ON THE BEACH
It was evening, and the sky was full of the deep and ominous colours
of an Indian sunset in the rains. A hot wind blowing in from the
sea threw the waves in heavy surf upon the sand. Up and down the
long “Marina,” or esplanade, bordered by a few vast public offices
and a few fishermen’s hovels, the last carriages were bearing home
Anglo-Indian ladies or youths comfortably wearied with their polo
and other games. But on the broad, dry sand, between the esplanade
and the surf, a vast circle of people was gathered round a little
platform and chair. They were seated by hundreds on the sand—between
four and five thousand of them altogether—and round the outer edge of
the seated circle hundreds more were standing upright, like the rim
of a flat plate.
When the meeting began their dark and eager faces could still be seen
in the sunset light. The faces disappeared, and only the brilliant
white turbans and white draperies were visible by the flicker of
a big lamp they had fitted upon the platform. The waning moon rose
late and shapeless among heavy clouds, and the dark faces reappeared,
outlined in silver; but still the crowd sat on.
All were men, and most of them were young. They had assembled to
show their joy at the release of Ajit Singh and Lajpat Rai—both
inhabitants of the far-off Punjab, one till lately an unknown youth,
the other till lately hardly known to any one in Madras, and only
known anywhere as a reformer of Hindu superstitions, a man of austere
private life and inexhaustible liberality to his own people.[33] Now
both had been raised by their deportation and imprisonment without
trial to the position of heroes and martyrs, and their recent release
(Nov. 11, 1907) had been greeted with joy throughout the country,
though not with gratitude; for there is no great cause for gratitude
when a wrong-doer undoes the wrong.
Through the middle of the crowd came a line of white-robed students
carrying a yellow banner with a strange device. “Bande Mataram!
Bande Mataram! Hail to the Motherland! we bow before our mother!”
rose the familiar cry from the thousands seated there. But there was
no wild gesticulation, no frantic excess, such as we might imagine
in a fanatical East. A Trafalgar Square crowd is more demonstrative
and unrestrained. Nor was a single soldier or policeman visible,
though the occasion had been publicly announced as a meeting of the
Extremists. In the audience I was of course the only European present.
A little boy with head half shaven and a long tuft of black hair at
the back stood up before the platform, and amid complete silence sang
in his native Tamil the Bengali song of “Bande Mataram,” which has
now become the national song of India. The music is of that queer
Eastern kind, nasal, quavering, full of turns and twists, such as
one may hear from the Adriatic to Burma, and very likely beyond. In
origin I believe it to be Persian; at all events I have heard it
in highest perfection on the Persian frontier and sung by Persian
musicians. Usually—in Greek for instance—the words are rendered
difficult to distinguish owing to the twists and long-drawn phrases,
but in this boy’s singing the words were fairly distinct, and the
repeated cadence gave a certain solemnity.
The words of the song were by a Bengali poet, Bankim Chandra
Chatterji, who introduced it into his historic novel called
“Anandamath,” or “The Abbey of Joy,” a romance upon the rebellion
of the austere Sanyasi Order against the decaying rule of the
Mohammedans in Eastern Bengal when Warren Hastings was the real
power. The best-known translation is by Mr. W. H. Lee, late of
the Indian Civil Service. It is fairly close, but English cannot
reproduce the compression of the original Sanscrit and Bengali mixed:—
“My Motherland, I sing
Her splendid streams, her glorious trees,
The zephyr from the far-off Vindyan heights,
Her fields of waving corn,
The rapturous radiance of her moonlit nights,
The trees in flower that flame afar,
The smiling days that sweetly vocal are,
The happy, blessed Motherland.
Her will by seventy million throats extolled,
Her power twice seventy million arms uphold;
Her strength let no man scorn.
Thou art my head, thou art my heart,
My life and soul art thou,
My song, my worship, and my art,
Before thy feet I bow.
As Durga, scourge of all thy foes,
As Lakshmi, bowered in the flower,
That in the water grows,
As Bani, wisdom, power;
The source of all our might,
Our every temple doth thy form unfold—
Unequalled, tender, happy, pure,
Of splendid streams, of glorious trees,
My Motherland I sing,
The stainless charm that shall endure,
And verdant banks and wholesome breeze,
That with her praises ring.”
It is obviously too tender for a stirring “Marseillaise.” There is
not enough march and thunder either in words or tune to enflame the
soul of trampling hosts. The thunder comes in the cry of “Bande
Mataram!” But the tenderness, the devoted love of country, and the
adoration of motherhood are all characteristic of the Indian mind.
When this national anthem was finished, the Tamil poet of Madras
recited a lament he had written for Lajpat Rai at the time of his
deportation. It was the common lament of exiles—the fond memory of
home, the deep attachment to the land of childhood, the loneliness
of life among strangers and unknown tongues—all very quietly and
simply told. Then by a sudden change, the poet turned to satire,
and described a dialogue between Mr. John Morley and India, on the
subject of Swaraj or Home Rule:—
“You are disunited,” says Mr. Morley; “what have you to do with
Home Rule? You don’t speak the same language, you haven’t got the
same religion; what have you to do with Home Rule? You cannot
fight, you are too fond of law, you are the victims of education;
what have you to do with Home Rule? You are born slaves, you
prostrate yourselves before the Englishman: what have you to do
with Home Rule? You are seditious, you are a prairie on fire, you
are a barrel of gunpowder, you cry for the moon, you are not fit
for a fur coat; what have you to do with Home Rule?”[34]
To which India makes firm and dignified reply. She has tasted
freedom, she has learnt from England herself what freedom is; even
John Morley has been her teacher, and she will not cease to labour
for Swaraj. Having drunk the nectar of freedom, can she turn back to
the palm-tree “toddy” of a Government shop, or cease to labour for
Swaraj? She claims the right of other nations, the rights for which
England herself has fought; she claims the same freedom of person and
of speech, and she will not cease to labour for Swaraj. From north to
south her people are becoming united, from east to west the cry of
“Bande Mataram” goes up, and slowly the sun of freedom is arising: it
may rise slowly, but India will not cease to labour for Swaraj.
The chairman rose, and the darkening air glimmered with the petals of
flowers thrown in handfuls, as the custom is. Round his neck heavy
garlands were hung, pink and white, to match the lesser garlands
which surrounded the photographs of the two national heroes on the
table. He spoke in English, like all the subsequent speakers till
the last. One felt at once how great a contribution to Indian unity
the English rule makes in the gift of a common language which all
educated men can understand, while even in Madras alone four distinct
native languages are spoken. He summarized the history of the last
year of suspicion, repression, deportation, imprisonment, flogging of
boys and students for political causes, and the Seditious Meetings
Act. It was all done without passion or exaggeration, and he ended
with a simple resolution calling on the Government to repeal the
deportation statute as contrary to the rights which England had
secured for herself under the _Habeas Corpus_.
Four speakers supported the resolution, and all spoke with the
same quiet reasonableness, so different from our conception of the
Oriental mind. But for clapping of hands, and occasional shouts
of “Bande Mataram!” or “Jai!” (literally “Victory!” or “Long live
So-and-so!”), the immense crowd remained equally calm. There was
no frenzy, no disorder, no excitement, beyond intense interest and
desire to leave no word unheard. If a speaker was just a shade too
emotional the crowd laughed a little scornfully, just as an English
crowd does. They laughed when one speaker—a well-known writer and
journalist of Madras—just overstepped the limits in recalling,
with tears in his voice, those happy days when as a student he had
sucked the enthusiasm for freedom from John Morley’s own books,
and had learnt to regard him as one of the gods of literature and
liberty, in the same great pantheon with Mill and Burke and Milton.
The crowd knew the man was in earnest, and they applauded, but they
laughed just a little scornfully. For the rest, the speaking was
average straightforward stuff, free from flowers, and even free from
quotations, which are the besetting tendency of many Indian minds.
Indeed, I remember only one quotation—just a hint at a parody on
Mark Antony’s speech, with John Morley and the Liberal Government as
the honourable men.
Only Anglo-Indians could have called the speeches seditious. To a
common type of Anglo-Indian mind any criticism of the Government, any
claim to further freedom, is sedition. But though this was avowedly
a meeting of Extremists, the claim in the speeches was for the
simple human rights that other peoples enjoy—the right to a voice
in their own affairs, and in the spending of their own money. As
to the increased suppression and persecution now overhanging them,
they might well be driven to despair. Other grievances they had long
known, and ever since Lord Curzon came to India their complaints
had been augmented. But they had always kept a belief in England’s
respect for personal rights and freedom, till Mr. Morley, of all
statesmen, came to overthrow it. What was left to hope for now?
So the meeting went on, till four speakers had spoken long, and
the late moon was moving up among the clouds and stars. Then a new
speaker rose—tall, dark, and aged, with clearly cut features, and a
shaven head. His dress was of deep salmon-coloured cotton—saffron,
with a tinge of red—and in one hand he held a wanderer’s staff,
symbolic of control over thought, speech, and action. Once he had
been a rich man, a barrister, a councillor, a leader of public life.
Now he had given away all he possessed. He had discarded the mark
of worship and the sacred thread. Having said farewell to family
and friends, to business, politics, and all transitory things, he
had set off with only a staff to wander through India, begging his
bread and teaching the divine realities, on which he meditated
day and night. To this meeting he had come, not to discuss mortal
justice or the British rule—things that hardly throw a shadow on
the radiance of eternity—but only to say that in his wanderings he
had met with Lajpat Rai, and had found in him a saintly human soul,
simple-hearted, austere, and regardless of possessions. He spoke in
his childhood’s Tamil, and when he had finished speaking he went upon
his way, while the meeting dispersed, and dying shouts of “Bande
Mataram!” mingled with the roaring of the surf.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Introduction, p. 20.
[34] See Introduction, p. 26 ff., Mr. Morley’s speech at Arbroath.