This editorial on the Punjab happenings invited the wrath of the Madras Government which demanded a security of Rs. 2,000 from THE HINDU under the Press Act. THE HINDU: “Public opinion, always ready to support strong measures in the restoration of order, is beginning to view with resentment and dismay the manner in which martial law is being applied. Tyrannical methods are not sanctified because they are applied by a British colonel and sanctioned by an Irish Satrap. One wonders in these days if there is a Central Government at all and if it has any policy at the back of its mind apart from an invertebrate surrender to the provincial (hot) heads of administration”.
MAY 8, 1919
The Punjab situation
AS THE STEADY TRICKLE OF CAREFULLY FILTERED NEWS from the Punjab accumulates, one gathers that things are being done in the name of law and order which, unless their necessity is established to a far more convincing extent than at present, are bound to have very grave consequences for the future peace and contentment of this country. Public opinion, always ready to support strong measures in the restoration of order, is beginning to view with resentment and dismay the manner in which martial law is being applied. Tyrannical methods are not sanctified because they are applied by a British Colonel and sanctioned by an Irish Satrap. One wonders in these days if there is a Central Government at all and if it has any policy at the back of its mind apart from an invertebrate surrender to the provincial (hot) heads of administration. While one ornament of the Service is revelling in the long-awaited opportunity to put his theories into practice, less fortunate fellow-administrators avenge themselves by running riot in an orgy of “plain speech”. One such gravely accuses the Indian Members of the Council with encouraging anarchism. But for the trammels, light as air as they are in these days of man-on-the-spotism run mad, of official position, he would have liked to call them anarchists in intention. Another works himself into a fury over a Government pensioner presuming to criticise the administration whose salt he has eaten. The Satrap of the Punjab his hands full, only occasionally scintillates, as the exquisite humour of seeing his pet aversion, the educated Indian, squirm under martial law proves too much even for his iron self-control. Meanwhile, the Central Government has apparently taken a holiday. It maintains a sphinx-like silence, its only incursions into the work-a-day world being if rumour speaks aright, an occasional descent from Olympian heights to force the hands of a too lenient Governor. While such is the attitude of men in high places the semi-official Press naturally proceeds to unbosom itself of long pent-up emotions with frankness and force. Indian politicians are lectured over their shortcomings and minatory language is the order of the day. Anglo-India has come into its own: it is once more the ruling race. The Indian Press is gravely told that it has not justified its existence and measures are called for to increase the stringency of the Press Act. With a lively concern lest the Government should be inclined to leniency, the Anglo-Indian Press has lately acquired the art of detecting and bringing into daylight hidden sedition and asking, with the artlessness that knows the answer is imminent, can such things be? One paper chortles in glee over the fact that considerable casualties were inflicted by bombing aeroplanes though its satisfaction is tempered by regret at the escape of so many of the mob. Another calls for a long rope and a short shrift for the author of all this mischief. And the strangest part of the business is that the tin-gods are inclined to hearken to such counsels and to shut their ears to those other voices with which, in less strenuous times, they were inclined occasionally to coquet. We are in fact rapidly drifting to the condition of government by newspaper. When the power behind the throne happens to be a Press steeped in racial prejudice, accustomed in the struggle for existence to immoderate expression, the Indian who hears it saying things with impunity that ought not be tolerated, naturally concludes that a new spirit has come over the Government. The days of “co-operation”, of mutual understanding and explanation are past, giving place on the one side to suspicion and on the other to sullenness. There is a rapidly growing feeling that the enthusiasm of Lord Chelmsford for reforms has cooled down and that he has allowed himself to be snowed under by the forces of reaction and repression. If that feeling becomes at all widespread it would constitute one of the gravest menaces to the integrity of the British connection and the consequent happiness of India. The continuance of martial law when the conviction is widespread that it has outstayed a necessity none too clearly demonstrated at its introduction, and the action being taken under it is producing an intense bitterness of spirit which is aggravated by the provocative writings of the panic Press. When we read for example of a life sentence being awarded to an excited man shouting reproaches at a batch of policemen the conviction is irresistible that justice has not been tempered with mercy overmuch in this case. Nor can the commandeering of the lights and fans of respectable citizens contribute as much to their sense of contentment as it may to the comfort of the troops for whose benefit the spoliation was effected. Such measures may be effective for a time but they are rather apt to spread resentment in strata which ordinarily have no sympathy with the forces of disorder. Excessive severity defeats its own object. Indiscriminate severity, such as under martial law seems to be the order of the day, is a sure recipe for further trouble. The Indian public has had grave doubts as to whether the state of things in the Punjab at any time justified the title “open rebellion.” They have no doubt that at present such a title is an absolute misnomer. Sir M. O’Dwyer has had his fling. Is it not possible for the Viceroy to frame a policy that will alleviate the bitterness in the public mind? Harmonious relations between the Government and the people, necessary at all times for progress, is now doubly so; and not merely for the prosperity of the Indian Empire but for its very existence. A new menace now overshadows the country and in a direction not many of our jaundiced Cassandras, shrieking red revolution and Bolshevism, seem to have suspected. As will be seen from a message published elsewhere events in Afghanistan indicate that a rupture is imminent if open hostilities have not at the present moment commenced. It is difficult to sift the news from Afghanistan, so as to arrive at the truth for the Amir’s censorship in its crude way seems to be quite as effective as Sir M. O’Dwyer’s. What is plain to read however is that whatever may have been his original attitude he is now distinctly hostile to the British Empire. How far that attitude has been forced upon him by popular feeling and by other causes it is not possible to determine. The fact, however, remains that the Amir is seeking to consolidate the shifty foundations of his throne by offering his subjects, in the traditional style of statecraft of militarist regimes, diversion in an attack upon the Punjab. With the London Times and other English papers, the Amir has apparently taken the state of open rebellion”, of Viceregal ukases too literally and he painted for the benefit of his warlike subjects a defenceless Punjab with its rich bazaars and fair fields lying at the mercy of the invader. The overt act was not long delayed in the shape of a frontier incident and the protest of the Indian Government was treated with scorn. Hostilities are now inevitable unless the Afghans, who temper martial valour with a wise discretion, see fit to repudiate, in the unmistakable fashion characteristic of their expressions of disapproval, their too bellicose ruler. It is satisfactory to know that the crisis has not caught the Indian Government by surprise and that the necessary dispositions have already been made. The matter now passes into the sphere of military science but the cloud in the north-west makes it all the more necessary that external difficulties should not be complicated by internal ill-feeling. We have said that such a feeling is being rapidly generated all over India, and presumably in Punjab also, by the measures of Sir M. O’Dwyer. Indiscriminate arrests and wholesale deportation, the harassing and humiliating orders issued under martial law, are tending to drive good citizens to despair. When an Editor is tried by a martial law commission for an alleged offence committed before the state of open rebellion”, when a prominent public man is remanded, on no other charge, as far as we are aware, than that of having presided at a public meeting, when convicted men are given sentences which all India agrees in thinking unduly severe, it does not require a major prophet to predict that the result will be intensification of unrest rather than its suppression. If blood and money be the price of confidence and trust, Punjab has paid it in full measure and brimming over. To what extent the recent riots are the result of Afghan intrigue, if at all, is yet a matter for enquiry. Where the traces of that intrigue can be discovered, by all means let the Government put its foot firmly down. We refuse, however, to believe that the educated classes in the Punjab, against whom with a vindictiveness that betrays the master-spirit behind, the martial law edicts seem to be specially directed, could ever be guilty of the folly of inviting an Afghan invasion. It is, therefore up to the Government of India to grasp the reins firmly and seriously consider how far the internal conditions of the country require its constant exasperation by methods such as have been taking place. If it is the duty of the people to cooperate in the restoration of order, it is no less the duty of the State to make such co-operation possible. There is a point of persistence beyond which justice degenerates into vindictiveness and any further tales of the exploits of the “no d-d nonsense” school will only serve to convince the public that that point has been reached and passed.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I