Minto-Morley Reforms

Immediately after the Surat Congress, the British Government decided to crush the revolutionary movement - also known as the Extremist movement - led by the Indian Nationalist Congress. Sri Aurobindo was arrested in May 1908, in the Alipur Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him. At the same time, Lala Lajpat Rai was deported, Tilak was arrested on July 22 and sentenced to six years in prison and Chidambaram Pillai and other leaders from South India were arrested. The moderates in the Congress party were looking frantically for some means to separate themselves from those facing repression. H.A. Wadya, a close associate of Pherozeshah Mehta, declared that the extremists were "the worst enemies of our cause" and said "the union of these men with the Congress is the union of a diseased limb with a healthy body, and the only remedy is surgical severance, if the Congress is to be saved from death by blood poisoning." And quite inevitably, the first Resolution of the Congress in 1908 was passed to tender "its loyal homage to his Gracious Majesty the King-Emperor." While the Congress mildly regretted the deportation and urged the Government to give the deportees a fair trial, it effectively endorsed the black laws of 1908. The resolution reads thus:  "XI. Resolved - That this Congress deplores the circumstances which have led to the passing of Act VII of 1908 and Act XIV of 1908, but having regard to their drastic character and to the fact that a sudden emergency alone can afford any justification for such exceptional legislation, this Congress expresses its earnest hope that these enactments will only have a temporary existence in the Indian Statute Book."  Neither did the Congress pass any resolution on the arrest of Tilak and the stiff sentence of six years imprisonment. But the public reaction to Tilak’s arrest was strong and widespread. In Bombay, there were strikes and police firing and even riots. However as a result of these arrests, the Nationalist wing of the Congress party was crushed. Though they had an emerging mass base, they had as yet a very poor organisational network. The split in Surat forced them out of the Congress before their own linkages were secure; and thereafter, government repression dispersed them before they could pose a challenge to the Congress with an alternative body.

As a result of the strong popular reaction after the Partition of Bengal, Lord Curzon was replaced by Lord Minto as the Viceroy in November 1905; he was assisted by  Lord Morley as the Secretary of State. It was at this time that the British Government came up with the Minto-Morley Reforms. These reforms were first proposed in 1906 but they were finally passed by the British Parliament in 1909. In 1906, even as the Boycott struggle was raging and was being crushed with a heavy hand, the Secretary of State Morley called in the "moderate" leaders for discussions on possible reforms of the Councils. By 1907, the "moderate" leaders were quivering with anticipation at the imminent reforms and by 1908, they were joyous at the Minto-Morley proposals; they expressed "deep and general satisfaction", and praised "the high statesmanship which dictated this act of the Government", and tendered "sincere and grateful thanks" personally to Morley and Minto. These reforms were officially known as the Government of India Act 1909. Its aim was specifically to see how the system of government could be better adapted to meet the requirements and promote the welfare of the different provinces without impairing its strength and unity. It attempted to enlarge the legislative councils and make them more representative. However, it would not be wrong to  say that the Indian Councils Act was actually a farcical exercise in mass deception. It pompously introduced the principle of "elections". What this amounted to was merely a minority of indirectly elected members in the Central Legislative Council and a majority of indirectly elected members in the Provincial Councils. The Councils themselves allowed only some powers of discussion, putting of questions, and sponsoring of resolutions. These Councils had no control over administration or finance, let alone defence or foreign policy. The reforms were made with the express intent of isolating the growing nationalist movement. Lord Morley indeed explained this in a most telling manner to the House of Lords: "There are three classes of people whom we have to consider in dealing with a scheme of this kind. There are the extremists who nurse fanatic dreams that some day they will drive us out of India.... The second group nourishes no hopes of this sort, but hope for autonomy or self-government of the colonial species and pattern. And then the third section of this classification asks for no more than to be admitted to co-operation in our administration.  I believe the effect of the Reforms has been, is being, and will be to draw the second class, who hope for colonial autonomy, into the third class, who will be content with being admitted to a fair and full co-operation.

In   the system of election that was introduced most cynically, a separate electorate for the Muslims was brought in. But despite all the show of reforms, no real responsibility was handed over to the Indian people. In fact, Morley was quite clear as to what his objective was. He said: “If I were attempting to set up a parliamentary system in India, or it could be said that this chapter of reforms led directly or indirectly to the establishment of a parliamentary system in India, I for one would have nothing to do with it”.

But far more serious was the Anglo-Muslim rapprochement. According to M.N. Das:  “the Viceroy’s philosophy, in terms of his advocacy of communal electorates, was to weaken Indian nationalism and in this objective he was singularly successful for when communal conservatism united with an apprehensive imperialism, still at its height, insurmountable obstacles arose to national unity and revolutionary programmes. This was the beginning of the tragedy of Indian nationalism.”

Sri Aurobindo wrote in the Karmayogin on the 11^th November 1909.

“The question of separate representation for the Mohammedan community is one of those momentous issues raised in haste by a statesman unable to appreciate the forces with which he is dealing, which bear fruit no man expected and least of all the ill-advised Frankenstein who was responsible for its creation. .... The Reform scheme is the second act of insanity, which has germinated from the unsound policy of the bureaucracy.  It will cast all India into the melting pot and complete the work of Partition. Our own attitude is clear. We will have no part or lot in reforms, which give no popular majority, no substantive control, no opportunity for Indian capacity and statesmanship, no seed for Indian democratic expansion. We will not for a moment accept separate electorates or separate representation, not because we are opposed to a large Mohammedan influence in popular assemblies when they come but because we will be no party to a distinction which recognizes Hindu and Mohammedan as permanently separate political units and thus precludes the growth of single and indivisible Indian nation. We oppose any such attempt at division whether it comes from an embarrassed Government seeking for political support or from an embittered Hindu community allowing the passions of the moment to obscure their vision of the future.”

Again, he wrote:

 “But the country, the swadesh, which must be the base and fundament of our nationality, is India, a country where Mohammedan and Hindu live intermingled and side by side. …The Mohammedans base their separateness and their refusal to regard themselves as Indians first and Mohammedans afterwards on the existence of great Mohammedan nations to which they feel themselves more akin, in spite of our common birth and blood, than to us. Hindus have no such resource. For good or evil, they are bound to the soil and to the soil alone. They cannot deny their Mother nor can they mutilate her. Our ideal therefore is an Indian Nationalism, largely Hindu in its spirit and traditions, because the Hindu made the land and the people and persists by the greatness of his past, his civilization and his culture and his invincible virility, in holding it, but wide enough also to include the Moslem and his culture and traditions and absorb them into itself.”

Regarding the Hindu- Muslim problem, he wrote:

“Of one thing we may be certain, that Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be effected by political adjustments or Congress flatteries. It must be sought deeper down in the heart and in the mind, for where the causes of disunion are there the remedies must be sought. We shall do well in trying to solve the problem to remember that misunderstanding is the most fruitful cause of our differences, that love compels love and that strength conciliates the strong. We must strive to remove the causes of misunderstanding by a better mutual knowledge and sympathy; we must extend the unfaltering love of the patriot to our Mussulman brother, remembering always that in him too Narayana dwells and to him too our Mother has given a permanent place in her bosom; but we must cease to approach him falsely or flatter out of a selfish weakness and cowardice. We believe this to be the only practical way of dealing with the difficulty. As a political question the Hindu-Muslim problem does not interest us at all, as a national problem it is of supreme importance. We shall make it a main part of our work to place Mohammed and Islam in a new light before our readers to spread juster views of Mohammedan history and civilization, to appreciate the Musulman's place in our national development and the means of harmonizing his communal life with our own, not ignoring the difficulties that stand in the way of the possibilities of brotherhood and mutual understanding. Intellectual sympathy can only draw together, the sympathy of the heart can alone unite. But the one is a good preparation for the other.”

In the twelve months' detention in the Alipur Jail, Sri Aurobindo had spent his time entirely in the practice of Yoga; his inner spiritual life had become the sole preoccupation. In February 1910, as the result of an adesh, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandernagore and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French India. In 1911, the British conceded on the partition question, and Bengal was re-united. Instead of claiming a victory for the people's six years of struggle, the Congress chose this as yet another occasion to extol the virtues of British rule: A Congress spokesman declared that "every heart is beating in unison with reverence and devotion to the British Throne, overflowing with revived confidence in and gratitude towards British statesmanship". Let us now take stock of the results of the Swadeshi movement. The Swadeshi movement was idealistic on one side - no great movement can go without an ideal - but at the same time it was perfectly practical in its aims and methods. The effects of the Swadeshi movement can be summed up thus:  

•      It destroyed the Moderate reformist politics and spread the revolutionary mentality and the ideal of independence;  
  
  
•  It laid the foundations of an Industrial India - not of course wholly industrial – for it recognized the importance of the agricultural class.   
  
  
•   it brought in the commercial classes and the whole educated middle class into the political field - and not the middle class only, while Moderation had touched only a small fringe;   
      
•   It had no time to bring the peasantry, but it had begun the work and Gandhi only carried it farther.
     
• It laid down a method of agitation which Gandhi took up and continued with three or four startling additions, khaddar, Hindiism, Satyagraha - getting beaten with joy, Khilafat, Harijan etc. With the departure of Sri Aurobindo to Pondicherry and the imprisonment of Tilak, the second phase of the Freedom Struggle ended.

The movement of 1905 in Bengal pursued a quite new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. We must not forget, however, that in the first stages these movements followed in their superficial thought the old motives of an objective and mostly political self-consciousness.                                                                                            SriAurobindo

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