Indian National Congress

“ If by agitation a Viceroy enjoying the full confidence of the British Government, with a powerful Parliamentary majority behind it, could be compelled by the British community in India, largely consisting of public servants, to surrender a great principle of policy, then the only hope for Indians was to learn to agitate in their own interests, and to create a political organisation of their own in order both to educate public opinion in India and influence public opinion in England. The men who started the Indian National Congress were inspired by no revolutionary ambitions. ”

“ The Indian National Congress is the natural outcome. There, representatives of races which a hundred years ago made war on one another, of castes that never either eat together or intermarry, now fraternise in one peaceful assembly, inspired by the novel idea that they are citizens. The Congress meets annually in December in one or other of the cities of India. ”

“ We do not agree with Mr. Gokhale that “no Indian could have started the Indian National Congress” and that “if the founder of the Congress had not been a great Englishman and a distinguished ex-official, such was the official distrust of political agitation in those days that the authorities would have at once found some way or other to suppress the movement.” ”

“ That many members of the Congress take part also in social reform conferences and are fully alive to the importance of social reform cannot alter the fact that, by turning its corporate back upon the cause they have at heart, the Indian National Congress has arrested instead of promoting one of the most promising movements to which Western education had given birth. ”

“ The Indian National Congress itself, as it represented mainly those classes, naturally displayed the same tendencies, and for a long time it devoted its energies to so-called political problems rather than to practical economic questions. Hence the almost complete failure of the Western-educated Indian to achieve any marked success in commercial and industrial undertakings, and nowhere has that failure been more complete than in Bengal, where it would be difficult to quote more than one really brilliant exception. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS. It is impossible to acquit the Congress of having contributed to the growth of active and violent unrest, though the result may have lain far both from the purpose of its chief originators and from the desire of the majority of its members. Western education has largely failed in India because the Indian, not unnaturally, fails to bring an education based upon conceptions entirely alien to the world in which he moves into any sort of practical relation with his own life. ”

“ The Indian National Congress has at all times contained many men of high character and ability, devoted to what they conceived to be the best interests of their country, and at first, at any rate, quite ready to acknowledge the benefits of British rule and to testify to their conviction that the maintenance of British rule is essential to the welfare and safety of India. ”

“ On broader grounds still the Congress could never be called National in the Western democratic sense of the term, for whatever exceptions it may have been willing to make in favour of individuals, there can be no question of popular representation in India so long as the Hindu caste system prevails, under which whole classes numbering millions and millions are regarded and treated as beyond the pale and actually "untouchable." ”

“ For fifty years the Indian has followed a devious and uncertain trail, in the fond hope that he might reach his journey’s end. If men and women, who through unintentional ignorance have given no heed to the welfare of our red Americans, will interest their Representatives in Congress, and also help to crystallize public opinion against further harmful legislation, it is quite possible that the National Commission plan may be carried into effect. ”

“ He took a special interest in questions relating to India, and interested himself so deeply in the social and political condition of the natives that he was known as 'the member for India.' In 1889 he attended the Indian national congress at Bombay, and was received with great honour. ”

“ This matter will be made the subject of a special message, placing before Congress all the facts which have come to my knowledge.
The relation of the Five Civilized Tribes now occupying the Indian Territory to the United States is not, I believe, that best calculated to promote the highest advancement of these Indians. That there should be within our borders five independent states having no relations, except those growing out of treaties, with the Government of the United States, no representation in the National Legislature, its people not citizens, is a startling anomaly. ”

“ The condition of things in that quarter requires the serious and immediate consideration of Congress, and the adoption of such wise and vigorous laws as will be competent to the preservation of the national character and of the peace made under the authority of the United States with the several Indian tribes. Experience demonstrates that the existing legal provisions are entirely inadequate to those great objects. ”

“ Our disregard of all the public protests against the Partition of Bengal and all the persistent appeals for its withdrawal; our disregard of the reasonable pleading of such men as Mr. Gokhale and Dr. Rash Behari Ghose in the Viceroy’s Council, have perhaps done more than anything else to discredit the methods of the old Congress. I do not mean that the Congress has been useless. It served as a training ground for political knowledge. It afforded a centre for the growing unity of India, and without it the leaders of Indian reform could hardly have formulated their own programme. ”

“ Under the very system of government which is supposed to secure to all men an active participation in its benefits, the Indian's vital interests—establishment upon good land, with protection and equality of opportunity during his long endeavor to adopt the new civilization—are hopelessly entangled with the merely sordid, commercial side of national legislation. In all the conglomerate mass that makes up the nation, he is the only human factor without representation by vote ”

“ Every year from 1000 to 2000 Indians signify their desire of becoming citizens by taking allotments. The right of Indians to sue and be sued in both Federal and State courts is well recognized, and they are frequently given the right of suffrage by the States in which they reside. At the present time there are estimated to be over 20,000 Indian voters in the United States. The Constitution confers upon Congress the power to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes, and until the year 1871 the common method of dealing with them was by treaty through the agency of special commissioners. ”

“ It is conformable to the uniform practice of the Government before the adoption of the Constitution, and amounts to a distinct recognition by Congress at that early day of the doctrine that that instrument had not varied the powers of the Federal Government over Indian affairs from what they were under the Articles of Confederation. It is not believed that there is a single instance in the legislation of the country in which the Indians have been regarded as possessing political rights independent of the control and authority of the States within the limits of which they resided. ”

“ The truth is that the Indians are earning the right to be regarded as worthy fellow-subjects in more ways than one. The battle-field has always formed the short cut to an honourable equality among races. But the Indians are also proving their title to our respect by the slower and more difficult methods of civil life. There was a greater experiment made in the constitutional government of dependencies than the expansion of the Indian Legislative Council on a partially elective basis three years ago. ”

“ The Bill under discussion is intended to deal with a remote and probable and possible danger. A danger is really assumed which does not exist. His Honour, Sir John Robinson, in moving the second reading of the Bill, based his fears about the danger of the European vote being swamped by the Indian vote on three grounds, viz.:
1. The fact that the petition to Her Majesty’s Government in connection with the Franchise Act, repealed by the present Bill, was signed by nearly 9,000 Indians. 2. The approaching general election in the Colony. 3. The existence of the Natal Indian Congress. ”

“ The policy of congress has evidently been to vest in the inhabitants of the Indian country such power of self-government as was though to be consistent with the safety of the white population with which they may have come in contact, and to encourage them as far as possible in raising themselves to our standard of civilization. ”

“ If not, it must embrace every thing, and all the objects of legislation. If not limited by existing laws, or if it repeals the laws that clash with it, or if the Legislature is obliged to repeal the laws so clashing, then the Legislative power in fact resides in the President and Senate, and they can, by employing an Indian tribe, pass any law under the color of Treaty. ”

“ They admit that:
“If responsible government is to be established in India there will be a far greater need than is even dreamt of at present for persons to take part in public affairs in the legislative assemblies and elsewhere; and for this reason the more Indians we can employ in the public services the better. Moreover, it would lessen the burden of Imperial responsibilities if a body of capable Indian administrators could be produced. We regard it as necessary, therefore, that recruitment of a largely increased proportion of Indians should be begun at once.” ”

“ Nor is the Congress any more representative of the toiling masses that are not "unclean." No measures have been more bitterly assailed in the Congress than those which, like the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900, were framed and have operated for the benefit of the agricultural and other humbler classes—i.e., of the real "people of India," in whose name the Congress speaks so loudly and with so little title. ”

“ The attitude of educated Indians to the British Government of India, and to Anglo-Indians as a body, is that of a political opposition, ignorant of many pertinent facts, divided from the party in power by racial and religious differences, and with no visible prospect of succeeding to office. The National Congress is the permanent Opposition in India. A permanent Opposition cannot but be biassed, and its press will seize at everything that will justify the feeling of hostility. ”

“ So long as the country fluctuates in an alternation of sentimental and brutal impulses, according as the wrongs done to the Indian or the wrongs done by him are at the moment more distinctly in mind, it cannot be wondered at that Congress should be reluctant to undertake the re-organization of the Indian service on any large and lasting plan, or that the Indian Office should hesitate to cut out for itself more work than it can look to make up in the interval between sessions. ”

“ This policy, if adopted and supported by Congress, and carried out with wisdom and firmness, will in my opinion gradually bring about a solution of the Indian problem, without injustice to the Indians, and also without obstructing the development of the country. It will raise them to a level of civilization at least equal to that of the civilized tribes in the Indian Territory, and probably to a higher one, considering the stimulus of individual ownership in land. ”

“ The outlook at present is gloomy so far as the internal work of the Congress is concerned. Members do not possess half the enthusiasm that was displayed in 1895 and 1896. Subscriptions in all the outlying districts have become considerably overdue. It would, however, be hardly fair to attribute this apparent neglect of the Congress work to wilful apathy on the part of the members. The Indian community have passed and have been passing not only through serious political troubles but have also, with the other communities, severely suffered from those of the war. ”

“ And even for the purpose of determining the extent of congressional regulatory power over the tribes and dependent communities of Indians, it is ordinarily for Congress, not the Court, to determine whether or not a particular Indian group retains the characteristics constitutionally requisite to confer the power. ”

“ If that question could be decided by applying the principles of English politics to India, the solution would be comparatively easy, but few people who have any knowledge of Indian matters would dream of suggesting such a solution. A movement has been in progress for some years past to urge the claims of the natives of India to representation in the government of their country, and the demands of the supporters of this movement have taken shape in the programme of the so called Native Congress. ”

“ After a few preliminary meetings had been held on Messrs Dada Abdulla’s premises, the Natal Indian Congress was formally established on the 22nd August amidst great enthusiasm. All the leading members of the Indian community joined the Congress. ”

“ The people earnestly desire justice for the Indian—of this there is no question. Congress is made up of the people's representatives, and Congress, ignoring the general sentiment, has from 1789 to 1904 persistently, steadily borne down upon the Indian in the interest of the few in the Indian country. ”

“ Congress is constitutionally competent to extend the laws of the United States at once over every Indian tribe within the Territories, if not within the States of the Union, even though treaties may guarantee to individual tribes complete and perpetual political independence ”