“The Congress has shown itself an incomparably keen and sensitive instrument of India’s will in nothing so much as in the confiding faith with which it placed itself under Gandhiji’s guidance and the loyalty with which it has striven to realise his high ideals. True, it has not yet succeeded in achieving all or even a large part of what it set out to do. But for the short and bright interlude in Indo British relations during the Irwin regime, which culminated in the historic Gandhi-Irwin Pact, there has been no realisation by the mighty power of England that in the Congress there is a power no less great, a power firmly grounded in the affection of the Indian people by virtue of long, honourable and tested service; and that in handing over the control of Indian affairs to the forces of nationalism represented by the Congress, Britain would be truly fulfilling the purposes of her rule.”
DECEMBER 27, 1935
Golden Jubilee of the Congress
“The Congress is the oldest political organisation we have in India. It is what it means – national. It represents no particular community, no particular class, no particular interest. It claims to represent all Indian interests and all classes.”
THIS OBSERVATION, WHICH MAHATMA GANDHI MADE AT THE Second Round Table Conference, about the Indian National Congress which celebrates its golden jubilee tomorrow amidst the rejoicings of a nation, was a sober statement of fact. Alike in its modest origin, its long, chequered and withal glorious career and the unique place it occupies in the affections of the Indian people today, it is sui generis among the political organisations that this country has known. For, it has always been more than a political body, therein lying its strength. At the very first session of the Congress, Mr. W. C. Bonnerji defined its objects in terms which were succinctly restated by Mr. Anandacharlu later as being “to strive to mitigate if not eradicate, race-prejudices, to disarm creed-antipathies and to remove provincial jealousies” and thus “to develop and consolidate sentiments of national unity”. And from the beginning it never functioned in vacuo. As Mr. Gokhale pointed out at the Benares Congress, “it was started to focus and organise the patriotic forces that were working independently of one another in different parts of the country, so as to invest their work with a national character and to increase their general effectiveness”. A signal proof of its catholicity is to be found in its seeking and in the early years obtaining the cooperation of some of the most farseeing members of the British community in India, both official and nonofficial. And indeed this is not surprising when we remember that, if any single man was responsible for founding the Congress, it was Allan Octavian Hume, a retired member of the ICS, of whom, when he died, the President of the year said in the course of a moving tribute, “The father, the founder of the Congress, he who worked for it day and night, winter and summer, ill, to tend, to nourish the child of his affection, he who in the most critical and difficult period of its existence laboured for it as no other man did, has gone, and we all mourn his loss as that of a parent.” As for the non-official Europeans, their better mind was expressed by Mr. George Yule, the first non-Indian to preside over the Congress, when he emphasised that community of interest was a more vital fact than difference of race. “We have no more power and no more voice in the Government of the country than you Indians have”, he said and he urged that “if there be but a small minority in the country fitted to exercise the useful function of the franchise, it is a mistake to withhold the privilege from them on the ground that others are not fitted”.
That was a reply to Lord Dufferin’s sneer that the Congress represented but a “microscopic minority”. The officials, who had watched the beginnings of the national movement with indifference bordering on contempt, were alarmed when they found it gaining rapidly in popular appeal. They began to dub it “disloyal’ and made much of the fact that with the exception of an enlightened minority, the Muslims as a body stood aloof from the Congress, under the leadership of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. But the significant fact was not that a majority of the Muslims stood aloof but that, for the first time since the advent of British rule in India, a section of them came to be persuaded that their interest as well as the interest of the country lay in making common cause with other communities. Well might Mr. Anandacharlu claim on this account that the Congress had within seven short years shown itself to be “a mighty nationaliser”. The attitude of the Muslims towards the Congress has undergone many changes since. But it may be said with perfect fairness that in its attitude towards the Muslims the Congress has never deviated from its desire to carry them with it. The agitation against the Bengal partition, which the Congress led, was an agitation not against the Muslims but against the dismemberment of a homogeneous people. And both by the part it played in regard to the Lucknow Pact of 1916 and by its consistent attitude towards the Communal Award it has given practical proof of its conviction that no minority should be coerced and that it is the duty of the majority to win the confidence of minorities. Its efforts have, no doubt, but imperfectly succeeded so far; nevertheless, it labours to compose political differences in the spirit of Gandhiji’s advice at the Belgaum Congress, “We must tolerate each other and trust to time to convert the one or the other to the opposite belief”.
The second great secret of the strength of the Congress is that it is the product of evolution. While it may not be correct to say that the goal of India’s progress was from the beginning clearly envisaged, the desire to achieve freedom was undoubtedly the deepest impulse that moved the founders of the Congress. It was in 1906 that Dadabhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of the Congress, struck a challenging note. “We do not ask for any favours. We want only justice. Instead of going into any further divisions or details of our rights as British citizens, the whole matter can be comprised in one word – “self-government” or Swaraj, like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies.” But the categorical demands that were placed by Gokhale before the Congress in the previous year could not, by any stretch of imagination, be regarded as even remotely approximating to a demand for self-government. This disparity between the ideal and the immediate objective, which strikes the student of Congress history in the first three decades of its existence, must be explained with reference to two primary facts- the belief, widely prevalent that India could get reforms as gifts from Britain and the then character of the Congress, as a movement representing the classes rather than the masses. There was a deep-rooted belief shared by most educated Congressmen of the time that England was sincerely anxious to enlarge the bounds of freedom and all that was required was to demonstrate to her that India really wanted freedom. In the absence of representative institutions the Congress sought to fill their place by functioning as an unofficial Parliament to ventilate grievances and ask for redress. In his presidential address at the Congress of 1895, Mr. Surendranath Banerji (as he then was) was at pains to explain that it was far from the intention of the Congress to arrogate to itself the position of His Majesty’s Opposition. “We do not oppose for the mere sake of opposition… We oppose bad measures. We support good measures. We may oppose the policy of the Government but we impute no motives”. Starting with this conception of the work to be done it was natural that in the early years, the Congress should devote itself exclusively to pressing upon the rulers the need for establishing representative institutions, reforming the administration, increasing the association of Indians with the Government and other similar ameliorative measures. Its faith in British intentions was largely due to the fact that in the regime of Lord Ripon, which was described as “the Golden Age of Indian Reformers”, “the aspirations of the people were encouraged, education and local self-government were fostered, and the foundations of Indian nationality were firmly laid”. This faith received a rude shock when England, under the influence of the jingoism that was responsible for the Boer War, began to treat Indian aspirations with contempt and put down the new nationalism with a high hand. The Seditious Meetings Act and the Official Secrets Act, the Partition of Bengal, the Press Act and the many other repressive measures by which Lord Curzon sought to humiliate India and break her spirit roused intense indignation throughout the country and the attitude of the Congress underwent a slow but sure change. At first it was inclined to throw the blame on the vicious system of bureaucratic government and cherished the hope that if Britain’s attention could be effectively drawn to the misdeeds of her agents in India, she would forthwith put an end to them. But that too proved a delusion. As early as 1903, in a fighting speech Lal Mohan Ghose declared, “We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that whenever British interests clash with ours, India is certain to kick the beam” and he urged his fellow countrymen to remember that “a great deal depends upon ourselves.”
This flouting of Indian opinion forced the Congress to a realisation of the fact that it lacked, to use a term very popular in later days, effective sanctions. But it was honestly believed that political education would in time percolate down from the intelligentsia to the masses and Congressmen urged that a wise Government should be prepared for this. Thus we find Lal Mohan Ghose observing in the same address, “As the ideas of the educated minority today are bound to be shared by the masses tomorrow, it is the duty of all farsighted statesmen to take time by the forelock and by the concession of well considered reforms to ensure the contentment of the people and to enhance their loyalty and affection for the Government”. Far from doing this, however, the Government seemed bent on alienating them in all possible ways. The psychological harm done by foreign rule is far greater than even the material damage, especially when it affects a proud and sensitive people slowly awaking to its rights. It is no surprise therefore to find that the Congress in its early days was largely preoccupied with questions of status and racial equality. In his address at the Amraoti Conference, Mr. Sankaran Nair (as he then was) declared, “On this race question no concession is possible. No compromise can be accepted so far as it lies in us. We must insist on perfect equality. Inequality means race inferiority, national abasement.” It was on this sore spot that blow upon blow fell. To a Congress which had believed in the magical virtues of British citizenship, it came as a painful discovery that there was one law for the Britisher and another for the Indian in his own land, and that in other parts of the Empire which he had helped to build up he was treated as a helot. But all these pinpricks paled into insignificance beside the terrible grief provoked by the Rowlatt Bills and the Amritsar tragedy of which Thompson and Garratt in their “Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India” write: “It formed a turning point in Indo-British relations almost as important as the Mutiny… The reason for this was not merely the number of the slaughtered at Amritsar or even the brutality displayed in subsequent proceedings, so much as the assumption implied in the behaviour of responsible Englishmen and in their evidence before the Hunter Committee, that Indians could and should be treated as an inferior race.” It was this tragedy that finally forced Indian nationalism to the conclusion that India’s salvation must come from her own efforts, and that self-government here and now could alone be the solvent of her many problems. The Gandhian era in Indian politics had set in.
It is hardly necessary to recount at length the splendid achievement of the Congress under the inspiration and guidance of Gandhiji and his great co-adjutors, Deshbandhu Das, the Nehrus, Pandit Malaviya and others. “In India there is a new-born spirit of self-reliance”, Sir William Wedderburn had declared in his presidential address at the Congress held in 1910. That spirit was kindled and fostered with matchless courage, skill, and devotion by a great band of patriots, the late Lokamanya Tilak and Srijut Arabindo Ghose, still happily with us, being the foremost among them. They were nobly aided by that redoubtable lady – need we say we refer to Dr. Besant? – who brought to the service of her adopted country a gift of oratory, a flair for organisation and a wealth of political experience that made the Home Rule movement spread like wild fire. It was these devoted leaders who awakened the Indian masses from their agelong slumber and helped to convert the Congress, which had been the organ of a small but highly cultured intelligentsia, into the mighty voice of a nation. “Swaraj is my birth right”, declared the Lokamanya and he taught the millions of his countrymen to demand it. And Gandhiji came to put the coping-stone on the Lokamanya’s work. He showed the millions, by the unexampled purity and austerity of his personal life, his unflinching devotion to truth, his ocean-like humanity and his great gospel of service and sacrifice, that self-government cannot come as a gift from another, that it is the crown of a new discipline and a new way of life, and that no task should be regarded as too hard, no sacrifice too great to win freedom. He placed the freedom movement on a broad basis of popular support by putting in the forefront of its activities the programme of constructive work. Unlike the earlier Congress which had fought shy of social reform on the ground that it might lead to dissensions among nationalists and had paid only fitful attention to the need for promoting economic regeneration, Gandhiji by insisting on the importance of advance on all fronts and leading the crusade for the uplift of the lowly and the downtrodden, made the Congress universal in its appeal. We are not concerned to trace here the inevitable vicissitudes that beset this unprecedented attempt to translate a lofty philosophy into action on a nation-wide scale. But who can forget or fail to remember with gratitude that if today the nation holds its head high, in spite of temporary defeats, and is proudly conscious that it is master of its own destiny, we owe this splendid transformation to the magic touch of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi? The Congress has shown itself an incomparably keen and sensitive instrument of India’s will in nothing so much as in the confiding faith with which it placed itself under Gandhiji’s guidance and the loyalty with which it has striven to realise his high ideals. True, it has not yet succeeded in achieving all or even a large part of what it set out to do. But for the short and bright interlude in IndoBritish relations during the Irwin regime, which culminated in the historic Gandhi-Irwin Pact, there has been no realisation by the mighty power of England that in the Congress there is a power no less great, a power firmly grounded in the affections of the Indian people by virtue of long, honourable and tested service, and that in handing over the control of Indian affairs to the forces of nationalism represented by the Congress, Britain would be truly fulfilling the purposes of her rule. But no reverse and no hostility can damp the enthusiasm of our people or lovehear. One of the greates sons of bodi, Mahade Govind Ranade saw the future of his country with prophetic vision and limmed it in lose heart. One of the greatest sons of India, Mahadev Govind Ranade, foresaw the future of his country with prophetic vision and limned it in glowing colours:
“With a liberated manhood, with buoyant hope, with a faith that never shirks duty, with a sense of justice that deals fairly by all, with unclouded intellect and powers fully cultivated, and lastly with a love that overleaps all bounds, renovated India will take her proper place among the nations of the world, and be the master of the situation and of her own destiny.
This is the goal to be reached – this is the Promised Land.”
It is the proud privilege of the Congress to lead the nation to this goal, sustained by the undying spirit that animated the patriots who for half a century have laboured in the cause of freedom. Could any true lover of his country do less than give this national organisation his whole-hearted allegiance?
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I