Home Rule League after the coup brought off by Banarji and Chakravarti, which showed that Das’s party was under heavy pressure even in its stronghold of Calcutta.* Although neither Banarji’s party nor the Khilafat Committee had so far succeeded in organizing a real NCO campaign either in Calcutta or anywhereelse, the elections which took place on the eve of the Nagpur Congress showed that Khilafat propaganda had made a considerable impression on the mass of Bengali Muslims in East and North Bengal. In the elections a comparatively small number of Muslim voters turned out, as illiterate Muslims influenced by Khilafat propaganda considered voting to be guna (sin). In Chittagong a grocer and a carter put up in mock fight by the NCO campaigners were returned with overwhelming majorities, and in Noakhali a cobbler, a hotel-keeper and a petty shopkeeper were similarly elected on large margins. In Rajshahi and Dinajpur the bulk of the educated men,including pleaders, refrained from voting. 89 AICC 2/1920, C. R. Das’s circular. TB 1917, ‘IB Bulletin’, unofficial letter of Mr Dixon, head of the IB, to Chief Secy., 20 December 1920; IB 1920, ‘NCO Movementin Bengal, January 1921’; GI, Home Poll Deposit, October 1921, no. 51; GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924.

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Almost all Muslims of Rangpur town abstained, and so did equally large numbers of Muslims in Gaibandha subdivision of Rangpur district. In Bakarganj very few Muslims voted and in one constituency in the district not a single voter, Hindu or Muslim, appeared.® Significantly, all these successes of the Khilafat-NCO propaganda occurred in the Muslim-majority districts of East and North Bengal. This successful extension of political propaganda was the achievementpurely of religious leaders such as Badsha Mia,the head of the Faraizi sect in East Bengal, which had a considerable organization among the peasantry. The issue on which they organized the campaign among the masses was economic exploitation. For the majority of the Bengali peasants the concept of Khilafat was too abstruse to comprehend, and the so-called Khilafat movement was for them really a fight for deliverance from economic exploitation. C. R. Das, alarmed by the successes of his political opponents, now contracted an alliance with the revolutionary leaders. It was a fateful decision, fraught with long-term consequences for the Bengal Provincial Congress. For the moment his hand was considerably strengthened by the attachment of Srish Chandra Chatterjee and Pulin Behari Das, who secured for his Nagpur delegation 300 exconvicts and ex-detenus, mainly of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti, towards whose expenses he contributed Rs 20,000. There were also approximately 300 district delegates, mostly supporters of Das. Not more than 100 were Muslimsout of the total] number of 900 delegates from Bengal. The Central Khilafat Committee had asked the Bengal Committee for 1,000 Gandhian delegates, but not more than 300 came, supported by Rs 5,000 collected by Padam Raj Jain from Marwari merchants and Rs 2,000 granted by the Bengal Khilafat Committee. The Secretary of the Bengal Khilafat Committee, Shamsuddin Ahmad, wasseverely reprimanded by Shaukat Ali for the paucity of Gandhian delegates from Bengal and wastold in plain terms that Gandhi’s instructions not to spend money to secure delegates should not have been taken too literally. Shaukat Ali found that Das had gathered in Nagpura following not only numerous but also well-disciplined and violently disposed by their revolutionary training, which gave them the upper handin the violent scenes in the Bengal Camp. Meanwhile at a private meeting with S. S. Chakra-

varti, J. L. Banarji and the Ali brothers, Gandhi decided in favour 82 TB 1920, ‘NCO Movementin Bengal, January 1921’.

93 TB 1920, ‘Khilafat-NCO Speeches’. 18

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of a compromise with Das, overruling Chakravarti’s protest because opposition from an influential leader like Das would weaken the cause. Nevertheless, on the next day and the following there were two pitched battles between Banarji’s party and the ex-detenus of Das’s party led by Pulin Das of the Anushilan Samiti. On the second day’s fight Padam Raj Jain and Bholanath Barman of Barabazar intervened in the fight with Marwari and Bhatia volunteers, but they were severely beaten up by the revolutionaries. Getting wind ofthis, Shaukat Ali sent a select batch of Punjabi and Gujarati volunteers who dispersed the rowdy revolutionaries. Subsequently Gandhi and Ashutosh Chaudhuri cameto the scene and pacified the two parties by intimating that a compromise had been reached with Das.** Das’s unexpected compromise with Gandhi at Nagpur was not, as has often been assumed, a surrender to Gandhi. It was Das’s

programme which won at Nagpur, not Gandhi’s. The elections were already over and the argument for or against boycott of Councils was no longer, from the point of view of Das’s party, ‘a matter of immediate practical importance’. What Das now wanted was a campaign of opposition to the British which would be much more obstructive than Gandhi’s original programme of non-co-operation. Such a campaign would be aimedat forcing the British to concede real devolution of power within the existing constitutional structure of the Raj and not at realizing the nebulous conceptof a constructive andself-reliant India no longer dependent on the rulers. Das wished to extend Gandhi’s programme of boycott of government to a programme of economic boycott, something which Gandhihad all along opposed. Gandhi had proposed a graduated course of nonco-operation in four successive stages, but Das argued for merging of the four stagesin an all-out assault from the beginning, and called for the reorganization of the Congress, the creation of a special fund and a sustained membership drive. In his plan the aim of extension of Congress organization and recruitment of wider following was to ‘enrol at least a majority of those who areentitled to vote underthe new Reform Act’.** Onall these points Gandhi yielded to Das. They are said to have madea secret pact, subsequently known as the DasGandhi pact, by which each promised the other freedom of propaganda in his own sphere.In practice this meant that Das was 4 TB 1920, ‘The Non-cooperation in Bengal, January 1921’. %§ AICC 2/1920, Das’s circular. 86 Prithwis Chandra Ray, Life and Times of C. R. Das, p. 159.

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free to shape the non-co-operation campaign in whatever mannerhe desired in his home province. But more than that, this profoundly altered the general Congress policy regarding the scope and methods of the non-co-operation movementin India as a whole. In the final non-co-operation resolution passed by the Nagpur Congress, several sections of Gandhi’s draft resolution, to which Das objected, were omitted altogether and the most important clauses of Das’s circular were substituted for them almost verbatim.®? In the first place, Gandhi’s draft resolution had recommended that the word ‘gradual’ be removed from the clauses regarding boycott of schools and courts. Thefinal resolution merely called on parents and lawyers ‘to make greater efforts’ in these directions. Second, Gandhi’s drafting of the clause regarding boycott of Councils was subtly modified by marginal alterations, which implied that the boycott was conditional and notabsolute, for the final resolution stated that ‘in the circumstances in which they have been broughtinto existence... the new councils do not represent the country’. Third, Gandhi’s plan of a non-co-operation campaign in four successive stages was abandoned andthe final resolution, paraphrasing Das’s circular, declared that the entire or any part of the campaign, including refusal to pay taxes, could be put in force at any time considered suitable by the AICC. Fourth, Gandhi’s draft resolution had mildly called on ‘the capitalists, the traders andthe dealers in the country to assist the national cause by introducing in their respective business the spirit of patriotism and to help the movement for boycott of foreign goods by concentrating their attention on stimulating production of cloth sufficient for the national needs by encouraging home-spinning and home-weaving’. But the final Congress resolution, going much further than this, called on merchants and traders ‘to carry out a gradual boycott of foreign trade relations’. It also called for ‘a scheme of economic boycott planned and formulated by a committee of experts’.%® Obviously the scope of economic boycott was to be much broader than what Gandhi had desired and wasto include not merely boycott of foreign goods but also boycott of the import-export trade controlled by the British agency houses in India. Finally, the following additions, lifted out of Das’s circular were grafted on to Gandhi’s 87 Compare the text of Das’s circular with the Congress resolution given in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 19, pp. 576-8.

9% Tbid., pp. 182-5, 576-8.

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draft resolution: formation of a body of workers called the National

Service, collection for a Tilak Swaraj Fund and building up a

Congress organization downto thevillage level. The Government of Bengal, in its fortnightly report to Delhi, stated that Das’s love of popularity might partly account for his compromise with Gandhi, but not wholly. For a more complete explanation it referred to some illuminating articles in a local extremist organ. According to the writer of these articles, the nonco-operators were fully aware that complete execution of their programme would lead to bloody revolution. But they did not believe that the British Government would allow things to get to that stage. Instead they expected that government would capitulate by offering terms that would include a definite date for the transfer of power, removal of repressive legislation, further liberal reforms, etc. Thus Das was being perfectly consistent through all his complicated manoeuvres, unwaveringly pursuing a single end through rapidly changing tactics. To describe his pact with Gandhi as a ‘somersault’? or a ‘volte-face’,#°! and to see mere political opportunism in his actions, would not explain how he came to unleash after the Nagpur session a mass campaign which far exceeded thestrict limits of Gandhi’s NCO programme. Whether he wanted the Congress to contest in the elections or to mobilize the masses for confrontation with the authorities, his object as always was to capture the machinery of government. This desire infected the entire assembly at Nagpur, for most of whom non-co-operation was but the most efficacious means to this end. Commenting on this new spirit at Nagpur, the IB Chief wrote unofficially to the Chief Secretary of Bengal: The Congress at Nagpur differs from other previoussittings of that body in several essential points ...In the special Congress in Calcutta feeling was no doubt very high in favour of Noncooperation. But that feeling generally speaking centred more or less round the resolution in an academic sense. Except a very °° TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’. 100 Broomfield, Elite Conflict, p. 168. 101 The present author, following Broomfield’s interpretation, used this expression. Rajat K. Ray, ‘Masses in Politics: the Non-Cooperation Movement in Bengal 1920-1922’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, December 1974.

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limited number of the delegates who attended the Special Session the rest of them did not look far ahead or contemplate anything beyond their immediate surroundings. Although Non-cooperation was intended by Mr Gandhi to be the means to an end—andthat end is the attainment of Swaraj, most of the delegates looked upon it as a measure ofretaliation, just in the same way as the boycott of British goods was resorted more to avengethe partition than to promote Swadeshi Textile industry. But in the Nagpur Congress the whole movement has received an accession of strength in a different way. The promoters of the movement have placed the glamourof freedombeforethe public. So far as can be judged from appearances the whole Congress was of opinion that the liberty of India would not be long in coming. The feeling ofretaliation or a spirit of revenge was not the dominating passion but the freedom of India was the inspiring sentiment—Non-cooperation and Swaraj have now changedtheir relative position since the Nagpur Congress. It is no longer a question of the meansto an end butit is a question of the endfirst and the means afterwards.1 To look for inconsistencies in Das’s position would be to miss the single-minded pursuit of power and freedom that became the dominating passion of the huge assembly at Nagpur (unprecedented for its size in the history of the Congress). To this entire development Das had made the most crucial contribution by compromising with Gandhi and winning him overto a new position. Das returned from Nagpur in a blaze of glory. Immediately he gave up his almost legendary practice at the High Court, a sacrifice that fired the imagination of the Bengali youth and triggered off widespread students’ strikes all over Bengal. He nowattained a position of preeminence in Bengal politics which not even Surendranath Banerjea had wonat any timein his long political career. His colleagues and rivals were, one by one, overshadowed. B. Chakravarti, who refused to give up his practice (it was much smaller in any case), was dwarfed by Das’s magnificent act of sacrifice for the country. Pal, who had been noted so far only for exciting political oratory, was no match for Das in political manoeuvre and party management. When he appealed for a more cautious campaign of non-co-operation at the Bengal Provincial Conference of 1921, he was practically howled out 102 7B 1917, ‘IB Bulletin’, unofficial letters to the Chief Secretary containing bits considered unsuitable for the weekly report by the head of IB, Mr Dixon. Letter dated 14 January 1921.

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of the Congress.!©3 At the same time Gandhi’s supporters in Bengal, whom J. L. Banarji and S. S. Chakravarti had led in opposition to Das, were also slowly edged out of the crucial positions in the Congress organization. A definite split in the BPCC led to J. L. Banarji’s resignation in the middle of 1921, on the groundthat there were still practising lawyers in that body.°* This left Das the undisputed master of the Congress machine in Bengal. He consolidated this position by building up a brilliant second rank leadership, drawn from young rebels in Calcutta and the districts, who made their mark by successfully bringing off labourstrikes and peasant disturbances. J. M. Sengupta of Chittagong broughtoff a steamer and railway strike in East Bengal in the summer of 1921 and Birendranath Sasmal of Contai (a small town in Midnapur district) organized a successful peasant resistance to the formation of union boards and the payment of chaukidari tax in Midnapurin the autumn of 1921. Another notable recruit to the party of Das was Subhas Chandra Bose, a young ICS officer whoresigned to join the Congress and distinguished himself by organizing a total hartal in Calcutta in connection with the visit of the Prince of Wales in the winter of 1921. With these three young lieutenants—J. M. Sengupta of Chittagong, B. N. Sasmal of Midnapur and Subhas Bose of Calcutta—Daswasable to buildup an unrivalled Congress organization and to launch a campaign of unprecedented fury. Organizing for non-co-operation Upto the end of 1920, when the Congress met at Nagpur, there had been little progress in Bengal under the different items of the nonco-operation programme. Only onetitle-holder had relinquished his title and only seven menresigned their honoraryoffices. Six pleaders hadleft the law courts and twenty-six candidates with good chances of election withdrawn from the elections. Little had been done in boycotting foreign goods, promoting Swadeshi and raising of volunteer corps.1 The Bengal Congress, torn between the factions of Das and J. L. Banarji, had kept aloof from the campaign, andit had fallen to the Bengal Khilafat Committee to organize the movementin Bengal. In 18 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.5, Ronaldshay to George V, 1 June

1921. 104 TB 1920, ‘NCO Movementin Bengal, January 1921’. 705 TB 1920, ‘NCO Movement in Bengal, January 1921’.

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this task it had not proved conspicuously successful. Under the prodding of Maulana Abul Kalam Azadit had resolved to set up district Khilafat committees and it had urged that each committee should raise a corps of volunteers for propaganda and collection of funds.*°* But due to dissensions within the Bengal Khilafat Committee, nothing effective had been done yet.!°? One group, headed by Maulana Akram Khan, was composed mainly of Bengali Muslims and the other, headed by Rahat Hosain, consisted of upcountry Muslims domiciled in Calcutta. Rahat Hosain had alleged that the Bengalis, who had charge of funds, had been unduly subsidizing Akram Khan’s two newspapers, Zamana and Muhammadi.™8 These dissensions continued during 1921, and Azad himself was compelled to animadvert on the mismanagement of Khilafat funds by Akram Khan and others.1°° A more fundamental problem was the co-ordination of the Congress and Khilafat organizations in Bengal. When the Bengal Congress under the leadership of Das decided to plunge into the campaign at the beginning of 1921, a joint working committee for co-ordinating the two organizations becamenecessary. Dasset up a provincial working committee for the non-co-operation movement consisting of six Muslims and six Hindus. But he assigned only three seats on this advisory board to the Khilafat Committee, an arrangement with whichit disagreed violently.“° Subsequently the Khilafat Committee took great care to build up its provincial organization

outside the Congress framework. It achieved substantial success in

this task as the NCO-Khilafat movement gained momentum in 1921. It organized its own volunteer bands, and augmented its funds by levying a Khilafat tax and by collecting Bakr Id hides.4 A parallel, but more impressive and permanent, development was the Congress network built up by Das on his return from Nagpur. The Nagpur Congress had added to the programme decided in Calcutta three further items: the raising of a Tilak Swaraj Fund, the organization of local committees and the enlistment of volunteers. To implement this plan, Das relied heavily on the revolutionaries. 106 TB 1920, ‘Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal 1920’. 107 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, no. 282 of 1920 (non-confidential). 108 JB 1920, ‘Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal 1920’. 109 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Governmentof Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’. 110 TB 1917, ‘IB Bulletin’; IB 1920, ‘NCO Movementin Bengal, January 1921’.

14. TB 1917, ‘IB Bulletin’.

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For the revolutionaries, whose organization had been disrupted by

the wartimearrests and internments under the Defence of India Act,

this was a splendid opportunity to rebuild their cells under the cover of a mass organization. The first step, in which they substantially assisted Das, was to organize the Bangiya Swaraj Sevak Sangha in Calcutta to push the campaign for picketing and boycott. By February 1921 this volunteer corps, which had several centres in Calcutta (with a captain and a quota of volunteers assigned to each), had recruited 1100 volunteers. These were mostly students who gathered round a nucleusof ex-detenus and ex-state prisoners.}” The second, and more important, step was to extend the volunteer organization throughout Bengal. By March 1921 there were nineteen regular corps of volunteers in different districts of Bengal,'* two of which were led by Purna Das and Bhupendranath Datta, both senior Jugantar party bosses.!!4 By May the number of volunteer corps had risen to thirty-two.5 By organizing these bandsof volunteers in each district and by deputing them to the villages for non-co-operation propaganda andcollection of funds, the former detenus and state

prisoners were at the same time extending and consolidating their shattered organizations. In almost all the corps there was a definite structure which improved with time, the most perfect being the one at Rangpur. By the end of 1921 the whole district had been organized into subdivisions and thanas with officers in charge of each and a sufficient number of volunteers to make the working of such an elaborate network practicable.This was possible because the Wahabis in Rangpur, led by Abdullah-al-Baki, threw their entire religious network into the organization of volunteer bands in the interior. The NCO workers and volunteers were in turn put into organizing district and local committees of the Congress, an activity that was stepped up in May 1921 according to a BPCCdecision.!"’ Here again the revolutionaries were especially active and by 1922 they were in 412 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924; IB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’. 18 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924. 44 YB 1920, ‘The Non-cooperation Movement in Bengal, January 1921’.

5 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’. 8 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924. 7 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-1922)’,

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control of as manyaseight district Congress committees.148 Where district committees already existed they were revitalized and reorganized. Older office-bearers who did not comply with the nonco-operation resolution were pushed out and their places were taken by new men."!° The new men immediately set about extending the organizationsthey had taken overorset up. In Birbhum theyenlisted

15000 members, raised Rs 8000 for the Tilak Swaraj Fund, and set

up local sub-committees in four places and Swaraj ashramsat six different centres.1°° All over Bengal this process was repeated. Remote corners, hitherto untouched by nationalist politics, were drawn

into a dense network of local Congress and Khilafat committees. Week after week news of new committees being set up poured in from remote police stations everywhere in Bengal. Although nofull account of this entire organization is now available,it is clear from the police records that by 1922 the committees numbered in hundreds and covered the rural areas in depth.¥*1 In onerespect the process of organization did not fulfil its early promise. From the beginning, the non-co-operators had announced an intention to start workers’ and peasants’ unions. In the Calcutta Metropolis and its suburbs, there were forty-one workers’ unions and two federations of unions by 1922. Nationalist politicians took a prominent part in founding the new unions. The Intelligence Branch listed at least forty nationalist politicians, including Das, Jitendralal Banarji and Akram Khan, who wereoffice-bearers in the forty-three unions and federations active in the Calcutta metropolitan area between 1920 and 1922.17? But it was the office employees and white collar workers, and to a lesser extent the workers in the transport services, who formed the rank and file of this trade union movement. The large massof illiterate mill-hands and the factory workers tended to stay away from the trade union movement.!?8 Even more serious wasthe failure in organizing unions and cooperatives among the peasantry. Das had proposed in January 1921 to raise Rs 5 crores to open co-operatives in the villages, the object of which would beto store all local production in excess of village 118 119 120 121

Thid. TB 1921, ‘The Non-cooperation Movementin Bengal’. Tbid. JB Library, no. 169, ‘Report on the Progress of Non-cooperation Movement

in Bengal 1922’.

122 1B, ‘Lists of Labour Unions and Associations in Bengal, 1920, 1921, 1922’. 123 Thid.

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needs and to sell the surplus directly to the manufacturers and not to the middlemen.!*4 This idea was warmly received by the peasants, but the project of a national union of co-operatives never materialized. Political, especially financial, necessity ruled out a direct attack on native trading and landed interests. Yet, if—as the non-cooperators wanted—the peasants were to be mobilized against colonial exploitation, it was not possible to proceed to the logical end without damaging these native middlemen’s interests. These obstacles explain the failure of workers’ and peasants’ unions and the heavy emphasis on Congress and Khilafat committees in the process of organizing for non-co-operation. In the implementation of the Nagpur resolutions, numerous Congress committees were set up all over Bengal, many thousands of volunteers were enlisted and very considerable sums were collected for the Tilak Swaraj Fund."*° But nothing further was heard about peasant unions and no prominent Congressman in Bengal committed himself to a pro-tenant position. Even so the organization was very considerable and served to mobilize the masses in an unprecedented campaign against colonial rule. The incorporative character of the Congress and Khilafat committees, which deliberately sought to include all classes in a national front against the British, avoided the pitfalls of purely class associations like workers’ unions and kisan sabhas, which might accentuate class differences and disrupt the united movement of the nation. Il. THE STORM BREAKS

In the aftermath of the First World War, sharply alternating cycles of boom and depression forced the pace of mass discontent in Bengal. Attracted by the expanding opportunities of employmentoffered by the abnormally inflated conditions of industry, a large number of workers crowded into the towns from the countryside during 1919 andthefirst half of 1920 and were then left stranded by a depression which cameall of a sudden in the middle of 1920. As the Investor’s India Year Book for 1921 recorded, from the middle of 1920 to the middle of 1921 Calcutta lived through

the greatest and most widespread period of depression that has ever been experienced. Most realised that the exceptional and 4 TB 1920, ‘The Non-cooperation Movementin Bengal, January 1921’. 1B 1923, ‘Action against certain ex-state prisoners, ex-detenus and exabsconders for resumed revolutionary activity’.

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unhealthy period of post-war prosperity must be followed by a reaction, but few can have foreseen anything so sudden and dramatic as that which actually occurred. Boundless optimism and confidence were, in the autumn of 1920, suddenly changed to gloom and stagnation. The purchasing power of the world seemed to have been instantaneously arrested and almost every industry

wasaffected.126

During 1921 the jute mills worked only for four days a week and shares were at a low ebb. The slumpseriously affected the many new industrial concerns that had been floated after the war: many of them succumbedand others faced great difficulties. The depression, with brief intervals, continued during 1921-1922.2” Conditions were especially acute in the jute mill industry, in which British managing agencies had reaped enormous profits between 1915 and 1920 at the expense of the mill workers and the jute cultivators. By early 1920 the jute mill owners had been compelled to grant nominal wageincreases, but real wages had declined on account of the steep rise in prices.1*® Still more ruthless was the exploitation of the peasants by the mills. Cultivators in East Bengal were forced to part with raw jute at abnormally low prices which, coupled with the low wages obtained by the mill-hands, swelled the margin of profit in the jute textile industry. The newsof the outbreak of war in August 1914 brought with it a disastrous fall in the price of the jute crop from which it did not recover. The Government of Bengal, alarmed by the acute agrarian distress in East Bengal, initially proposed to take steps for restoring the prices of raw jute. But the Europeanjute interests reacted fiercely, and Lord Carmichael, overwhelmed by a storm of abuse, had to

curtail his plans for giving relief to the jute cultivators. Instead he contented himself with making military dispositions in East Bengal in case of peasant disturbances.!2 By 1917 production by the jute mills, stimulated by wartime requirements, had fully recovered from

the initial setback of 1914, but the jute cultivators werestill receiving only half of what they were getting before the war. Thus the ratio of net profit (excluding interest) to paid-up capital in the jute textile industry rose from an index of 100 in 1914 to 580 in 1915, 750 in 126 Inyestor’s India Year Book 1921, preface. 127 Inyestor’s India Year Book 1922, preface. 128 Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance Report (1926),p. 131. 129 Hardinge Papers, vol. 88, Carmichael to Hardinge, 5 August 1914, 11 August 1914, 6 September 1914, 12 October 1914, 14 October 1914.

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1916 and 490 in 1917.13° When wetake into accountthe large-scale repatriation of profits by European businessmen in Calcutta after the war, the low prices at which the mills obtained raw jute from the cultivators must have facilitated an enormous drain from the countryside of Bengal to Britain. East Bengal, where jute was produced, proved the storm-centre of rural unrest in 1921-22. At the same time there wasa great deal of educated unemployment in Bengal. During the war the towns saw the employmentofa large numberof additional clerical workers and an increase in salaries, but

the slump in trade and industry which immediately succeeded the artificial post-war boom led necessarily to large-scale retrenchment.!®!1 The widespread depression which set in from mid-1920, making available for the use of the political leaders large bodies of unemployed workers and jobless volunteers, provided the driving force behind the non-co-operation movementin Bengal. The economic difficulties of 1920-21 were cyclical in character. But by arousing mass discontent these temporary difficulties brought out into the open the more fundamental perceptions of economic exploitation andracial humiliation. The large number of people who participated in the non-co-operation movement in Bengal desired consciously or unconsciously to shatter the domination of colonial business interests, and inevitably this desire manifesteditself in forms that were unmistakably anti-white. The initial target of attack was the interlinked complex of tea, jute, coal, oil, railway, steamer and

engineering interests. The popular hatred of white racial domination providedthe bitter edge of this economic assault. It was at the level of propaganda among the masses by unsophisticated local preachers that the economic and racial content of political propaganda was most crudely revealed. To take a typical instance, the itinerant maulvi, Ismail Emanuddin of Tippera, held a waz (sermon) at Narayanganj on 5 November 1920, and combined his appeal to the Muslimsto save the Holy Places of Mecca, Medina and Karbala with the advice to strike against the European capitalists. At Narayanganj these European capitalists, said the preacher from Tippera, were taking the lion’s share in the profits of the jute and steamer business, while their clerks and coolies did not have sufficient means even to meet the most essential needs.18? 189 Bagchi, Private Investment in India, p. 276. 8. Census of India 1931, vol. V, part 1, pp. 287-8; BCC 1923, vol. u, from the Chamber to the Unemployment Committee, 18 June 1923. 482 IB 1920, ‘Khilafat-NCO Speeches’.

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Middle class resentment of white domination had producedterrorist assassinations; popular hatred of the Europeans madeit possible to contemplate forms of action more comprehensivein their scope. Thefirst idea of the Khilafat and non-co-operation agitators was to instigate a strike amongthe private servants of the Europeans. This idea did not materialize.1** But from the summerof 1921 there was a deliberate attempt to boycott Europeans and a systematic intimidation of servants to leave their service. Popular anger, aroused over the fate of the “coolies’ stranded at Chandpur, madeit possible to initiate an extensive social boycott of Europeans that caused serious alarm to the government.144 Masses on the move

On his return from Nagpur, Dasfirst concentrated on organizing a student strike throughout Bengal; when the strike failed to sustain itself he began a campaign of mass mobilization. At first the vast majority of college students in Calcutta left their classes and an epidemic of student strikes hit all districts of Bengal except Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Dinajpur in the north.At the height of the student unrest in Bengal in February 1921, about 11,157 students had been withdrawn from government and aided institutions out of a total of 103,107 pupils attending these institutions. Of those withdrawn, perhapsa third returnedlater, the remainderjoining national schools, conducting political propaganda or doing nothing.'** The schools and colleges reopened and the excitement died down by the beginning of March. Yet the studentstrikes left their mark upon the general political situation. ‘The chief mischief resulting from the upheaval among students’, wrote Ronaldshay to the King, ‘has been the employment of those who did not return to their classes—a considerable number in the aggregate—on propaganda in the villages.’13? Thefirst tentative Congress move towards mobilizing the common people in an enmassedassault on the colonial structure of the eco133 TB 1920, ‘Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal for the year 1920’; TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government on the Political Situation

(1921-22)’. 134 Tbid. 135 JB 1920, ‘NCO Movementin Bengal, January 1921’; Chelmsford Collection, MSS. Eur.E. 264.26, no. 47, Ronaldshay to Chelmsford, 19 January 1921. 136 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924. 137 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 604.4, Ronaldshay to George V, 1 June

1921.

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nomy occurred in February 1921 whenstriking students and national volunteers launched a campaign amongthe cultivators to boycott the cultivation of jute. The Bengali middle classes had long come to regard the production of jute as a means by which the economy was being subordinated to British capitalism, and the press had familiarized the public with the thought that restriction of the acreage for jute would result in a larger crop of food for the people. These ideas were circulated among the peasants by the striking students, but as the ruling price of raw jute wasslightly higher than that of rice, the cultivators did not respond to this propaganda. However,the effect was to make the peasant think of other methods to improve his position and to prepare the way for non-payment of taxes later on.}°8

By April increasing signs of lawlessness were becoming manifest. In Dacca town there were fouror five occasions on which Europeans were stoned. In the town of Comilla (Tippera district) bricks were thrown at the wife and child of the Superintendent of Police. In Howrah a jute mill manager was beaten up because he had cut bonus from the pay of labourers observing hartal. In the interior of Mymensingh there was a general refusal to attend police investigations and a belief that the government had lost its authority. Volunteers looted and rioted in Tippera, rescued arrested persons in Barisal, and prevented unloading of Liverpool salt in Munshiganj. In May there was a temporary but complete strike of all servants of the Europeans at Akhaura in Tippera following the slapping by a jute agencyassistant of ‘an insolent khidmatgar’. At the same time a more successful strike was organized in the Burma Oil Company’s workshops at Chittagong, where orders prohibiting meetings and processions were successfully defied and a complete hartal wascalled off only on the company surrenderingto the strikers.1°° On the eve of the ‘coolie’ exodus from the tea gardens of Assam which brought about a sudden breakdown of law and order in extensive parts of East Bengal, there was thus already muchdisorderin the area. Colonial manufacturing, mining and planting complexes provided the focal points of the seething popular discontent against imperial rule. The mills, factories and engineering workshops in and around Calcutta were natural centres of labour unrest. Even before the Bengal Congress under the leadership of Das had embarked on a violent campaign of mass strikes, pro-Gandhi elements had started 88 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924.

189 Toid.

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in a more quiet way organizing the workers and improving the quality of their life. C. F. Andrews, together with a batch of young Bengalis headed by Nagendranath Gangopadhyay(a son-in-law of Rabindranath Tagore, he had recently left Grace Bros. so as not to serve a foreign capitalist firm drawing money out of India), was engaged in the constructive work of forming trade unions in Calcutta.¥4° In the suburbs of Calcutta, similar constructive work was

being done by Pandit Krishna Kumar Sastri, a disciple of Gandhi hailing from Arrah district in Bihar. In and around Titagarh, where he had settled, he was preaching Hindu-—Muslim unity, forming arbitration courts and persuading mill-hands to give up toddy and liquor. His campaign had considerable success in Titagarh, Kankinara and Kamarhati; both Hindu and Muslim mill-hands looked on

him with respect and followed his instructionsin social andreligious matters.141 This pacific, constructive and distinctively Gandhian approach in labour matters contrasted sharply with the more militant tone which the Khilafat workers and the Congress volunteers imported into the

trade union movement. The Khilafat workers, who were the most

active group in organizing the mill-hands, also preached HinduMuslim unity, abjuring of liquor and social reforms, but they did so with the more specifically political purpose of arousing antigovernmentfeeling.14* They were able to tap a very strong popular undercurrentofill-feeling towards the European managementof the jute mills. The depth of this undercurrent can be gauged from a peculiar incident in Howrah district in May 1921. There was a rumourthat boys were being kidnapped for sacrifice at the foundations of the new Ludlow Jute Mill, then being built. This rumour caused panic in Uluberia and the surrounding villages, and led to serious riots in the Lawrence and Fort Gloster Mills.14* So dcep was the hatred of white capitalists that people were apparently ready to believe anything about the mill management. Small wonder that there were 137 strikes in the jute mills in 1921, involving more than 186,000 140 C, F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 22 March 1921.

141 TB 1920, ‘The NCO Movement in Bengal, January 1921’, weekly confidential

report from the Superintendentof Police, 24 Parganas, 29 January 1921. 142 [bid., S.P.’s weekly confidential report, 29 January 1921. 143 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of BengalonthePolitical Situation (1921-22).

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men.144 There were also frequent strikes at the engineering workshops of Burn, Jessop and other industrial concerns in the metropolitan districts around Calcutta. Beyond Calcutta and its industrial suburbs, similar labour discontent was being fomented in the Raniganj coalfields by two Swamis, Biswanand and Darsananand, with the active help of Marwari coal traders and Bengali colliery owners who werefighting with the European managing agencies for the control of the coal trade and mining. Deputed to the coalfields by the Trade Union Congress formed at the Nagpur Congress, Swami Biswanand, Dip Narayan Singh and ChandraBangshi Lal Sahay formed two labour associations at Raniganj and Barakar. They werefinanced by rich Marwaris who were also contributing to the Barakar Bank opened by Gandhi and Swami Biswanand to promote Indian enterprise in the coalfields. Darsananand addressed a meeting of 300 upcountry workers at Ballarpur, presided over by a local Bengali zamindar who owned somecollieries, and by his remarks deliberately worked up the undercurrent of racial ill-feeling against the Europeans. At Jamuria, Darsananand delivered another speech inculcating the ‘Bolshevik principle’ of equity between the rich and the poor, whereupon the mechanics at Andrew Yule & Company’s Sibpur Power House wentonstrike. On a second visit to Jamuria, however, Darsananand told a

gathering of 5000 labourers that the real object of these meetings was ‘to stop the work of the European ‘“‘owned” collieries and to strengthen and enrich the collieries belonging to Indians’. He advised the workers that unless Andrew Yule, which was preventing, other companies from increasing wages, granted a 100 per cent wage increase, workers should stop work at once and join the collieries owned by Indians. As a result there was a strike at six collieries of Andrew Yule, four collieries of Equitable Coal and one of Bird, involving altogether 5300 miners demanding higher wages and more honourable treatment from white colliery managers. The strikers were tribals and low caste villagers who looked upon Darsananand as a god come to earth who would bring blindness, barrenness of womenand flooding of pits unless they followed his instructions. At the same time there was a strike at Burn & Company’s Kulti Iron Works, which was directed by men returned from the Nagpur M4 Bagchi, Private Investmentin India, p. 142. 45 TB 1920, ‘NCO movementin Bengal, January 1921’.

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Congress—Jograj Marwari, Dip Narayan Singh and Swamis Biswanand and Darsananand.!* Later on in July, Dasvisited Raniganj, Asansol and Barakar and exhorted the people of the mining area not to give any help to the Europeans, norto financetheir enterprises.14” The mining area became seriously disturbed by continuous propagandaofthis sort. The labour situation deteriorated even more sharply in the tea garden area. Up northin the district of Darjeeling, Dal Bahadur, a local firebrand of Kalimpong who had been dismissed from government service, was whipping up agitation among the hillmen, who were openly shouting before the district officer ‘Gandhi ki jai’. Serious trouble was apprehendedbythis officer in the tea gardens, where the planters kept their men on extremely low wages.!*8 A fracas leading to the arrest of Khilafat volunteers led to a general hartal in Darjeeling town; while at Kurseong, a smaller town where a Swaraj and Khilafat fund had been opened, public speeches by local firebrands had to be prohibited. Sporadic unrest instigated by the non-co-operators continued among tea garden labourers in Darjeeling. In July there were several strikes, spontaneous and unorganized, without direction from a central agency. A special officer was deputed by the governmentfor propaganda workin the affected area and the Indian Tea Association was asked to impress on the planters the necessity of keeping in touch with the workers.**® Unrest had also spread further downhill to the Duars in July, and later on, in 1922, this unrest manifested itself in attempts to loot tea garden marketfairs in Jalpaiguri district.1°° In Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, however, some sort of stability was provided by the fact that the Nepalese labour employed in the tea gardens was local. A much more serious situation developed in Assam, where the labour employed in the gardens was drawn from Bihar and UP. In Maythere was a sudden massive exodusof labour from the Chargola valley in Assam, induced by rumours that Mahatma Gandhi was about to usher in the millennium and that a 148 TR 1920, ‘The NCO Movementin Bengal, January 1921’, W. C. R. of S.P. Bankura, 22 January 1921 and W. C.R. of S.P. Burdwan, 29 January 1921. 147 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’. 148 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 56/1921, ‘Political Situation in the Darjeeling District’. . 149 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’. 160 Thid.

19

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happy future awaited them in their distant homes in the west. The wages offered in the Assam tea gardens no longer offered any attraction when compared to the agricultural wages currently prevailing in their native districts in Bihar and UP. But the planters, being protected by the Inland Emigration Act of 1859, could afford to ignore this; while downcountry wages had risen everywhere, in

Assam there wasnoincrease. The planters took full and unwarranted

advantage of the Act of 1859, often making illegal private arrests, a practice which continued evenafter it had becomeillegal under the amendedact of 1908. The lawstill required discharge certificates for ‘coolies’ who wanted to go home, which wereoften refused by district magistrates on the ground that they had not fulfilled their contracts.154 In the summer of 192] a strange discontent and a stranger hope seized the labourers, and refusing to obtain ‘certificates’, a large body of them started on the long trek for home which brought them to Chandpur in Tippera district on 15 May.The local officials at first followed the policy of repatriating the labourers, but before long the Governmentof Bengal, influenced by the Indian Tea Association, assumed a stance of ‘neutrality’ between capital and labour, which really meant veiled opposition on the spot to the repatriation of labourers. This change of attitude synchronized with the arrival at Chandpur of Mr Macpherson, a representative of the Indian Tea Association who collaborated with the subdivisional officer of Chandpurto prevent labourers from boarding a steamerfor the next stop on their journey, Goalando, on the night of the 21st.153 On the following night, to prevent a recurrence of the day before’s rush to the steamers, and to safeguard the railway premises, the local

officials cleared the station with the help of Gurkha military police,

whocarried out the operation with extreme brutality. ‘It was only by a miracle on that Gurkha outrage night’, wrote

151 Indian Tea Association, Detailed Report of the General Committee of the Indian Tea Association for the year 1922, containing the resolution of the Govt of Assam on the Report of the Assam Labour Enquiry Committee 1922. 162 This was a spontancous mass exodus, a virtual Aijrat. It was not instigated, as Broomfield has alleged (Elite Conflict, p. 215), by a group of Congressmen from Calcutta who moved into the tea gardens of Assam, nor did this alleged group promise the coolies transportor later on fail to keep the promise. 158 Modern Review, July 1921; Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 8 and 11 July 1921; Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.2, ‘My Bengal Diary’, 1 June 1921, 6 June 1921.

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Andrews to Gandhi from Chandpur, that the East Bengalis (who were ‘highly emotional, quick tempered, hot, passionate’), ‘did not go out andtry to kill those Gurkhas.’ In no timeatall, East Bengal was ‘on the very border-line of violence’.1** On the morning after the event there was a complete hartal in Chandpur town. At Comilla the local bar left the courts in a body, schools closed down, domestic servants almost to a man deserted European masters, the bazaar refused to sell food to governmentservants, and for a few days the European community lived in a state of siege. Similar conditions prevailed in Chandpur, Noakhali and Chittagong. On 24 Maythere was a strike on the Assam—Bengal Railway in Chittagong which rapidly became general. On 27 Maya steamerstrike occurred at Chandpur which in a few days spread to Goalando, Barisal and Khulna. Rail and river transport westwards was practically suspended by the action of local non-co-operators headed by J. M. Sengupta of Chittagong, the organizer of the railway strike. Das, who rushed by boat to Chandpur, personally directed the steamer strike at Goalando.1® A perturbed Ronaldshay wrote to Montagu: ‘The most disquieting feature is the extent of the hold which events have shown they have already acquired overlarge classes of people. They have been able to call strikes on the inland steamer lines and the Assam—Bengal Railway, and they have been able to call hartals in a numberof East Bengal towns simultaneously.’ What East Bengal witnessed in this hourof crisis was a spontaneous rising of the entire population, especially the lower classes, who expressed throughthestrikes their acute sense of economic exploitation and racial abasement under white rule. It was impossible to overlook that the Government of Bengal was deliberately refraining from helping the refugee labourers‘for fear of a further exodus from the gardens’.45? Andrews was asked to act as a mediator, and with the support of the non-co-operators he made a simple proposal: governmentto provide a token subscription of Rs 5000 as a mark of sympathyand the public to subscribe the rest for the repatriation of the refugees at Chandpur. He wentall the way to Darjeeling, where the Government of Bengal had shifted for summer, with this pro154 ©, F, Andrews Papers, Andrews to Gandhi, 21 June 1921. 155 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924. 156 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.5, Ronaldshay to Montagu, 15 June 1921. 187 C, F, Andrews, The Meaning of Non-Cooperation (Madras, n.d.), p. 16.

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posal, but the Government, surrounded there by planters, coldly rejected it.58 Meanwhile all transport in East Bengal had been paralysed by the organized action of the lower classes, who now gave full vent to their repressed hatred of the white ruling class. A new feature of the hartals, which profoundly disturbed the governmentat the beginning of June, was a deliberate attempt to boycott Europeans and loyal Indians and to intimidate their servants into leaving service.5° The acute resentment of white economic controls reflected itself in the strike on the British Indian Steam Navigation Company’s steamer Jines, and predictably there were renewed proposals of a national steamer companyto replace the foreign steamerservices.1©° The intention behind the strike was to force the government to repatriate the refugees.4*1 The Government of Bengal, however, refused to be coerced, especially ‘as the Indian Tea Association was dealing energetically with the matter’.1®* In the meanwhile cholera had broken out in the refugee camp. This confronted Das with a difficult choice. Andrews was urging the withdrawal of the strike so that the refugees could be transported home by public subscription of their steamer and railway fares. Should the non-co-operators now carry on thestrike to force the governmentto surrender, or should they call off the strike to let the refugees go at non-official expense? Privately Das began to gather funds for repatriating the refugees.1** He got a promise of the required sum,but wasfirmly of the opinion that the strike, which was ‘national’ in character, must not be allowed to fail.164 158 Thid., pp. 16-18. 169 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-1922)’, 160 Tbid.; Hemendranath Dasgupta, Deshabandhu Smriti (Calcutta, B.S. 1333),

p. 273.

181 Thid. 162 1B 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’, 468 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, October 1921, nos. 11~53 (A). 164 Tbid. Broomfield writes that C. R. Das’s statement about national honour infuriated C. F. Andrews and in support of this allegation he quotes from letter from Andrews to Tagore: ‘Honour is very cheap when another person has to

maintain it.’ Actually this letter, written one year later (dated 23 February 1922), wasnot about the Chandpurstrike atall, but concerned the East Indian Railway strike of 1922, organized principally by the Khilafat workers. Andrews wanted to settle the strike, but was afraid that the extremists would cry out that honour was at stake. Broomfield thus uses a statementrelating to a different incident.

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In Calcutta a group of ardent non-co-operators (apparently not the senior leaders and certainly not Das) argued at a meeting that ‘the fate of few thousand refugees in the cholera camp at Chandpur ... ought not to stand in the way of a general railway steamship strike, if it could be brought to pass. A few thousand coolies might be sacrificed,if India’s 320,000,000 could obtain Swaraj.’ It appears from the context that this statement was made by somepolitical workers, and certainly not ‘Congress leaders’, of whom there is no mention by Andrews in his account of the meeting. Broomfield depicts a horrified Andrews appealing in vain to the non-co-operators against this callous disregard of human suffering.1% What actually happenedat the meeting was quite the contrary. Andrewsspecifically mentions that the audience was not impervious to the appeal of compassion and ‘at once responded’ to his argument that if the whole of India wasreadyto sacrifice itself for a few thousand people the act would be glorious, but if this doctrine was applied in reverse then Gandhi’s high spiritual standard would be debased.1® Eventually a solution was found that ‘allowed Das both to continue the strike and to let the refugees be repatriated. Andrews, with the help of some moderate politicians and a few Marwari business-

men, collected the necessary funds and hired a private steamer to

carry the tea garden labourers across to Goalando on their westward journey. Far from obstructing, the non-co-operators enthusiastically assisted the operation. Doctors and volunteers were supplied by the non-co-operators to help the refugees on the way.1*’ The journey was punctuated by loud cries of ‘Chittaranjan Daski jai’, to the chagrin of the officials who recalled bitterly that the money had been found by the moderates.1®8 In point of fact, however, Das spentnoless than Rs 1.5 lakh from the Tilak Swaraj Fund fortherelief of the refugees and the strikers.1®° The non-co-operators employed their extensive organization to look after the different groups of tea garden workers at every stage of their journey.” At Chandpurthe volunteers assisted and maintained the refugees in the cholera camp. Everywhere they distributed rice from the Swaraj Fund amongthestriking railway 165 166 167 168 169 170

Flite Conflict, p. 217. ©, F, Andrews, The Meaning of Non-Cooperation, pp. 41-2. GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, October 1921, nos. 11-53 (A). Tbid. FHemendranath Dasgupta, p. 272. GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, September 1921, nos. 300-52 (B).

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and steamer workers andcollected subscriptions for their sustenance through the prolonged strike”! As Andrews noted, the Chandpur events called forth ‘a deep feeling of charity’ and made Bengal one, consciously and visibly.1” I do think that I understand something of the best side of the Movement, as well as the worst side. For I have lived with Suresh

Banerji and the volunteers in the cholera camp at Chandpur; and the beauty of what I saw was beyond all words. That, and infinitely

more, has to be remembered as well as all the weakness and the

crudity, and the constant appeal to baser passions, which I have also seen and heard and read.178

The root cause of the tragedy lay in the very structure of colonial domination. Tea planting and exporting wasan essential part of the British economic stake in India and the ‘coolie’ exodus threatened this entire business. The Mussalman commented: ‘Mr Andrews has vividly pointed out what a government not responsible to the people is capable of. European capitalists exploit the country to their advantage, and the bureaucracy helps them in every possible way.’!"4 The European commercial community was now demanding firm government action, The Indian Tea Association held the view that rather than appointing an enquiry committee on labour conditions in Assam, it was more reasonable to have a committee on the reasons

for the inactivity of the governmentin not dealing with the situation in the initial stages of the movement.?” Underthis political pressure, the earlier policy of wait and see laid down by the Government of India towards the non-co-operation movementwas slightly modified, and local officers were instructed to undertake active counterpropaganda, without at this stage resorting to suppression of the movement. Under this modified policy, special propaganda officers were deputed to the tea districts in Assam and Darjeeling, and in Bakarganj the district magistrate launched an anti-non-co-operation 171 Toid. 172 C, F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Tagore, 15 June 1921. 173 Toid. “4 TB, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22). “8 ITA, Detailed Report of the General Committee of the Indian Tea Association for the year 1921, annual general meeting, 10 March 1922, speech of Chairman.

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movement with useful hints from A. K. Fazlul Huq, who was now co-operating with a vengeance.1’6 As a result of this counter-propaganda by local officials, the steamerstrike in Goalando suddenly collapsed on 25 June, nearlyall serangs and khalasis returning to work. All other steamerlines resumed work in the first half of July, Khulna, Chandpur and Goalandoreturning, one by one, to normal. Trouble broke out once again in Barisal uponthearrest of the local leader Sarat Ghosh, and there was a complete hartal for three days during which schools were closed, steamers were blocked, traffic ceased in the streets, and even

conservancy sweepers were prevented from going to their work by the volunteers. The strike was broken byfirm action, but the AssamBengal Railway strike in Chittagong continued until the end of August. The strikers’ demand for recognition of the railway union presided over by J. M. Sengupta was refused, and the process of evicting strikers from the railway quarters and taking new men put into operation. In the second half of July the men began to return to work, but a riot broke out when the police, escorting a party of returned workers, were assaulted by a mobofstrikers at the instigation of Sengupta. Armed police were called to quell the disturbance, and it was not until Septemberthat all the workers returned to work on the terms of the Railway Agent.?”” While no deaths resulted from the Gurkha outrage which set East Bengal aflame, the railway and steamer strike certainly resulted, as Andrewspointed out at a meeting of the pro-Gandhifaction in the Indian Association Hall, in the death of many labourers whose repatriation was held up by the cessation of transport.’ Shyamsundar Chakravarti, the chairman of the meeting, strongly supported Andrews and emphasized that strikes were no part of the non-cooperation programme as set out at the Congress.1’? Meanwhile Andrews, reporting to Gandhithe real danger of an explosion in East Bengal because of the strike mania, wrote: 1°86 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924; ibid., 209/1921, ‘Propaganda Work in the Bakarganj District’. 177 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22); GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924. 178 Hijli Hitaishi, 14 July 1921; Medinipur Hitaishi, 4 Suly 1921. 179 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22).

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At a meeting which I held about Chandpur the whole meeting was against me except three or four who were such co-operators as Krishna Kumar Mitra and one or two Marwaris. Again the Marwaris in Calcutta who have been as good as gold about the Assam Refugees (Oh how I havelearnt to love these Marwaris: You saw what I wrote and sent to the Press about Gourishankar Mestia, who laid downhis life at Chandpur)—theyare now directly turning against the non-cooperators just at this critical moment when they ought to be giving all their wealth for the Tilak Swaraj Fund. They say that they will give any money I should wish for the distressed labourers into my hands but they will not trust anyoneelse becauseit will go to the ‘strike’.18° Gandhi, in reply, came out with a strong article, entitled the ‘Lessons of Assam’ in Young India: ‘Mr Andrews deplored the sympathetic strike of the steamship employees. Whoever instigated it, did an ill-service to the labourers. In India we want nopolitical strikes .. . We do not need an atmosphere of unsettled unrest... We must gain control over all the unruly and disturbing elements or isolate them even as weare isolating the government. The only way, therefore, we can help the strikers is to give them help andrelief when they have struck for their own bonafide grievances. We must sedulously prevent all other strikes. We seek not to destroy capital or capitalists, but to regulate the relations between capital and labour. It would be folly to encourage sympathetic strikes.’18! Das and his followers were infuriated by this statement and for a time they considered breaking off from Gandhi. They were restrained from this course by the consideration that in such a case they would irresistibly gravitate towards violence.1®* But the underlying differences in Das’s and Gandhi’s thinking were now clear. The clash that occurred over the Chandpurcrisis was due to fundamentally differing conceptions of the role of labour in politics. Gandhi and Andrews had a natural preference for constructive activity instead of strikes. They were prepared to tolerate strikes for the redress of specific grievances, but were opposed to strikes as part of the non-cooperation movement. Their attitude was that strikes and hartals brought addedsuffering to the lower classes and tended towards mass violence. Das, on the other hand, was preparedto take these risks of 180 C. F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Gandhi, 21 June 1921. *8! GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 209/1921, ‘Propaganda Work in East Bengal’. 182 Thid.

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violence and suffering in a national cause. His aim was to mobilize the lower classes to createirresistible political pressure on the British. He did not believe that the only legitimate reason for strikes lay in specific grievances; and hedid his best to relieve the suffering of the strikers by providing funds and volunteers to look after them. Soon after the excitement had subsided, Gandhi came ona visit to

East Bengal. He walked straight into a trap laid for him by the district authorities who were conducting counter-propaganda at Barisal. At a meeting of Gandhi in Barisal town, the district Propaganda Committee of local moderates controlled by the government from behind the scenes posed a series of questions about the late strikes to which Gandhi replied with characteristic honesty, putting the local non-co-operators on the spot. To the question whether a strike for the release of the local leader Sarat Babu was justified, Gandhi replied in Urdu: “The meaning of non-cooperation is that we want deliberately to go to jail though quite innocent... Therefore it should be haram for us to be sorry.’ Replying to a question about the stopping of conservancy service and water supply in Barisal during the strike, he said that he did not want to get Swaraj at all if people behaved in this manner. He condemned the cry ‘Gandhi Maharaj ki jai’ accompanying violent actions, and advised the people not to utter such a cry, which, he said, thrust daggers into his heart.!*3 The district magistrate of Bakarganj, gleefully reporting this tactical victory to the government (while the moral victory remained entirely with Gandhi), wrote: It will be seen that the speech was a great vindication of our loyalists and a corresponding condemnation of the local noncooperators. The leaders who sat upon the platform were fully conscious of this and hung their heads in shame while they were thus being scathingly denounced. The points were not lost on the audience though Maulvi Hashem Ali Khan who translated the speech into Bengali did his best to paraphrase the rebuke and even tried to insert some remarks aboutthe loyalists which Mr Gandhi had not made. He was stopped once or twice for this both by Mr Gandhi and the audience. The whole proceedings were a great tactical victory for us.1%4

Much moreserious in implication for the NCO movementas a 183 TB 1921, ‘The Non-Cooperation Movementin Bengal’. 184 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 209/1921, ‘Propaganda Work in the Bakarganj District’.

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whole than this local tactical point gained by a district magistrate was the fact that the social and ideological contradictions in the movement were by now broughtto focus by the ‘Lessons of Assam’ and the speech at Barisal. While the ideology of the movement, the Hind Swaraj, had no place in it for capitalism, the organization of the movement depended squarely on thefinancial support of native capitalists. While exhorting his people to boycott British goods, Gandhi was at the same time asking Bombay mill owners not to exploit this opportunity for making profit. He himself admitted in his Barisal speech that the mill owners were making exorbitant profits, and his solution was to advise the people not to use millwoven cloth atall. I wantto say this [said Gandhiat Barisal] that if you depend upon Ahmedabad and Bombay mills as you did in the days of partition you will not be able to carry on any work. In your Swadeshi Barisal you should turn out cloth out of that much cotton as you can grow in Barisal... You have become luxurious. You want fine cloth. You do not want to do much labour. You should leave this and you should turn the charkha in every home. But in that case—asked the Hijli Hitaishi pertinently—why should not Indian mill-woven cloth also be boycotted 718° Such a logically consistent move would of course have cut the financial ground from under the movement, for the interests which were patronizing the movement had no patience for ‘charkha, ghani and all that’. So while the poor consumerbore the burden of boycott, the rich mill owner reaped the profit. ‘For the defence and furtherance of the interests of the native manufacturers’, commented M. N. Roy in his One Year of Non-Cooperation, ‘the programme of Swadeshi and boycott is plausible... But as a slogan for uniting the people under the banner of the Congress, the boycott is doomedto failure; because it does not correspond, nay it is positively contrary, to the economic condition of the vast majority of the population . . . The boycott will enlist the support of the manufacturers, but it will never receive a dependable response from the consumers.”!®* Eventhe last assumption, however, was open to doubt; for while Indian capitalists were setting up cotton mills they were also heavily involved in the cloth import trade, especially the Marwaris. On Gandhi’s return from Barisal to Cal185 Hijli Hitaishi, 16 September 1921. 186 TB 1923, ‘One Year of Non-Cooperation’.

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cutta, the Marwari Chamber of Commercein September took the decision to order no moreforeign cloth till the end of the year and fined Mohan Chand Gopi Kishen Rs 1001 as being the only person to violate the agreement. As soon as the year ended, however, fifty-eight Marwari merchants entered into fresh contracts with Manchester and the boycott could no longer be enforced although a majority of the Chambervotedforit.18” After the excitement in East Bengal over the Chandpurincident had subsided, there wasa lull in political activity in the province at the end of July, which continued through August, September and October. Then in Novemberthere was a suddenturnin the situation towards violence. The reason for this change was to be sought in the perfecting of the volunteer organization, the opening of Congress committees and penetration of political propagandato the interior during the lull. Though there were no widespread outward disturbances, there was no diminution in the steady stream ofpolitical propaganda. No less than 4,265 non-co-operation meetings took place between June and mid-November.** The reaching of remote areas in the interior by the Congress committees and volunteer corps ultimately began to produce observable effects on the unrest which had been simmering underthe surface during the lull. When it burst into the open in Novemberin both urban and rural areas, it took

three forms: rioting by landless and tribal elements in rural society, peasant combinations against tax payments and settlement operations, and urbandisorders, strikes and hartals.

Trouble of the first type started in April on the lands of the Midnapur Zamindari Company in Rajshahi, where the sharecroppers refused to pay rent to the European landowning corporation, the only zamindari concern to be affected in the district. The non-co-operators sent Someswar Chaudhuri to Rajshahi to stir up trouble between capital and labour. Being proceeded against under Section 107, Someswar Chaudhuri crossed the river from Rajshahi into Nadia, where trouble simmering between the Midnapur Zamindari Company and its utbandi tenants (shifting tenants whose customaryright to land could be easily denied because of the absence of permanent holdings) since 1918 broke into defiance of law and order in July and August. The utbandicultivators proposed abolition 187 IB Library, ‘Report on the Progress of the Non-Cooperation Movementin Bengal 1922’. 188 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924.

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of indigo cultivation and demanded letting out of Jand on terms which the Company refused. Someswar Chaudhuri held a meeting near the indigo factories with the result that they had to be closed down the next day as no one came to work. He was joined by the dismissed assistants of the concern, in whose companyhevisited the country of the Midnapur Zamindari Company. An attempt at compromise by the district magistrate failed and the non-co-operators addressed meetings, defied orders under Section 144 and instigated the rural police to resign.1® Trouble spread also in the lands of the Midnapur Zamindari Company in Murshidabad and Midnapur, the most serious disturbances occurring among the tribal Santhals and Mahatos in the western part of the latter district. There the company held extensive lands, where rent was much higher than in other areas of Jhargram Subdivision.?®Sailajananda Sen, a schoolteacher, opened a Congress Committee at Gidni near Jhargram andincited the tribals in Pargana Silda to combine against the Midnapur Zamindari Company. Trouble started in November 1921 when looting at the weekly market fair by tribals necessitated a route march by military police through the area. At the instigation of Sailajananda Sen the tenants of the Company refused certain terms of settlement offered by the additional district magistrate who came to Jhargram to enquire into complaints of oppression. This opposition gradually degenerated into regular plunder of forests, and on some occasions more than a thousand people would combineat a time to plunder and damage the jungle. In his meetings Sailajananda Sen told the tribals that Swaraj had been obtained, the jungle and the land weretheirs, and they would have to pay only four annas each to the Congress fund and nothing to the zamindars. Upon his arrest in February 1922, Murari Mohan Rai took charge of the Congress in pargana Silda, and in September 1922 the tenants at his instigation took a vow not to cut wood from any jungle leased by the Midnapur Zamindari Company to the Midnapur Mining Syndicate, with the result that all attempts by the Company to work in the jungle failed. European officials of the Company were often threatened with arrows while trying to stop jungle looting by the Santhals. From the European zamindari of Silda the disturbances spread in April 1923 to the native zamindari of Jamboni, where a spate of 189 Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 21 November 1921, 1 February 1922. 189 Final Report on Midnapore, p. 69.

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fish-looting broke out, inspired by similar acts in Malda and Dinajpur by Santhals earlier in February and March. Trouble had been brewing between Jagdis Dhabal Deb of Jamboni and his Santhal tenants, instigated by a rival claimant to the Jamboni Raj, the Raja of Dalbhum,and his agent, the Mohanta of Ghatsila, with the help

of some hereditary enemies of the estate—a few Satpathis (Brahmans) and Mahatos (wealthy once, broken by the Jamboni Raj). At their instigation the Santhals started looting fish and armed clashes between the servants and tenants of the Jamboni Raj followed. The zamindar lost control of the estate and his servants could not move out for fear of life. The disturbances spread to otherestates, involving (1) in the north, Raipur thana in Bankuradistrict, (2) in the central part, Silda Pargana in Binpur thana,(3) in the south-east, Jamboni thana, including the Gidni Railwaystation, and (4) in the south-west, the eastern portion of Singhbhum district in Chhota Nagpur. The disturbances were ‘agrarian and economic in character’ and ‘directed against the owners of tanks and jungles in general’ who had deprived the Santhals of their traditional fishing and jungle rights.1% More complex than these outbreaks of violence among the dispossessed aboriginal elements at the bottom of rural society were combinations of Bengali peasants, led by leading villagers of peasant stock under the direction of local lawyers and politicians. Combinations threatening to disrupt settlement operations and collection of taxes had sprung up by November 1921 in Pabna, Bogra, Birbhum and Midnapur. Macpherson, the settlement officer for Pabna and Bogra, was actually assaulted by an unruly crowd including NCO volunteers when he went to a market fair to buy food for his staff from whom supplies had been withheld. After this assault the district magistrate and the police superintendent toured Bogra and a show of force by armedpolice got the settlement operations going again, but Macpherson was assaulted a second time in succession.4** For some time Khilafat meetings had been held in the bigger marketfairs in Bogra wheretales of outrage against Muslim holy places had been circulated, and ordinary maulvis and mullahs who had formerly held 191 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 181/1923, ‘Disturbances in Jamboni, District Midnapore’; Servant, 10 July 1923; Nikar, 14 February 1922, 15 and 29 May 1923; Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the district of Bankura 1917-24 by F. W. Robertson (Calcutta, 1926), pp. 11-12. 192 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22); IB 1921, ‘The Non-Cooperation Movementin Bengal’.

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aloof from politics had been recently drawn into the boycott movement in East Bengal.1°% An even more impressive peasant combination was put together in the Contai and Tamluk subdivisions of Midnapurdistrict against newly introduced union boards by a Mahishya lawyer from Contai, Birendranath Sasmal, who had joined C. R. Das’s party and was one of his three top lieutenants. This area was thickly settled by agricultural Mahishyas, led by rich agriculturists and small proprietors who had acquired ‘lots’ in the Sundarbans. They opened up the Sundarbanswith their Mahishya dependants in Contai and Tamluk, who were movedacross the river to the Sundarbansfor clearing the forest. Thus this class of respectable peasant-proprietors, a considerable body in Contai and Tamluk, had an assured income. The great mass of poor peasants of the area were also Mahishyas. The homogeneity of the population in Tamluk and Contai andthe caste identity of its social leadership with the rest of the people produced an extremely effective combination against payment of union board rates once it became known that these new local self-governing bodies were likely to increase the older chaukidari rates by fifty per cent. The news dashed the hopes of poor Mahishya peasants who had thought that they were electing their own village officers to the union boards who would take the place of the ‘Hakims’ (government officers) and administer justice to them without costly lawyers. B. N. Sasmal, who had a personal antagonism against the subdivisional officer of Contai, Mr Dey, organized meetingsall over the region with the help of Satish Chandra Jana, an educated young man of a respectable local Mahishya family. The educated people of Contai, who controlled the union boards and who might therefore have counteracted Sasmal’s campaign, were split by rivalry between two sections, one consisting of the local residents and the other of people from other districts who had established a practice in the Contai courts or had flourished in other spheres. The two factions split on the issue of the coming election to the Legislative Council in December 1921, contested from Contai by a Kayastha named Asoke Dutt, who was considered an outsider by the local Mahishya gentlemen. A rumour spread that he had made offensive remarks against the Mahishya community, and he was promptly denounced

by the respectableMahishyas of Contai.

The Nihar, a Contai newspaper edited by a local Mahishya, 188 Final Report on Pabna and Bogra, pp. 93-5.

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MadhusudanJana, was the organofthe local party and opposed the candidature of Asoke Dutt. His candidature was, however, espoused by Nagendra Chandra Bakshi, who was himself a local man but was popular among the settlers and a Kayastha by caste. The pro-

government Contai newspaper, Hijli Hitaishi, published in May 1921 by Nagendra Chandra Bakshi, sharpened the rivalry between the two parties. The Nihar was connected with the local Brahmo Samaj, while the Hijli Hitaishi was an adjunctofthe local Hari Sabha. It was rumoured that Mr Dey, the subdivisional officer, was interested in the candidature of Mr Dutt, who washis relative by marriage. At this stage Dey brought aboutan alliance between B. N. Sasmal (who already had a personal enmity with him) and the editor of the Nihar (who was convinced that he had incurred Dey’s enmity by opposing Dutt’s candidature) by withholding the government sale and certificate notices from the Nihar. This step was taken on accountof the publication of a few letters in the paper against the union boards. Since the editor himself had made no comment against the union boards, Sasmal at once held this up as an instance of government tyranny and ofits attempt to suppress free discussion. He appealed to the people to increase the circulation of the paper, which had now gone over completely to the non-co-operation party. The situation was rendered worse by advertisements being given to the HAijli Hitaishi, the organ of the outsiders headed by Nagendra Chandra Bakshi, the Chairman of the Contai Local Board.

Sasmal now organized a campaign with the help of educated Mahishya volunteers which reached the remotest parts in Tamluk and Contai, and the agitation soon spilled over to Ghatal and Sadar subdivisions in Midnapurdistrict. By November 1921 entire villages had combined in such a manner that under social pressure union board members and chaukidars in many unions had resigned, union board rates had been withheld in all subdivisions of Midnapur and attempts at distraint of property in orderto realize union boardrates had been foiled by the fact that no purchaser was forthcoming in the seriously affected areas of Tamluk and Contai. The local officers, hoping that people might be persuaded to pay the chaukidari rates under the older Chaukidari Act, recommended the abolition of union boards in November as a tactical withdrawal in order to regroup against the NCO campaign in the district. In accordance with this recommendation the union boardswere abolished by the government and Sasmal thus scored a complete victory. This victory was due to

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the combination of what was effectively the whole population of an extensive rural tract, who had implicit faith in Birendranath Sasmal, their kinsman, who had renounced a lucrative practice to serve them and who had worked with them during the last two floods.1*4 The urban unrest also reached a climax in November, and in Howrah and Calcutta the situation began to slip out of the control of the police. On the night of 4 November a procession returning from a Khilafat meeting in Howrah townattackedthe police, forcing them to retire to a police station. Armed police requisitioned from Sibpur were attacked-en route. They succeeded in relieving the police station, now besieged by a large mob, only by firing in order to disperse the crowd. In this action one police constable and a number of rioters were killed. A boycott of the Howrah police was put into operation by volunteers who intimidated the shopkeepers and householders. At the same time an attempt to break a tram strike in Calcutta by running a tram in north Calcutta led to serious disturbances in Belgachia where a deputy commissioner, an assistant commissioner and twenty other members of the police received injuries.1% The arrival of the Prince of Wales on 17 Novemberprovided the occasion for a striking demonstration of national solidarity all over India. Widespread riots greeted his arrival in Bombay, and for four days life in the city was disrupted. Calcutta responded in a more quiet way by the most complete twenty-four hour hartal ever seen. From early morning [commented the Times], Congress and Khilafat volunteers appeared onthestreets, and it is no exaggeration to say, took possession of the whole city. The Bazars were closed. Tramcars were stopped. Taxis were frightened off the streets and horse vehicles were nowhereto be seen. There was little open violence, not even a brickbat was thrown at the armoured cars that patrolled the streets. The police looked on and did nothing. The control of the city passed for the whole day into the hands of the volunteers. At nightfall electric lights were cut off, and the streets were silent, dark and deserted. It waslike a city of the dead.19% 194 This account of the agitation in Midnapur is based on the 1921 issues of two Contai newspapers, Nihar and Hijli Hitaishi, and on BMP, Local SelfGovernment Branch,July 1922, nos. 36-34. 6 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengalon the Political Situation (1921-1922),

6 Quoted by M. N. Roy, ‘One Year of Non-Cooperation’, copyin IB file.

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Reports from the commissioners of the divisions showed that the hartal on 17 November had been moreorless completely observed throughout all urban areas in the Presidency of Bengal.!*? And similar action was takenincities all over India. On the brink of chaos European business interests in Calcutta were badly frightened. Control of a city which contained the vital economic interests of a vast empire had passed for full twenty-four hours to the declared opponents of government. R. M. Watson-Smyth of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce pronounced in the Bengal Legislative Council: On the day after Thursday’s hartal, one of the best known of the extremist papers wrote with satisfaction that even if Government refuse to realize it, it was patent to all that Thursday’s hartal was revolution. In this we all thoroughly agree. Revolution was indeed writ large over all Thursday’s proceedings. Revolution is what these things mean, and as revolution they must be dealt with. For months, aye for years past, the public have been urged to be patient, and recently even in the highest quarters we have been told that the revolutionary movement is dying out, and we are invited to witness the fruits of this policy of patience. On Thursday last we did indeedtaste these fruits, and we want no more ofit.1%8

Conscious of the resentment of government inaction among the European business community, the Government of Bengal pleaded with the Government of India in its fortnightly report for thefirst half of November: ‘It is now clear that the non-cooperation movement has built up an organization of very real power, andthis it will be necessary to break if decent administration is to be restored.’ At the highest level there was now a change in governmentpolicy with regard to the non-co-operation movement.’ Till now the government had followed the policy of letting the movement kill itself by its inherent contradictions, though after the tea garden exodusinstructions had been given to district officers to resort more freely to prosecutions and propaganda. But alarming developments 187 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’. 198 Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 21 November 1921. 199 Tej Bahadur Sapru Papers, p. 282, Address of Viceroy to the Bengal Mahajan Sabha; GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924. 20

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in November forced the governmentto give a new and moredefinite lead. The Governmentof India, announced the Viceroy impressively, ‘are very conscious of their power andtheir strength. Recent events have madeit imperative that the full strength of the Government should be exerted for vindicating the law and preserving order.’ Amidst this impressive display of power, the Prince of Wales continued his far from joyous journey northwards, only to be greeted in Allahabad ‘with what truth compels the admission of as the most effective hartal yet experienced. The streets were liberally festooned and garlanded, but entirely deserted.”*°° In other places visited by the Prince, boycott was not so complete, though the full force of an undoubtedly powerful machinery of agitation was put forth.?°+ The

Prince’s arrival in Calcutta, the hotbed of unrest, was to be the acid

test of the relative strength of the non-co-operators and the government, and both sides prepared for the confrontation on a massive scale. Four armed cruisers were anchored outside the harbour and special battalions of troops were posted in every part of the city. Besides this armed military might, the weight of the influential European population of the city was throwninto the scales, and a civilian guard was formed composed of Europeans, Eurasians and loyal Indians, to whom the municipal control of the city was handed over so that public utility services might continue in the coming hartal. Congress volunteers and similar bodies were declared unlawful associations, prosecutions were instituted against leading politicians and newspapers, and public meetings in Calcutta were prohibited for three months. Outside Calcutta the largest number of arrests for defiance of law took place in the districts of Pabna, Mymensingh, Dacca, Faridpur, Bakarganj, Tippera, Chittagong, Howrah, 24-Parganas and Rangpur.” C. R. Das now madethe tactical mistake of trying prematurely to draw the teeth of government repression instead of organizing quietly for the showdownonthe day ofthe Prince’s arrival. A policy of massive courting ofarrest to choke the jails was put into operation in early December. Batches of young men—Bengalis, Hindustanis, Muslims and Sikhs—appeared as volunteers in Barabazar on 5 December, and on each succeeding day up to the 8th arrests were 200 Manchester Guardian, quoted by M. N. Roy,op. cit. *0! Reading Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 238.6, no. 5, Reading to Montagu, 23 February 1923. *°2 IB, ‘One Year of Non-Cooperation’; GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924.

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made in large and increasing numbers. To whip up excitement, women were thrown into the movement openly for the first time in Bengal. On the 7th a small batch of Bengali women, led by Mrs C. R. Das, courted arrest. On the following day in Barabazar an excited mob completely blocked Harrison Road andtraffic was entirely suspended. The Indian constables were thoroughly demoralized on realizing the strength of the forces of disorder confronting them and all arrests had to be carried out by European police sergeants. Because of the strain on the European element and demoralization of the native police, British military infantry were posted in the disturbed area on the 9th. Large crowds again assembled in Barabazar, but the infantry dealt with the situation, making 190 arrests during the day. On the 10th C. R. Das, Abul Kalam Azad, Subhas Bose,

B. N. Sasmal and Ambika Prasad Bajpye were arrested; until then 753 had been arrested, mostly students. After the 10th the students dropped out of the movement, and the policy of challenging the government to enforce its proclamation was carried on by the enlistment of mill-hands and low class Muslims who were sometimes paid for courting arrest. On the afternoon of the 23rd, the day before the Prince’s arrival, no less than 650 arrests had to be made in Bowbazar and Barabazar andjail accommodation wastaxed to the utmost. But this proved to be the last expiring effort of the opposition, miscalculated in timing and initiated at least a week too early. On the night of the 23rd/24th, the civil guard took over the whole of south Calcutta, releasing the police and the infantry to deal with the native quarter of north Calcutta, where also the civil guard reinforced the police and armybattalions. The hartal, though successful to the extent of securing the closure of shops and markets, failed to produce a disturbance which had marred the celebration in Bombay.?% Ronaldshay noted in his diary on the following day: Yesterday I was wokenabout 6 a.m. by the sound of a tram—the first time I have ever been glad to hear the horrible sound! The Prince’s receptionfar better than J ever dared hope; andthehartal less effective. Trams and a fair numberoftaxis and carriages on the streets though shops and markets closed. Large crowds on the route of procession including very considerable numbers of Indians. At the races the biggest crowd IJ have seen this winter, and 203 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on thePolitical Situation’.

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large crowds lining red road and outside Government house to

see him return. Weare all very much relieved.?"4

The changed climate of opinion wasseen in the increasing numberof

people who flocked to see the Prince and a successful visit cul-

minated on the 27th when the Prince was received with great enthusiasm by immense crowds on the Maidan. The full forces of government and business had been pitted against the entire force of popular opposition and had carried the day in the metropolis, proving their control ofthecity. Joy evaporated as the reports from the districts began to pourin. There had been open defiance of authority in every district of Bengal, chaukidari taxes had been refused, magistrates’ orders had been defied, and the hartal was almost complete in all the main centres of population throughout Bengal.?°> Even in Calcutta the improvement in the situation following the Prince’s visit proved to be short-lived. The non-co-operators, realizing that they were losing ground after the striking success of the public reception of the Prince, began sending out bands of volunteers urging boycott of foreign cloth. Women appeared once again on the streets and held meetings in defiance of the Police Commissioner’s orders. This method of propaganda spread to the districts, and the wife of a zealous police officer tried to commit suicide while her husband was engaged in making arrests. A situation of utmost difficulty arose from the

entrance of Indian women of the educated classes into the political

arena. Any action taken against them, reported the Government of Bengal to the GovernmentofIndia,‘is seized upon by the extremists and paraded as an insult to the womanhoodofIndia, while it equally calls forth hysterical protests in quarters usually described as moderate. On the other hand, immunity from arrest is making them bolder and they are beginning to attract large crowds by holding meetings in the squaresofthe city in defiance of orders prohibiting them. The dispersing of such crowds is fraught with the danger of serious rioting.’?0¢ 204 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.2, ‘My Bengal Diary’, 25 December 1921. *05 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation’; Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.4, Ronaldshay to Montagu, 12 January 1922.

206 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation’.

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Much moreserious, however, than the political action of educated women in Calcutta and other towns was the growing volume of uncontrollable rural unrest. This was directed mainly against the regular police, the rural chaukidari police, and the payment of chaukidari taxes and union rates. But already there were signs of withholding of rent from zamindars, which affected not only the European Midnapur Zamindari Company,but native landlordslike the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, who wastold by his tenants that they would not pay rent if he continued to pay the land revenue.2°7 Cultivators in Mymensing, refusing to pay the chaukidari tax in the belief that Swaraj was near at hand, said that they lived in the land of God and were His creation and that they were not to pay anything to anyone in the world. The tendency of the campaign against the paymentof the chaukidari tax to develop into a general resistance to the paymentofall dues, including rent, began to cool the ardour of non-co-operators, many of whom were drawn from the landed classes. The Publicity Board of the BPCC issued a notice warning the district committees against this form of mass civil disobedience, but in manydistricts the idea had already caught the imagination of the masses. In the interior the BPCC carried no weight and even the district Congress committees seemed powerless to control the ‘great wave of lawlessness’ which swept over the affected areas in East and West Bengal. The BPCC had not yet adopted the policy of civil disobedience, and in no specific area in Bengal was there any systematic inauguration of mass civil disobedience, but the disturbed areas were clearly drifting towardsit. In its fortnightly report for the first half of January 1922 the Government of Bengal reported: The situation remains volcanic... Both in Calcutta and in the mufassil the attempt to discredit law and order by the use of every weapon continues, and while surface politics ebb and flow with talks of round table conferences, civil disobedience and revision

of the Treaty of Sévres, below there is a strong under-current of disorderly elements, mainly Muhammadan, which is steadily carrying the whole mass towards violence.” 207 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.4, Ronaldshay to Montagu, 9 February 1922; IB Library, ‘Report on the Progress of the Non-Cooperation Movement in Bengal 1922’. 208 1B 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22)’.

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The masses at the meetings in Birbhum, Nadia, Comilla, etc.—no

less than 240 were held in Bengal during the week ending 12 January 1922—-were mainly Muslim, and the Muslim community was being worked up to a high pitch of excitement by the suddenly increased activity of Khilafat agitators, who were spreading false rumours and inflammatory appeals about the desecration of the holy places and the need for jihad. At a meeting in Nadia it was stated that chastity was rare among English women and Englishmen were described as sons of bastards. The audience, largely Muslim, was told to be fearless of life. A conference of the ulema at Comilla, attended by 10,000 Muslims, declared civil disobedience obligatory according to the Hadith, and imprisonment for Swaraj and Khilafat purifying. Intensive propaganda was conducted by the leading Wahabis of Rajshahi, Dinajpur and Birbhum, where pirs and collecting agents collected Baitul-Mal, and their principal topic of preaching was the approachingdeclaration of Jihad.*°° The tide of unrest which swept through North, West and East Bengal from January to March affected nearly every district of the province. The only district which did not figure in the police reports during these three months was Murshidabad in Presidency Division.2!° The most extended areas of serious unrest covering a number of neighbouring districts were (1) the littoral districts of South East Bengal inhabited by Muslim cultivators, namely Chittagong, Noakhali and Tippera, which had already reacted with considerable violence to the Chandpurcrisis, and (2) the jute producing districts of North Bengal inhabited also by Muslim cultivators, namely, Pabna and Bogra, which had similarly responded in a violent mannerto settlement operations. The unrest, however, spread also to districts hitherto little affected. In the Rajshahi and Dinajpur districts of North Bengal, quiet so long, the Wahabis under Abdullahal Baqi threw themselves into the volunteer movement, and soon there was trouble between landlords and tenants. Further north, in Jalpaiguri, the district Congress committee followed a deliberate policy of recruiting hillmen, including Gurkhas, and boycott of a 09 TB Library, ‘Report on the Progress of the Non-Cooperation Movementin

Bengal 1922’.

20 The following account of mob violence and mass unrest is based on GB,

Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924; IB Library, ‘Report on the Progress of the

Non-Cooperation Movementin Bengal 1922’; and IB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation’.

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tea garden market fair was enforced. On 12 February some Santhals were arrested in the Jalpaiguri Duars on the charge of looting a Marwari shopkeeper’s stall following a quarrel between him and a Santhal cooly. When the small police force began to march off with the arrested Santhals, a menacing crowd wearing Gandhicaps surrounded the force and began to throw dust into the constables’ eyes. The police opened fire to disperse the crowd, killing three and wounding twelve. The crowd consisted of Muslims, Santhals and Oraons, who proclaimed before attacking that they were immune from bullets because they were wearing Gandhi Maharaj’s caps. In Darjeeling the assistant manager of a tea garden estate was beaten by the labourers and chased into the jungle. Although all districts were affected in some measure during January-March, civil administration came to the verge of collapse only in the worst-affected areas in the interior of four districts— Rangpur (North Bengal), Midnapur (West Bengal), Tippera (South East Bengal) and Chittagong (South East Bengal). Significantly, in noneof these areas were the villages in the grip of dominating local upper-caste gentry to the same extent as in Dacca, Faridpur and Bakarganj. Landholding was evenly distributed among small peasant proprietors belonging mostly to the homogeneous Muslim (Rangpur, Tippera, Chittagong) or Mahishya (Midnapur) communities, which formed the greater part of the population in these districts. In Tippera, the only district where a local landholding and moneylending upper-caste stratum came underfire from the agricultural Muslim population, the situation quickly assumed the shape of a fierce class conflict. Masses went out of hand in the affected areas, Chauddagram and Laksam, where zamindars and moneylenders,

seeking protection, threw themselves into the arms of police. It was observed that the agitation was entirely Muslim but notreligious, people being ‘simply out to assert themselves, and save money’.*!4 Between 13 February and 9 March, there were no less than five determined attacks on the police. After a riot on 2 March the DM and the SP carried out a house search on 9 March with forty-eight constables. A crowd of 400 carrying lathis (sticks) and daos (axes) gathered. While the police party tried precipitately to retreat from the village, the crowd made frantic attack on them. Volunteers tried to restrain the mob, but without effect. In a hail of bullets, three people died and five were wounded. Neither the Congress nor 211 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924.

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the government had any control over the area. The area affected was wider in Rangpur, where the volunteer movement reached a high degree of organization due to the participation of Wahabis at the instigation of Abdullahal Baqi, who introduced the new feature of drilling of volunteers. A systematic boycott of governmentservants, police and chaukidars was put into operation in this district. A widespread refusal to pay chaukidari taxes soon developed into a refusal to pay rents and many local tenure-holders and jotedars consequently turned against the movement. But by this time the situation had got out of hand. In the worst-affected subdivision of Nilpahari a Swaraj thana was opened by Gayesuddin Ahmed, commonly called Gandhi daroga, who used a bugle to call volunteers together. On 21 December 1921 armed police were attacked in Nilpahari market, where firing caused a few casualties. A few days later the DM patrolled the area with armed forces and chaukidari taxes were paid for the time being. But the situation did not improve and on 20 February the SDO went to clear away a prohibited market at Ulipur. The crowd attacked his police party with bamboosand clods and three were woundedin the firing. It was noticed that the Congress volunteers tried to help the police and to induce the crowd to disperse, but they were unable to exercise any control over the crowd.

In Rangpur, Tippera, Noakhali and other places the regular police were the main targets of attack; in Birbhum and Midnapur the movement was mainly directed against the rural police. In Midnapur, as we have seen, the movement against the union boards had been so successfully conducted by B. N. Sasmal that by Decemberthe government, in the hope of persuading the villagers to accept at least the older chaukidari system, had withdrawn the new union boards. This tactical withdrawal did not pay off, for Sasmal was now in jail and the district Congress committee had lost control over the masses. Though the district Congress committee advised payment of the chaukidari tax, the masses were now determinedto resist any attempt to enforce paymentand there was no improvement in the collection of the tax. Refusing to follow the directions of the local Congress, the villagers explained that when they had subscribed to the Swaraj fund they had been assured that in future they would escape from all kinds of taxes. The authority of the BPCC wassimilarly powerless to prevent withholding of rent. The local Mahishya gentry was too solidly entrenched in the villages to allow any no-rent campaign to

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develop in their own lands, but in Contai where the movement against the chaukidari tax was most advanced, the collection of rents in the government estates, which covered a great area of the subdivision, was affected.

In Chittagong mass civil disobedience not only persisted longer, but took a more varied shape. The earlier movement during the Chandpur crisis had been organized mainly in urban areas by J. M. Sengupta underthe control of the Congress, but after December 1921 violence, uncontrolled and unorganized, spread into the remotest

forest areas without easy access from towns, and the district magistrate warned the government in February that tragedy might occur at any momentin theinterior of the district. At the instigation of the volunteers, who pushed the campaign recklessly, police and forest officers were severely assaulted in the performance of their duties, the transportation of materials by the Public Works Department was stopped, contractors were threatened and labourers assaulted while working for the PWD, reserve forests were entered and looted by crowds of villagers, beat houses and inspection bungalows were burnt, meetings were held in defiance of Section 144, and tea garden market fairs were boycotted and attempts made to cut off supplies. The principal form of the movement was opposition to the forest department. In the affected thanas of the thinly populated and scarcely civilized Cox’s Bazar forest looting started as a result of permission by the forest officer after the cyclone of May 1921 to take building material free from the woodsfor ten days on application. Wood was taken without permission and the habit grew until by May 1922 the forest department virtually ceased to function. Of twelve forest offices and beat housesin this area, eight were burnt down in one year, as well as the Divisional Forest Office at Cox’s Bazar. In April one man wasshot dead in a confrontation between armed police and forest looters. This widespread looting was not the work of volunteers, but of ordinary villagers—one more instance of the leaders losing control. Cry halt Tossing on the mighty wave of disorder which was sweeping through rural Bengal, the BPCC, now led by Shyamsundar Chakravarti in the absence of C. R. Das (in jail from December 1921), became divided on the question of mass civil disobedience in the form of refusal to pay chaukidari tax, to which the masses were spontane-

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ously resorting without the authorization and against the directives of the Bengal Congress.”!2 J. M. Sengupta, who had been originally responsible for instigating the trouble in Chittagong and had now been thoroughly frightened by the loss of his grip on the predominantly Muslim civil disobedience movement in the district, solemnly uttered a warning at the Bengal Provincial Conference in Chittagong in April 1922 against race hatred and violence. Moving aboutfor the last few months among Muslims doing Khilafat work, he had discovered that the hatred of the English was ‘more marked amongst the Mahamadans than amongst any otherclass of people’ and expressed the fear that the policy of rousing the masses would lead to a rising against all higher classes, irrespective of race and

colour, and the downfall of merchants, traders, zamindars and the

middle classes who were thriving underthe existing system of government.248 The leaders who had gained control of the Congress after Das’s arrest in December 1921 wereafraid of abdicating their leadership if they failed to push the movement and of risking a mass uprising if they did. From this dilemma they were rescued by the decision of the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress at Bardoli to suspend masscivil disobedience. The influence of the NCO movement, though muchless in rural areas generally than in the towns, had by the beginning of February 1922 produced extremely disturbing symptoms in the countryside, particularly in parts of Assam, Bengal, UP and Bihar.?"* Gandhi’s rich Marwari supporters in Calcutta had for some time been pressing him to apply the brakes. The massacre of policemen by an infuriated mob at Chauri Chaura was the ‘last straw’ for Gandhi, who had realized for some time that the movement was rapidly developing from a non-violent movement into a violent struggle and fast getting out of the control of political leaders.?45 Gandhi took courage in both hands, andcalling together the Working Committee at Bardoli, suspended masscivil disobedience, substituting for it a ‘constructive programme’ of hand spinning, national schools and arbitration courts. This effectively put an end to the organized non-co-operation movement under the Congress leadership, though mass civil dis712 TB Library, ‘Report on the Progress of the Non-Cooperation Movement in Bengal 1922’. 218 Tid. 214 GI, HomePoll (A), 18/1922 and 678/1922. *18 Jawaharlal Nehru Correspondence, Gandhi to Nehru, 10 February 1922.

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obedience continued until July in remote rural tracts like Tippera and Chittagong. It resolved itself into class conflict in July and August between landlords and tenants over an extensive area in North Bengal, comprising Pabna, Rajshahi, Dinajpur and Rangpur, where tenants refused to pay illegal cesses to the zamindars (especially the Midnapur Zamindari Company) and held meetings to concert opposition. In August there was a determined attack by 800 refractory tenants on a special police force sent to Char Khalitpur in Pabna, wheresix tenants were injuredin firing.?1® However, the upper classes, both in town and country, had with-

drawn from the movementand there was now no connection between the Congress movement and mass unrest. Heartened by the Bardoli resolutions, the governmentat last picked up the courage to arrest Gandhi. Not a dog, as the Viceroy observed with complacency, barked. The concrete achievements of the non-co-operation movement, as M. N. Roypointed out, were few, but important, and ignored by the bureaucracy until too late to prevent them. They consisted in the successful collection of a National Fund of one crore rupees, the registration of ten million members of the Congress party, and the building up of a nation-wide organization for propaganda purposes, which the

Nationalist Movement had never before had, and whose all-

embracing activities swept the great mass of the people—intellectuals, petty bourgeoisie, peasants and city proletariat alike, within its scope.*??

At the time when the non-co-operation movement was suspended by Gandhi, C. R. Das and his followers were in jail and the Bengal Congress was controlled by Gandhi’s followers like Shyamsundar Chakravarti. The decision to suspend the movement was generally unwelcome in Bengal and brought out once more the differences in Das’s and Gandhi’s approach. Das’s follower, Subhas Bose, was to recall later at a political conference in London: ‘In 1922 when the whole nation had been roused to passionate activity and greater daring and sacrifice could be expected of the people the Commander216 1B 1922, ‘Report on the Progress of the Non-Cooperation Movement in Bengal 1922’. 2177B, ‘One Year of Non-Cooperation’. Most of the Congress funds were

collected during 1921, when Gandhi collected the famous crore within the

specified time. AICC 44/1924, ‘Notes on Congress Finances’; Montagu Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 523.14, Reading to Montagu,7 July 1921.

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in-Chief suddenly hoisted the white flag. And this happenedafter he had thrown away, a couple of months earlier, a unique opportunity for what would have appeared in the existing circumstances as an honourable compromise with the Bureaucracy.’*!® Bose was expressing here the essence of Das’s political strategy. Das had a defined goal: national power. To achieve this, his essentially political mind was constantly on the watch to seize on any concession yielded by the British, and then to press for more from a position of enhanced strength. On the eve of the Prince of Wales’ visit to Calcutta in December 1921, the Viceroy had sent a feeler to Dasin jail: if boycott of the Prince’s visit was withdrawn he would release prisoners and call a round table conference. Das’s young followers wereat first opposed to this compromise, but he convinced them that the compromise was essential to fulfil Gandhi’s rash promise of Swaraj in one year. ‘If a settlement was made before December 31st and all political prisoners were released, it would appear to the popular imagination as a great triumph for the Congress. The Round Table Conference might or might not be a success, but if it failed and the government refused to concede the popular demands, the Congress could resume the fight at any time and when it did so, it would command greater prestige and public confidence.’*!® Gandhi, however, was hesitant about a com-

promise, and insisted on further terms which led the Viceroy to withdraw the offer. Das was disgusted by the loss of this political opportunity, and wasall the more annoyed when two monthslater Gandhi suspended the movement with nothing to show for it. His relentless will to national power was unable to comprehend the rejection of an advantageous offer and the subsequent decision not to press ahead when the offer had been withdrawn. Gandhi, on the other hand, did not see things from an exclusively political point of view. He was prepared to modify his political calculations by moral considerations which Das did not appreciate. All the police reports suggest that on the eve of the decision to stop the movement, rural control was collapsing over large parts of 218 Subhas Chandra Bose, presidential address, ‘The Anti-Imperialist Struggle and Samyavada’, at the Third Political Conference, London, 1933, published in

Fundamental Questions of Indian Revolution (Calcutta, 1970). *19 Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian Struggle 1920-2] (Calcutta, 1964),

pp. 67-8.

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Bengal. A violentrural uprising was narrowly averted by the decision not to launch civil disobedience. ‘Weare fearful of the future of our district from accounts which wearegetting from the interior’, warned the Tippera Guide on 24 January 1922.2” The fortnightly report for the second half of February commented fearfully on ‘the growing spirit of lawlessness both in towns and districts which the Congress elementis utterly unable to controlor direct’.222 If Gandhi’s standard of a strictly controlled, non-violent movement was to be maintained,

there was no alternative to calling off non-co-operation. But Das, in his own terms, was perfectly rational in wanting to press ahead, regardless of risk. To what extent was the non-co-operation movementsuccessful in committing the body of the population to a course of opposition to government? Upto the end of 1921, when the government won the

battle for Calcutta during the visit of the Prince of Walesto thecity, the unrest in Bengal, as elsewhere in India, was mainly urban in character. Even during the Chandpur crisis in the predominantly agricultural area of East Bengal, it was the towns which were affected by strikes and hartals. After December 1921, when the massive application of government power beganto break the organization of the non-co-operation movement in the towns, the unrest became mainly rural in Assam, Bengal, Bihar and UP, and quickly began to go out of control of the town-based Congress and Khilafat organizations. In Bengal, administration was virtually paralysed in Contai, Tamluk, Sabong and Ghatal in Midnapurdistrict, Nilpahari and Fulchar in Rangpur, Laksam and Chauddagram in Tippera, and Banskhali, Satkania and Cox’s Bazar in Chittagong. The mass character of the movement, at least in its origin, was not the result of a groundswell from below,but of the reaching-down of organization from above. J. M. Sengupta’s campaign in Chittagong and B. N. Sasmal’s agitation in Midnapur, which brought the villages into close contact with the Congress organization and the volunteer movementforthefirst time, clearly showed that the movement was organized from above by means of a closer rapport between the provincial political elite and the local town andvillage leadership. At the beginning of 1922, however, there was a peasant movement from below, a groundswell which burst the bonds of Congress control. In 220 Broomfield, Elite Conflict, p. 225. 221 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political Situation (1921-22).

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Tippera, in Rangpur, and in Chittagong the Congress volunteerslost control over the rural crowds. These crowds were now composed mainly of the poorer peasants. Richervillagers, frightened off, were dropping out of the movementin someplaces. The movement succeeded best in committing the mass of the people to political opposition in those areas where the tyranny of an upper caste landed gentry was relatively weak. In these areas the leading villagers, if they belonged to the majority community of the local population, were in a strong position to commit whole bodies of villagers to defiance of authority, providing of course they joined the political leaders from the towns who brought the Congress and the Khilafat organizations down to them. In the case of the prosperous Mahishya farmers of Contai or the Muslim jotedars of Rangpur, wholocally enjoyed a goodsocial position, there was no impediment to their joining the party of the Congress or Khilafat leaders from the towns. There wasstrong disincentive to join the Congress only in the case of local leaders of ritually low peasant castes like the Namasudras and the Rajbanshis, and in fact the political response from these two large peasant communities, which numbered next only to the Muslim and Mahishya communities, was weak because of their resentment of their low ritual rank. The Rajbanshi community of Rangpur under the leadership of Rai Sahib Panchanan Barman temporarily went over to the non-co-operators in July 1921, but in fact the Muslim volunteers remained the main driving force behind the movementin thedistrict.?*? The attitude of the Namasudra leaders, resentful of the ritual

domination of Brahmans, Vaidyas and Kayasthasin their part of the province, was more ambivalent. A meeting of the Namasudras in Pirojpur in Bakarganj on social reform and boycott of foreign goods dissolved into three warring factions: those who were against widow remarriage and boycott, those for widow remarriage and boycott, and those against widow remarriage and for boycott. Those against both widow remarriage and boycott were the dominantparty, and at the beginning of the conference a smaller body of 500 who wanted both widow remarriage and boycottleft the pandal, followed by the larger body of four to five thousand Namasudras who wanted boycott but not widow remarriage. The two parties then returned and jointly attacked the remaining delegates at the conference, 222 TB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Government of Bengal on the Political

Situation (1921-22),

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though no one died in the fighting.?? Significantly, the greater Bikrampur area consisting of portions of Bakarganj, Dacca and Faridpur, which had been in the forefront of the Swadeshi movement, did not see a breakdown of law and ordersimilar to that in

Midnapur, Rangpur, Chittagong and Tippera, where the uppercaste Hindu gentry were much weaker. Evenin areas thinly inhabited by uppercaste gentry like Midnapur and Rangpur, however,the local rich farmers did not wish the unrest to stir up the poor peasants and share-croppers to a point where their own economic interests would be threatened. There was no movement of under-tenants and share-croppers to withhold rent from zamindars, unless the landlord happened to be the government (as was the case with regard to the government khas estates in Contai) or a European corporation (as was the case with regard to the lands of the Midnapur Zamindari Companyin Midnapur, Nadia, Rajshahi, etc.) A small numberof native landlords were affected, but in some ofthese cases the jotedars themselves had turned against the landlord, as in Rangpur where they were refusing to pay abwabs to the zamindars of Balna and the Maharaja of Kasimbazar. The most successful peasant combinations in Bengali villages were usually, but not always, led by village heads and rich farmers, who turned against the movementas soon asit beganto slip out of their control. Butin spite of the control exercised by the substantial villagers, a strange unrest, usually expressed in terms of a millennial hope of Swaraj, stirred the lowest elements in Indian society. Gandhi’s charismatic appeal reached deep down to the bottom layer of the deprived—the tribals, the low castes, the coolies, the landless

labourers. It penetrated even into the jails of Rajshahi, Barisal, and Midnapur, where criminal elements broke out from prison, excited by the false rumour that Swaraj had been established outside by ‘Maharaj Gandhi’, that the British Raj was over and notes and rupees were being coined in the name of Gandhi.?" Under the impact of these strange millennial hopes, Oriya porters in Calcutta refused to carry loads of foreign cloth for Marwari merchants.”” Santhal and Oraon tribals attacked armed police, wearing Gandhi caps supposed to give immunity from bullets, and tea garden coolies 223 Hijli Hitaishi, 22 June 1922. 224 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 395/1924. 225 YB 1921, ‘Fortnightly Reports of the Governmentof Bengal on the Political Situation’.

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left their estates en masse to find the Swaraj that Gandhi wassaid to have established in their distant .villages.2?6 The spirit which moved the deprived and the degraded of India, thrilled to a new hope by the name of Mahatma, was described in mingled joy and sorrow by C. F. Andrews(in an article written for the Modern Review soonafter his return from Chandpur) with the vision of suffering impressed deep into his mind: Thestory has been already told, how the refugees came down from the tea gardens of Assam, emaciated beyond description; with a stark hunger looking out of their eyes; with scarcely sufficient rags to cover their own nakedness; with little children who could

hardly stand, their legs were so thin, with babies, pinched by hunger, seeking in vain to draw nourishment from their mother’s breasts. I have seen manysights of misery and destitution before,— in a sense, mylife has been full of such sights; for I have lived and

worked amongthe poor. But I have never seen such utter misery as I saw among these refugees... They had one hopeleft, to which they clung with a pathos that wasas greatas their suffering itself. ..It was the hope, that through Mahatma Gandhi, deliverance would come from all their burden of sorrow andaffliction. ... We saw the courage that sustained them. We noticed how their spirits were kept up, during these long-drawn days of disappointment, by this hope which I have mentioned. To the men, who wererefugees, it gave patience and endurance. To the women, it was like a passion of the soul; and they were able to enkindle something of their enthusiasm even in their little children. ... It was a transforming faith that raised the whole scene above the commonplace, and touchedit with spiritual beauty. ... In the midstofall these scenes, the question was borne in upon me with great insistence,—'Is this that I have seen oneofthe signs of a new religious awakening throughoutthe length and breadth of India?’ The poorof India, who have been so terribly oppressed by governments and priestcrafts, by landowners and profiteers, have cried to God for deliverance. They are becoming more and more certain, that the hourof their freedom is at hand. During the past few months, it has been my ownlotin life to travel over almost every part of the North India, from East to West and from West to East,—to places as far distant from one another as Sindh and East Bengal. On these journeys, I have seen strange happenings and witnessed a new spirit. This new spirit, I am convinced, goes 228 C.F. Andrews Papers, Andrews to Gandhi, 21 June 1921.

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far deeper than the political movementof ourtimes. It has its own initial impulse from the poor... ... The one thing that has impressed itself upon my mind and heart lately, more than any other, is this. The countless millions of the poor in India are all astir .. . They have symbolized their yearning for deliverance in the person of Mahatma Gandhi... This is not happening in one place only. Timeafter time, recently, I have been in the companyof the poor and the outcast and the destitute; I have been to gatherings, where the untouchables and others have flocked together in crowds to meet me and I have listened with intense pain to the story of their afflictions. They appear now to be everywhere taking their courage in their both hands as they have never done before.?2” This, then, was the extent of the involvement of the masses in the

political unrest of the non-co-operation movement: a millennial unrest among the lowest elements of rural society, kept in check by dominantvillage classes; combinations by the mass of cultivating families against payment of governmenttaxes and, in a few districts, landlords’ rents; and widespread and frequent disorders in cities, mill towns and mining areas by mill-hands, miners, carters, coachmen and coolies, mostly upcountrymen,tribals or Muslims. Social control tended to break down morereadily in those areas oflife where the colonial government or foreign capital came into direct contact with large bodies of people than in areas where control was exercised indirectly through Indian intermediaries. In the case of the government these contact points lay mainly between police parties and unruly crowds in urban areas and rural markets, and between the tax-collecting machinery of the sub-divisional administration and bodies of chaukidari tax payers and governmentestate tenants. In the case of foreign capital the contact points were mainly those between mill managers and mill-hands, and between European landowning corporations and dispossessed tribes. Where the machinery of social control was exercised by Indians, the power-holding groups which usually lost control of the population under them were nonagricultural moneylenders and absentee landlords. There were, however, instances of rural conflict in which the poorer peasants alienated the richer resident cultivating families. This happened in the last stages of the movement. Butinitially all kinds of villagers participated in village combinations against the government or 227 C, F. Andrews, ‘Oppression of the Poor’, in Modern Review, August 1921. 21

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the landlord over carefully chosen and limited issues. The non-co-operation movement which Gandhi brought so abruptly to a close against the will of Das’s party in jail wasin its nature and strategy more in accordance with the intentions of Das than with the vision of Gandhi: a movement for putting violent pressure on the British for accommodating Indians within the constitutional structure of the Raj. For a time in December 1921 it almost seemed that Das’s aim of bringing the British to a constitutional compromise might be achieved. In spite of the eventual failure to bring the British to an immediate compromise, the NCO movement did prove to be successful in terms of Das’s less defined objectives. From his point of view, as we have seen, the long-term strategy behind non-co-operation was to enrol within the Congress the rural and urban electorate defined by the Montagu-Chelmsford constitution. The subsequent triumph of the Swaraj party in the elections to the Bengal Legislative Council indicated that Das’s aim in this direction had been fulfilled. Through his mass campaign the Congress acquired a grassroots organization which penetrated to the villages and provided him with an electoral machinery for sweeping the polls. This was in sharp contrast with the failure of the Swadeshi movementto provide the moderates with an electoral base after the reunification of Bengal. The successful organization of a mass struggle by the Bengal Congress indicated the development of political links between the Calcutta-based nationalist leadership and the rural electorate, which subsequently came into operation in the sphere of formal representative politics.

CHAPTER 5

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY

(1922-1927) {. Climax of Bengali Nationalism. Pro-Changers and No-Changers— triumph of the Swaraj party—victories in Legislative Council and Calcutta Corporation. II. Crisis ofBengali Nationalism. Exacerbation of social conflict—end of the road—consequences of the death of C. R. Das—sow the wind— Congress factions—reap the whirlwind—communalriots of 1926—the strugglefor power—defeat ofB. N. Sasmal and ascendancy of Calcutta cliques in Congress.

I. THE CLIMAX OF BENGALI NATIONALISM

Pro-Changers and No-Changers With the calling off of mass civil disobedience at the height of the non-co-operation movement, the powerful Congress organization

built up in Bengal by C. R. Das fell into disarray. The restless, drifting political forces in the province were not drawn to the constructive programme which Gandhi substituted for struggle against imperialism before he was throwninto jail.1 Das, coming outofjail in 1922, made a quick diagnosis of the situation and declared himself in favour of a programme of wrecking the Councils from within. His programmeof Council entry was designed to gather the scattered forces of the Congress in Bengal. During the non-co-operation movement, a Congress committee with local committees underit had been organized in each district, and although this impressive provincewide organization was now rather weak, it could easily be reactivated. In striking contrast with the post-Swadeshi period, the provincial leadership found ready at hand a political machine to mobilize the interior from Calcutta. At the same time the BPCC machine was firmly linked to the Congress Working Committee at the centre and 1 Dhumketu, 22 September 1922, copy in IB 1922, “The Dhumketu Magazine’.

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could not be activated for an electoral campaign without changing the centre’s policies. Once again the divergence between Gandhi’s line and Das’s line became apparent and it was Das’s line which prevailed once more. The Pro-Changer wing of the Congress, organized as the all-India Swaraj Party under the leadership of Das and Motilal Nehru, drew the Congress committees into a countrywide campaign to capture and then obstruct the Legislative Councils. The demandfor change of Congress policy came mainly from the older centres of political activity—Maharashtra and Bengal—with the additional weight of an influential section of UP politicians. An informal liaison between these two older centres came into existence after the non-co-operation movement. Tilak’s old lieutenants, who had, much against their will, withdrawn from Council elections in

1920, werethefirst group to voice definite opposition to Gandhi and to formulate a clear-cut alternative programme of ‘responsive cooperation’—a principle enunciated by their deceased master Tilak— which enjoined co-operation where possible and obstruction where necessary. As they carried little weight in the All India Congress Committee, they turned hopefully to the only Congress leaders of all-India stature with a known partiality for Legislative Councils, C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru. Moonje made the first overture to Das immediately after the Bardoli decision: in February 1922 while Daswasstill in jail, Moonje wrote to a follower of Das: This is just the time to give a definite lead to the country andI find none morefitted than Mr Dasto give a definite lead to the country, and of all persons I find none morefitted than Mr Das to command the confidence of the country at large. The Maharashtra looks up to him for such determined and definite lead. Mahatmaji has failed miserably just at the time whena little statesmanship and manly courage would have turned the scale in our favour. It has been proved that the present mass movement, the result of his own conception, is beyond the measureofhis intellectual capacity. We will retain him as our Director to keep up an appearance in opposition to the Government but we wish that the brain behind,

in future, should be that of Mr Das, for whom the Maharashtra.

has great regard 2

Moonje’s old allies in Calcutta—the Amrita Bazar group—supported the policy of entering the Legislative Councils and provided a link 2B. S. Moonje Papers, Moonje to Mr Roy, 28 February 1922.

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between Das’s party and the Tilakites.? Motilal Nehru brought the support of a section of UP politicians to this nucleus of resistance to Gandhi and his orthodox followers—Rajagopalachari, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, and others. In Bengal the No-Changers did not possess any solid strength, for educated Bengalis were unenthusiastic about Gandhi’s programme and there was no Gandhian leader ofall-India stature in Bengal. The leader of the No-Changers was an old extremist politician of the Swadeshi era, Shyamsundar Chakravarti, who saw in giving a lead to Gandhi’s followers in Bengal a chance for himself to capture leadership of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee. As long as C. R. Das was there to direct the non-co-operation campaign, Chakravarti pulled virtually no weight in Bengal politics. The wholesale arrest of Das andhis followers in connection with the hartal in Calcutta during the visit of the Prince of Wales, however,

left Chakravarti the only effective leader in the field, and on coming out of jail in 1922 Das found the No-Changers in complete control of the machinery of the BPCC.This wasreflected in the preponderance of S. S. Chakravarti’s party over that of Das in the Bengal Provincial Conference of Jessore in April 1923. But Chakravarti’s presidential speech at the conference—‘a hysterical and childish commentary on his own achievements’*—did not enhance his prestige, and the Atmasakti, a left wing paper which wassiding with Das, commented acidly on his performance: Lastly we wantto say this, that Shyamsundar Babuis unfit for the Presidentship of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee. He may have shownpatriotism,self-sacrifice and devotion but he does not know howto direct an organisation in a mannerbefitting the dignity of a provincial Congress committee. Any comment is enough to set him crying, dancing and taking umbrage andhis talk is full of meaningless babble. Under these circumstances he should of his own accord resign from his post; if he does not, the

members should requisition a meeting and pass on him a vote of censure. We hopethat he will resign in the interests of the country before such a motion is brought forward. If not, then it will be understood that his post carries a certain source of enjoyment—if necessary we shall reveal this source.® 3 Tbid., Moonje to Golap Babu (of the Amrita Bazar Patrika), 11 June 1923. 4TB 1923, ‘The Bengal Provincial Congres’ Conference at Jessore, 1923’, 5 Atmasakti, 23 May 1923.

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It took Das the whole of a year to capture the machinery of the BPCCfrom S. S. Chakravarti, for although the No-Changer faction in Calcutta had no local strength, it had the powerful support of the No-Changersat the centre. To dislodge the party of S. S. Chakravarti from the BPCC, Das had to turn therefore to the All India Congress Committee, the source of Chakravarti’s support. Unwilling to

alienate such influential all-India leaders as Das and Nehru, the

AICCleaders reached a compromise with the Pro-Changers which permitted them to enter the Councils as members of the Swaraj Party. Pressing the advantage gained by this compromise, Das launched a two-pronged attack for the capture of the important District Congress Committees of Dacca and Bakarganj, which fell one by one to the Swarajists in August 1923. Encouraged by this success, Das launched an assault on the BPCCitself. The Swarajists’ hold on the Bengal Congress was further consolidated at the Special Congress of Delhi in September 1923, where the mediators such as Mohamed Ali, Abul Kalam Azad and Vallabhbhai Patel virtually threw over the No-Changers in Bengal (under S. S. Chakravarti) and south India (under C. Rajagopalachari) in order to avoid secession by the Swarajists. Azad was the President of this session, but Mohamed Ali took charge from the beginning, and presenting the compromise resolution made a stirring appeal for Congress unity and for withdrawal of opposition to the resolution in order to achieve unanimity. Mohamed Ali’s resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority, but the bulk of the Madras delegates and a few from Karnataka and Gujarat raised their hands against it.® Infuriated by the surrender of the Indian National Congress to Das’s party, the Servant, edited by S. S. Chakravarti, declared open revolt. The compromise resolution ‘to organize an effective campaign of Civil Disobedience for speedy attainment of Swaraj’ was called fatuous.’ Returning from Delhi, Das set about eliminating the No-Changer faction from any position of control within the BPCC. At a general meeting of the BPCC on 30 November, owing to the absence of several provincial members of the Swaraj party, the No-Changers were in a majority and Das was forced to make a tentative offer to them to form a coalition executive committee with thirty members from each party—an offer which the No-Changers accepted after some consultation. But Das gave no definite assurance and _per8 AICC Papers, 5/1923.

? Servant, 19 September 1923.

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suaded the President, Lalit Mohan Das, to adjourn the meeting asit waslate in the evening. Urgent telegrams were then sent to collect the provincial members of the Swaraj party, and when the meeting assembled again in December,it was clear that the Swaraj party had the majority. Nothing further was said about the compromise proposal. An attempt by the No-Changers to elect J. L. Banarji, who

was holding aloof from both factions, was foiled, and Das waselected

President of the BPCC. Whenit cameto the election of the Executive Committee, only six out of sixty members won from the No-Changer faction. The result was that the Swaraj party secured complete control of the Congress in Bengal and entered the elections to the Bengal Legislative Council with the prestige of its name and the resources of its organization. Control of the BPCC ensured the success of the Swaraj party in the general constituencies, but since there were only forty-six general seats in a Council of 139 members, Das could not hope to gain a majority without securing a substantial number of the thirty-nine Muslim seats on the Council. Communalism was essentially a struggle for power by the marginal sections of the educated classes of Bengali society, and Das saw clearly that the only way to secure Muslim support for a broadlegislative coalition against the British was to ensure the educated Bengali Muslims a just share in the benefits of victory. With considerable political vision and courage he concluded in December 1923 a pact with nationalist Muslim leaders in Bengal for building up a broad national coalition in the legislature. The Bengal Pact conceded the Muslims a statutory majority in the administration and government of Bengal after the attainment of Swaraj, and provided for voluntary banning of music before mosques, free performance of cow sacrifice at Id, and larger employment of Muslims in the Swarajist-controlled Calcutta Corporation. The pact, ratified at a joint session of the BPCC andthe Bengal Khilafat Committee, was gratefully acknowledged by Muslim MLCsat a meeting in the house of the co-author of the pact, Abdul Karim, a retired Inspector of Schools who assumed leadership of Swarajist Muslims.® Khilafatists, who had so long been opposed to Council entry, entered the electoral battle and their campaigning contributed to the Swarajist capture of half the Muslim constituencies.® This was a considerable achievement for Das, and his Bengal 8 JB 1923, ‘Proceedings of the Khilafat Swaraj (Mr Das’s) party’; GI, Home ® Kenneth McPherson, p. 132. Poll Deposit, 25/1923, 25/1924.

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Pact was a bold step towards a solution of the Hindu-Muslim problem. Muslim respect and support for Das, both in Bengal and in other provinces, was undoubtedly widespread and genuine, as statements by Muslim MLCsin the Bengal Legislative Council and the reminiscences of all-India Muslim leaders like Abul Kalam Azad bear witness.!° The triumph of the Swaraj party In the first elections to the Council in 1920, with the Congress out of the running, Surendranath Banerjea and his moderate Hindu colleagues, contesting under the banner of the National Liberal Federation, had no difficulty in securing election to the Bengal Legislative Council. After the Budget session, in which the members refused a police grant of Rs 23 lakhs on the ground of financial stringency, a ministerial party was formed by Surendranath Banerjea to which all Hindu members adhered except a group of twenty-five or thirty members who formed the opposition to both the ministers and the reserved side of the government. This ministerial party included those Muslims who followed Syed Nawab Ali Chaudhuri, an East Bengal zamindar who became a minister together with Surendranath Banerjea and Probhas Chandra Mitter. Those among the members, both Hindu and Muslim, who were disappointed at this distribution of cabinet seats did not form a regular and organized opposition party but led small coteries and factions which had only one thing in common—hostility towards those who occupied the places which they had aspired to fill themselves’.1! Although the ministers apparently had an elected majority in the Bengal Legislative Council, they thus remained under the thumb of a solid organized group ofofficials, Europeans and Anglo-Indians who neverfailed to act in unison and could bring to bear upon anyissue a vote of thirty-six in a divided council. The real powerin the Bengal Legislative Council remained in the hands of a small but compact body of European businessmen who cleverly manipulated the balance between Surendranath’s party and the Muslim communalgroupled by Syed Nawab Ali Chaudhuri. The Europeans showed their power by settling the dispute between the Hindus and the Muslims over the constitution of the Calcutta Corporation, the bill for which was 10 Tbid., p. 134; Leonard A. Gordon, p. 195. 4 Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609.4, Ronaldshay to George V, 1 June 1921.

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shaped by Surendranath Banerjea.!2 Underthe pressure of communal groups in the Council, Banerjea had to agree to the reservation of fifteen Muslim seats on the Corporationto be filled by the vote of an exclusive Muslim electorate for the first three years. In other matters Banerjea got his way: the number of members of the Corporation was raised from fifty to ninety, of whom sixty-three were to be elected. The executive power of the Corporation was also handed overto the Indians, and instead of the Chairman, provision was made for an elected Mayor and a Chief Executive Officer who would be accountable to the Corporation. This was the last triumph of Surendranath Banerjea: his brief years of power between 1921 and 1923 were the fruit of a long struggle against bureaucratic rule which he had started way back in 1876. To the Legislative Council, where he was the most distinguished minister from 1921 to 1923, he was not even returned in the next elections; and in the newly constituted Corporation, which he had designed with such loving care, he was nowhere to be seen. With the entry of the Swaraj party into the fray in the elections of 1923, the sun of the moderates faded. The European businessmen,

who had so long banked on themoderates for the protection of their interests, found that the party had suddenly disappeared. With grim foreboding a European businessmansaid in the Bengal Chamber of Commerce: ‘I venture to say that there is hardly a single elective constituency, outside those of the Landlords and the Mahamadans, where our friends the Moderates would stand a dog’s chance of being elected.*1* The results of the elections fulfilled the worst expectations of the Europeans. The moderates were so completely defeated by the Swarajists that only seven moderate candidates scrambled uncertainly into the Council. Even the veteran leader Surendranath Banerjea was defeated in his home ground of Calcutta by a rising Swarajist doctor—B. C. Roy. The success of the Swaraj party fell short of an absolute majority in the Bengal Council—it obtained forty-seven seats of which as many as twenty-one were won by Muslims.*4 Das turned down the invitation of the Governor of Bengal, Lytton, to form the ministry, hoping that upon his refusal to take office the ministry would be formed from among the Independent 12 Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 29 November 1921.

13 BCC 1922, vol. 1, annual general meeting, speech of A. Jones. 14 Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution, p. 103.

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Nationalists whom he had promisedto assist in any matter regarding the transferred subjects on condition that they opposed the reserved half of the governmentin all matters. But Lytton refused the demand of Byomkesh Chakravarti for the appointment of an exclusive Independent Nationalist Ministry. Das thereupon formedanalliance with eighteen Independent Nationalists under Byomkesh Chakravarti, who followed the Swarajist policy of obstructing the Council, though willing to accept office on their own terms.) A ragged search for a majority then resulted in a ministry consisting of S. N. Mallik, virtual leader of the opposition in the first Council until he was bought over by his appointment as the Chairman of the Calcutta Corporation, and two Muslims, Fazlul Huq and A. K. Ghaznavi. S. N. Mallik’s election was invalidated and his subsequent defeat in a by-election forced him to resign in February 1924. This left an all-Muslim ministry in charge of the transferred subjects. The absence of any Hindu minister severely strained the loyalty of the handful of moderates in the Council on whom the government could still rely, and two of them supported the Swarajists and the Independent Nationalists to bring about a rejection of the salaries of the two Muslim ministers in March. The ministers continued for some time in the hope ofa restoration of their salaries. ‘Both sides’, wrote Lytton later on, made use of every available expedient to secure the necessary support of Members whose votes were doubtful. The Ministers worked their power of patronage for all it was worth, and brought what pressure they could upon the members of their own community. The Swarajists used every means of bribery and intimidation which their fertile brains could conceive andtheir large party funds made possible.’1® On 26 August whentheissue of ministerial salaries was brought up again in the Council, Das’s paper Forward published a letter purporting to be signed by Fazlul Hug which showedhim to be involved in an unsavoury intrigue to purchase the vote of an unnamed Rai Bahadur. This created a sensation in the morning session, Fazlul Huq claiming that the letter was a forgery and Das affirming that 1% Atmasakti, 19 December 1923; IB 1923, ‘Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal’. '8 Pundits and Elephants, Being the Experience of Five Years as Governor of an Indian Province by the Earl ofLytton (London, 1942), p. 52.

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the signature was Huq’s.!” In the afternoon the ministers’ salaries were thrownoutby two votes, and they hadto resign. As the excutive was compelled to take over the transferred subjects, Das’s programme of destroying the reforms thus seemed to have been successful in Bengal. After this success the opposition in the Council weakened and the earlier spectacular triumph of wholesale rejection of the budget could no longer be repeated. Das’s success thus definitely fell short of ‘wrecking the Councils from within’. But the radical alteration in the balance of political forces was seen in the fact that the European Association, alarmed at the massive blows directed against the new constitution by the Swaraj party, pleaded by telegram to the Secretary of State that the trial period of the new reforms should not be shortened because of Swarajist pressure. This was the same association which had opposed the introduction of reforms tooth and nail in 1917.18 The Swarajists scored an even more striking success by capturing the new Corporation designed by Surendranath Banerjea, who was completely denied the fruits of his legislative labour. The new Corporation of Calcutta which emerged from the elections of 1924 was, aS a member of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce put it ironically, ‘entirely a nominated Corporation’. There were some nominated by the Government, others nominated by the Chamber of Commerce and other public bodies and the rest by Das, who became the new Mayor, with Subhas Chandra Bose as his Chief Executive Officer. Fearfully predicting the consequences to flow from such an entirely nominated Corporation, Mr Jones of R. Knight & Sons warned the Chamber of Commerce: Now a Corporation as so constituted, I would suggest to you here, would be a body capable of very dangerous procedure... Whatis going to happen when you have a Corporation nominated by Mr C. R. Das? I am not going to tell you what I think may happen, because I might be offering valuable suggestions to the leader of the destructive party, but anybody here with any imagination can see for himself endless possibilities of mischief, endless possibilities of making the life of the Europeans a great deal less comfortable than it is now, and somepossibility of wrecking the whole machine.?9 17 Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 26 August 1924. 18 Forward, 23 April 1924. 19 BCC 1922, vol. 1, annual general meeting, speech of A. Jones.

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The Swarajist councillors with their comfortable majority made an impressive entry into the Corporation. ‘White Gandhi caps, Punjabis and yellow turbans interspersed with scarlet fezes made quite a display of colours.’®° Ancient councillors like Prince Akram Husain, Amulyadhone Addy and Mr Cox, whooffered themselves for election as aldermen, were swept aside and younger Swarajist politicians elected instead. A number of standing committees were set up which discussed all matters before the Corporation and where the real work was done. The European businessmen found to their frustration that the ‘Swaraj party had arranged things so that each standing committee was composed of two Europeans and ten Indians, which meant that the hands of the European members were tied’.24 Organized by Das into a compact, well-drilled caucus, the Swarajist councillors took complete hold of municipal matters, deciding all important matters coming before the Corporation in advance in their party meetings. Control of the Corporation brought a new source of financial support to the Swaraj party. The party funds were augmented by taking large sums from firms which were given contracts by the Corporation. Subhas Bose arranged for the Corporation to accept a tender from Messrs Kar & Co., Engineers, Contractors and Builders, for Rs 1,275,000 in connection with the Palta Water Works

Extension scheme, in preference to a lower tender from P. C. Kumar & Co. In return for this consideration Messrs Kar & Co. contributed Rs 75,000 to the Swaraj party funds and also Rs 3,600 towards the expenses of thirty-six members of the Swaraj party who went with Das to the AICC at Ahmedabad in order to counterbalance the NoChangers and compel them to accept the Swarajist position.?* The Swaraj party funds amounted by the middle of 1924 to eight lakhs rupees, derived from (1) candidates during the last election, (2) private donations from big merchants and a regular percentage of religious funds managed by rich aratdars, (3) money received for conducting a campaign for reforming the corrupt temple administration of Tarakeshwar, and (4) money received through the Calcutta Corporation.”? The Bengal Congress also benefited financially from 20 Forward, 12 April 1924. "1 BA, Proceedings of the Calcutta Committee of the European Association commencing from 1918 to 30 September 1924. #2 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation—the Swarajya Party’. 3 Thid.,

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the triumph of the Swaraj party. The Swaraj party in the Corporation ordered Rs 40,000 worth of khaddar cloth from the Secretary of the BPCC as it was decided to clothe the Corporation workers in khaddarinstead of khaki. The key to the Swarajist domination of the Council and the Corporation was the support of the majority of the Muslim members in these institutions. Indeed, Das had succeeded in obtaining from politically conscious Muslims a measure of support which no other Hindupolitician in Bengal had ever secured. Whenhefirst concluded the Bengal Pact with Muslim leaders, the impression of the Government of Bengal was that the Swarajists had ‘overreached themselves for the terms of the pact are so favourable to the followers of Islam that it has raised some suspicion among the faithful and intense resentment amonga very large section of the Hindu community’.*4 In spite of this initial hostile reaction to the pact from communal elements, the Swaraj party was able to overcome Hindu opposition and to win the confidence of a broad section of the political leadership of the Muslim community. To drive a wedge into the Swarajist bloc in Council by fanning Muslim suspicions about Hindu sincerity, supporters of the government in the Council persuaded Khan Bahadur Musharraf Hussain to bring a motion for the immediate implementation of the pact by giving eighty per cent of all future vacancies in the government to the Muslimstill they reached the agreed proportion offifty-five per cent. It was hoped that Das would lose either his Muslim followers, to whom the pact had been a strong inducementto join the Swaraj party, or the support of nationalist Hindus, who disliked the terms of the pact. Although this strategy pushed Dasinto a tight corner by bringing all the communal Hindu and Muslim groupsin the Council out in opposition to the Swarajists, he got over the temporary difficulty with the help of nationalist-minded Muslims who formed the majority among Muslim MLCsin the Council. Das wasafraid that if the motion came up in the Council and the Swarajists were forced to vote forit, they would lose the support of the Hindu community. He therefore made vigorousefforts to induce Musharraf Hussain to withdraw the motion, but in vain. When the motion came upin the Council, Das moved that the motion be adjourned sine die on the ground that the pact referred only to the future state of Swaraj and was not meant to operate before it. He came under fire from both 24 Tbid.

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Muslim communal members like Syed Nawab Ali Chaudhuri, who wanted immediate implementation of the pact, and Hindu communal memberslike S. C. Mukherjee who wanted full discussion in order to expose Das’s nefarious intention of defeating the budget with the vote of Muslim members. Some Europeansin the Council gleefully egged on the dispute, shedding crocodile tears for Das and commiserating with him in his difficulties.2> But Muslim opponents of the government, who formed the majority among the Muslims in the Council, came to his rescue. Even non-Swarajist MLCs like Hasan and Husain Suhrawardy (who had been won overby bright prospects in a Swarajist-controlled Corporation) rose to defend Das’s good faith and advocated strict adherence to the terms of the pact. Das’s move to postpone discussion of Musharraf Hussain’s motion was carried by sixty-six to forty-eight and the attempt to split the Swarajist front failed.?° Following this a Khilafat conference in Calcutta, which voted overwhelmingly in favour of the pact, resolved that no attempt should be madeto force Das to implementit before the realization of Swaraj. The trust reposed in Das by Muslims was apparent soon afterwards in the elections to the Corporation, in which Swarajist Muslims won ten outofthe fifteen seats reserved for Muslims. Nor was the trust misplaced: with Das’s help, Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy was elected Deputy Mayor, and in spite of Hindu clamour the Chief Executive Officer, Subhas Bose,filled up twenty-five out of thirty-three vacancies with Muslim employees in an honest attempt to give Muslims a just share in Corporation appointments.?” The Muslim Graduate Association ‘heartily appreciated the bold stand by the Calcutta Corporation authorities in considering the just claims of the Mussalmans’, though at the same time deeply resenting the opposition of a section of Hindus.?8 In spite of the eager expectationof an early collapse of the Hindu— Muslim pact by the Government of Bengal, the pact was fairly successful until the death of Das. It was able to hold together the legislative combination of nationalists of both communities against the government. As the organ of the nationalist Muslims, the Mussalman, pointed out, the causes of estrangement between Hindus and Muslims arose from the loaves andfishes of office, cow sacrifice 25 26 "7 *8

Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 13 March 1924, Kenneth McPherson, p. 137; Leonard Gordon,p. 209. Mussalman, 25 July 1924 and 1 July 1927. Tbid., 22 August 1927.

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and music before mosques. The first problem concerned the educated section of both communities and could be resolved only by some agreement regarding distribution of offices between Hindus and Muslims. Regarding the other two issues which concerned the people at large, the paper pleaded for a change of heart, deprecating ostentatious cow slaughter and musical processions.” But the paper also pointed out that since it would be unrealistic to expect an immediate changeof heart, the leaders must enter into a compromise as a preliminary move.®° In this sense the Bengal Pact wasa step in the right direction, though theratification of the pact at Sirajganj by a dishonest majority collected by Das without any attemptat getting an agreed pact left the paper with some misgivings.*! Nevertheless the paper congratulated the Swaraj party on its successes in the Council—rejection of the land revenue demand, defeat of the general administration grant and police budget and throwing out of ministerial salaries—‘so that our good friends—Messrs Ghuznavi and Fazlul Huq—if they wish to stick to their posts with the tenacity of limpets must do so in the spirit of heroic self-sacrifice so abundantly manifested by Mofussil honorary magistrates’. Rejecting the claim of the two ministers to stand for Muslim interests, the paper commented, ‘It is time that all this talk on “Islam” and “‘Muslim in-

terests” should at once cease. To say that the Mussulman Ministers are there in the interests of Islam and for the protection and furtherance of Muslim interests is to palm off a gigantic fraud upon the entire Muslim community.’®? When the all-Muslim ministry finally fell in August, out of thirty-seven elected Muslims voting in the Council, the majority—nineteen—voted against the ministers. The Swaraj party machine emerged as a parallel and alternative centre of political power alongside the Government of Bengal as a result of the process by which C. R. Das, a man of outstanding political abilities, log-rolled into opposition to the Government groupings of all sorts which had sprung up since the war. In the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee and the Swaraj party, which were virtually merged into a single organization by Das, there were influential men from Calcutta’s high professional and landedsociety, organizers of popular movements in the villages, labour leaders, revolutionary cadres, important business interests and representatives of the Muslim community. All these different groupings were *9 Tbid., 18 April 1924. 31 Ibid., 6 June 1924.

30 Tbid., 23 May 1924. 82 Tbid., 28 March 1924.

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given representation in the BPCC and Swarajist executive by Dasin his attempt to build up an organization with extensive political support. One important emerging group wasthat of the party bosses drawn from a Calcutta coterie—later to be knownas the Big Five (Nirmal Chandra Chandra, Sarat Chandra Bose, Nalini Ranjan

Sarkar, Bidhan Chandra Roy and Tulsi Goswami)—whose influence was dueto their hold over the party finances and electoral machinery. Chandra and Goswamiwererespectively treasurers of the BPCC and the All India Swaraj Party, and their group also acquired the managementoftwobig financial concerns of the party—the Forward Publishing Company and the Deshabandhu Village Reconstruction Fund. Besides the top professional classes of Calcutta which constituted his own society, Das also successfully drew into the BPCC leaders of non-co-operation campaigns in the districts, who were appointed to important executive posts in the BPCCin Calcutta and were allowed at the same time to go on frequent tours to their respective districts to organize mass movements. Some of these leaders, such as J. M. Sengupta of Chittagong, Kiran Shankar Roy of Dacca and Anil Baran Ray of Bankura, were high caste men holding important positions in Calcutta’s political circles. J. M. Sengupta was deputy leader of the Swaraj party in the Legislative Council, Kiran Shankar Roy was an important party functionary and Swarajist MLC from Dacca and Anil Baran Ray served for some time as Secretary of the BPCC. Besides these high caste leaders from the districts, there were grassroots leaders of peasant movements who also made their mark in the BPCC executive, the most prominent among these being Birendranath Sasmal, a Mahishya leader of Midnapur, and Haji Abdur Raschid Khan, a Muslim leader of

Noakhali. Leaders like these, drawn frequently from Muslim and lower caste backgrounds, gave the BPCC its new mass character. If these leaders brought the BPCC popular backing, the revolutionaries provided it with party cadres. It was with the help of the Jugantar and Anushilan leaders that C. R. Das captured the BPCC from the No-Changers during 1923, and the close alliance between the Swaraj party and the revolutionary cells was reflected in the fact that the leaders of these cells, such as Amarendra Chatterjee, Upen Banerjee,

Bipin Ganguly and Satyen Mitter, held important posts in the Swaraj party machine. As many as twenty-eight ex-detenus or exconvicts becameoffice-bearers of the BPCC in 1924 and twenty-one

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revolutionaries were elected to the AICC.** Finally the BPCC included a number of Muslims, though it remained predominantly high caste Hindu in composition.*4 In 1924-25, there were thirty-one Muslimsout of the total number of 229 BPCC members; the proportion was much higher in the Swarajist Council bloc, in which twenty-one were Muslims out of the bloc membership of fortyseven. The common subordination of all these diverse groupings to the undisputed leadership of Das kept the Swaraj party machine in fairly good working order until his death. He had also collected about him a youthful andtalented leadership which stood next to him in the line of succession—J. M. Sengupta, B. N. Sasmal and Subhas Bose—all of whom had madetheir mark by organizing mass campaigns: Sengupta by bringing off the Bengal-Assam Railwaystrike, Sasmal by enforcing the withdrawal of union boards from Midnapur, and Bose by organizing the Calcutta hartals against the visit of the Prince of Wales. Besides his ability to discover and utilize political talent, Das also showed a capacity for mobilizing financial resources. With the early successes of the Swaraj party, the rich trading classes in Calcutta joined the bandwagon and placed one-fourth of their Iswar Britti funds (amounting to Rs 2 lakhs), consisting of small levies made from buyersforreligious purposes, at the disposal of the Swaraj party.2° However, G. D. Birla and other Marwari businessmen in Calcutta had from the very beginning frowned upon Das’s instigation of labour strikes and his connections with the revolutionaries, and it was significant that while all local Congress committees in Calcutta fell one by one to the Swaraj party, the Barabazar Congress Committee, in which the Marwaris had a strong position, continued to support Gandhi.*6 The position of great power which C. R. Das acquired in Bengal naturally increased the weight of the province in the political affairs of India as a whole, for no other province where the Swaraj party entered the legislatures enjoyed such an undisputed and outstanding Swarajist leadership as Bengal. As President of the All-India Swaraj Party Dassettled intra-party disputes far away from Bengal, such as the one between the Jayakar and Patel groups in Bombay. To win 33 L/P & J/7/242/1831 ; IB 1923, ‘Action against certain Ex-State Prisoners’,etc. 34 Leonard Gordon, p. 184. 35 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation—the Swaraj Party’. 36 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation: the Congress Party-—Bengal’. 22

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over the Congress to his programme and to mobilize support for the Swaraj party in the elections to the legislatures, he toured all over

India, conducting, for instance, an extensive electoral campaign in

1923 in the Madras Presidency where his party was the weakest.®’ After Gandhi’s concessions to the Swarajists on coming outofjail, nationalist India came to be virtually guided by a triumvirate consisting of C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru and M. K. Gandhi. Il. THE CRISIS OF BENGALI NATIONALISM

The exacerbation of social conflict The coalition of disparate and often conflicting interests which C. R. Das kept together with such consummate skill within the Swaraj party began to show signs of disintegration as the Swaraj party started losing momentum after its earlier successes. Even at the height of its power the Swaraj party was threatened by pulls in different directions, for tensions were inherent in the coalition which that party represented. There was a slow ascendancy of the Calcutta coterie within the party which alienated important interests even before Das’s death and ultimately led to the tearing apart of the Bengal Congress under his successors. Nationalist Muslims and grassroots leaders from the interior were slowly forced out of the Congress. . Das’s source of Muslim support for his programme of wrecking the Council was the alliance of the Swaraj party with the Khilafat Committee of Bengal. This source of support began to dry up as the Khilafat party itself began to decline as a political force in 1924. Das secured the aid of the Bengal Khilafat Committee throughits president and its secretary who were both members of the Swaraj party, but he could not obtain control of the Calcutta Khilafat Committee which provided the finance of the Bengal Khilafat Committee. The Calcutta Khilafat Committee showed a definite hostility to the picketing campaign in Calcutta which Dasstarted after his triumph in bringing aboutthe fall of the Muslim ministry in August. The reason for this was that a prominent memberof the Calcutta Khilafat Committee, Muhammad Mohsen Ali, did not obtain the post of Deputy Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation, which went to another Muslim.** The Suddhi and Sangathan movementby 3? Leonard Gordon, p. 191. 88 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation—Khilafat Agitation’.

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Swami Sraddhanand in upper India also spread alarm and anger among the Urdu-speaking immigrant Muslims in Calcutta. In view of this Khilafat workers in Calcutta decided to aim for Hindu— Muslim unity in political matters but not to tolerate Hindu interference in religious matters.29 The news of the abolition of the Khilafat in March 1924 destroyed any hopeof reviving the Khilafat agitation. The Bengal Khilafat Committee soon became moribund. Concern was expressed at its possible extinction because of lack of finance. By November the Khilafat movementhad entirely died out, given its final burial by the non-interference of the British in the Hadjaz question. Without a strong Khilafat Committee as its ally, the Swaraj party could not muster Muslim supportforits ineffective campaign against the new Bengal Ordinance under which a number of revolutionaries holding important posts in the Swaraj party, including their patron Subhas Bose, were put under arrest. The Swaraj party, frustrated by its impotent attempt to mobilize the population on this issue, complained to Muslim leaders about lack of sympathyon the part of the Muslim press and the Muslim public. The Muslim Swarajist members of the Council had incurred the distrust of the Muslim public, were being denouncedas infidels for bringing about the fall of the Muslim ministry, and—commented the police report for November—were unlikely to win in the next election.” With the Khilafat Committee out of the running, there remained the communal-minded Bengali Muslim politicians, representatives of a growing Muslim section within educated society in Calcutta and the towns of East Bengal. Their economic interests set them in opposition to the Hinduservice and professional groups. The Muslim membersof the legislature outside the Swaraj party had no formal and separate party organization apart from the various Muslim associations of which they were members. But on all communal issues in the Council the Muslim members outside the Swaraj party showed an unexpected capacity for combination in spite of the fact that there were almost as manyfactions as there were leaders among them. They endeavoured by joint action to secure as many appointments for Muslims as possible. Their bond of union for defending Muslim interests was not strong enough to hold them together when personalinterests were involved. Factions were formed among them 39 1B 1923, ‘Proceedings of the Khilafat Committee in Bengal’. 40 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation—Khilafat Agitation’.

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on personal grounds rather than on matters of principle and it was the weakness of dissensions which prevented the Muslims from exercising that influence in the Swarajist-dominated Council which was

open to them had they combinedonall issues.

With the help of British officials and businessmen, however, the

educated Muslims in Bengal gradually began to organize themselves sectionally to attain the political power to which the numerical superiority of their community was the passport. The strategy for the expansion and strengthening of the educated classes in Muslim society was to spread higher English education among the Muslims and to capture the municipalities and local boards in Muslimmajority areas, control of which would provide a springboard for election to the Legislative Council in the centre and a base for exercise of power in the locality. The foundation of the Dacca University in 1921 and the opening of the Islamia College in Calcutta under the patronage of Fazlul Huq duringhis short-lived ministry of 1924 led to more rapid spread of English education among the Muslims. The percentage of Muslims in higher education increased from 12.8 in 1921-22 to 14.2 in 1926-27.The effect of this was not seen immediately on the proportion of Hindus and Muslims in the Council, but outside the Council Muslim sectionalism became a more

effective force and in several East Bengal districts Muslims combined in order to secure a preponderance in the local boards and municipalities. This trend became prominentin local politics from 1921 whennota single Hindu waselected to the municipalities of Sirajganj and Jamalpur, and only two Hindus wereelected to the Tangail municipality. ‘In district and local boards in East Bengal’, announced Ekramul Haqin the Legislative Council while recounting these facts, ‘the Hindus are pushed to the wall.’** These Muslim victories certainly showed that in the towns of East Bengal the educated Hindus were no longer the politically dominant group and that control was passing to the small town Muslim educated classes. This waspolitically important because at the centre of power, in Calcutta, the educated Muslims lacked the strength of a majority and the only effective way of securing a place in the centre was through provincial representation in the Legislative Council from outside Calcutta. By exploiting their source of power in East Bengal, the Bengali Muslim “\Tbid.; Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution, pp. 109-10. *2 Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution, pp. 50-2. 43 Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 24 November 1921.

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politicians slowly built up a power base in Calcutta around the Council House in the 1920s. It was only then that Muslim sectionalism became a major political force in the province comparable to predominantly Hindu nationalism. The importance of a strong economic and political base in Calcutta for the Bengali Muslim community was well recognized, as the Ahmadi, a Bengali Muslim paper, showedin its appeal for ‘Moslem Sangathan’ (Organization).44 It was significant that at this stage the Muslim commercial and trading class in Calcutta (in so far as there was one) wastoo tiny a segment to be in a position to compete with the top European business and manufacturing class and was engaged in traderivalry only with Bengali and Marwari traders in the lower branches of the inland trade. In the sphere of service and professions also, there were not many educated Bengali Muslims who could aspire to the Indian Civil Service and therefore feel the racial antagonism which barred the entry of natives in the top ranks of the bureaucracy. Their competition was rather with the educated Bengali Hindus in those school teacherships, clerical jobs, legal professions and deputy magistracies for which a large body of educated Muslims were qualified but which were virtually monopolized by urban Bengali Hindus of pure ritual status. As long as colonial government continued to be so exclusive that the interests of the educated Bengalis, both Hindu and Muslim, were forcibly confined to a narrow sphere oflife, there was a scope for unity between the educated sections of both communities. Such unity was especially in evidence from 1912 onwards, its crowning achievement being the Lucknow Pact of 1917. This unity was based on the fact that after a period of tutelage by the British officials the educated Bengali Muslims, as also Muslims elsewhere in India, had emerged by 1912 as a stronger social force capable of pressing their political demandsby agitation on a commonfront with the Hindus. This kept in check the latent rivalry between them from 1912 to 1920. In 1921 the form of governmentin Bengal underwent a change which accommodated the aspirations of the educated Bengali Muslimsfor the moment but not of the educated Bengali Hindus. In the logic of the development of power relations, therefore, the Bengali Muslim politicians were bound to collaborate with the British government until such time as the classes whom they represented underwentsufficient expansionto find theexisting structure of governmenttoo narrowfortheir aspirations. 44 Ahmadi, Asvin and Kartik, B.S. 1332.

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While the Bengali Muslims were thus showing a new energy in turning their numerical advantageto political domination, the Hindu politicians became divided in factions which were so fierce that it appeared that they would tear apart the public life of the province. Muslim communalpolitics was quite as faction-ridden but looked somewhat petty when contrasted with the more colourful factional in-fighting among the nationalists. It was the reconstitution of the Calcutta Corporation by S. N. Banerjea that led to the tearing apart of political life in Bengal, for the ministry being taboo for the Swarajists the Corporation was the only field for the exercise of power and patronage, and those who exercised these could never retain the unity which was imposedby active struggle against colonial rule by eschewing all its institutions. The Calcutta Corporation dominated the political life of Bengal, led to its dissolution and widened the rift between the communities. It started the tripartite contest for supremacy between the lieutenants of C. R. Das— B. N. Sasmal, Subhas Chandra Bose and J. M. Sengupta. Thefirst phase of the battle took place between Bose and Sasmal over the post of the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation, and the result was a knock-out victory for Bose. Sasmal had led the successful peasant resistance to the union boards in Midnapurduring the non-co-operation movement, but he was a man of low caste (Mahishya) in the ranking system of Calcutta (though in Contai it was the dominant caste). He was an uncouth provincial, an inhabitant of outlandish Contai, as far as Calcutta’s high society was concerned. Bose came from an established Kayastha family of Calcutta and had extremely good connections with the highest social circle of the city. His brother was a lawyer of the Calcutta High Court and he had the support of influential High Court lawyers which was invaluable for a rising young aspirantfor political leadership. Even J. M. Sengupta, a barrister of good Vaidya origin (but nevertheless a man from Chittagong, a place as outlandish as Contai and held in low esteem bythe citizens of Calcutta), did not compare with Bose, the bright boy of Presidency College, the young ICS officer who had resigned service, the hero and idol of the students and the leader acceptable to the now ubiquitous revolutionaries. Dashadoriginally proposed to reward the services of Sasmal by offering him the job of Chief Executive Officer, but he soon backed out when he found that the choice would offend the Kayastha clique of Calcutta. The ‘Strong Man of Midnapore’, commentedthe Capital

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with wry humour, ‘was pushed out to make room for the ex-civil servant who boldly left the celestials to become a non-cooperator’,® for ‘Boss Das’ could not afford to run the risk of alienating the influential leaders of the Calcutta clique, one of whom wentso far as to comment: ‘Will a keot [corruption of the word Kaivarta, an extremely contemptuous way of referring to the Mahishyas] from Midnapur come andrule in Calcutta?’** Humiliated beyond measure, Sasmal asked his mentor Das two questions at a meeting of the BPCC: (1) Subhas Bose had been elected memberand his brother Sarat Bose alderman of the Calcutta Corporation by the Swaraj party. Why was the BPCC bent on establishing the mastery of one family over the Corporation? (2) In the highest executive post of the Corporation, it was being proposed that he be bypassed and another man appointed. Wasthis because he washeld in contemptfor his low caste? Das expressed annoyance with the first question and gave an inadequate answerto the second which did not satisfy Sasmal.*’ Sasmal left the BPCC in utter humiliation and anger and went back to his legal practice and his control of local politics in Contai and Midnapur.*® A conflict between Calcutta leaders and politicians from the interior was thus brought into sharp focus within the BPCC for the first time, involving at the same time a hostility between the high caste elite and the rising low caste bhadralok in Calcutta and other towns. Having thus secured a crucial post in the Corporation, Bose led a faction in the Swaraj camp which pushedthe claims of Calcutta at the cost of the provincial elements of the Congress. Opposedto this was a faction led by Abdur Raschid Khan of Noakhali (again,significantly, a provincial politician not belonging to the high caste society of Calcutta and in addition a Muslim) which stood for distribution of appointments among the different communities in order to create general satisfaction. Bose’s faction stood for giving the 45 Capital, 1 May 1924.

48 Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Deshabandhu Smriti (Calcutta, 1939), p. 48;

Bimalananda Sasmal, Svadhinatar Phank? (Calcutta, B.S. 1374), p. 118. 47 Hijli Hitaishi, 18 April 1924. 48 The Congress committee of Midnapur was composed, in addition to Mahishyas, of Brahmans and Kayasthas who wereafraid that the capture of the local and district boards by the Congress would bring about an extension of Mahishya control of local politics and they were therefore unhappy about the participation of the local Congress Committees in local and district board politics from the beginning.

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revolutionaries a controlling position in the Corporation though Bose gave most ofthe initial appointments to Muslims. His faction included two Muslims—Shahid Suhrawardy, a memberof an established Calcutta family of high social rank, and Syed Jalaluddin-alHashemi, a Muslim revolutionary. Abdur Raschid Khan’s faction included Muslim members of the Swaraj party like Majid Bux, Fazlur Rahman and Azizur Rahman, and a Hindu revolutionary from Noakhali (Abdur Raschid Khan’s district) named Satyen Mitter who formally headed the faction; the division was, therefore,

by no meansentirely communal. There were many factions among Muslims andterrorists and clearly Bose could not accommodate all. Das, while outwardly supporting Abdur Raschid Khan’s faction in order not to lose the support of the Swarajist Muslims, was at heart in sympathy with Bose’s faction. Haji Abdur Raschid Khan, distinguished by his record of struggle during the NCO campaign in Noakhali, was long promised the post of Deputy Executive Officer of the Corporation and wasvery disheartened by the fact that he had not obtained it even after six months.*® The discrimination against provincial politicians of lower social rank which drove Sasmal out of Calcutta politics and denied adequate reward of service to Abdur Raschid Khan prevented the integration of different elements in a mass political party. The exclusive dominance of the high caste Calcutta society in the Swaraj party tended to alienate those politicians from the provincial towns, often lower caste or Muslim in origin, whose adherence had given the party its mass character. Within Calcutta the Swaraj party alienated the Muslim student community, a growing body in the twenties, after winning a brief allegiance from them. Before long the Muhammedan Graduates’ Association was lamenting its folly in joining the Swaraj party since its members did not get the promised posts in the Calcutta Corporation. There were too many candidates for the posts which Das reserved for Muslims in accordance with the terms of the Bengal Pact. The disappointed candidates invariably threatened to leave the Swaraj party and to carry the Muslim community with them.*® A serious agitation among disappointed Muslimsagainst any Muslim supporting or joining the Swaraj party was soon afoot as the impression gained ground that Swarajist *° IB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation—the Swaraj Party’. He waseventually given the post of second Deputy Executive Officer in the Corporation. 5° Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Deshabandhu Smriti, p. 49.

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promises to the Muslims were never to be fulfilled.54 Their worst expectations were borne out when the Swaraj party rejected at the end of 1925 a new Municipal Bill which contained separate representation for Muslims, though by the terms of the Bengal Pact the party was clearly committed to helping Muslims to obtain statutory provision for representation in municipalities. Das was by then dead and the stalwarts of the Swaraj party, knowing well that the predominantly Hindu rank andfile of the party would oppose such a provision, sought to avoid a division in their camp by throwing out the bill on the plea of certain retrograde features in it. Even the nationalist Muslim paper, the Mussalman, commented that the Swarajist Muslims who voted against the bill in deference to the party whip hadbetrayed the interests of the Muslim community.*? In 1920 and 1921 this organ of nationalist Muslim opinion had been under the impression that the need for communal organizations had ceased, but towards the end of Das’s career the paper concluded that communal organizations for Muslims would be indispensable for some time to come in view of the Suddhi and Sangathan movement among the Hindusof north India. It is only fair to point out that Das was handling an extremely difficult political situation, full of pitfalls in whatever direction he turned. His overture to win the educated Muslims was complicated by the possible alienation and hostility of the educated Hindus on whose support the party was in the last resort dependent. His difficulties were greatly increased by the orthodox and communalelements in Hindu society in Calcutta who opposedhis policy. This opposition crystallized round the Hindu—Muslim pact and the Tarakeshwar reform campaign. The presence of these communal elements in Calcutta was indicated by the existence of a Cow Preservation League in the city presided over by the Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, and patronized by rich Marwaris like Kesoram Podder, who wasits Secretary. This league had been busily lobbying the AICC during 1922-23 for restriction of cow slaughter in view of the deterioration of cattle in India.** There was in addition the pro-Gandhi Ananda Bazar Patrika, which at the same time lent support to Swami Sraddhanand’s 51 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation—the Swaraj Party’. 52 Mussalman, 15 and 19 December 1925, 53 ATCC, 12/1922, ‘Correspondence between Cow Preservation League and AICCabout anti-cow-slaughter’.

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inflammatory campaign of reconverting Muslims to Hinduism.** When Swami Biswanand, with the encouragement of Das, started a

campaign in 1924 for the reformation of the corrupt temple administration of Tarakeshwar under its notorious mohanta, Satish Giri, a Hindu Sabha promptly set about organizing Hindu opposition to the Swaraj party. The conservative Amrita Bazar Patrika, Ananda Bazar Patrika and Servant joined in a chorus of condemnation of the young Swarajist volunteers who day after day carried on a satyagraha in Tarakeshwar, until Satish Giri was forced to resign (but on his own terms). To obtain supportat the Bengal Provincial Conference at Sirajganj in 1924 against the Hindu factions opposed to him, Das gave Rs 10,000 out of the funds obtained from Messrs Kar & Co. for the

Palta Water Works contract to Suren Ghosh of Mymensingh for strengthening the revolutionary organization in Bengal. Suren alias Madhu supplied several hundreds of volunteers from the revolutionary party at the Sirajganj Conference to support the Swaraj party in return for a definite undertaking that Gopi Mohan Saha, a revolutionary recently executed for murder, would be praised for his heroism by a resolution at the conference. With the help of these volunteers Das dominated the Sirajganj Conference during 1-4 June 1924, passing resolutions by converting the volunteers into delegates on each occasion when there was opposition: payment of homage to Gopi Saha,ratification of the Hindu-Muslim pact and support of the satyagraha movement at Tarakeshwar. The Hindu Sabha, which held its session also in Sirajganj, resolved to support the Suddhi movement and condemned Congress interference in Tarakeshwar. The Sirajganj Conference indicated the growing control of the Swaraj party machine by the revolutionaries, who proved themselves to be the masterful servants of the Bengal Congress.*® The Swaraj party made matters worse for itself by failing to represent the interests of the cultivating and working classes more effectively. In a province where the majority of the peasantry and a large section of mill labour belonged to the Muslim community, this failure made communalism an effective political tactic to promote particular interests. Such a political development was not automatically dictated by the dialectics of social conflict. In the first half of 54 Ananda Bazar Patrika, 19 March 1923. 55 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation: the Congress Party—Bengal’; IB 1924, ‘NonCooperation—the Swarajya Party’.

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1924 the anti-Saha agitation among the peasants in East Bengal, mostly Muslims, to free themselves from their economic subservience to urban money-lending groups remained confined to its original economic aspect, and the attempt by politicians to make it a communalissue bore no fruit.5® Nor was Das unaware of the importance of a mass programmefor the success of his political struggle against the diarchy, and in the early days of the Swaraj party he asserted repeatedly that Swaraj for the ninety-eight per cent was the only true Swaraj and that if upon attainment of Swaraj the classes became selfish he would come down squarely on the side of the masses to fight with them against a class regime. Yet the very success of his party attracted vested interests which infiltrated its organization. Increasingly the party machine came to be controlled by men like Tulsi Goswami, landlord and slum-owner, and Nalini Ranjan Sarkar,

financier and insurance magnate. There was an idea atfirst that the Swaraj party, like Labour in Parliament, might mobilize the support of the trade unions and thus capture political power in the Legislative Council and form a labour government with the support of the All-India Trade Union Congress.5? Das took an active interest in the local trade union politics of Calcutta and was twice President of the All-India Trade Union Congress, at Lahore in 1923 and in Calcutta in 1924. But clearly he wasnotin his element here. He looked forward to a peculiarly Indian ‘synthesis’ that would resolve the conflict between the clashing interests of capital and labour and hopedthat the labour movement would lose its sectarian character and merge into the national movement as represented by the Congress. Such doctrines were not best calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of labour, and the third session

of the AITUCat Lahorein 1923, presided over by Das, was a complete fiasco, due mainly to the unscrupulous conductofits organizers who had kept the AITUC outof the wave of labour unrest in 1921 and had broken the Jamshedpur strike in 1922. “The manner in which it was ignored by the actual labouring classes was very noticeable and on one day the attendance wasonly 50.8 Things did not improve at the next session in Calcutta, where the 5¢ TB 1924, ‘Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation by the Government of Bengal’. 877B 1923, ‘Extracts from the “Sarathi’? Newspaper’, copy of Sarathi, 18 September 1924. 58 TB 1920, ‘All-India Trade Union Congress’.

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AITUCpractically dissolved into two contending factions, one led by Das who became President of the session once again with the help of the Bombay trade union leaders, and the other by Mukunda Lal Sarkar, the General Secretary of the Indian Employees’ Association, who represented the extreme section of the trade union movement in Calcutta and had connections with the Comintern leader M. N. Roy. Roy wrote an eight page letter to Mukunda Lal Sarkar dilating on the betrayal of the working classes by the so-called leaders, affirming that Das had abandonedhis slogan of ‘Swaraj for the 98 per cent’ in favour of Swaraj for less than two per cent and stating that a new leadership for the AITUC wasessential. Although Mukunda Lal Sarkar had to submit to the election of Das under the pressure of the Bombayleaders, he kept up a continual disturbance and eventually succeeded in bringing about complete disorder, so that Das had to adjourn the meeting for the day. Das passed his insipid resolutions on the next day.®® His speech wasfull of expressions like ‘social unity’ and ‘synthesis of capital and labour’ and fulfilled the worst expectations of militant left wing trade unionists. His attempts at peasant organization were equally devoid of sustained energy. After his release from jail in the middle of 1924 Gandhi pressed on him the need for a more constructive programme within and outside the Council. Das, in return for Gandhi’s consent

to his Council entry programme, evolved a scheme for organization of the village on the lines of his earlier village plans of 1917. Virtually nothing, however, was donein this direction until Decem-

ber 1924 when some money wascollected for peasant organization and village reconstruction, to be spent eventually on other matters of more pressing interest to the Swaraj party. The landlords within the party machine sabotaged the village campaign for fear of peasant unrest.

The danger of the disillusionment of the people with the leaders of Bengal lay not so muchin a possibility of bare class confrontation as in the more likely emergence of communalism asan all-pervasive political force. For here lay an opportunity for lesser politicians, representing the weakersections of the urban groups competingfor a greater share in jobs and professions, to characterize peasant grievancesas the grievance of a community and to organize the community politically in order to capture power in their own interests. 59 Ibid. 6° Forward, 1 April 1924. 81 TB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation—the Swaraj Party’.

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Class war had little appeal for the dominant Muslim cultivating families who supplied the greater part of rural credit and employed the greater number of agricultural labourers (including sharecroppers) in East Bengal. But they responded eagerly to the campaign of Muslim combination to wrest the control of local boards and union boards from the high caste Hindus who formed a stratum over them. Urban Muslim politicians, basing themselves on these Muslim peasant families, could then at a higher level try to control the Legislative Council and the transferred half of the government. This was the reason why the Swaraj party planned a campaign in 1925 against the extension of union boards in Noakhali, fearing that the Village Self-Government Act would give more power to the Muslim peasant and relax the hold of the urban Hindu lawyerclass over the villages, on which the party relied for mobilizing mass support.*® The influential Muslim elements in the countryside allowed rural unrest to develop only against alien non-agricultural classes not properly integrated with the stratified system within the village, a limited movement which would not threaten their own position in the social hierarchy of the village. An obvious target was the urban Saha moneylenders in Dacca and the landholding Hindus in Pabna, against whom a movement of Muslim debtors and share-croppers emerged in 1924, The smouldering animosity between the Muslim peasants and the Hindu propertied classes took the shape of boycott of Saha moneylenders in Dacca and Mymensingh, butthis did not affect the internal credit mechanism controlled by cultivating Muslim families resident in the village.®* In Pabna there was tension between Hindu landholders and Muslim share-croppers, which had been going on since 1918. In 1925, when jute was selling at abnormally high prices, the share-croppers of Shahzadpur refused to accept terms for the next year, and declining to carry the landlord’s share of the paddy to his house they cut one half of the crop andleft the other half standing. The Hindu gentry had to cut their own paddy while their Muslim share-croppers stood by and jeered.*4 The Bengal Tenancy AmendmentBill, which was introduced in the Council in 1923 in order to give the status of tenants to sharecroppers, afforded an opportunity to communal Muslim politicians 62 TB 1925, ‘Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal’. 63 [B 1924, ‘Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation by the Government of Bengal’. 64 Final Report on Pabna and Bogra, p. 73.

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to seek peasant support at the cost of the landlord-ridden nationalist groups within and outside the Council. The No-Changers outside the Council came out openly against the bill, along with the moderate group andthe landlord lobby in the Council under the leadership of P. C. Mitter, the Vice-President of the British Indian Association

and the Minister of a transferred subject.** The bill was withdrawn from the first Council under the combined pressure of the Hindu parties. The bill was brought up once again in the Swaraj partydominated second Council in 1925, and although it had the support of left wing and revolutionary elements allied with the Swaraj party,®® they could not commit the leadership to supportof the bill in spite of exerting considerable pressure. The party was dominated by landlords and contained influential people like Tulsi Goswami, a zamindar of Serampore who owned extensive slums in the jute mill area. Underthe influence of these landlords the Swaraj party adopted obstructive tactics in the Council with regard to the Bengal Tenancy AmendmentBill, which at once brought a sharp denunciation from left wing and revolutionary elements of the party. When the bill was referred to a select committee, the Swaraj party voted with the government to reject the inclusion of additional members in the select committee. It was noticeable that the additional members whom the Swaraj party rejected were mostly people who could be expected to favour the interests of tenants. The party also carried against the government an amendment requiring a very large quorum (eleven out of nineteen members) of the select committee and it was suggested that the object was to prevent the committee from submitting the report before the general election of November 1926. Neither the party nor its press showed any tendencyto jeopardize the interests of the landlords. At a meeting of the Labour Swaraj party on 9 December 1925, Kazi Nazrul Islam, the revolutionary poet, and Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, a left wing leader, denounced the vested interests in the Council which had conspired to betray the people’s interests.®’ All this created an ideal opportunity for a progressive Muslim leader like A. K. Fazlul Huq to build up a Muslim party with peasant support, since the Swaraj party, committed to landlord interests, let slip the opportunity of building up a peasant base. ®° Ananda Bazar Patrika, 19 March 1923; BIA, Annual Report, 1922-3.

86 Atmasakti, 9 May 1923. *? IB 1925, ‘Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal’.

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End of the road

In March 1925 C. R. Das attained his last triumph when a fresh attempt by the government to run a ministry wasfoiled by his skill in securing a temporary combination against the government. The position in the Council at the time was this: Swarajists forty-three, Nationalists under B. Chakravarti twenty-one, Muslim and Hindu

moderate factions thirty-two, Europeans, officials and nominated Indians forty-four. The new ministry was formed with one Hindu, Raja Manmatha Nath Roy Chaudhuri and one Muslim, Syed Nawab Ali Chaudhuri; Fazlul Huq was ruled out because he was unscrupulous and in debt.®* This proved eventually to be a serious mistake. The Muslims were unsatisfied with only one minister from their community. Lytton tried to persuade them that they would be no worse off than before with one Hindu and one Muslim minister since parity would be maintained, but they repeated ‘with childlike vehemence’ that having once had two ministers they would never be satisfied with one and were willing to have two Hindu ministers if necessary. Lytton did not pause to consider that the real problem was not more adequate representation of Muslim communal interests, but greater accommodation of the rival Muslim factions in the Council. Europeans, Muslims, Hindus,all urged in their deputa-

tions that four ministers were needed and that no ministry could be saved otherwise. But Lytton was inflexible and was not prepared to revise his scheme after having announced that four ministers were unnecessary.®® Had he not stood on his prestige, the new ministry might have survived. Das’s task was by no means easy. He had only forty reliable Swarajists in Council opposed to diarchy as such. Hefirst secured the Independent Nationalists who wanted ministers (preferably themselves) but at reduced salaries, and hoped for the defeat of the present ministers and the appointment of new ones. The Swarajists threatened that if the Nationalists did not defeat the ministers’ salaries,

the Swarajists would leave the Council in a body, leaving the Nationalists alone and with no hopeofgetting rid of the present ministers whowere tools of the bureaucracy. On the other hand Dasassured Chakravarti that a united front would oblige the government to make 88 Birkenhead Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 703.18, Lytton to Birkenhead, 11 March 1925.

89 Tbid., Lytton to Birkenhead, 19 March 1925.

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terms and appointa suitable ministry. Even then Das had no majority unless he could detach some supporters of the government. Das turned his attention to Fazlul Huq, for long hopelessly in debt and chagrined at being excluded from the ministry. Two large decrees for debt were out against him and Das managedto get hold of the decreeholders. He then threatened Fazlul Huq with immediate issue of a body warrant if he voted with the government. On the other hand, if he joined the opposition Das promised him cash down, important briefs in the High Court and postponement of the decrees for two years. After somevacillation Fazlul Huq succumbedto this pressure. He went about in a car with Das persuadinghis friends to come over to the Swarajists. Some did this out of friendship and others were bribed by Das.” Das now had a majority and the new ministryfell before it had even got a proper start. What was sickening, wrote Lytton to the Secretary of State, was the utter demoralization of public life which had come over the province and it now seemed impossible to him to work democratic institutions successfully with the present mentality of the people. I may be told, I know, that I am expecting too much—that our own political life in the 18th century was extremely corrupt and that corruptionis still rife in the public life of America today, yet these conditions would not justify the intervention of a foreign government or the refusal of the right to self-government. If we had only officials in India, I should be quite prepared to accept this argument and to contemplate their withdrawal. As, however, we have vastly more important interests which will necessitate our remaining in India and keeping control of the machinery of Government, until we are satisfied that those interests will be safe

in Indian hands this argument does not help me. What we haveto do is to promote self-governmentso far as that is compatible with

our interests and to instruct Indian politicians in the working of democratic institutions so that the form of their Government may be gradually changed to one which they can profess to desire, but again only in so far as this is compatible with ourinterests... We

cannot leave India and while we remain there, we cannot tolerate

the methods which I have described andit will, I think, take more than a generationto effect a change.”

But for Das, who had only a few months more to live, time was running out, and for the Bengali nationalists, who had climbed to 7 Tbid., Lytton to Birkenhead, 26 March 1925.

7 Thid.

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new heights of power underhis leadership, the next generation held no promise. In March 1925 when the ministers’ salaries were thrown out for the third time, it became clear that the government of the country would carry on without the ministry. What, then, was the point of the Swaraj party, people began to ask. The future appeared uncertain at a time whenall around class, communalandfactional

conflicts of various kinds were tearing apart the fabric of society. What was Das to do now? Hehadearlier promised that he would render the government of the country impossible by wrecking the Council from within, and that if the government still refused to accept the national demands he would launch civil disobedience after leaving the Council. But signs of despondence were evident in the Swarajist camp. For the campaignofagitation against the Ordinance to suppress terrorism in Bengal had failed to arouse Bengal even after the arrest of Subhas Bose and other revolutionary leaders. The interference of the Swaraj party in the affairs of the Tarakeshwar temple to put a check to corruption had alienated the orthodox Hindus and had given a new handle to the No-Changersto agitate against the Swaraj party. The promised campaign of peasant organization and village reconstruction for which funds had been collected in December 1924 had failed to take any shape because most of the money had already been spent on other objects and because the programmethreatened the interests of the landlords in a way which the influential landlord element in Das’s following would not countenance. Many newspapers, including the Atmasakti and the Mussalman, were pressing Dasto fulfil his promise of organizing the country byvillage reconstruction, a programme about which so much had been heard in December and January. There was restiveness among the revolutionaries, who were disorganized by the arrest of their leaders and discontented at not getting more money from the Swaraj party. The uncertainty as to his future line led Das to publish a statement in the press that he was willing to co-operate with the government on honourable terms and that he had nofaith in revolutionary violence. Such a gesture was possible only because all the leaders of the revolutionary movement were nowin jail; it could not have been made six months earlier when the terrorists had him by the throat and were forcing him to give them financial support. The Amrita Bazar Patrika took him to task for whittling down the demandsofIndia, and the Bengalee poured ridicule on his gestures and openly laughed 23

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at his threat of civil disobedience, calling him a ‘harmless viper’.”* In private Das had a meeting with Stephenson in the house of a mutual friend and offered terms which included his acceptance of the ministry on condition of release of political prisoners.”* But the British knew that he was in no position to dictate terms. Das’s game had been played out. He wasgetting bogged downin a situation from which the only escape was an understanding with the British which would enable him to form a ministry. Without response from the British it appeared as if the conflicting social and political forces which he wasstriving desperately to keep under control would rip open his Swaraj party and the whole organization ofthe political life of the educated Bengali Hindus. At the Faridpur Provincial Conference in May 1925 when Gandhi came down to Bengal in order to pull Das’s chestnuts out of the fire, Das sent out a desperate call to the British for a corresponding gesture. His presidential speech wasreceived coldly by the audience. He professed to see signs of reconciliation everywhere and invited the British to an honourable compromise. The terms for the compromise were: (1) relinquishment of the extraordinary powers assumed by the government andrelease of political prisoners, (2) a firm promise of the government to grant full Swaraj in the near future within the British empire, (3) immediate modification of the present administration of the country before the grant of full Swaraj. Addressing the British community in India, Das said, ‘here, in this country we are always ready to recognise your right’. This sudden offer of friendship to the British left his audience cold. A revolutionary leaflet entitled Bhabbar Katha containing virulent attacks on Das and Gandhi wasfreely circulating in the conference. The leaflet not only objected to Gandhi’s visit to Bengal, but poured scorn on Dasandhis party: The Swaraj party failed to launch Civil Disobedience by leaving the Council but in order to safeguard their own existence and to hide their own miseries, have brought about a means of compromise—they have not got the power to disobey the law and they are not willing to admit their failure either. But are the people of the country so blind as not to assess the Swaraj Party at its real worth? Oppression is daily increasing in the country. Those who lent their power and influence to the Swaraj Party, have been 72 TB 1925, ‘Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal’. *8 Birkenhead Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 703.18, Lytton to Birkenhead, 1 April 1925.

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incarcerated without any trial and what could the Swaraj Party do to help them? It is a big thing to speak of Civil Disobedience. Have they been able to ‘wreck’ the Council? Is it the same thing to ‘wreck’ the Council or haveit ‘prorogued’? Standing near Char Manair the Bengalis must be told clearly that the efforts of both Mahatma Gandhi and Deshabandhu Das have beenbaffled.”4 Das took serious exception to the circulation of this pamphlet. The brief honeymoon between the Swaraj party and the revolutionaries was at an end. Troublestarted at the BPCC meeting in Faridpur when Das wanted a resolution promising that the Swaraj party would consider terms of co-operation with the government on the condition of the release of only Subhas Bose, Anil Baran Ray and Satyen Mitter. His revolutionary opponents insisted on the release ofall political prisoners. Upon this Das left the meeting, threatening resignation. Gandhi ultimately effected a compromise resolution demanding release of those arrested in October 1924 and not those arrested in 1923. Das requested the revolutionaries to lie low for six monthstill the government came to a compromise but he was losing his hold. The revolutionaries strenuously opposed the resolution condemning violence. They accused him of throwing them overboard after taking their help in the elections. Das realized that their defection would leave him in a very weak position, for the Swaraj party would lose an essential part of its organization in the next electoral campaign. The fortnightly intelligence report for the first half of May commented: ‘His future position is undoubtedly difficult though his powerful personality still commands the support of his party. In the absence of alternatives the Bengali politicians cling to a leader, even when hehassolittle to offer as Das has for 18 months’

work, but the attempt to cultivate good relations with the British Government and at the same time to retain control over the revolutionary party has proved too difficult a task.’” The European Association described Faridpur as Das’s Canossa and announced joyfully that he had led his army with bands playing amidst intense excitement ‘right up against a blank wall’.”* A month and a half passed while Das stayed up in Darjeeling mortally ill, and still there came no response from the British side. For the British had decided against it months ago and had only been playing him 74 TB 1925, ‘Bengal Provincial and Other Conferences at Faridpur’. 75 IB 1925, ‘Fortnightly Reports on the Political Situation in Bengal’. 76 European Association Quarterly Review, July 1925, no. 18, p. 19.

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along. ‘I do not think’, Birkenhead had written to Lytton on 30 April 1925, ‘the moment opportune for any advance of any kindatall from us to him. Forming the best opinion it is possible for me to reach in this office, J am convinced that Dasis playing a losing game and knowsit.’?? Lytton agreed with Birkenhead that Das was ‘not a person to whom much consideration need be given’. He might not,

of course, believe in violence. ‘As however he cannotinfluence the

actions and opinions of his avowed followers, he is no use to us... As an opponent he has ceased to be formidable; as a friend he is useless.”?8 Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das died in Darjeeling on 16 June 1925. The impressive funeral procession from the railway station of Sealdah to the cremation ground of Kalighat through the streets of Calcutta testified to the position of great moral authority he held at the time of his death. Amidst tearful effusions, Gandhi paid the most truthful tribute to his memory: ‘He held Hindus and Mussalmans together under circumstances the most trying.’’? There was one

dissenting voice. The Bolshevik paper entitled The Masses of India, referring to ‘his opportunist leadership of the Swarajist party’ and his Faridput speech, delivered the judgmentthat

If C. R. Das was born as a revolutionary, he certainly did not die as one... When he emergedasthe leader of the secessionists from orthodox non-cooperation, the situation in India was revolutionary ... The masses had then made their epoch-making entry into the political arena. In one fugutive moment of lucidity, C. R. Das had taken account of the situation and spoken of ‘Swaraj for the 98 per cent’, as the only Swaraj worth fighting for. It was possible for him then to have followed in India the line of evolution which was followed in China almost contemporaneously by Sun Yat Sen. He spoke vaguely of ‘Swaraj for the 98 per cent’; he might have, as a matter of practical politics, transformed the limited and pusillanimous programmeof his party into a broad and fighting programme, more in consonance with theinterests of the ‘98 per cent’; he could thus have united into one organisation the nationalist and the proletarian forces of revolution, as was indeed realised in China by Sun Yat Sen in his Kuomintangparty. But C. R. Das allowed the situation to go by default. He in” Birkenhead Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 703.2, Birkenhead to Lytton, 30 April 1925. 78 Ibid., MSS. Eur. D. 703.3, Lytton to Birkenhead, 21 May 1925,

79 Calcutta Municipal Gazette, 20 June 1925.

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carnated himself more and more as the representative of those social classes for whom separation from the British Empire was not an imperative necessity, not certainly a necessity to be satisfied at the cost of a bloody revolution. His treason to the interests of the *98 per cent’ began with his championship ofthe interests of the ‘2 per cent’. In the brief and inglorious career of C. R. Das as the Swarajist leader, we have had the spectacle of an would-be Indian Menshevik whofailed even to rise to the level of a Kerensky, having miserably ‘bungled and mismanaged’ an unquestionably revolutionary situation and having even forgotten to depose the English Tsar in India in his haste to pose as the premature champion ofthe interests of the liberal bourgeoisie.8° There is some truth in this judgment, but it is not wholly fair. Gandhi was nearer the truth when hereferred to ‘circumstances the most trying’. Das faced a combination ofdifficulties which no other Congress leader in India had to face. In the first place Muslims constituted the majority of the population in Bengal, and their predominantly agricultural interests clashed with those of the Hindu gentry. In UP the same clash of contending rural interests inhibited the growth of the Congress in the countryside and produced an ‘imperfect mobilization’ amongthe peasantry.*! But there, the clash of peasants and gentry did not dovetail so neatly into a HinduMuslim divide. The longer and wider dissemination of English education in Bengal, moreover, coincided with a restriction of op-

portunities for Bengalis to the narrow sphere of jobs and professions, since business and industry were dominated by foreign capital. The competition for jobs among the English-educated classes in Bengal was in consequence unusually fierce and it powerfully fostered caste and communal antagonisms among urban Bengalis. These antagonisms were further accentuated by the fact that non-official Europeans were such a powerful political group in Bengal, far more so than in any other province of India. This again was a consequence of the overwhelming preponderance of foreign capital in Calcutta. It was in its interest to play off sectional patriotisms against a united Bengali nationalism. This game wasfacilitated by the social, cultural and economic cleavage between Calcutta and its surrounding countryside—itself the product of the dual economy created by foreign 80 1B 1923, ‘Bolshevik Propaganda’, copy of The Masses of India, July 1925. 81 Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh 192634: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization (New Delhi, 1978), chapter 6.

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capital. It wasall too easy to arouse the jealousies of the relatively less privileged country folk against their more privileged metropolitan cousins, andall the moredifficult to build a bridge between the metropolis and the country. These were difficulties that would have sorely tried the resources of the most superior statesmanship. Nohistorical judgment will be fair which does not acknowledge that Das succeeded to an extent no other Bengal leader before or after him ever did. The growing political difficulties in Bengal strained his resourceful leadership to the uttermost and he was driven to seek co-operation with Lytton at the end ofhis life. But till his death he succeeded in holding together a national coalition of the conflicting forces in the body politic of Bengal, which fell apart only underhis successors. Twoconsiderable historians of Bengal politics have portrayed Das as an ambitious, unscrupulous and clever opportunist.8? Their judgmentis at fault. Das left the mostbrilliant practice in the history of Indian law to plunge into a hard and strenuous struggle which brought him, a man used to comforts, prematurely to death. When he died, his fortune had been spent in the cause of the nation, and even his house was mortgaged. His political strategy, a finely balanced combination of pressure and compromise, had been consistent and well suited to the traditions of Bengal politics and of the Indian National Congress. Within the European-dominated economic andpolitical system of Bengal the resources were too few with which Das could satisfy so many conflicting ambitions in his province. No doubt he sometimes stooped low in the rough and tumble of politics. His opponent, Lytton, wrote of the prevailing corruption in Bengal politics, but he admitted himself that this was no argument against self-government. Lytton, indeed, got to the heart of the matter when he pointed out the basic incompatibility between ‘our interests’ and ‘democratic institutions’. It would take another twentytwo years to dislodge these interests; meanwhile they played havoc with the public life of Bengal. The death of Das was speedily followed bythe disintegration of the Swaraj party. The party was in great difficulty owing to the absence 82 John Broomfield contrasts Lytton, ‘another man with a mission’, with C. R. Das, ‘a leader being led’. Elite Conflict, pp. 187, 259. John Gallagher describes Das as ‘the most brilliant opportunist in Indian politics, virtuoso of agitation, broker between irreconcilables, gambler for glittering stakes’. Locality, Province and Nation, p. 275.

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of a recognized successor. At the time of Das’s death both the BPCC and the Swaraj party were denuded of funds and had beensubsisting for some time on Das’s borrowings, raised on the security of his Russa Road house. There wasa frantic search for the leadershipleft vacant by Das. It was proposed to lure B. N. Sasmal back to the Swaraj party by offering him the post of Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation, and the idea of calling Aurobindo back from Pondicherry to lead the nationalist party was also discussed. It was from this point onwards that the Bengal Congress, lacking a leader of all-India stature with undisputed control of the province, lost its weight in the top circle of national leadership and becameincreasingly subordinate to the directives of the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress. This development was reflected in the decisive part which Gandhi, who wasin Calcutta at the time of Das’s death, played in selecting his successor. Gandhi proposed to undertake satyagraha to bring Sasmal back to the Congress and also wrote to Aurobindo in Pondicherry without getting any response.® Ultimately, in consultation with Abul Kalam Azad, he placed the ‘three crowns’ worn by Das(leadership of the Swaraj party in the Council, Mayoralty of Calcutta and Presidentship of BPCC), for which several contenders were competing tooth and nail, on the single head of J. M. Sengupta. The Bengalis were not grateful to Gandhifor his service in preserving a semblance of unity in the Congress ranks and in electing Sengupta as Das’s successor. The new leader was continually dependent on the support of Gandhi and Motilal Nehru and faced the same dangers as C. R. Das without his power of control.*4 For Sengupta encountered the inevitable opposition of ‘one group of would-be leaders intriguing against the groupin office for the time being’®®—henceforth a perennial feature of Congress affairs in Bengal. Nirmal Chandra Chandra, leader of the Kayastha clique in Calcutta (which had ousted Sasmal from his promised Chief Executive Officership of the Calcutta Corporation), was willing to pay a price of Rs 50,000 (to be paid into the coffers of the Swaraj party through the Chittaranjan Memorial Fund) for the post of Mayor. But H. S. Suhrawardy, the unreliable Swarajist Deputy Mayorof the Corporation, also had an eye on this coveted prize. Sarat Chandra 83 TB 1925, ‘The Swarajya Party’. 84 Birkenhead Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 703.18, Lytton to Birkenhead, 25 August 1925.

85 Bengalee, 2 February 1927.

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Bose, another contender foroffice who wasseekingto reserve a place for his brother Subhas Bose (incarcerated at the moment in Mandalay jail), wanted to be the President of the BPCC. But Satkaripati Roy, occupying at the momentthe office of Secretary of the BPCC, was knownto bein the field for the same post, backed by a moderate section of Congressmen. The revolutionary cell within the BPCC, anxiousto forestall him or Shyamsundar Chakravarti (both believers in non-violent methods), was pushing the candidature of Sengupta (Subhas Bose,their former patron, being not ready to hand).** Gandhi’s first impression was that the Mayor should be a Muslim. Azad, however, strongly recommended Sengupta, who was elected on the ground that the Swaraj party should be strengthened by electing the leader of the party to the high office of Mayor. Since Subrawardy was not suitable for leading the Bengal Congress, Gandhirejected the petition of Muslim Swarajists that Suhrawardy be elected Mayor.’’ There was so much disappointment at the new distribution of offices that Abdulla Suhrawardy and Emadul Huq, whokeenly felt the discrimination against their community, resigned from the Swaraj party, as did some Hindus. As a result, wrote Lytton with satisfaction to Birkenhead in August 1925, the government was enabled to carry all bills in the Legislative Council. Sow the wind

By the beginning of 1926 the cracks in the Bengal Congress which Gandhi had sought to paper over by imposing Sengupta as Das’s successor had been exposed to the public by the emergence of organized cliques openly competing for Congress leadership. There wasthe ‘official’ clique led by Sengupta, who found himself increasingly dependent on the All India Congress leadership for maintaining his position in the BPCC, which was extremely weak,largely because of his ‘outsider’ status in Calcutta politics. Influential Calcutta politicians had coined the pun ‘Flat Mayor’ in order to make fun of a city father living in a rented apartment.®® The Calcutta coterie, 86 TB 1925, ‘The Swarajya Party’. 87 Mussalman, 4 August 1925. 88 Birkenhead Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 703.18, Lytton to Birkenhead, 25 August 1925.

89 A manuscript inside account of Congress rivalries and intrigues in Bengal, written by Sasmal, gives details of these dealings of the Calcutta clique. This account is not available for scrutiny, but Sasmal’s son, Bimalananda Sasmal, kindly mentioned someof the contents of this document to the author.

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brushed aside by Gandhi, had now come out in opposition to Sengupta. They were led by the Big Five who dominated the party machine and did their best to make things hot for Sengupta. The members of the Big Five were N. C. Chandra (an established attorney of the High Court who cameof an old Kayastha family of Calcutta), N. R. Sarkar (a big Kayastha businessmanandleader of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce), Tulsi Goswami (an Oxfordeducated Brahman zamindar of Serampore), Sarat Bose(a flourishing Kayastha advocate of the High Court) and B. C. Roy (a prosperous Kayastha doctor of Calcutta). These rich Calcutta notables, who could not themselves be leaders because of their lack of a record of exclusive Congress work andself-sacrifice, were handicapped at the moment because their favourite, Subhas Bose, wasin jail. They had nothing but contempt for lawyers from the interior like Sasmal, an upstart “Keot of Midnapur’ wishing to rule in Calcutta, and Sengupta, a ‘Chittagongian fowl’ undeservedly decorated with the three crowns.® They made it their pastime to pull strings in the fierce tripartite contest of Sengupta, Sasmal and Bose for the three crowns. Meanwhile the terrorists threw their weight about, having emerged as an organized group seeking a controlling voice in the BPCC. In the BPCCelections at the end of 1925 they gained their object when they won a majority and reduced Sengupta to an unwilling tool for their machinations.®! For the moment he had their support, since they were rather relieved to find that Gandhi had not backed the claims of orthodox Gandhians like Snyamsundar Chakravarti or Satkaripati Roy to leadership. In 1926 they formed the Karmi Sangha to dominate Congress affairs and promptly the Big Five accused Sengupta of being a mere instrumentin their hands. Casting aboutfor an ally against Sengupta, the Big Five pounced on Sasmal, whom they had themselves hounded out of Calcutta in 1924.92 All of a sudden Sasmalgained the confidence of the Big Five,

with whose help he obtained the ticket for the North Midnapur constituency and waselected President of the Bengal Provincial Conference at Krishnagarin 1926. 89 These characterisations are mentioned in Sasmal’s unpublished inside account. The imagery hererefers to the natural three-peak red crown of a cock. 91 Public and Judicial, L/P & J/7/242/1931. 8B. C. Roy to Sasmal, 21 January 1926 and 2 February 1926, and T. C. Goswami to Sasmal, 15 January 1926, letters quoted in Bimalananda Sasmal, Swadhinatar Phanki, pp. 143-6.

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But the Big Five’s alliance with Sasmal (like their opposition to the Karmis) was a matter of temporary convenience. Sasmal’s politics differed radically from those of the Sengupta clique, the Karmi Sangha and the Big Five. One thingall these three groups,in spite of their fierce rivalries, had in common: they were all competing for power on a narrow social basis in the confined sphere of Calcutta. Underthe sway of big metropolitan professional and landedinterests, all these Calcutta-centric groups were bent on manipulating the levers of influence available at the centre and had no appetite for giving a lead to popular agrarian movementsin the interior. Sasmal’s political goals and strategy were fundamentally different from theirs and it is no exaggeration to say that his fighting programme of mass mobilization offered the last chance of rescue from the morass into which the Bengal Congress wassinking steadily after 1924. In his presidential address to the Krishnagar Conference, Sasmal clearly stated that the object of the national movement was complete independence, not equal partnership within the British empire, and that such complete independence could be attained only by revolution—a mass uprising that would not stop short of violent challenge to authority—and not by non-violent non-co-operation, obstruction in the Council, terrorist conspiracy orcivil disobedience. Even if the British were forced by civil disobedience to leave the country, such methods would notlead to a root and branch abolition of the existing administrative system and social structure, and the new regime would be dependent on an untrustworthy army and a navy deserted by British officers. If, on the other hand, a handful of conspirators established Swaraj by driving out the British, such a Swaraj would inevitably degenerate into a machine of exploitation. Only revolution would bring a new social order that would give true meaning to Swaraj. But Sasmal also recognized that the conditions were not yet ripe for revolution, and in order to create such conditions he advocated, on the one hand, village organization through national education, social service and political training, and on the other, destruction of diarchy by repeated resignations from the Council and repeated campaigns for re-election culminating in mass civil disobedience.®? On his return to the Swaraj party after Das’s death Sasmal pressed this fighting programme at a general council meeting in Cawnpore, but his suggestion about repeated resignations and re-election did not find favour even among members from *3 Birendranath Sasmal, Abhibhashan (Calcutta, 1972).

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Bengal, and Motilal Nehru, pouring cold water on the proposal, wrote to him that it was ‘in its nature wholly impracticable in any part of the country, including Bengal except perhaps the Midnapore Division’.% But Sasmal was not an isolated figure in Bengal politics and had substantial support among Congress workers outside the organized groups competing for control of the BPCC. Standing aside from the unseemly contest for the three crowns carried on by the Sengupta clique and the Big Five were a large number of Congress workers and grassroots leaders in the districts who were emerging as an identifiable group under Sasmal’s leadership. These were mostly leaders at village level who worked through the district Congress committees established by C. R. Das during the non-co-operation movement. Frowning uponthe activities of the terrorists and disgusted with the intrigues of rival Calcutta cliques, these leaders of Congress organizations at village level were seeking a voice in the BPCC through a representative of provincial stature, and on Sasmal’s return to the Congress they hopefully turned towards him asa leaderof their own. Sasmal was, moreover, the only leader in whom nationalist Muslims in the Congress reposed a genuine trust, for he was an honest and ardent advocate of the Hindu—Muslim pact and his village-oriented agrarian political programme struck a responsive chord among Khilafat movementleaders at district level like Abdur Raschid Khan of Noakhali and Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chaudhuri of Comilla. Finally, Sasmal won the respect and supportofa disillusioned section of Calcutta-based Congressmen who wished a plague on both the houses of Sengupta and the Big Five, a few left-oriented nationalists in the city, as well as a number of personal adherents (such as Das’s sister Urmila Devi) in Calcutta who were attached to him for various reasons. His forthright and courageous stand against the ubiquitous terrorists brought him the admiration ofall these different elements which for some reason or other wanted a broad, mass-based,

fighting programme. At the Krishnagar Provincial Conference in May 1926 Sasmal, speaking out against individual terrorism and anarchist conspiracy, stated that ‘those who believe in violence ought to keep aloof from the Congress organizations’.®* This drew the ire of the terrorists, who %4 Motilal Nehru to Sasmal, 12 January 1926, photocopy given in Bimalananda

Sasmal. %5 Bengalee, 23-24 May 1926.

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violently broke up the assembly and hounded him outof the pandal without allowing him to finish the address. J. M. Sengupta, doing an acrobatic feat of tight-rope walking, prudently moved a censure motion against Sasmal for his remarks on terrorism in order to keep in the good booksofthe terrorists, but sided at the same time with Sasmal with regard to the Hindu—Muslim pact. This was in opposition to the wishes of the terrorists, who, having participated in the recent communal riots in Calcutta, had come up determined to do away with the pact at the conference (a thing which Sengupta could not afford in view of the coming elections). Sasmal, by using the President’s casting vote in an equally divided house, passed the Hindu—Muslim pact at the subjects committee but was forced to resign from the Presidentship when the terrorists had a censure motion passed against him with the help of Sengupta. Using his resignation as a pretext to avoid further discussion of the pact at an open assembly where the overwhelming majority were obviously opposed to the pact, Sengupta dissolved the conference and went back to Calcutta, leaving the remaining delegates to reassemble the conference under J. Chaudhuri and rescind the pact.®* Sasmal, who had the support of the Muslim delegates at the conference, was praised for ‘his outspokenness and courage of conviction’ by the Mussalman, which observed that he had ‘notfelt the least hesitation in calling a spade a spade and to speak out what he considered would serve the best interests of the country’.®” On coming back to Calcutta, Sengupta, who had himself taken the lead in censuring Sasmal for daring to criticize the terrorists at Krishnagar, sought his help in removing the terrorists, who had turned against him for defending the pact, from the Executive Committee of the BPCC.%* Sasmal brought him the support of Muslim members and a large numberof district leaders who came and voted solidly for him at a BPCC meeting in June, where the Hindu— Muslim pact was reaffirmed and the Executive Committee was reconstituted minus the Karmis.°® The Big Five, who had so far refrained from participating in this conflict, suddenly found themselves isolated in an Executive Committee in which Sengupta had obtained domination as a result of their wait-and-see policy. Immediately they resigned from the committee in protest against its arbitrary reconstitution and joined hands with the Karmis in op°6 Thid.

8? Mussalman, 28 May 1926.

°8 Bengalee, 10 February 1927.

°9 Ibid., 14 and 16 June 1926.

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posing the Hindu-Muslim pact. Theelections were fast approaching and the party machine could not function without the bosses; so Sengupta patched up his differences with the Big Five in July by electing to the Executive Committee thirty members agreed upon by Sasmal, Sengupta and the Big Five, and by striking a bargain with the Big Five that the pact would not be aired as an issue during the elections. The Big Five quickly gained ascendancy in the BPCC and Sengupta had to reconstitute the Executive Committee, taking in twelve Karmis. As a result the anti-Muslim party gained the dominant voice in the committee and in protest Sasmal, his friends and the Muslim members resigned.The consequence wasdisastrous. Veteran nationalist Muslims like Abdur Raschid Khan and Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chaudhuri went out of the Congress and contested in the elections on a communal platform. Reap the whirlwind The Hindu—Muslim pact was now dead; the nationalist Muslims had stood aside from the Congress; and while Calcutta cliques were fighting for control of the Congress the communalparties had gained a complete ascendancy among the Muslims of Bengal as a result of communalriots which exploded again and again with unprecedented violence during the nine months preceding the election. The impulse behind these riots could be traced through the inflammatoryelectoral campaigns of communalist politicians like Sir Abdur Rahim and Husain Shahid Suhrawardy to the under-cover as well as overt activities of the Political Department of the Government of Bengal to foster a united Muslim communalist party in the Legislative Council. In the midst of the campaign for Swaraj in one year and wrecking the Councils in three months, the ruling British administrative and commercial classes were in desperate need of supporters to keep the constitutional structure of the Raj in working order. In the first Council such supporters were found both from Surendranath Banerjea’s moderate group and from the various Muslim Council factions competing for the government’s patronage. In the second 100 [bid., 20 June and 27 July 1926; Mussalman, 16 July, 3 and 15 September 1926. 101 Mussalman, 1 October 1926. 102 For an exposé of the Bengal Government’s aims andtactics in this period, see Broomfield, Elite Conflict, pp. 270-4.

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Council the moderate party, as the European businessmen discovered ruefully, virtually disappeared due to the sweeping victory of the Swarajists who captured more than half of the general non-Muslim constituencies. An attempt was then made bytheofficials and nonofficial Europeans in the Council to fashion an organized political party from the non-Swarajist Muslims. The vote of the official and Europeanblocs in the Council was thrown in to prop up the shaky Muslim ministries. When this strategy failed to keep the reforms going due to the control of half the Muslim votes in the Council by the Swaraj party, the Political Department of the Government of Bengal initiated and co-ordinated a deliberate policy of driving a wedge between the Swaraj party and its Muslim supporters, to wipe out the nationalist Muslimsas a political force, to assist the ascendancy of communalism as the dominant force among the Bengali Muslims and to induct communal groupsinto entrenched positions of powerin the institutions of the Raj. To contain the threat to the existing order from the rebellious Bengali Hindus, the interests of the educated Bengali Muslims were promotedby special concessions to build up aneffective political counter-force. A few monthsafter the failure of the attempt to revive a ministry in 1925, Sir Abdur Rahim, Member of the Governor’s Executive Council, reminded the Government of Bengal of the consensus of opinion among its membersthat‘the best prospect of getting support for Government seemedstill to lie in the Muhammadan quarters’ and that ‘one meansofrallying the Muhammadans wasto investigate the ways and meansof removing their grievances regarding employment in the public service’. Abdur Rahim now urged that the Government was pledged to the Muslim community‘to takestepsat once to advance the position of the Muhammadans in the administration’ and pointed out that the question had now acquired ‘considerable dynamicpolitical force’ which might well be exploited to the advantage of the Government of Bengal.!°? The Government of Bengal took the cue from Sir Abdur andinstructions were sent from the Executive Council to all the departments to reserve a larger share of appointments for the Muslims.!°4 In an obvious bid to utilize the ‘considerable dynamic political f6rce’ of the issue, this executive order was made public at the end of 1925 and at onceit provoked an opposition from Hindu MLCsin the Council, which 78 Sir Abdur Rahim’s minute of 27 July 1925, GB, Appointment, November 1925, no. 70-71 (A). 104 Thid.

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increasedill-will between the communities. At the sametimeinstructions were sent to the district magistrates to throw their weight behind those local Muslim associations which were willing to cooperate with the government and to withdraw all patronage from the more independent-minded political bodies among the Muslims by striking them off the list of recognized associations. The officers were also given the political task of eliminating factional rivalry among Muslim politicians by assisting the chosen local associations to absorb all other communal organizations and to secure control of all the local affairs of the Muslim community. The purpose behind this was to strengthen the local bases of a united Muslim Council party and to break the stranglehold of the Swarajists in the Council. With this end in view the Political Department was willing to go so far as to overrule a Divisional Commissioner who advised against recognition of a new Islamia Anjuman in Dacca Division in place of the District Moslem Association. The reason for this extraordinary action was that the new Anjuman proposed to ensure the election of loyal Muslims to the local boards and municipalities and to organize the Muslim community on a loyalist basis for the 1926 elections.1°* The success of this strategy was seen in the increasing influence of communal feeling in the elections to the local boards and municipalities. One district magistrate reported that the grouping of parties was now following the cleavage of religion and that in consequence aspirants for political power were finding it convenient to inflame communal passionsin order to augmenttheir following.1 In several districts Muslims combined in order to secure a larger representation in the district and local boards.1°” Abdur Rahim retired from the Executive Council at the end of 1925 and was returned unopposed to the Legislative Council from a Calcutta constituency in January 1926. The Swaraj party, paralysed by the squabbles between the Sengupta clique and the Big Five, was not even able to put up against him a Muslim Swarajist candidate. Rahim nowexported the policies which he hadso skilfully initiated in the administration to the sphereofelectoral politics. The approach of elections at the end of 1926 led to an increasing link-up oftheelite and popularlevels of communalism. Distinguishing these levels, the 10 106 107 108

Broomfield, Elite Conflict, p. 272. Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution, pp. 190-1. Tbid, pp. 109-10. Indian Quarterly Register, January-June 1926,vol. 1, p. 97.

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Mussalman had commented soonafter the fall of the Fazlul Huq ministry in 1924: It is to be borne in mind that the things that cause estrangement between Hindus and Muslimsare of two kinds. Thefirst kind is the loaves and fishes of office and the representation of Muslims and non-Muslimsin the legislative and local bodies. This concerns the educated classes only, both Hindu and Muslim. The second kind is cow-killing, music before mosques and other kindred matters. This concerns more the masses than the classes. Though the educated classes are interested in these matters, it is the masses,

both Hindu and Muslim,that actually fall out over these questions and create disturbances.1° Mass communalism as a political force was a relatively new phenomenon which arose from the eruption of the masses in politics after the war. The Calcutta riots of 1918, the Khilafat movement of

1920-24 and the Tanzeem movement brought to Bengal by Dr Kitchlew in May 1925 heightened the consciousness of communal interests at mass level and increased the appreciation of the potentialities of mass action. The Bengal pact on the distribution of appointments between the educated sections of the two communities was not matched by an attempt to foster organic inter-communal unity amongst the masses. The perceptions of the majority of Muslimsin Calcutta and the towns of East Bengal were moulded bytherealities of daily life in the mahallas and not by the provisions of pacts drawn up in the mansions of Corporation Councillors and MLCs.1!° A politician like Suhrawardy who foundit convenient to collaborate with the Swarajists in the Council and the Corporation had to adopt a different strategy on the Hindu-Muslim question when he started looking for support from a mass electorate at the comingelections. In order to capture this support, leaders of the Rahim brand deliberately made inflammatory appeals to those intolerant social and religious aspirations which were responsible for the murderousriots of 1926. The problem was complicated, on the Hindu side, by the inflow of Hindu communalism from upper India and the inflammatory tour of Hindu Mahasabhaleaders like Malaviya and Moonje whoheld meetings in the city and urged the upcountry Hindus to unite during 109 Mussalman, 19 September 1924. 110 Kenneth McPherson, pp. 141-3.

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the riots. The Government of Bengal found reasons to conclude that in so far as there had been Hindu aggression‘it hadits origin outside

Bengal’.*4* It was music played by an upcountry Arya Samaj pro-

cession before a mosque which provoked in April the first of the series of riots in Calcutta, which later spread to the districts. Young Bengali Hindus, especially members of the Congress Karmi Sangha, joined in the riots only when provoked by attacks on temples.!? Among Muslimsalso, the main participants in the riots were Urduspeaking upcountry immigrants. Pointing to Sir Abdur’s electoral strategy behind the riots, the Bengalee (of which Byomkesh Chakravarti was now editor) commented caustically: ‘He is without doubt the ablest and most respected leader of the English educated Moslemsof Bengal. He has yet to win the votes of the Moslems whodo not know English. These riots have afforded him a splendid opportunity of capturing the hearts of Moslems without English education. He hasbeen utilising the opportunity.’44*> How long, asked the rival paper Forward, must the rioting go on to ensure the safe return of Sir Abdur Rahim’s thirty followers at the next elections ?444 This is not to imply that top-ranking leaders of the Muslim community seeking election to the Legislative Council actually planned and directed the operations during the riots. But there was evidence to show that Sir Abdur and his son-in-law Suhrawardy had formed political connections with those band leaders at the ward level who actually organized the disturbances, and that the former’s bearing, far from having a pacifying effect, had encouraged the ward leaders in their aggressive attitude. Suhrawardy, the Deputy Mayor of the Calcutta Corporation, was intimately connected with the Pathan brothers Mina and Alla Baksh Peshwari, prosperous money-lending merchants of local importance in the Mechua Bazar area who organized the attacking parties of upcountry Muslim traders, artisans and merchants in north Calcutta. The third Calcutta riot which broke out on 15 July was deliberately started by Alla Baksh Peshwari, who led a premeditated attack on a Hindu procession in consultation with Suhrawardy. On 13 July Sir Abdur had convened a meeting in his house to consider what action should be taken with regard to the procession, and at this meeting strong opposition to the procession was urged by Suhrawardy; ‘his 111 GI, HomePoll, 209/1926. 112 Bengalee, 6-7 April 1926. 118 Thid., 23 April 1926. 144 Forward, 29 April 1926.

24

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language was such that Sir Abdur Rahim found it necessarytotell him more than once that there must be no breaking of heads.’ Late on the night of 14 July, Suhrawardy and other leaders, including Alla Baksh Peshwari, ‘visited Mechuabazar, whichis the stronghold of the Mahomedansin north Calcutta, and incited the Mahomedans to resist the procession and abused other Mahomedans who sought to dissuade them’,1!® Earlier, during the first Calcutta riot in April, a big shop called Marwari Stores was looted on 3 April ‘and Mr Suhrawardy was found on the spot when the police arrived and the looting was over, and his attitude was such as to create the suspicion that he had encouragedthe looters.’!!® Apparently the Deputy Mayor, and some other politicians seeking election, came into contact with the rioters at ground level and their involvement in the riots was much more direct than that of Sir Abdur. Suhrawardy and Y. C. Ariff, a rich merchant-politician who had participated in the Khilafat movement, were seen haranguing the congregations of various mosques during the riots.1!’ Before long the riots had spread from Calcutta to the towns and villages of East Bengal. In Pabna town,after some images had been desecrated, aggressively armed Hindus took out a music-playing procession on | July and fought with Muslimsin front of a mosque. Newsof this attack on a mosque in Pabna town provoked widespread attacks on Hindus by Muslimsin a rural tract extending over four police stations of Pabna district.11* An attempt to trace the history of communalactivities in the district showed that the Muslims of Pabna town had an AnjumanIslamia, established several years ago, which had not been functioning properly until recently when communalrivalry in public services and local bodies became acute. There was also a branch of the Hindu Sabha, established in 1921, and

immediately before the attack on the mosque Shyamsundar Chakravarti, who had become a thoroughgoing communalist in the process of opposing the Bengal Pact, had presided over a Hindu conference at which protests had been raised against police restrictions on music before mosques.® In September riots again broke out over the Janmashtami procession in Dacca, in which the Muslims of the 1145 6 117 48 118

GI, HomePoll, 209/1926. Thid. Kenneth McPherson, p. 167. GI, HomePoll, 209/1926; Indian Quarterly Register, July-December 1926. Indian Quarterly Register, July-December 1926.

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town hadtraditionally participated. This time Muslims insisted on no music before mosques and Hindusrefused to give way. A section of Muslim leaders decided on a boycott of the procession and withdrew Muslim labour andtrade. Picketing was started in order to enforce the boycott by a thousand Muslim students who enrolled as volunteers and there was free fighting in the streets for several days.1?0 The impressive features of the riots were the scale on which they took place and the involvement of Bengalis in towns and villages far away from the smouldering animosities of upcountry immigrants in Calcutta. In chronological order, 44 were killed and 584 injured in the first Calcutta riot of April, 66 killed and 391 admitted to hospitals in the second Calcutta riot of April-May, 11 killed and many injured in riots at the Kharagpur railway centre in Midnapur in May, an unknown numberkilled and injured in a week’s rioting in Pabnain July, 28 killed and 226 injured in the third Calcutta riot of July, an unknown number killed and injured in rioting at the docks in Calcutta in September and 8 killed and 72 injured in the Janmashtamiriots of Dacca in September.1#4 A notable feature of the riots was that on neither side did the communalist politicians agitate on economic or agrarian issues; the questions which cropped up again and again in their inflammatory speeches and in press reports were desecration of idols, slaughter of cows, and music

before mosques. This exclusive appeal to religious fanaticism was an indication ofthe electoral strategy of the inflamersof public opinion. Nevertheless, economic issues were important, especially in the interior. In Calcutta the riots were undoubtedly instigated by polliticians and ward leaders with an eye on the coming elections. But this does not wholly explain the spread of communaltensionto rural areas where the phenomenon wasrelatively new. Where there had been well-understood local conventions regarding music before mosques, these were being systematically violated by both sides; new mosques were being deliberately set up beside the paths on which the Hindus traditionally took out idols in procession, and where there had been noprocessions before, Hindus were nowplaying music in front of mosques.!*? The deliberate character of these new confrontations undoubtedly derived from a growing social and 120 Thid., p. 82. 121 Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution, pp. 104-6. 122 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 1927, no. 117 (1-3), ‘Communal Tension in Mofussil’.

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economic conflict in the countryside. One district magistrate saw this conflict in terms of a competition for power between the zamindar and the jotedar. Commenting on the riots in Mymensingh in October 1926, the district magistrate observed: I am of the opinion that the causes of estrangement between the communities are fundamental and likely to develop with the spread of education and growth ofself-government. In fact, what we are witnessing is the beginning of the break-upofthe social and economic supremacy of the Hindu higher castes. The Muhammedans realise that where mere numbers count they must necessarily be a power, although they have been losers to the Hindus in the contest of wits. They resent the claims of the Hindus to racial superiority and a particular grievance of which one often hears is the refusal of most Hindu landlords and their amla to allow even well-to-do Muhammedantenants the courtesy ofa seat. There is the economic rivalry of Hindu landlords and Muhammedantalukdars or jotedars in this district whichis reflected in the keen interest taken by the Muhammedanelectorsin the fate of the Bengal Tenancy Act AmendmentBill. The growth of Islamic studies has naturally disposed many Muhammedans possessing influence among the proletariat to religious enthusiasm and strict orthodoxy. A sort of religious revival is taking place and Muhammedan Marriage Registrars and Kazis are active in furthering this cause... The wandering maulvi or maulvis from other parts invited to address strange congregations is undoubtedly a person whoseinfluence is not on the side of concord between the communities.1*4 The economicrivalry behind this rising communaltension will be still further evident from the fact that in many places the prosperous Hindu peasant castes joined the Muslims. In Faridpur the Namasudras and the Jelias (fishermen) sided with the Muslims in their hartals against the high caste Hindu gentry.1** The rural Hindu gentry, greatly outnumbered by a restive Muslim and Namasudra peasantry, were in a state of siege.!*5 Fear brought bitterness. Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, a leading novelist closely acquainted with rural 128 GB, Poll Dept Poll Branch, 1926, no. 516 (1-14). 124 Thid. 125 For a sensitive depiction of the rise of Muslim peasant community consciousness and the threat it posed to the Hindu gentry, see Partha Chatterjee, “Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal, 1926-1935’, in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies I.

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Bengal, wrote at this time: ‘So what are we doing? Weare collecting news of outrages from everywhere and saying to them: You are assaulting us, you are breaking our idols, you are desecrating our temples, you are abducting our women... unless youstop all this, we cannot stay here. Do we say or do anything more than this ?’?6 As a writer Sarat Chatterjee was by no meansgiven to communalism, as his famous story ‘Mahesh’ (in which all his sympathy lay with the poor Muslim peasant who wasforced to leave his village by the landlord for accidentally killing his own starving cow) will show.It is therefore all the more significant that the most popular novelist of the time was now thinking in terms of ‘we’ and ‘they’. It is no use today to say to the Muslims of Bengal: seven generations ago you were Hindus, so you are related to us by blood. Fratricide is a great sin, so have mercy on us. For mypart I cannot see anything more dishonourable than asking their mercy and seeking unity with them in this manner. At home and abroad I have many Christian friends. In some cases, their grandfathers were converted, in other instances they themselves embraced Christianity. But unless they themselves reveal their faith, it is impossible to guess that they are not in every respect our brothers and sisters. J knew a lady, wholeft this world whenstill young. I have seen few individuals so worthy of reverence. And the Muslims? We had a Brahmin cook. Hefell in love with a Musalman woman and abandonedhis religion. I met him oneyearlater. His name,his dress, his very nature had altered. Even the shape which God had given him had altered beyond recognition. And this is not just one instance. Anyone who is acquainted with the slums, where this is happening every day, knowsthat this is what really happens. In fanaticism they can probably put even the Musalman of Kohat into shame.12”

The rooted loathing which is evident in this passage shows that, psychologically speaking, the Hindus and the Muslims were becoming two truly different peoples, parted by a deep chasm of mutual hatred. This growing spirit of unity and exclusiveness on both sides of the religious divide implied that the mental worlds of the two communities were pushing further and further apart. This was a new 126 Sarat Rachanavali (birth centenary edition), vol. 3 (Calcutta, B.S. 1383),

“Vartaman Hindu—Musalman Samasya’, p. 475 (originally published in the Hindu Sangha, 14 Asvin, B.S. 1333). 127 Thid., p. 474.

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factor in politics that cut across the existing factional divisions in each community. In ordinary circumstancesthe rival political groupings within each community lost no opportunity of attacking each other through the press. But in times of communal tension the groupings in the press were changed andthe claims of the rival communities ranked above everything else. This was especially the case during the riots of 1926 when papers which had consistently advocated inter-communal harmony were found ranged on opposite sides.1%8 The communal solidarity of Muslim politicians dissolved into factional squabbles soon after the end of the majorriots in Calcutta. The projected monolithic Muslim Council party under Abdur Rahim’s leadership did not come into being. Fazlul Huq, who led a splinter group based on East Bengal, kept away from Sir Abdur’s Calcutta-based Bengal Muslim Party from the beginning. Suhrawardy, whoserelations with his father-in-law were far from cordial, organized against the latter’s pro-government moderate party an Independent Muslim Party which was an uneasy coalition of the Suhrawardy clique and Khilafat leaders like Abdur Rauf, Mujibur Rahman, Abdur Raschid Khan, Abdullahal Bagi, Maniruzzaman Islamabadi and Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chaudhuri—whopromised the electors to oppose both the government and the Swarajists.1°° At the last moment Sir Abdur’s party itself was split by his rivalry with the Mymensingh zamindar, A. K. Ghaznavi, who organized the Central Muslim Party of nineteen members in the Council with the support of East Bengal notables like the Nawab of Dacca, the Nawab of Shaistabad and other prominent Muslim notables of the districts.48° Because of these factional squabbles, complicated by the refusal of the moderate and responsivist Hindu leaders in the Council to work with an arch-communalist like Abdur Rahim, the Bengal

Muslim Party could not form better at the elections than the dent Muslim Party, both of leanings.1** With the help of

the ministry in spite of having done Fazlul Huq faction and the Indepenwhich were suspected of Swarajist the anti-Rahim Suhrawardy clique,

128 See especially the issues of the Forward and the Mussalman, April 1926 onwards. Both papers were solidly attached to the Hindu-Muslim pact; yet during the riots, the Mussalman supported Muslim claims and the Forward Hindu counter-claims. 129 Mussalman, 1 October 1926. 180 Bengalee, 30 January 1927; Mussalman, 14 and 21 January 1927. 181 Mussalman, 22 October 1926.

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A. K. Ghaznavi and Byomkesh Chakravarti (leader of the Responsivists) formed the ministry and at once the Rahim group, the Fazlul Huq faction and the nationalist Muslims (who split with the Suhrawardys) joined the Swarajists in opposition to the ‘Ghaz-— Chakra’ (Elephant-Wheel) ministry, which fell in the middle of 1927,18* to be succeeded by a Musharraf Husain—P. C. Mitter ministry which was equally short-lived. Onepolitical effect which the riots of 1926 did produce, in spite of having failed to bring about a united Muslim communal party, was to put an end to the political association of Hindus and Muslimsin a single inter-communal nationalist party. The extent of communal bitterness was indicated by the fact that in many cases Muslims who came forward on the Congress ticket or had formerly been associated with the Congress (such as Abdur Raschid Khan and Ashrafuddin Ahmad Chaudhuri) were defeated by comparatively unknown candidates willing to co-operate with the government for promoting their communal interest. The Swaraj party lost its Muslim support to the third Council elected in 1926, in which thirty-eight out of thirty-nine Muslim representatives came out in favour of working the reforms! (an issue on which the rival Muslim groupings—the Ghaznavi-Suhrawardy combine, the Rahim group and the Fazlul Huq faction—wereat one). The Big Five-dominated Swaraj party did better in the general non-Muslim constituencies than last time (winning thirty-five out of

forty-six seats, a distinct improvement on the capture of twenty-six

seats in 1923) but in achieving this the Big Five did not scruple to play up to landlord interests and to pander to communalsentiments. These pro-landlord and anti-Muslim tendencies in their electoral campaign cametogether in their opposition to Sasmal’s candidature from the North Midnapurconstituency, which they had themselves approvedearlier in the year. Throwing Sasmal overboard after his resignation from the Executive Committee of the BPCC in protest against the readmittance of the anti-Muslim Karmis, B. C. Roy got the AICC (through his influence with Motilal Nehru) to cancel Sasmal’s ticket and to put up instead the Raja of Narajol, Debendralal Khan, at the very last moment. The Big Five and the Karmi Sangha combined all their resources in an unsavoury communal 182 Bengalee, 25 and 30 January, 3 and 26 February 1927; Mussalman, 28 January and 26 August 1927. 183 Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution, pp. 109-10,161.

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campaign to defeat Sasmal in the North Midnapur constituency. Sasmal complained in the columns of the Bengalee on 14 December 1926: In my district, which is the largest Hindu district in Bengal, a

vernacular leaflet bearing the headline ‘Hindus, Be Careful’, but

which did not bear the nameofthe press or printer or publisher thereon, was distributed broadcast during myelections andit contained the precious news that I was a cheat, that I was a supporter of prohibition of music before mosques and that I had voted for giving 80 per cent of posts to the Moslems; and it then warned the Hindu voters of Ghatal not to vote for me for safety of Hindu religion, caste and society. Another vernacular leaflet bearing the names of such prominentcitizens of Midnapuras Srijuts Upendra Nath Maiti and Sachindra Prasad Sarbadhicary stated that J had refused to pay subscription for the Saraswati Puja, that I had no objection to becoming a Mohammedan, that J had shown regard and respect for those Mohammedans who had broken many temples and who had ruined the chastity of many Hindu women, and that J had come out of the Executive Council of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee with 17 Mohammedansand so it

requested the Hindu voters to consider whether I wasentitled to get their votes or not.

Sasmallost the election since the North Midnapurconstituency was outside his sphere of political influence. His defeat coincided symbolically with the return of only one Muslim Swarajist candidate to the Council and the end of Swarajist ascendancy in the legislature due to loss of Muslim support. The struggle for power But the Congress in Bengalstill got one last chance to revitalize its rural connections in the early months of 1927 when Sasmal secured a brief control of the BPCC. Immediately after the end of the elections to the Bengal Legislative Council, the rival cliques in Calcutta—the Sengupta wing and the Big Five—had thrownoff the discipline imposed by the requirements of campaigning to resume their stale factional squabbles. Preoccupied with intrigues in Calcutta, neither side paid any attention to the BPCCelections in the districts at the end of 1926. There wasnosign of any realization of the need to strengthen their bases in the district Congress committees which would comeandelect the Executive Committee of the BPCC.

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While the Big Five were engaged in the congenial task of carefully making arrangements for enmeshing the hapless Sengupta, Sasmal in his quiet way obtained an ascendancy among the membersofthe newly elected BPCC,a large number amongst whom were Congress workers at village level who were seeking a voice in the higher councils of the Congress. In the mean while the Big Five had considerably simplified Sasmal’s task by running so manycircles around Senguptathat‘that gentleman was only too glad to doff one of the three crowns that Gandhi had placed on his head’!®4—to wit, Presidentship of the BPCC. The Big Five then put forward their own nominee for the Secretaryship, Kiran Shankar Roy. ‘But all this manoeuvering on the part of the Big Five and their supporters was frustrated by the persistent wariness of Mr B. N. Sasmal who had in an unsuspected manner secured for himself a sufficiently strong following in the BPCCto get himself elected to that body in place of Mr Kiran Shankar Roy, the nominee of the Big Five. And when the question of choosing a President came up before the Executive Council of the BPCC the supporters of the Big Five found Prof. Jitendra Lal Banarji stepping into the shoes of Mr Sengupta.’ Neither appointment was welcometo the Big Five, for their quarrel with Sasmal after the North Midnapur election was a matter of public knowledge, and J. L. Banarji was formidable on account of his ability and eloquence.1** They fished about for supportto get rid of both and once again secured the help of the Karmi Sangha, cut down to size by Sasmal, who nominated only four Karmis to the Executive Committee instead of Sengupta’s twelve.1®’ All the Calcutta cliques, including Sengupta’s group, now combined to beat off this new and unforeseen invasion from the interior. Sengupta was won over to the combination against Sasmal by the Big Five’s promise of supportfor his re-election as Mayor. Theelections to the Calcutta Corporation were approaching and none of the main Calcutta cliques could afford to let the Sasmalite BPCC Executive Committee select the candidates and run the campaign. Sasmal, who had the support of the majority of the district delegates, the thirty Muslim members of the BPCC and his personal friends in Calcutta, put up a stiff fight against the powerful Sengupta — Big Five - Karmi combine, who got a no-confidence motion passed against Sasmal 134 Bengalee, 2 February 1927. 135 Thid. 187 Public and Judicial, L/P & J/7/242/1931.

136 Thid., 25 February 1927.

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and Banarji by a narrow margin of four at a requisitioned meeting in February.138 Subsequently the Executive Committee, turning round in favour of Sasmal, refused to accept the resignations offered by Banarji and Sasmal. The Big Five set up a rival BPCC Executive Committee which ran its own Corporation Election Board in the house of Nirmal Chandra Chandra, with Sengupta as its President and a Karmias its Secretary.1%° Banarji and Sasmal, deciding to carry the battle into the stronghold of the Big Five, drew up their own rival list of candidates for the elections to the Calcutta Corporation with the support of a section of disillusioned Calcutta politicians bound by personal ties to Sasmal (Urmila Devi, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Basanta Kumar Majumdar, Hem Prova Majumdar, etc).14° From the beginning the chances of Swarajist ascendancy in the Corporation were dim due to the competition between rival Congress candidates and the inability of the Big Five to run any candidates for the seats reserved for Muslims.!41 The Sengupta — Big Five combine broke up the election meetings of Banarji and Sasmal by rowdy demonstrations with the help of the Karmis,'** but nevertheless the competition from Sasmal’s party seriously weakenedtheir position. Eight sitting Swarajist councillors were unseated in the elections, being replaced by four Sasmalite Congressmen and four independent moderates.14* The seats reserved for Muslims went mainly to Sir Abdur Rahim’s clique in Calcutta and there was not a single Muslim Swarajist in the new Corporation.144 When the elections were over the thirtyseven successful candidates of the Sengupta group and the four Sasmalites who had wonseats combined to form a party of forty-one in a house of eighty-five councillors (to whomfive aldermen were to be added by the councillors themselves by election). The end of Swarajist ascendancy in the Corporation wassignified by the fact that due to Muslim opposition, only one Swarajist—Sengupta himself— was elected alderman, so that the Swarajists were further reduced to a minority of forty-two in a house of ninety.14 Soon after the failure of Sasmal’s bid for power in Calcutta, the intervention of the AICC in favour of the Big Five and Sengupta brought to an end Sasmal’s brief ascendancy in the Bengal Congress. 188 Bengalee, 11-13 February 1927. 189 Tbid., 20 and 25 February 1927. 140 Tbid., 27 February 1927. 141 Tbid., 5 March 1927. 142 Thid., 8 March 1927.

143 Statesman, 18 March 1927.

144 Kenneth McPherson, pp. 184-S.

45 Statesman, 12 April 1927.

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An arbitration board appointed by the AICC included, ironically enough, a prominent member of the Big Five, N. C. Chandra, and predictably the award wentin favour of Sasmal’s opponents. Sasmal and his followers were excluded from the new BPCC Executive Committee constituted on 26 June, and his resignation, together with that of the few Muslims associated with the Congress, sealed the fate of the Bengal Congress, which was completely delivered over to the intrigues andrivalries of narrow-based Calcutta cliques. By November the new executive of the BPCC haddiscoveredto its dismay that the membership of the Congress had thinned down perilously and that its district organizations were practically non-existent.1¢ The reasons for Sasmal’s failure were many and complex. His followers lacked influence, money and status, and faced the combined

opposition of all the powerful groups in the Calcutta-dominated Congress, its official wing, its organization bosses and its terrorist cadres. His opponents had formal as well as informal links with the All India Congress leadership and the decisive intervention of the AICC finished Sasmal’s bid for power. However, certain internal weaknesses in the movement led by Sasmal have to be taken into account.!4? Sasmal had built up a truly broad-based peasant movementin the villages of eastern Midnapur andhe drew the support of grassroots leaders at village level who had built up popular movements on a similar scale in other localities. But these popular movements were confined to isolated localities and dominated by local personalities who had no institutionalized connection with one another except their common subordination to the BPCCleadership at the centre. Sasmal was not the organic leader of a single broad democratic movement covering the whole of rural Bengal—he was only the most successful and prominent of the isolated workers at village level who had been thrown up by the non-co-operation and Khilafat movements as the leaders of their own localities. Given the fragmentary nature of his support, his only chance of success lay in log-rolling the diverse and isolated local movements into an organized coalition and entrenching it in the executive positions within the BPCC machineat the centre. During the short interlude of his power Sasmal did not exhibit the political vision and managerial 146 Thid., 24 November 1927. 1447 For an explanation of Sasmal’s failure, see Hitesranjan Sanyal, ‘DakshinPaschim Banglay Jatiyatabadi Andolan’, in Chaturanga, Baisakh—Asadh, B.S. 1383, pp. 21-2.

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talents needed for such a sophisticated operation. Given time he might have developed these skills, possessed in such an ample measure by his mentor C. R. Das, but the Big Five struck too soon. There was in fact a proposal at the Bengal Provincial Conference led by Sasmalin the village of Maju in April 1927 to reorganize the BPCCon the basis of more extensive rural support.148 Sasmal found no time to set himself to the task of implementing the suggested reform of the organization of the BPCC, for he had already become enmeshed in the barren intrigues of Calcutta municipal politics. By deciding to give battle to the Big Five in the elections to the Calcutta Corporation, he had chosen the wrong ground. His strength lay in his position as peasant leader of Contai and not as would-be manager of the Calcutta Corporation, an institution which the Big Five had long dominated throughtheir established position in the city. Instead of inducting district and village Congress leaders into executive positions in the BPCC, Sasmal went for promoting his personal followers in Calcutta to these positions. His brief months of power promoted a new clique in Calcutta, not a broad coalition of leaders of mass movementsin the localities. Sasmal’s retirement was followed by the steady ascendancy of the communal revolutionary cell within the BPCC. Soon after his resignation as the Secretary of the BPCC, Subhas Bose clambered into his position after making a deal with the terrorists. The deal was that the terrorists would run the BPCC underhis guidance. This bargain was concluded late in 1927 and under it twenty terrorists became membersof the new sixty-member Executive Committee. By 1931 the Congress in Bengal had been split open between the rival factions of J. M. Sengupta and Subhas Bose. The Dacca Anushilan Samiti rangeditself behind the faction of Sengupta and the Jugantar party backed Bose.1°° While the Congress in Bengal was thus torn between rival Calcutta cliques and cut off from the mass energies of the hinterland, the British manipulated communal divisions in the sphere of governance of the province, and between 1927 and 1937 several Muslimdominated ministries were formed with the help of the official and 188 Bengalee, 21 April 1927. 148 Public and Judicial, L/P & J/7/242/1931. 150 For an account of these years, see Bhola Chatterji, Aspects of Bengal Politics in the Early Nineteen Thirties (Calcutta, 1969); John Gallagher, ‘Congress

in Decline’ in Locality, Province and Nation.

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369

European blocs in the Council. The successful defence of British capitalist interests in the legislature depended on the manipulation of communal divisions in the Council, for industry being now a transferred subject under Indian ministers, it was essential to have tractable ministries or noneatall. The economic interests of foreign capital in Calcutta ruled out from the very beginning any chance of orderly development of healthy democratic institutions in Bengal. The British administrative and commercial interests had to turn more and more to Muslim politicians for co-operation, as among the educated Bengali Hindus no politician without extreme views had a chance of success. When an extremist became a moderate his popularity was gone. With the rise in prices and the standard of living, educated Bengalis were hit both in towns and villages, and the overproduction of matriculates and graduates by schools and colleges led to lack of employment. There was great economic discontent among large sections of the educated community and this discontent increased racial antipathy and dislike of foreign rule. At the same time the co-operation of Muslim politicians with the government brought about a more rapid expansion oftheir social basis and a greater Muslim share in service and professions. Competition for jobs between the educated sections of the two communities became more and more fierce. The dimensions of social conflict went on expanding steadily and the politics of the province cameto be increasingly vitiated by racism, communalism, casteism, provincialism and factionalism. But for all this confusion the politics of Bengal showed a faint direction in its drift. In 1929 Fazlul Huqset the faction-ridden and unorganized Muslim politics in Bengal in the direction of organizing the hinterland to capture powerin the centre. In that year he formed the peasant party known as the Krishak Praja party. The centre of political gravity in Bengal slowly shifted from the dominant high caste circle of Calcutta to the rising Muslim aspirants for power in the countryside.

CONCLUSION A long-term view ofthe direction ofpolitical change in Bengal reveals at every turn an irreconcilable clash of imperial interests and nationalist aspirations. From 1875 to 1927 there were many compromises and squabbles among nationalist politicians, but these appear secondary when we look at the period as a whole. On a long-term view, the national movementin this province wasprimarily a struggle to break the hegemony of British capital and to put an end to the white racial arrogance that accompaniedit. The real content of British rule in Bengal lay in the economic exploitation of the country, based on the racial abasement of its population. If the historian does not take this fundamental nature of the Raj into account, he will not understand the politics of its subjects. Colonial rule distinguished all Europeans from all natives. Here wasthe basis of that potential unity amongits native subjects which found political expression in nationalism. The issue was ‘white versus brown’, as the European Association succinctly defined it. In this battle ‘all white forces’, official and non-official, were arrayed against ‘the common enemy’. This common enemy was not a monolithic nationalist group. But whatever the divisions among the nationalists, the Europeans never made the mistake (as some Western historians now do) of underestimating their common resolve to dislodge the British from positions of economic and political control. The Europeans appreciated, as one of their newspapers put it in 1909, that no section of nationalists intended to rest until the

government of the country was in Indian hands. That was the meaning of Swaraj, and Swaraj, they noted, was the goal ofall

sections of nationalist Bengal, moderate, extreme and revolutionary.

The parties, they correctly appreciated, differed ‘only as to means’.

But these means, they also saw, were complementary and not

exclusive. Without the one the other would be reduced to impotence. The moderate would be ineffective without the extremist, the extremist without the terrorist, the terrorist without the moderate

(for it was the moderate who fought in the Legislative Council against legislation meantto repress terrorism).

Conclusion

371

A sense of racial humiliation had pervaded all sections of the plural society in Bengal. Racial discrimination against natives was not simply a matter of colour prejudice but was organically connected with the European monopoly of markets, raw materials and labour. About a dozen British managing agencies based on Calcutta had a controlling share in the major enterprises of eastern India before the First World War. The predominantly white bureaucracy provided the ‘steel frame’ of empire within which the European business houses could safely operate. The racial affinity between these administrators and businessmen madeit possible for the Bengal Chamber of Commerce to exercise informal influence on the government. An executive and a judiciary which discriminated systematically between Europeans and natives enabled the managing agencies to exclude Indian rivals, and the planters to exploit the labourers. The racial abasementof natives thus formed an essential part of the colonial economic system in Bengal. Had the British stake in India been confined to the interests of officials, this would not have ruled out a British withdrawal. But, as

Lytton of Bengal saw clearly, the British had ‘vastly more important interests’ which necessitated their staying in India and keeping control of the machinery of government. To retain control inevitably meant a policy of divide and rule. There was a conspiracy between white officials and white businessmento preserve their racial domination by fostering divisions amongtheir native subjects. European domination thus not only twisted the economic developmentof Bengal, but also distorted its political development. The non-official Europeans combined with the officials to exploit the social divisions in the province, manipulating communal, caste and factional squabbles to their own purpose. And yet in spite ofall these divisions, nationalism grew because of a commonperception

of ultimate objectives—abolition of the parasitic interests which fed

on the country’s human and natural resources, capture of the levers of control from white men, establishment of the right of the natives to decide their own fate. Nationalists might be willing to make tactical compromises and expedient alliances to satisfy immediate political requirements, but they never lost sight of the long-term goals. An unremitting hostility to imperial interests persisted through all the squabbles of rival politicians. Whenever they sensed that power could be extracted by pressure or saw that it was being taken away, they exhibited a

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remarkable capacity for combination. This happened in 1876 (agitation in favour of the Calcutta MunicipalBill), 1899 (agitation against the Calcutta Municipal AmendmentBill), 1905 (agitation against the partition of Bengal), 1917 (the Hindu-Muslim and moderate— extremist agreements at Lucknow), 1921 (the campaign of non-cooperation following the Nagpur Congress), and 1923 (Bengal Pact, leading to nationalist combination in the Council and the Corporation under C. R. Das). Officials at first dismissed the nationalists on the ground that they did not have the people with them. There was sometruth in this. The colonial import—export interests had carved an enclave into the peasant subsistence agriculture, and had restructured the economy ona dualistic pattern. The effect had been to widenthesocial distance between the classes and the masses, between the metropolis andits hinterland. Because the educated Bengalis lived off the surplus extracted by the British from the countryside,it took time to mobilize rural support. The Indian Association, which voiced nationalist aspirations in Calcutta, took the first steps in this direction by setting up district branches and organizing tenants’ meetings in the 1880s. But subsequently nationalist politics in Calcutta tended to becomeisolated from politics in the districts and the rural localities. The rural and provincial organization of the Indian Association decayed in the 1890s. Its grassroots links were replaced by more respectable connections with district bars and municipalities. The predominantly high caste lawyers, traders and small landowners, who came to control the local self-governing bodies set up under Ripon’s scheme, had many contacts with Calcutta. Such contacts—educational, cultural and social—helped the nationalist politicians of the Indian Association to strengthen the links between the politics of the High Court Bar, the Calcutta Corporation and the Bengal Legislative Council on the one hand, and thedistrict bars, the local self-govern-

ing bodies andthe district people’s associations on the other. By tracing the course of interaction between Calcutta and the districts it is possible to get a deeper insight into the changing balance of power between the rulers and their opponents. Our analysis shows that a major change took place in politics between 1899 and 1914. A new network of indigenous samitis, which at first mounted a mass campaign of boycott and thenresorted to terrorist campaign of assassinations, sprang up alongside the older and more

Conclusion

373

respectable set of constitutional connections between Calcutta and the districts. Politics at the centre and in the localities were brought into closer touch in course of campaigns which affected the two Bengals created by Lord Curzon. To counter this new challenge to authority, the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam systematically fostered the educated groups amongthe East Bengali Muslims. By 1912 they had acquired a solid identity and were no longersatisfied with the conditions on which their co-operation had been secured by the British. Upon the reunification of Bengal in that year they joined hands with educated Hindus in a common demandforself-government. Muslim jotedars in East Bengal were also showing signs of a new ambition to extend their influence beyond the village. In the process of extending their contacts they began to support the pro-Turkish agitation of the Muslim ulema, who were anxious aboutthe fate of the Khilafat at the end of the First World war. Thesocial and political barriers created by economic dualism were thus being gradually overcome by the educated nationalists. It would have been misleading to dismiss them even in their early days as a ‘microscopic minority’. As Tagore pointed out in reply to Dufferin, ‘the educated community were like the barometer that indicated the heat inside the boiler.t The English-educated men, because they were articulate, were the persons who expressed the collective sense of economic exploitation and racial abasement. During the First War, one prescient Bengal official saw that they were no longeran isolated minority, but were learning to identify themselves with the masses. As P. C. Lyon predicted in 1917, they ultimately carried the people with them in the campaign of 1921-22. The deep sense of exploitation and humiliation among the masses exploded in this campaign. It manifested itself in the spontaneous boycott of white administrators and businessmen during the hartals, and in the more consciously directed attempt to destroy the interlinked complex of importexport enterprises under the British managing agencies. In the earlier Swadeshi movement, people had notparticipated to this extent. Nor had the attack on European economic and racial domination been so wide-ranging. There had been boycott of imported British manufactures, such as cotton piece-goods, but no attack on tea plantations, coal mines, jute mills, engineering workshops, steamerlines, railways, etc. All these British enterprises now 1‘*Apamaner Pratikar’, Ravindra Rachanavali, vol. 12, pp. 949-50. 25

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came under attack because nationalist politicians in Bengal, led by

C. R. Das, harnessed the newly awakened forces of labour and

capital to the campaign of opposition to the British. The war, by loosening the grip of British capital and by damaging the social

economy of Bengal, unleashed these new forces in nationalist

politics. But it was also a remarkable feat of organization. It took the inspired leadership of Dasandhis lieutenants to mount the campaign on such a wide basis. The provincial towns and rural localities were effectively integrated by chains of command going down from two central organizations—the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee and the Bengal Khilafat Committee. Politics in Calcutta, the central characteristic of which was the bitter conflict between Europeans and natives, came to be firmly linked with the politics of rural localities, where explosive discontents had been accumulating since the outbreak of war. The effect of the increased pace of nationalist activity was to galvanize the vested interests which came under attack. The Bengal Chamber of Commerce realized that it could no longer rely on informal contacts with the bureaucracyalone. Its political arm, the European Association, was now reorganized to enable the nonofficial European community to participate in politics on a full-time professional basis. As successive constitutional reforms gave more powers to the Legislative Council, the Bengal officials and the nonofficial Europeans worked out a strategy to limit nationalist gains. Together they set out to exploit the fissures in Bengal society by carefully devised constitutional devices: weighted representation for the Europeans and separate electorates for the Muslims. In the reforms of the Legislative Council in Bengal in 1909, 1912 and 1919, Parliamentleft the framing of rules and regulations to the officials. There was considerable scope for manipulating the rules within the terms of the successive Acts. The officials took full advantage of this to reduce the number of elective constituencies from which nationalist politicians could contest. Special constituencies were created for Europeans, Muslims, landlords, native com-

merce, depressed classes, etc. A fragmented electorate was deliberately created to prevent the emergence of a single Indian public. There were no truly general constituencies which might encourage a process of consolidation. The backwardness of the Muslims was invokedtojustify the creation

Conclusion

375

of separate electorates. Bengal, however, was a Muslim-majority province where adequate Muslim representation through general electorates could have been secured by extending the franchise and reserving seats. But the British knew that general electorates would initiate log-rolling of sectional interests, and they could not afford to take the risk of mergers andalliances that this would bring. In a plural society, based on a dual economy, the Europeans had ample scope to play a divisive role. They set out systematically to draw local factional rivalries into broader communal antagonisms. In municipal and local politics, political groupings at first followed the lines of personal connections and individual rivalries in which Hindu—Muslim or high caste -low caste animosity did not play a predominant part. But when the British began to offer attractive terms to carefully selected categories such as Muslims and Namasudras, the alignments changed. Then the logic of power, which had hitherto induced individual Muslims to co-operate with individual Hindusin local boards and municipalities, drove them to forge new connections in their capacity as Muslims against Hindus. The constituent elements in traditional society were small local groups. No

caste or community possessed any great cohesion beyond the

locality. Hitherto isolated clusters of local interests which lacked lines into Calcutta’s educated society now began to assume broader identities, such as the Muslim community or the Namasudracaste, to secure British patronage. Nationalism in Calcutta had forged solid links with the high caste petty gentry in East Bengal by 1905. In response imperialism encouraged the prosperous peasants in East Bengal to seek rival connections. They were encouraged to win a position in the political world of Calcutta through Muslim and Namasudra kinsmen seeking entry into the metropolitan professions. The success of this strategy was not immediate. The momentum generated by the non-co-operation and Khilafat movements enabled the Bengal Congress under C. R. Das to put together a coalition of several distinct forces against the government. This coalition comprised Calcutta’s high professional circles, popular rural leadership from the districts, as well as the revolutionary terrorist cells. It was cemented by the Hindu—Muslim pact of 1923. Next year the Swaraj party captured the newly reconstituted Calcutta Corporation and effectively obstructed the Montagu—Chelmsford reforms by bringing down the Indian ministries which had been set up with the support of the officials and the Europeansin the Legislative Council.

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Undersevere pressure from the nationalists Anglo-Indian bureaucracy and European commerce now began to form, more urgently and desperately than before, their own channels of contact with the provincial townsandrurallocalities, so as to acquire support against the Congress. They were helped by the ascendancy within the Congress of a high caste Calcutta coterie which sought to deny positions of influence to Congressmen from the districts. The European bloc in the Legislative Council exploited this rift to gain Muslim and Namasudraallies. With European aid, Bengali Muslim politicians became powerful in Calcutta for the first time. Their base of power wasthe rural localities in East Bengal where they enjoyed the support of prosperous Muslim peasants who were engaged in a fierce competition with the high caste Hindu gentry for local influence. The riots of 1926, which spread from Calcutta to East Bengal, indicated these growing rural tensions. Communalist Muslim politicians, aided by the British, exploited these riots to get elected to the Legislative Council. In the process the nationalist coalition built by C. R. Dasfell apart within a year of his death. The fate of the Bengal Congress was sealed whena final attempt by the rural leader, B. N. Sasmal, to rescue it from the grip of Calcutta cliques was defeated. Frustrated in their attempt to mobilize adequate rural support in the struggle against the British, Bengal nationalists were ready after 1927 to try any variant of political extremism based on a narrow social basis—communism, communalism, and inevitably, terrorism.

They were thus continually at variance with the Congress High Command. Their humiliation was final when Subhas Bose, the leader

of Bengal’s radical intelligentsia, was ruthlessly outmanoeuvred and ejected from the Congress. In the mean while, educated Bengal Muslim politicians patronized by Anglo-Indian bureaucrats and European non-officials consolidated their hold on theinstitutions of government. The province moved almost inexorably to the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’ of 1946, the creation of two Bengals, and the population movements across the newly drawn borders.

SOURCES The primary sources consulted in writing this account of society and politics in Bengal are in three languages—English, Bengali and Hindi. The principal repositories of these sources are the India Office Library and the British Museum in

London, the University Library and Marshall Library in Cambridge, the National

Archives and the Nehru Museum in New Delhi, the Rabindra Sadanin Santini-

ketan (Birbhum, West Bengal), the Medinipur Hitaishi office in Midnapur (Midnapur, West Bengal), the Nihar office and the Hari Sabha in Contai (Midnapur, West Bengal) and the National Library, the West Bengal State Archives, the Intelligence Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department, the Home Department of the Government of West Bengal, the Calcutta Corporation, the

Calcutta Port Commissioners, the Sahitya Parishad and the various associations and chambers of commerce in Calcutta. OFFICIAL RECORDS India Office Records and Library, London Public and Judicial Department Papers, L/P & J/6 and 7. Report on Native Newspapers in Bengal 1890-1916. Bengal Revenue Proceedings.

Bengal Municipal Proceedings. Eastern Bengal and Assam Appointment and Municipal Proceedings. Indian Municipalities Proceedings. National Archives of India, New Delhi Records of the Home Department of the Governmentof India, Public Branch (Political Branch from 1907). Records of the Home Department of the Government of India, Education Branch. Records of the Homie Department of the Governmentof India, Municipalities Branch.

West Bengal State Archives, Calcutta

Proceedings of the Government of Bengal, Appointments.

Proceedings of the Government of Bengal, General Department, Education. Proceedings of the Government of Bengal, General Department, Miscel-

laneous. Proceedings of the Government of Bengal, Political Department, Police Branch.

Government of West Bengal, Home Department, Calcutta

Records of the Political Department of the Government of Bengal, Political Branch.

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Records of the Judicial Department of the Government of Bengal (Confidential). [These confidential records of the Political and Judicial Department of the Governmentof Bengal were kept in lockers in the Home Department and were not sent to the custody of the Keeper of Records. They are now being trans-

ferred to the West Bengal State Archives. At one time these files were kept in archival order in accordance with the catalogues printed confidentially every year, which listed and numberedall files in the form of a subject index in alphabetical order. But now there is no official of sufficient experience in the Home Department who knowsthe location of the files listed in the catalogues. ‘Panna Babu’, the only official (now retired) with some knowledge of the records, expressed the belief that incriminating files were destroyed by British

officials in 1947. I was the first scholar given access to these records, and with the extremely valuable help of Panna Babu I was able to discover about 112

files dating from 1896 to 1942. The search was intensive only for files dating

from 1905 to 1925, and in fact apart from a few stray files most of the files

found in this search were those in use between 1909 and 1924. A comparison

of these surviving files with the printed catalogues relating to these years, kept

in the Political Branch of the Home Department, shows that only a part of

what was there has survived. A microfilm copyof the files I had consulted is

available in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.]

Intelligence Branch, Criminal Investigation Departmentof the Police, Calcutta Files in the Records Section, Intelligence Branch. Printed files and secret books, Intelligence Branch Library.

[Special permission from the Home Department of the Government of West Bengal is necessary for consulting these records. There is a catalogue offiles which have survived, but some importantfiles listed in the manuscript catalogue

are missing (subsequent to the preparation of the list of surviving files). The titles on the files sometimes differ from the titles given on the manuscriptlist,

but as a means ofidentification the file numbers are mentioned in thelist. I

have been allowed to refer only to the titles and years of the files and not to

their numbers. I have followed the principle of giving the title actually written on the file and not that transcribed on the manuscript list. The files sometimes contain proscribed posters, books and newspapers which are otherwise lost, the most important among these being a fairly complete run of the Dhumketu magazine. Apart from these files there is also a collection of secret books and printed files in the Library of the Intelligence Branch, which must not be confused with the manuscript section in which the files of the Intelligence Branch are preserved, though there is some amountof duplication.]

RECORDS OF SEMI-OFFICIAL AND PUBLIC BODIES Calcutta Corporation, Calcutta Proceedings of the Calcutta Corporation, Calcutta (part 1). Proceedings of the General Committee (part m1).

Sources

379

Proceedings of the Special Committees (part 1).

Calcutta Municipal Gazette.

[The Library of the Corporation contains the proceedings of the Calcutta Corporation and its Committees in bound printed volumes—of which I have utilized only part I—and the issues of the Calcutta Municipal Gazette, first published under the mayoralty of C. R. Das. Aside from the Library, the

Records Office of the Corporation contains manuscript assessment registers and death registers which are rich in details of sociological significance.]

Calcutta Port Commissioners, Calcutta

Files in the Secretary’s Department. Proceedings of the Calcutta Port Commissioners.

[Apart from these records, the Library of the Calcutta Port Commissioners contains their Annual Reports which give no inkling of the internal political manoeuvresof the business world which arereflected in the records.]

RECORDS OF POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS AND PARTIES Indian National Congress

All-India Congress Committee Papers, Nehru Museum. [These date mostly from 1919, there being very few files before that date for the simple reason that the AICC was a shadowy and insubstantial body before

this year.]

British Indian Association, Calcutta Publications of the British Indian Association.

[These are bound manuscript volumes, each volume containing the correspondence, proceedings and annual reports of the Association for five years in a chronological order. The materials incorporated in the manuscript volumes are almost without exception printed, but while each individual report or item of correspondencehas its own printed pagination, the pagination of the volume is in faded ink. I have referred to the individual entries by mentioning their dates.]

Indian Association, Calcutta

Manuscript Proceedings of the Committee of the Indian Association.

Annual Reports of the Indian Association.

[There are a few handwritten volumes in which the proceedings of the com-

mittee meetings are briefly recorded and several volumes of printed annual reports and other printed reports which are bound together for five or more consecutive years. The annual reports contain the correspondence of the Association during the year in their appendices.]

European Association (formerly European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association), now U.K. Citizens’ Association, Calcutta European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, Proceedings of the General

380

Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal Meetings of the Association commencing March 1883 (one manuscript

volume). European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, Proceedings of the Meetings

of the Council (manuscript Minute Books). European Association, Proceedings of the Meetings of the Council (manuscript Minute Books). Proceedings of the Calcutta Branch of the European Association commencing

from 23 April 1918 (one manuscript volume). European Association Subscription Registers (manuscript volumes containing the names of members and their firms or occupations). Annual Reports of the European Association (printed), formerly European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association (printed). European Association Quarterly Review (printed magazine dating from 1920).

[These records are invaluable for the insights they yield into the politics of the European businessmen in India. Detailed and often remarkably candid, they reveal the important role played by foreign business interests in Bengal politics.]

PRINTED REPORTS OF CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE, TRADE ASSOCIATIONS AND COMPANIES Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Calcutta

Bengal Chamber of Commerce Committee Proceedings (manuscript). [Contain revealing and secret information on the politics of this influential body.] Annual Reports of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce

[Each Annual Report consists of three parts: (i) the proceedings of the Annual General meeting where the Annual Reportis presented,(ii) the Annual Report, and (iii) the appendices containing the correspondence of the Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce during the year and statistical tables. As different sets of pagination are followed forthe severalparts, I have not referred

to the page numberof the volume, indicating instead what part I am referring

to. BCC 1900, for instance, means the annual report of that year, while in the case of a general meetingI specifically mention the meeting (annualor special). In the case of correspondence, I have specified the letter.]

Bengal National Chamber of Commerce, Calcutta

Annual Reports of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce. [The same remarks apply as above, except that the reports are much smaller and are sometimes bound together for consecutive years. Printed Proceedings of Annual General Meetingsare also available separately for some years. ] Bharat Chamber of Commerce, Calcutta

Annual Reports of the Marwari Association (from 1920). Marwari Chamber of Commerce Ki Report (in Hindi, from 1920).

Sources

381

[These are also divided in three parts and the same systemof reference has been

followed.}

Indian Jute Mills Association, Calcutta

Annual Reports of the Indian Jute Manufacturers’ Association. Annual Reports of the Indian Jute Mills Association. Indian Tea Association, Calcutta Detailed Reports of the General Committee of the Indian Tea Association.

Indian Mining Association, Calcutta Annual Reports of the Indian Mining Association. Indian Mining Federation, Calcutta Annual Reports of the Indian Mining Federation.

{The reports of all these associations are modelled on those of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the samesystem of reference has been adopted.] East Bengal River Steam Service Ltd., Calcutta Annual Reports of the East Bengal River Steam Service Ltd. {These printed reports are kept in a file in the office of the Secretary. The companyis still in the possession of the Bhagyakul Brothers.] PRIVATE PAPERS India Office Records and Library, London Cross Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 243. Hamilton Collection, MSS. Eur. C. 125-126, D. 508-510, F. 123.

Morley Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 573. Montagu Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 523. Birkenhead Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 703.

Northbrook Collection, MSS. Eur. C. 144.

Lytton Collection, MSS. Eur, E. 218,

Dufferin and Ava Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 130. Lansdowne Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 558.

Elgin Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 84.

Curzon Collection, MSS. Eur. F, 111. Chelmsford Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 264.

Reading Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 238.

Richard Temple Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 86.

Zetland Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 609. British Museum, London Ripon Papers, BP 7/6.

Cambridge University Library, Cambridge Crewe Papers. Hardinge Papers.

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Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal

Marshal Library, Cambridge John Maynard Keynes Papers.

National Archives of India, New Delhi Minto Papers (microfilm). Pherozeshah Mehta Papers. G. K. Gokhale Papers.

M. R. Jayakar Papers.

Nehru Museum, New Delhi

A. C. Banerjee Papers (partly English, party Bengali). Bhupendranath Basu Papers. Purshotamdas Thakurdas Papers. Jawaharal Nehru Correspondence.

West Bengal State Archives, Coliection of the Freedom Movement Committee, Calcutta Byomkesh Chakravarti Correspondence. National Library, Calcutta B. S. Moonje Papers. Tej Bahadur Sapru Papers.

University of Jadavpur, Calcutta Diaries of Hemendra Prasad Ghosh 1890-1914. Rabindra Sadan, Santiniketan, West Bengal Rabindranath Tagore Papers.

Tagore Family Letter Books, 5 vols., 1835-1858. Documents of the Tagore Family. C. F, AndrewsPapers.

NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS India Office Records and Library, London Bengalee: An English weekly edited by Surendranath Banerjea, later converted into a daily.

Indian Mirror: English newspaper edited by Congressman Narendranath Sen. Indian Daily News: European daily. Economic Journal: British periodical. Englishman: European daily of Calcutta. Statesman & Friend of India: Liberal European daily of Calcutta. Pioneer: Europeandaily of Allahabad. National Library, Calcutta New India: English weekly edited by Bipin Chandra Pal from Calcutta. Mussalman: Pro-Congress Muslim English weekly of Calcutta.

Sources

383

Bande Mataram: Extremist English weekly edited by Aurobindo Ghose from Calcutta (microfilm). Reis and Rayyet: English weekly of Calcutta edited by Sambhu Mukherjee,

President of the Indian League.

Indian Nation: English weekly of Calcutta.

Hindoo Patriot: English newspaper of Calcutta, organ of the big zamindars. Servant: A No-Changer English daily of Calcutta edited by Shyamsundar Chakravarti. Forward: A Swarajist English daily of Calcutta edited by C. R. Das. Commercial Library, Calcutta Capital: Organ of the European businessmen in Calcutta. Amrita Bazar Patrika office, Calcutta

Amrita Bazar Patrika: At first an English and Bengali weekly of Calcutta edited by Sisir Kumar and Motilal Ghosh, converted into an English daily in 1891. Sahitya Parishad, Calcutta Swaraj: A Bengali weekly of Calcutta.

Mihir: A Bengali Muslim paper of Calcutta.

Dharma: A Bengali weekly edited in Calcutta by Aurobindo Ghoseafter his release from jail. Ananda Bazar Patrika: A Bengali No-Changer daily of Calcutta. Atmasakti: A Bengali Pro-Changer revolutionary weekly of Calcutta.

Ahmadi: A Muslim paper of Calcutta in Bengali edited by Golam Jamdani. Rabindra Sadan, Santiniketan, West Bengal Modern Review: English journal of Calcutta edited by Ramananda Chatterjee. Sabuj Patra: A Bengali literary journal. Medinipur Hitaishi office, Midnapur, West Bengal Medinipur Hitaishi: Local Bengali extremist weekly of Midnapur. Nihar Office, Contai, Midnapur, West Bengal. Nihar: Local Bengali weekly of Contai supporting the NCO movement. Hari Sabha, Contai, Midnapur, West Bengal Hijli Hitaishi: Rival Bengali weekly of Contai, anti-NCO.

OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS U.K. Parliamentary Papers

Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, Report, 1926, vol. xt. Report from the Select Committee on the Depreciation of Silver, 1876, vol. Vit.

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Royal Commission on Labourin India, Report and Evidence, vols. 1-x1 (London, 1931). Government of India Official Publications

Agricultural Statistics of British India, 1895/96-1925/26 (Calcutta, 1896 onwards).

All India Rural Credit Survey, Report of the Committee of Direction, vol. 1, Survey Report, part 1 (Rural Families) (Bombay, 1956), and part m (Credit Agencies) (Bombay, 1957). Census of India, 1891, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931, Report and Tables for Bengal and Calcutta. Indian Industrial Commission 1916-18, Report (Calcutta, 1918).

Joint Stock Companies in British India and the Indian States (1921-22) (Calcutta, 1924),

Quinquennial Reports on the Average Yield per acre of Principal Crops in

India for the periods ending 1921/22 and 1926/27. Sedition Committee 1918, Report (Calcutta, 1918). Government of Bengal Official Publications

Agricultural Statistics of the Lower Provinces of Bengal, 1895/96-1922/23 (Calcutta, 1897 onwards). Bengal District Administration Committee 1913-14, Report (Calcutta, 1915). Bengal District Gazetteer, Pabna by L. S. S. O’Malley (Calcutta, 1923).

Bengal District Gazetteer, Mymensingh by F. A. Sachse (Calcutta, 1917). Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings (formerly, Proceedings of the Council of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal for the purpose of Making Laws and

Regulations).

Calcutta University Commission Report 1917-19, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1919). East Bengal District Gazetteer, Dacca by B. C. Allen (Dacca, 1912).

Final Reports on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the Districts of: Bakarganj 1900-1908 by J. C. Jack (Calcutta, 1915). Bankura 1917-1924 by F. W. Robertson (Calcutta, 1926).

Dacca 1919-1917 by F. D. Ascoli (Calcutta, 1921).

Jessore 1920-1924 by M. A. Momen(Calcutta, 1925). Malda 1928-1938 by M. O. Cartier (Alipore, 1939). Midnapur 1910-1918 by A. K. Jameson (Calcutta, 1918).

Murshidabad 1924-1932 by M. A. Momen (Alipore, 1938). Mymensingh 1908-1919 by F. A. Sachse (Calcutta, 1920).

Nadia 1918-1922 by J. M. Pringle and A. H. Kamm (Calcutta, 1928). Pabna and Bogra 1920-1929 by D. Macpherson (Calcutta, 1930).

Rajshahi 1912-1922 by W. H. Nelson (Calcutta, 1922). Rangpur 1931-1938 by Arthur Coulton Hartley (Alipore, 1940). Tippera 1915-1919 by W. H. Thomson (Calcutta, 1920). Government of Bengal, Report on the Working of the Reformed Constitution in Bengal 1921-27 (Calcutta, 1927). Municipal Department, Local Self-Government, Resolution Reviewing the Reports of the District Boards in Bengal during the year 1899-1900 (Calcutta 1900).

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WI (part m1) (Calcutta, 1930). Report on the Industrial Development of Bengal by J. A. L. Swan (Calcutta, 1915). Report on the Inland Trade of Bengal 1880-1881 (Calcutta, 1881). Report on Labour in Bengal 1906 by B. Foley (Calcutta, 1906). Report of the Rent Law Commission, vols. 1 & 11 (Calcutta, 1880). Report on the Trade Carried by Rail & River in Bengal 1900-1901 (Calcutta,

1901). Season & Crop Reports of Bengal 1901/1902 to 1925/1926 (Calcutta, 1902 onwards). Publications of Semi-Official or Non-Official Bodies

Calcutta Improvement Trust, Report on the Condition, Improvement and Town-

Planning of Calcutta by E. P. Richards (Hertfordshire, 1914). Full Proceedings of a Public Meeting held on the 22nd January 1891, at the Residence of the late Kamal Krishna Deb Bahadur, Sobhabazar, Raj-Bari, Calcutta, to protest against the Age of Consent Bill, published by the Sobha-

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(Calcutta, 1919).

Report on the Survey of Rural Credit and Unemploynient in East Pakistan

(Dacca, 1958).

PRINTED BOOKS—ENGLISH The Administration ofBengal under Sir Andrew Fraser 1903-1908 (Calcutta, 1908). Ahmed, Rafiuddin, The Bengal Muslims 1871-1906: A Quest for Identity (Delhi, 1981). Ahmed, Sufia, Muslim Community in Bengal 1884-1912 (Dacca, 1974). Andrews, C. F., The Meaning of Non-Co-Operation (Madras, n.d.). Bagal, Jogesh Chandra, History of the Indian Association (Calcutta, 1953). Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, Private Investment in India 1900-1939 (Cambridge, 1972).

Banerjee, Shyamananda, National Awakening and the Bangabasi (Calcutta, 1968). Banerjea, Surendranath, A Nation in Making (London,1963).

Basu, Aparna, The Growth of Education and Political Development in India 1898-1920 (Delhi, 1974). Baumer, Rachel Van M. (ed.), Aspects of Bengali History and Society (Hawaii, 1975).

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1975). Bengal Provincial Conference 1917, Calcutta Session, compiled by Yatindrakumar Ghosh (Calcutta, 1972).

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Bipin Chandra Pal (Calcutta, n.d.). Bengal Village Biographies (Calcutta, 1858).

Bharat Chamber of Commerce, Golden Jubilee Souvenir 1900-1950 (Calcutta, 1950). Bhattacharya, Yogendranath, Hindu Castes and Sects (Calcutta, 1876).

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1953). Bose, Nemai Sadhan, Racism, Struggle for Equality and Indian Nationalism (Calcutta, 1981).

Blyn, George, Agricultural Trends in India 1891-1947: Output, Availability and

Productivity (Philadelphia, 1966).

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Bose, Subhas Chandra, The Indian Struggle (Calcutta, 1964). Broomfield, J. H., Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal

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Chatterji, Bhola, Aspects of Bengal Politics in the Early Nineteen Thirties (Calcutta, 1969). Cotton, Sir Henry, Indian and Home Memories (London, 1911). Cronin, Richard Paul, British Policy and Administration in Bengal 1905-1912:

Partition and the New Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam (Calcutta, 1977).

Das, M.N., India under Morley and Minto: Politics Behind Revolution, Repression

and Reforms (London, 1964). Desai, A. R., Social Background of Indian Nationalism (Bombay, 1966).

Dutt, Romesh, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age: From the Accession of Queen Victoria to the Commencement of the Twentieth Century

(London, 1956).

Essayez, The Memoirs of Lawrence, Secoud Marquess ofZetland (London, 1956). Gallagher, John, Johnson, Gordon, and Seal, Anil (eds.), Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870 to 1940 (Cambridge, 1973).

Gandhi, M. K., The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 19 (Ahmedabad, 1966). Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (eds.), From Max Weber (6th edition, 1967). Ghose, Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vols. 1 and 2 (Pondicherry, 1972).

Ghose, Loke Nath, The Modern History of the Indian Chiefs, Rajas, Zamindars etc., part m (Calcutta, 1881).

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Ray, Prithwis Chandra, Life and Times of C. R. Das: The Story of Bengal’s SelfExpression (London, 1927). Ray, Rajat, Urban Roots of Indian Nationalism: Pressure Groups and Conflict of Interests in Calcutta City Politics, 1875-1939 (New Delhi, 1979).

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1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1976).

PRINTED BOOKS—HINDI Modi, Balchand, Desh ki Itihas me Marwari Jati ka Sthan (Calcutta, Bijaya 1969). PRINTED BOOKS—BENGALI Ahmad, Ibn Maazuddin, Amar Samsara-Jivanu (Calcutta, 1914). Ambastha Dipika, published by the Ambastha Sammilani Sabha (Calcutta, 1893). Bandyopadhyay, Bhavani Charan, Kalikata Kamalalaya (Rare Books edition, Calcutta, B.S. 1343).

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Biswas, Krishnabhamini, Mahishya Mahila (Nadia, 1911).

Biswas, Sudarshan Chandra, Vallala-charita (Samalochana) (Habaspur, Faridpur, 1914-15). Chakravarti, Harish Chandra, Bharanti Vijaya (Dule Andul, Howrah, 1912). Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra, Bankim Rachanavali, 2 vols. (ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal) (Calcutta, B.S. 1872).

Chattopadhyay, Sarat Chandra, Sarat Rachanavali (Birth Centenary edition), 5 vols. (Calcutta, B.S. 1382 onwards). Das, Bisweswar, Kartik-charita (Sutragar, Santipur, 1915). Dasgupta, Hemendranath, Deshabandhu Smriti (Calcutta, B.S. 1333). Datta, Bhupendranath, Aprakasita Rajnaitik Itihas, vol. 1 (Calcutta, B.S. 1333). Dhar, Dinanath, Vallala-charita ofAnandabhatta (translation) (Calcutta, 1904). Ghosh, Dwarakanath, Sadgop Samitir Samkshipta Vivarani (Calcutta, 1910).

Ghosh, Hemendra Prasad, Congress (Calcutta, second revised edition, 1921-22). Ghosh, Narayan Chandra, Sadgop Sopana (Calcutta, 1911).

Ghosh, Sarachchandra, Sadgop Jati O Samaj Tattva (Calcutta, 1906). Gupta, Rasiklal, Maharaja Rajvallabh Sen (Calcutta, 1914). Gupta, Suresh Chandra, Asvini Kumar (Barisal, B.S. 1335). Jana, Indranarayan, Swbadi Mahishya Sabha (Subadi, Midnapur, 1912). Kanungo, Hemchandra, Banglay Biplab Prachesta (Calcutta, 1928). Kar, Chandrasekhar, Jadunather Jivana-Katha: Svargagata Jadunath Chattopadhyayer Samkshipta Jivana (Krishnagar, 1916). Mahabharati, Dharmananda, Siddhanta Samudra, 4 vols. (Calcutta, 1903). Mitra, Krishna Kumar, Krishna Kumar Mitrer Atma-charita (Calcutta, 1937). Mukhopadhyay, Prabhat Kumar, Prabhat Granthavali, vol. 3 (Calcutta, B.S.

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Mukhopadhyaya, Upendranath, Karmakshetra: Bangali Hindujati Keno Lop Paiteche (Calcutta, 1916). Palit, Bhutnath, Radhanath Charita (Calcutta, 1909). Ray, Basanta Kumar, Mahishya Vivriti (Dacca, 1915-16). Ray, Kartikeya Chandra, Svargiya Kartikeya Chandra Rayer Atmajivana-

charita (Calcutta, 1904). Ray, Krishnavallabh, Kayastha Katha (Calcutta, 1914-15). Sarkar, Balaram, Namasudra Juana Bhandara (Faridpur, 1911). Sarkar, Hemanta Kumar, Deshabandhu Smriti (Calcutta, 1939). Sarkar, Prakash Chandra, Malhishya Prakash (Calcutta, 1912).

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Thakur, Rabindranath, Ravindra Rachanavali, 12 volumes, Birth Centenary 26

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Vandyopadhyaya, Harimohan, Bharata Kahini (Darbhanga, B.S. 1307).

ARTICLES Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, Reflections on Patterns of Regional Growth in India during the Period of British Rule, Occasional Paper no. 5, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta, 1976).

Broomfield, J. H., ‘Peasant Mobilization in Twentieth Century Bengal’, in Spielberg, Joseph, and Whiteford, Scott, Forging Nations: A Coniparative

View of Rural Ferment and Rural Revolt (Michigan, 1976). Broomfield, J. H., ‘Social and Institutional Bases of Politics in Bengal 19061947’ in Baumer, Rachel Van M. (ed.), Aspects of Bengali History and Society

(Hawaii, 1975). Broomfield, J. H., ‘The Vote and the Transfer of Power: A Study of the Bengal Genera! Election 1912-13’, Journal of Asian Studies, February 1962.

Broomfield, J. H., “The Forgotten Majority: the Bengal Muslims and September 1918’, in D. A. Low (ed.), Soundings in South Asian History (London, 1968). Buckland, C. E., ‘The City of Calcutta’, Journal of the Society of Arts, Liv, no. 2776, 2 February 1906. Chandra, Sudhir, ‘The Indian League and the Western India Association’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, March 1971. Chaudhuri, B. B., ‘Rural Credit Relations in Bengal 1859-1885, Indian Economic and Social History Review, June 1969.

Dutt, R. C., ‘Bengal Zamindar and Ryot’, Bengal Magazine, vol. 2, December 1873. Gallagher, John, ‘Congress in Decline: Bengal 1930 to 1939’, in Gallagher, John, Johnson, Gordon and Seal, Anil (eds.), Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on IndianPolitics 1870 to 1940 (Cambridge, 1973).

Gordon, Richard, ‘Non-cooperation and Council Entry 1919 to 1920’, in

Gallagher, Johnson and Seal, Locality, Province and Nation. Islam, Sirajul, ‘Fazlul Huq Speaks in Council 1913-1916’, Bangladesh Historical Studies, vol. 1, 1976. Johnson, Gordon, ‘Partition, Agitation and Congress: Bengal 1904 to 1908’, in Gallagher, Johnson and Seal, Locality, Province and Nation.

Keynes, J. M., ‘Recent Economic Events in India’, Economic Journal, March 1909. Keynes, J. M., ‘The Economic Transition in India by Theodore Morrison’, a

review article, Econontic Journal, September 1911. Krishna, Gopal, ‘The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization’, Journal ofAsian Studies, vol. 25, no. 3, 1966.

Maclean, J. M., ‘India’s Place in the Imperial Federation’, Journal of the Society of Arts, Lit, no. 2665, 18 December 1903.

McLane, John R., ‘The 1905 Partition of Bengal and the New Communalism’, in Alexander Lipsky (ed.), Bengal East and West (East Lansing, Michigan, n.d.). .

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Indian Ecouomic and Social History Review, March 1970. Sanyal, Hiteshranjan, ‘Dakshin-Paschim Banglay Jatiyatabadi Andolan’, Chaturanga, Baisakh-Ashadh, B.S. 1383. Seal, Anil, ‘Imperialism and Nationalism in India’, in Gallagher, Johnson and Seal, Locality, Province and Nation. Sengupta, Kalyan Kumar, ‘Agrarian Disturbances in Nineteenth Century Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, June 1971. Sengupta, Kalyan Kumar, ‘The Agrarian League of Patna’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, June 1970. Timberg, Thomas A., ‘A Study of a ‘“‘Great’? Marwari Firm: 1860-1914’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, September 1971.

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Ahmad, Sufia, ‘Some Aspects of the History of the Muslim Community in Bengal (1884-1912), SOAS, 1961. Broomfield, J. H., ‘The Enterprising Bengali’, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi, 1973.

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Sanyal, Hitesranjan, ‘The Social-Political Roots of Nationalism’, Centre for

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INDEX Abhijatas 30-1, 85 Age of Consent controversy 125-7

Agrarian society, social structure 51-9, 74-6; classes 51-68; movements 60-5; tensions 59-68, 360; unrest

60-7 Agriculture 46-51, 76

Basu, Bhupendranath 88, 154, 204-5, 208, 210 Begg, Dunlop & Co. 20 Bengal Chamber of Commerce 18-20,

37, 144, 147; in politics 24, 130, 131, 138, 194, 195, 197, 229, 232,

236,

Agricultural labour 57

Ahmadi 329 Ali, Amir 116, 220 Aligarh Muslim University 218 All India Swaraj Party 324, 325 All India Trade Union Congress 335, 336

Amrita Bazar Patrika 53, 66, 87, 88,

119, 126, 145, 165, 182, 191, 214,

334, 341; Patrika Group 86, 89-92,

93, 108, 122-3, 124, 128, 312

Ananda Bazar Patrika 333, 334 Andrew Yule & Co. 20 Andrews, C. F. 243, 244, 247, 248,

251, 275, 279, 281, 282, 284, 308 Anjumans 71-4 Ashraj 40, 116, 129

Assam 14, 277-84 Atmashakti 313, 341

319

237,

238,

239,

240,

317,

Bengal Renaissance 68 Bengal Legislative Council 142, 144,

146, 147, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 210, 211, 238, 239, 310, 316

Bengal Khilafat Committee 315, 326, 327 Bengal National Chamber of Commerce 35-7, 130, 164 Bengal Provincial Conference 111, 112, 150, 155, 211, 261, 302, 313,

334, 349 Bengal Mahomedan Association 187

Bengal Tenancy AmendmentBill 337, 338

Bengalee 102, 111, 122, 125, 127, 145,

148, 153, 166, 182, 191, 198, 214, 341, 356, 364 Bhabbar Katha 342 Bhadralok 30n, 40, 202, 248; vishayi

Balkar War 74, 223

bhadralok 31 Big Five 324, 349-53, 363-8 Bikrampur 6, 40, 52, 66-7, 79

Banerjea, Surendranath 33, 36, 86, 88,

Bird (Bird Heilgers) & Co. 20, 20n Bombay 21, 47, 108, 109; capital 15;

Bande Mataram 168, 169, 192, 255 Banerjee, A. C. 125, 141, 145 89, 93, 95, 100, 102-3, 108, 109, 110, 122, 123, 124-5, 128, 129, 131, 132, 136, 155, 162, 166, 167, 168, 172, 198, 199, 200, 204, 205, 208,

209,

211,

213,

215,

316,

317,

330 Bangavasi 104, 124, 125, 127, 132

Barga (share-cropping) 57 Barisal (Bakarganj), 45, 54, 57, 66, 157-8, 253, 261, 285, 286 Barisal Hitaishi 158

faction group controlling Congress 110

Bonnerjee, W. C. 27-8, 33, 36, 108,

109, 123, 124-5, 131 Bose, Subhas 266, 295, 319, 320, 322, 325, 327, 330-2, 348, 368 Bose, Ananda Mohan36, 89, 109

Brahmos 90 Branson 97-8

Brati Samiti of Faridpur 157, 159

394

Index

British Indian Association 83, 85-8, 100, 104, 109, 128-9, 132, 338 Business: Bengalis 11, 20, 30-31; Europeans 12, 14-21; Marwaris

(see also Marwaris) 35; Muslims 36

Calcutta 2-10, 13, 17; economy 14-21,

45-6, 225-6, 227, 230, 232; Port

Commissioners 17; Improvement

Trust 17; society 21-45; immigrants 38-9; politics 39, 84ff, 97ff, 103, 137-41, 143-8, 153-4, 167-70, 199, 222-3, 236, 242-3, 274-6, 292-6, 316-17, 319-21, 324, 330-3, 348-50, 356-8

Calcutta Corporation 17, 86-8, 130,

136, 142, 143, 145, 146, 316, 317, 321, 330

Calcutta Khilafat Committee 326

Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act 142, 145, 146 Calcutta University 147, 149, 155 Chakdars 58, 75-6

Capital 14-17, 29, 35, 225-6; British capital in India 13, 14, 14n, 15, 21, 46, 105, 143, 227; European capital 9, 14, 15-21, 226-7; Indian

capital 4, 11, 17-18, 20, 30-1, 35-7, 48-9, 106, 151, 163-4, 228-30; racial composition of 15-16 Capital (newspaper) 18, 199 Caste 39-40, 45, 68-70; in politics 8,

42-5, 78-80, 223~35, 290-2, 330-1; associations 43-5, 71, 77

Central National Mahomedan Association 41, 109, 129 Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra 107, 120,

Congress 8, 28, 36, 82, 102, 105, 107n, 109-10, 111, 112, 116, 121-6, 169, 195, 221, 241, 245, 246, 250, 255, 257, 258, 259, 260,-263, 265, 266, 267, 268, 287, 302, 303, 335, 350; in Bengal 33, 214, 215, 216, 246, 249, 253, 262, 263, 267, 274, 302, 311, 312, 314, 320, 326, 348, 350, 368 Constitutional reform 83, 84, 85, 127— 35, 137, 193, 196, 197, 231, 232, 235, 236, 238, 240, 241, 242 Cultural trends 68; Hindu reform vs. revival 90-1, 120 Curzon, Lord 18, 23, 139, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150

Dacca8, 45, 52, 63, 67, 159-61 Dacca Anushilan Samiti 157, 160, 161,

176, 178, 179, 184, 185, 261

Dacca University 328

Das, C. R. 7, 8, 217, 245, 246, 258, 259, 260, 265, 267, 268, 284, 294, 295, 312, 313, 314, 323, 324, 325, 336, 338, 340, 345, 346, 347

162, 247, 261, 269, 303, 315, 326, 341,

211, 249, 262, 273, 304, 318, 333, 342,

212, 256, 263, 280, 310, 319, 334, 343,

215, 257, 264, 281, 311, 321, 335, 344,

Depressed classes 81, 238

Depressed Classes Mission 234 Drain, doctrine of 14, 94, 183, 272 Dual economy 13-14 Dufferin, Lord 92, 116-17, 118 Dundee 21

Dutt, Aswini Kumar 157-8, 165, 171 Dutt, R. C. 30n, 120

141,177

Chatterjee, Sarat Chandra 23n, 361

Chaudhuri, Ashutosh 131, 247, 256 Chaudhuri, Radhanath 112-14

Chukani, Chukanidars 57

Coal 14, 18, 20-1

Communalism 3-5, 7-9, 68-74, 80-1, 115, 185-93, 336-9, 352-62; riots 118-21, 224, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362

Economic policy 11-13, 17-19 Economy 12-21, 150-2, 208, 270-2;

dual economy 13-14; drain 14, 143; agrarian economy 45-51, 62, 65-7

Educated Bengalis 2-4, 7, 11, 13-14, 29, 32-5, 38-41, 46, 52, 79-81, 82, 84-8, 369; connection with landed gentry 34, 52

395

Index Elections 131-3, 200-2, 204-5, 316-17, 362-4 English education 32-4, 39-41, 66, 80-1, 85-6, 112

Haoladars 57 High Court (Calcutta) 26-8, 96, 98,

Englishman 87, 206, 235

Hindoo Patriot 87, 100, 126, 145 HomeCharges 12, 48, 94

Estates (landed) 54-7, 65, 67 Europeans (see also non-official Europeans and racialism): economic interests 12-21, 95-97, 143,

145,

146,

199,

282, 293,

320;

racialism 21-9; women 22, 25, 98,

99; clubs 22, 25n; assaults on natives 23

100, 102, 137, 141, 182 Hijli Hitaishi 290-2

Hume, A. O. 36, 108, 109-10, 126 Huq, Fazlul 219-22, 245, 256, 257,

283, 318-19, 328, 338, 339, 340, 362, 369

Husain, Mir Musharraf 119

ICS17, 25, 33, 93, 98, 101, 209, 236

European and Anglo-Indian Defence

TIlbert Bill controversy 26, 83, 95-105,

Factory Act (1840) 21, 37

Indian Association 8, 36, 83, 89-93,

Association (European Association) 23, 24, 95-101, 131, 181, 182, 194, 195, 196, 197, 202, 232, 319, 343

100, 101-2, 108, 109, 111, 112,

Faraizis 63, 68, 74

114-16, 125, 128, 136, 146, 149,

Faridpur 66, 158-9 First World War, see World War I

153, 203, 215, 216, 217, 238

Forward 318

Gandhi, M. K. 248, 249, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 262, 263, 264, 265, 277, 285, 286, 302, 303, 304, 326, 333, 336, 343, 348-9

250, 258, 279, 310,

252, 259, 284, 312,

Gantidars 57 Garth, Richard 26-8

Gentry 7, 51-3, 59-68; crisis of the smaller gentry 65-7; connection

with service and professions 51-3, 66-7, 79-80 Ghose, Aurobindo 140-1, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171, 173-4, 347 Ghose, Lal Mohan 95, 103, 131

106 Imperial Legislative Council 142 Ymperialism 1-10, 11-12, 93-7; economics of 12-21, 45-51, 105, 143, 226-7

Ghosh Motilal 89, 122, 126, 165, 171, 211, 213-14 Government, political policy of 118, 144-50, 186-9, 193-202, 237-8, 293-4, 339, 340, 342, 343, 344, 354-5 Government service 40; natives in 32, 34, 93-4; Bengalis 3, 4, 7, 32, 33, 52, 66, 79-81 Grihasthas 30, 85

Indian Councils Act, see constitutional reform Indian Civil Service, see ICS Indian Daily News 86, 87-8

Indian Jute Mills Association 19, 37, 138

Indian League 83, 86-90

Indian Mining Association 19

Iudiau Mirror 103, 105, 108, 117, 145,

165

Indian Nation 146

Indian National Conference 83, 102, 105, 107, 109 Indian National Congress, see Con-

gress Indian Tea Association 19, 24, 282

Indian Universities Act of 1904, 142

Industry 14-21, 163-4, 270-1 Investment,

pattern

capital) 15-16

of

(see

also

Investor’s India Year Book 15, 16, 270

Islam, Serajul 131, 132

Jardine Skinner & Co. 20, 97

Jinnah, M. A. 187, 255

396

Index

Jote 55 Jotedars (see also rich peasants) 54,

57, 58-9, 307, 360

61,

64,

73-4; 75-6,

Judiciary (see also High Court) 23, 48; discrimination against natives 22-3,

26-9

Jugantar 191; Jugantar party 178, 180,

184 Jute 13, 17, 20-1, 55, 62, 64, 208, 271; mills 15, 19-20, 271-2 Kaivartas (see also Mahishyas) 74, 76-7

Keswick, J. J. J. 97, 100

229, 230, 243, 246, 261, 281, 287, 301, 302, 325, 329, 330; Chamber of Commerce 230, 260, 287 Meherulla, Munshi 119 Mehta, Pherozeshah 110-11, 169-71, 172, 173, 210

Mian, Badsha 74

Mian, Dudu 63 Mian, Noa 63, 74

Middle classes 2-4, 7~8, 11, 13-14, 29, 31-5, 39-41, 52, 53, 76-8, 79-81, 82, 84-8; connection with landed gentry 34, 52, 53, 66-7 Midnapur 58, 74-8, 79-80, 288, 290, 305, 307

Khilafat movement 8, 68, 74, 217,

Midnapur Zamindari Company 287, 288, 297, 303, 307

275, 292, 298, 302, 322, 327 Kipling, Rudyard 24—5

Mitra, Krishna Kumar 92, 154, 159,

246, 251, 257, 260, 261, 267, 270,

Labour 19, 35, 37-9, 111, 154, 274-84 Land (see also agrarian society): Rent Act of 1859, 53, 63; Permanent Settlement 53; Bengal Tenancy Act 53-4, 92, 100; tenures 53-9 Landholders’ Association 82, 85

Landlords (see also gentry) 53-6, 59, 61-5, 83; in politics 84-8, 100, 109, 119, 126, 128-34, 338 Legislative Council, see Bengal Legislative Council Liberalism in politics 91, 111, 127-35

Local self-government 41-2, 80, 84,

128-9, 328

Lytton, Lord 93, 94 Lytton, Governor of Bengal 318, 339,

340, 344, 346 Madras 21, 47 Madrasa 70, 71 Mahishyas 68, 74-8, 80, 299-300, 306 Majumdar, Ambika Charan 128, 158-

9, 200, 202, 203

Managing agency 4n, 17-21

Manchester 21, 22, 37; imports 14, 21 Mandals 57

Martin (Martin, Burn) & Co. 20, 20n Marwaris 35, 36, 156, 163, 222, 228,

284

Mitra, Rajendralal 85, 87, 110 Modern Review 308 Moneylenders 47-9, 60-1, 337

Muhammedan Literary Society 41, 129

Muslim(s) 5, 9, 28, 36, 38, 45, 80-1, 156; social structure of 40-1, 6874; politics of 41-2, 83, 103, 109,

116-21, 128-32, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 193, 196, 198, 218, 219, 222, 223, 233, 234, 243, 260,

261, 275, 298, 302, 306, 315, 316,

321, 323, 326, 327, 328, 329, 333, 334, 335, 337, 339, 353-5; League

210, 217, 222, 256; separatism 3, 8,

42, 221; Graduate Association 322, 332 Mussalman 186, 220, 282, 322, 333, 341, 352, 356 Namasudras 9, 45, 68, 78-80, 81, 156,

159, 233, 234, 235, 306 Namasidra Suhrid 234; nationalism 1-10, 33-4, 82-4, 93-5, 105-9, 107n, 134-5, 140-1, 209, 218-20 Nawab of Dacca 52, 56, 186, 187, 190,

193

New India 105, 141 Nihar 290, 291

397

Index Non-co-operation Movement 66, 78, 246-70, 273-310 Non-official Europeans 9, 25, 83, 84-8,

95-101, 130-1, 147, 148, 316, 317

Revivalism in politics 91,

125-7, 140, 166, 177

118-20,

Ripon, Lord 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 102, 108 Rowlatt Act 242 Rowlatt Satyagraha 243

Pabna 62-4, 73-4, 337

Pabna disturbances (1872) 60-5 Pal, Bipin Chandra 105, 110, 111, 112-

13, 141, 159, 162, 166, 167, 168,

170, 174, 216, 250 Pal, Kristodas 85, 87 Pan-Islamic Movement 74, 222-4 Parsis 15, 36 Peasants 47-8, 62, 80, 208, 271,

Roy, M. N. 252, 286, 303, 336 Sadgops 44 Sadharan Brahmo Samaj 90, 111, 125 Salgram case 102-4 Samajpatis 69-70, 76

360; share-croppers (bargadars) 57,

Sandhya 167, 168, 191 Sanjivani 37, 111, 126 Sasmal, B. N. 273, 290-2, 295, 324, 325, 330-2, 347, 349-53, 363-4, 365-8

58, 61, 72, 337; religious and caste movements 68-81; in politics 79-

325, 330, 347, 348, 349, 352, 353,

335, 337; rich peasants (see also

Jotedars)

51,

56-9,

72-3,

75-8,

81, 92, 114, 287-92, 297-301, 360

Planters 22, 24, 37, 138, 140, 194,

278 Politics 127; municipal and local 41-2,

79-81, 114-16; associations in 82-4, 84-8, 89-93, 112; factions in

89-91, 108, 110-11, 165, 167-8,

171-2, 204-5, 213-16, 225, 312-15,

330-2, 347-50, 352-3, 362-3, 3658; students in 89, 90, 103, 154-5,

176, 273

Prabasi 163 Prince of Wales 21, 294, 296, 305 Priti 44

Professions 33; professional groups 4, 7-8, 13-14, 29, 32-5, 52, 76-9;

legal profession (Bar) 27-8, 33, 40, 48, 79-81 Racialism 17-19, 21-9, 32, 83, 107; and monopoly 22, 49-50; native

counter-aggression 28-9, 112, 138-

40, 177-8, 206-7, 273; racial conflict in politics 85, 95-105, 106, 139,

140 Railways 17, 18, 19n Raiyats (see also tenants) 56 Rajbanshis 68, 306

Rent 65-7; structure 54-6, 57, 59

Sengupta, J. M. 266, 279, 302, 324,

365, 366, 368

Servant 314

Share-croppers, see Peasants

Shaw Wallace & Co. 20 Shipping 17 Sirajganj 62, 64 Spleen theory 23 Statesman 167 Steamer companies 18

Sudhakar 119, 120, 129, 132 Suhrid Samiti 157 Swadeshi 18, 127

Swadeshi Movement 66, 143, 150, 154, 156, 157, 159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 167, 169, 170, 173, 177, 190, 191, 203, 212, 215,

151, 163, 175, 217,

228

Swadesh Bandhab Samiti of Barisal 157, 158, 160

Swaraj 191, 192; Swaraj Party 314, 315, 317, 319, 320, 321, 323, 325,

327, 332, 333, 334, 335, 337, 338, 339, 340, 342, 347, 363 Sylhet 112, 113 Tagore, Debendranath 30-1 Tagore, Dwarkanath 30 Tagore, Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohan

86, 100, 104, 114

398

Index

Tagore, Rabindranath 22, 23n, 24-5, 31, 120, 184, 185, 190, 215, 243, 244 245, 247, 251, 275 Tagores of Jorasanko 30-1 Tamluk 75

Tea 14, 17, 19, 20-1

Tea garden labour19, 111, 277-8

Temple, Sir Richard 57 Tenants (see also agrarian society, land, peasants) 53-4 Terrorism 175, 177,

183, 184

12, 14-15, 47-8 Ulema 70-4 University of Calcutta 32, 130, 147-9 Untouchables 78-9 Vaidyas 69-70 Vernacular Press 37, 93-5, 123-4

178, 179, 181,

Thompson, Rivers 26, 80, 98, 99, 100,

101, 102

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar 171, 172, 241

Tilak Swaraj Fund 267, 269, 270, 281 Tippera Guide 305 Tollygunge Club 22

15, 17, 21; British overseas trade 12; pattern of international trade

Trade 49; import-export trade 7, 14-

World War I 12, 228, 270; impact of

4-5, 65, 206-9, 225, 270-2

Yasin, Muhammad 41-2 Young India 284 Yule, Sir David 21

Zamindars (see also landlords) 52-7