“If Sir Michael’s bias against the educated classes amounted to an obsession, if Sir Michael and his myrmidons strained law and justice to connect a political agitation with mob excesses and evolved a fullfledged rebellion, is it too far fetched to argue that Sir Michael did, consciously and of set purpose, with whatever excellent motives of purging the Punjab of what he considered its bane, magnify a riot into a rebellion in order to wreak vengeance on his enemies, the politicians?”
MARCH 29, 1920
The agony of the Punjab
THE HOUR FOUND THE MAN WITH LOINS GRIT FOR THE FRAY. At a time when the Punjab was passing through the greatest crisis in its history since the Mutiny and needed more than ever the touch of a sympathetic hand, it found at the helm of affairs – Sir M. O’Dwyer. The Punjab since its annexation has been a sort of happy hunting-ground for the Heaven-born. There the Babu ceased from troubling and the niceties of official procedure hampered not the incipient Empire-builder. The “Punjab manner” has become to the rest of India – bureaucratic India of course – an envious aspiration. A simple, martial people not educated into forgetting the rule and the right of the sword, paternal theories of Government inherited from its predecessors, here was a combination dear to the heart of the silent, strong men in whom Anglo-Indian novelists typify the white man’s burden. They have made us familiar with all the shibboleths of the school. One must be cruel in order to be kind. If the people in their ignorance did not know what was good for them, heroic remedies must be adopted. The bane of their life is education, not the real education which teaches them to sing “God bless the Squire and his relations” but the kind of education which breeds what Kipling in his graphic way calls the “beggar-taught” which teaches them ideas above their proper stations. It is the cult of efficiency carried to its logical extremes.
Steeped in the highest or in the baser traditions of this school – it is all a question of the point of view—Sir Michael perhaps exhibits its virtues and its defects in their most complete form. He was efficient, with the efficiency of the physician who concentrates on eliminating the symptoms and driving them underground. He handled the Ghadr conspiracy with a quick decision which was admirable – in its way. The conspiracy was not: and the conspirators scattered to the four winds of heaven. It was characteristic of Sir Michael’s methods that he took no steps to meet the causes which produced the conspiracy. Similarly in his dealings with recruiting and the war loan, of which we shall have more to say later on. Suffice it here to say that he was successful, very successful. Eschewing the squeamishness of his weaker fellow-satraps he bent his efforts on the results and let the means justify themselves in the end. In the result, in both recruiting and the war loans, Punjab took a place on which she is entitled to look back with pride. It is at any rate not Sir Michael’s fault if she does not for he has lost no opportunity of rubbing in the superiority of the “Punjab manner” into the rest of India and statistics bore out his boast. Here the day’s work sufficed him. The thing was to get the men and the money. That done the consequences might go hang for all he cared. Unfortunately for him and for the Punjab the consequences followed too closely on the achievement. Sir Michael is from this point of view perhaps one of the few who shared the Junkers’ natural regret that the war could not have lasted a little longer. When a man is bent on getting things done, getting them done quickly and getting them done regardless of consequences, it may easily be imagined how fierce must be his hatred of the formalities of procedure, how impatient he must be of criticism and how in the end he could have arrived at a hatred of what he must have considered hampering influences, amounting to a positive obsession. That, stripped of excessive verbiage, is his conception of the theory of Government as is made evident in the following passage from a speech he made immediately after he took charge of the Province:-“I shall welcome any practical suggestion, as to how Government can discharge more efficiently its primary obligation to secure life and property, and how the people can be roused to a sense of their duty towards the community. All other questions of policy are in my opinion subsidiary to these two and should stand over till these obligations are adequately discharged.” That at any rate is plain speaking, if it is not particularly high thinking. He will have peace even if he had to make a wilderness to secure it and he will have the people recognise their duty to the community – by furnishing recruits and money – if necessary at the point of the bayonet. He did. His policy in these fateful years was one long-drawn hymn of hate against the educated classes who dared imbibe and worse, preach, doctrines not conforming to the simple Old Testament theories of Government of Sir Michael. Sir Michael intended not merely to rule but to govern. He would brook no rival beside the throne; not even an Executive Councillor to shine in reflected glory. To a proposal for an Executive Council in his Province he replies – “The proposal had come upon him as a surprise. The people of the province had from the start been habituated to regard the Lieut. Governor as the sole head of and in the last degree responsible for the administration of the province.” It may be recalled that before the Parliamentary Joint Committee he expressed the opinion that he could not have made his handling of the “rebellion” the shining success that it was had he been obliged to consult colleagues.
The war was to him a God-sent opportunity of strafing the “beggar-taught” to some purpose. Says the Report:-“He abused the powers given to him by the Defence of India Act by prohibiting the entry into the province of Messrs. Tilak and Pal. He interned hundreds of local men with little or no cause. He gagged the vernacular press, prevented the Nationalist papers edited outside the Punjab from circulating in the province, as for instance New India, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the Independent. He prohibited the circulation even of pre-censored vernacular papers and brought a state of things, whereby it became practically impossible for the people of the province to have free interchange of independent views, or a free ventilation of their grievances in the public Press; and then, having prevented free speech and free writing, he allowed himself to think, and gave outsiders to understand that the people of the Punjab were the happiest under his rule”.
Sir Michael’s many speeches, notably the one in the Imperial Council, against the educated classes amply bear out the assertion that his hatred of them had assumed the proportions of a mania. He even quoted Burke – name hated of strong men of his ilk – against giving undue weight to the merely clamant.
His opinion of the politician may be gathered from the following: “It is often stated as an argument for self-government, that there are no religious riots in Native States. For this there are many reasons, but a leading one is that the professional politician does not exist there, or if he does, is not allowed to interfere. The one recent and serious religious disturbance that I am aware of in Native States – between Sunnis and Shiahs in Bhopal – was fomented largely by the interference of a Muhammadan lawyer from Bombay anxious to advertise himself. In the Punjab, though sectarian feeling often runs very high, it rarely leads to riot or bloodshed, because the local authorities know on whom to depend to compose matters. Those are not politicians but quiet men of local influence.”
It is sad to reflect that shorty after these lines must have been penned blood was shed in the Punjab to the tune of many thousands and that the non-political men of local influence were the first to feel the weight of Sir Michael’s hand. If as the Report shows, there was no serious rebellion worth the name; if Sir Michael’s bias against the educated classes amounted to an obsession; if Sir Michael and his myrmidons strained law and justice to connect a political agitation with mob excesses and evolved a full-fledged rebellion; is it too far-fetched to argue that Sir Michael did, consciously and of set purpose, with whatever excellent motives of purging the Punjab of what he considered its bane, magnify a riot into a rebellion in order to wreak vengeance on his enemies, the politicians?
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I