THE HINDU vehemently opposed a farewell party to Mr. D. F. Carmichael, member of the Madras Governor’s Executive Council. THE HINDU: “We are compelled to protest in unqualified language and in the name of all that binds the rich and the learned in solemn obligation to the poor and ignorant of the same community, against the poojah which these men propose to make to the Hon’ble D. F. Carmichael. We say, with the utmost pain, that the poojah ought not to be made and Mr. Carmichael does not deserve it…. We thought for honour to have value it must be discriminating and it must be deserved”.
NOVEMBER 14, 1883
The Honourable D.F. Carmichael
FROM THE LETTERS WE HAVE PUBLISHED IN OUR COLUMNS and from those that we publish today, the feeling of the native community with regard to the proposed Carmichael Poojah will be apparent. When we were first told that such a proposal was entertained by one or two leading native gentlemen, we could not believe it; we refused to believe it. We believed that the natives had too vivid recollection of the disasters that had befallen them under the latest wave of that angel’s wings to regard him entitled to worship any longer. But when a notice signed by the Honourables G. N. Gujputee Rao, Humayoon Jah and T. Muthuswami Iyer, was put in our hands, oh, what was our surprise! The three signatories are honourable native gentlemen, for whose services to the country and Government we entertain the highest regard, and for whom personally no native has a higher respect than ourselves. But we thought that, above all, they were citizens, bound by certain relations of mutual obligation and carrying a trust, a responsibility, that was too sacred to be slighted at the very time when that trust and responsibility acquired a heavier weight and more profound significance. We wish we were able to express sufficiently the sense of pain and reluctance that depresses us while writing against the decided course of our citizens, whom we respect so much. Yet we have a higher and more sacred trust to discharge; we have imposed upon ourselves a task of representing public feeling and we feel bound to discharge that trust to the utmost satisfaction of our conscience irrespective of any result to our personal interests. We write under full and accurate knowledge of the feeling of the great mass of the people in this matter; and under an equally full sense of the responsibility that attaches to our criticism of officials and citizens. Writing as we do under these conditions, we are compelled to protest in unqualified language and in the name of all that binds the rich and learned in solemn obligation to the poor and ignorant, of the same community, against the poojah which these men propose to make to the Hon’ble D.F. Carmichael. We say, we say with the utmost pain, that the poojah ought not to be made and Mr. Carmichael does not deserve it. The poojah is indeed to be made by Mr. Carmichael’s friends and admirers, yes friends and admirers of Mr. Carmichael the Collector and Mr. Carmichael the Member of the Council, we suppose. Let us see what these friends and admirers can say in defence of the poojah. Can they say that he was the friend of the country, of the ryots, of the poor working men, of the educated classes or even of the officials in general? Can they say that he fought hard for the employment of natives in the higher branches of the public service? Can they say that he was for giving their countrymen a status of equality with his own countrymen? Can they say that he was for extending the political liberties of the people? Can they say that his administration was beneficial in its general results? Can they at least say that the general results of his administration were free from positive harm to the native community or that he employed his knowledge and influence in preventing such results? We shall not anticipate what these “friends and admirers” may say in the place of meeting. But we can hardly bring ourselves to believe that these native gentlemen, who have the welfare of their country at heart and who resent the injuries done to their helpless countrymen, unable to defend themselves against the oppression of unprincipled officials, could have so soon forgotten the loud wail of oppression that filled the ears of every one in Madras and in the district a year ago from the poor ryots of Chingleput. Could they have forgotten how their poor countrymen were kept under the trees in hot midday without food or water and dragged, day in and day out, from house to court and court to house, to be threatened and otherwise maltreated, because the helpless wretches no longer able to brook the tyranny of their favourite “tiger” meekly cried against him? Could these honourable gentlemen have so soon forgotten the utter ruin to which hundreds of families of their countrymen of Salem were subjected, because an incompetent official to whose timidity and want of foresight the whole occurrence was to be attributed had to be screened? How these “friends and admirers” relish the report of Government to the Secretary of State that a spirit of lawlessness was growing amongst the people and that lawlessness was to be put down and Government credited, by transporting innocent men and ruining Salem, how they relish this explanation, we cannot say. But we can say that the authors of that explanation are not the men to be adored by the community so maligned. How will the wretched ryots of Chingleput, against whom last year and the year before last, warrants and summonses flew like arrows to hunt them out of the nooks and huts where they had hid themselves to find a day of rest and repose, how will those ryots look upon their countrymen of wealth and influence, making poojah to one to whose omission to remove the hand that smote them so bitterly, they attribute their sufferings? Will the wretches of Salem who yet cling to their families, disgraced and ruined, and between whom and the abode of their former patrons a grim ocean now rolls, have a word of blessing for the worshippers who honour the officers, in whose power it was to have saved them, but who aggravated their misery by tolerating a policy of vindictive, oppressive and wicked cruelty? Let the men that will assemble for worship on Saturday deny, if they can, the charges of commission and omission which our esteemed correspondent vox populi, himself a representative native gentleman, lays at the door of the retiring Councillor’s administration. We thought for honour to have value it must be discriminating and it must be deserved.
The poojah-makers are indeed to consist of “friends and admirers”. But these friends and admirers are not, we suppose, isolated individuals, distracted from society, having no obligation to their fellow-citizens; they are educated men who are citizens first and then friends and admirers of one another. If their object of worship is an idol of such holiness why do they shrink from inviting a general adoration from the whole community? They must be conscious of the singular character of the estimate which is utterly out of harmony with that of the large majority of their fellow-citizens. The men that have initiated this odious movement, owe their distinction to their position in society and their relation to the public. Has the “friendship and admiration between them arisen from any relation of consanguinity or any other relation than that of the respective public character of the persons honouring and the person honoured? Now can their acts escape from being construed that, by honouring an officer whom the community, as a whole, regard with feelings the reverse of esteem, they abuse the trust devolving on them by virtue of their social rank and commit the community to a course which they protest against? If these friends and admirers honour their idol silently, individually without making use of a public place and without referring to his official deeds and vote a statue, the public will hardly concern themselves about their folly. As an official, as a member of Government, they are going to honour Mr. Carmichael, and it is in that capacity he has made himself an object of the people’s intense dislike. In honouring Mr. Carmichael these men do anything but honour their own community and to the injury that has been accumulated, they are going to add insult of the most exasperating description. Has it come to this? To be honoured by natives can no longer be an honour. The officer whose obstruction has tended to perpetuate the spoliation of our temples, who has ever refused to interfere in our favour between us and the members of his own service, who looked on with indifference while two districts were being trampled under foot, who has done nothing to extend our local liberty, who protested against raising the native to a position of equality with Englishmen, who has striven to impose odious taxes and revive barbarous and oppressive institutions, who has never encouraged the ambition of the educated young men, who practically laid down flattery and personal attendance as passport to his favour, and who has not done a single measure which may be countered as beneficial to the country, and in fact whose administration has been so devoid of positive merit, but on the other hand has been so injudicious, onesided and arbitrary as to make him unpopular among his own service, an official of this description is to be honoured in the name of the community, by our countrymen in whom the country has unlimited confidence and to whom they have hitherto looked for advice and help in all matters concerning their welfare. We know that several Englishmen simply laugh at the step that has been proposed and wonder how it can be possible. In order to screen our community from a reproach which they do not deserve we have raised our protest against the step. We say we have honour, ambition, and aspiration, we complain that Government do not respect our claims, that Englishmen look upon us with contempt and haughtiness born of imagined race superiority, we talk of patriotism and public spirit and we dream a thousand dreams of the future greatness of our country, we do all this, but what are these boasts, claims and dreams worth, if we cannot defer temporary individual interest to the permanent interests of the country, if we cannot sink the individual in the citizen, if we cannot discriminate the true object of honour and the object that deserves a distinct assurance of our resentment. In protesting against the proposed meeting to honour Mr. Carmichael, we are doing a duty which we would fain have seen devolve on other men, but which in recollection of our duty to our countrymen, we feel bound to discharge, however painfully. We are aware that the names of the signatories are such as to create confidence in some, and influence others to show apparent sympathy, but there is a time when such individual relations ought to be submerged in deference to public duty; and we call upon our countrymen to recollect Salem and Chingleput when the notice inviting them for the meeting is placed in their hands.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I