Indian speeches (1907-1909) | Page 6

said the situation was serious, and it was growing worse. In this agitation special attention, it is stated, has been paid to the Sikhs, who, as the House is aware, are among the best soldiers in India, and in the case of Lyallpur, to the military pensioners. Special efforts have been made to secure their attendance at meetings to enlist their sympathies and to inflame their passions. So far the active agitation has been virtually confined to the districts in which the Sikh element is predominant. Printed invitations and leaflets have been principally addressed to villages held by Sikhs; and at a public meeting at Ferozepore, at which disaffection was openly preached, the men of the Sikh regiments stationed there were specially invited to attend, and several hundreds of them acted upon the invitation. The Sikhs were told that it was by their aid, and owing to their willingness to shoot down their fellow countrymen in the Mutiny, that the Englishmen retained their hold upon India. And then a particularly odious line of appeal was adopted. It was asked, "How is it that the plague attacks the Indians and not the Europeans?" "The Government," said these men, "have mysterious means of spreading the plague; the Government spreads the plague by poisoning the streams and wells." In some villages the inhabitants have actually ceased to use the wells. I was informed only the other day by an officer, who was in the Punjab at that moment, that when visiting the settlements, he found the villagers disturbed in mind on this point. He said to his men: "Open up your kits, and let them see whether these horrible pills are in them." The men did as they were ordered, but the suspicion was so great that people insisted upon the glasses of the telescopes being unscrewed, in order to be quite sure that there was no pill behind them.
See the emergency and the risk. Suppose a single native regiment had sided with the rioters. It would have been absurd for us, knowing we had got a weapon there at our hands by law--not an exceptional law, but a standing law--and in the face of the risk of a conflagration, not to use that weapon; and I for one have no apology whatever to offer for using it. Nobody appreciates more intensely than I do the danger, the mischief, and a thousand times in history the iniquity of what is called "reason of State." I know all about that. It is full of mischief and full of danger; but so is sedition, and we should have incurred criminal responsibility if we had opposed the resort to this law.
I do not wish to detain the House with the story of events in Eastern Bengal and Assam. They are of a different character from those in the Punjab, and in consequence of these disturbances the Government of India, with my approval, have issued an Ordinance, which I am sure the House is familiar with, under the authority and in the terms of an Act of Parliament. The course of events in Eastern Bengal appears to have been mainly this--first, attempts to impose the boycott on Mahomedans by force; secondly, complaints by Hindus if the local officials stop them, and by Mahomedans if they do not try to stop them; thirdly, retaliation by Mahomedans; fourthly, complaints by Hindus that the local officials do not protect them from this retaliation; fifthly, general lawlessness of the lower classes on both sides, encouraged by the spectacle of the fighting among the higher classes; sixthly, more complaints against the officials. The result of the Ordinance has been that down to May 29th it had not been necessary to take action in any one of these districts.
I noticed an ironical look on the part of the right hon. Gentleman when I referred with perfect freedom to my assent to the resort to the weapon we had in the law against sedition. I have had communications from friends of mine that, in this assent, I am outraging the principles of a lifetime. I should be ashamed if I detained the House more than two minutes on anything so small as the consistency of my political life. That can very well take care of itself. I began by saying that this is the first time that British democracy in its full strength, as represented in this House, is face to face with the enormous difficulties of Indian Government. Some of my hon. friends look even more in sorrow than in anger upon this alleged backsliding of mine. Last year I told the House that India for a long time to come, so far as my imagination could reach, would be the theatre of absolute and personal government, and that raised some doubts. Reference