THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS.
He set up conclusions to the number of nine thousand seven hundred
and sixty-four ... he went afterwards to the Sorbonne, where he
maintained argument against the theologians for the space of six
weeks, from four o’clock in the morning till six in the evening,
except for an interval of two hours to refresh themselves and take
their repasts, and at this were present the greatest part of the
lords of the court, the masters of request, presidents,
counsellors, those of the accompts, secretaries, advocates, and
others; as also the sheriffs of the said town.
--_Pantagruel._
“The Bengal Legislative Council is sitting now. You will find it in an
octagonal wing of Writers’ Buildings: straight across the _maidan_. It’s
worth seeing.” “What are they sitting on?” “Municipal business. No end
of a debate.” So much for trying to keep low company. The long-shore
loafers must stand over. Without doubt this Council is going to hang
some one for the state of the City, and Sir Steuart Bayley will be chief
executioner. One does not come across Councils every day.
Writers’ Buildings are large. You can trouble the busy workers of
half-a-dozen departments before you stumble upon the black-stained
staircase that leads to an upper chamber looking out over a populous
street. Wild _chuprassis_ block the way. The Councillor Sahibs are
sitting, but anyone can enter. “To the right of the Lât Sahib’s chair,
and go quietly.” Ill-mannered minion! Does he expect the awe-stricken
spectator to prance in with a jubilant warwhoop or turn Catherine-wheels
round that sumptuous octagonal room with the blue-domed roof? There are
gilt capitals to the half pillars, and an Egyptian patterned
lotus-stencil makes the walls decorously gay. A thick-piled carpet
covers all the floor, and must be delightful in the hot weather. On a
black wooden throne, comfortably cushioned in green leather, sits Sir
Steuart Bayley, Ruler of Bengal. The rest are all great men, or else
they would not be there. Not to know them argues one’s self unknown.
There are a dozen of them, and sit six-a-side at two slightly curved
lines of beautifully polished desks. Thus Sir Steuart Bayley occupies
the frog of a badly made horse-shoe split at the toe. In front of him,
at a table covered with books and pamphlets and papers, toils a
secretary. There is a seat for the Reporters, and that is all. The
place enjoys a chastened gloom, and its very atmosphere fills one with
awe. This is the heart of Bengal, and uncommonly well upholstered. If
the work matches the first-class furniture, the inkpots, the carpet, and
the resplendent ceiling, there will be something worth seeing. But where
is the criminal who is to be hanged for the stench that runs up and down
Writers’ Buildings staircases, for the rubbish heaps in the Chitpore
Road, for the sickly savor of Chouringhi, for the dirty little tanks at
the back of Belvedere, for the street full of smallpox, for the reeking
gharri-stand outside the Great Eastern, for the state of the stone and
dirt pavements, for the condition of the gullies of Shampooker, and for
a hundred other things?
“This, I submit, is an artificial scheme in supersession of Nature’s
unit, the individual.” The speaker is a slight, spare native in a flat
hat-turban, and a black alpaca frock-coat. He looks like a _vakil_ to
the boot-heels, and, with his unvarying smile and regulated
gesticulation, recalls memories of up-country courts. He never
hesitates, is never at a loss for a word, and never in one sentence
repeats himself. He talks and talks and talks in a level voice, rising
occasionally half an octave when a point has to be driven home. Some of
his periods sound very familiar. This, for instance, might be a
sentence from the _Mirror_: “So much for the principle. Let us now
examine how far it is supported by precedent.” This sounds bad. When a
fluent native is discoursing of “principles” and “precedents,” the
chances are that he will go on for some time. Moreover, where is the
criminal, and what is all this talk about abstractions? They want
shovels, not sentiments, in this part of the world.
A friendly whisper brings enlightenment: “They are plowing through the
Calcutta Municipal Bill--plurality of votes you know; here are the
papers.” And so it is! A mass of motions and amendments on matters
relating to ward votes. Is _A_ to be allowed to give two votes in one
ward and one in another? Is section 10 to be omitted, and is one man to
be allowed one vote and no more? How many votes does three hundred
rupees’ worth of landed property carry? Is it better to kiss a post or
throw it in the fire? Not a word about carbolic acid and gangs of
_domes_. The little man in the black _choga_ revels in his subject. He
is great on principles and precedents, and the necessity of
“popularizing our system.” He fears that under certain circumstances
“the status of the candidates will decline.” He riots in
“self-adjusting majorities,” and the “healthy influence of the educated
middle classes.”
For a practical answer to this, there steals across the council chamber
just one faint whiff. It is as though some one laughed low and bitterly.
But no man heeds. The Englishmen look supremely bored, the native
members stare stolidly in front of them. Sir Steuart Bayley’s face is as
set as the face of the Sphinx. For these things he draws his pay, and
his is a low wage for heavy labor. But the speaker, now adrift, is not
altogether to be blamed. He is a Bengali, who has got before him just
such a subject as his soul loveth--an elaborate piece of academical
reform leading no-whither. Here is a quiet room full of pens and papers,
and there are men who must listen to him. Apparently there is no time
limit to the speeches. Can you wonder that he talks? He says “I submit”
once every ninety seconds, varying the form with “I do submit.” “The
popular element in the electoral body should have prominence.” Quite so.
He quotes one John Stuart Mill to prove it. There steals over the
listener a numbing sense of nightmare. He has heard all this before
somewhere--yea; even down to J. S. Mill and the references to the “true
interests of the ratepayers.” He sees what is coming next. Yes, there
is the old Sabha Anjuman journalistic formula--“Western education is an
exotic plant of recent importation.” How on earth did this man drag
Western education into this discussion? Who knows? Perhaps Sir Steuart
Bayley does. He seems to be listening. The others are looking at their
watches. The spell of the level voice sinks the listener yet deeper into
a trance. He is haunted by the ghosts of all the cant of all the
political platforms of Great Britain. He hears all the old, old vestry
phrases, and once more he smells the smell. _That_ is no dream. Western
education is an exotic plant. It is the upas tree, and it is all our
fault. We brought it out from England exactly as we brought out the ink
bottles and the patterns for the chairs. We planted it and it
grew--monstrous as a banian. Now we are choked by the roots of it
spreading so thickly in this fat soil of Bengal. The speaker continues.
Bit by bit. We builded this dome, visible and invisible, the crown of
Writers’ Buildings, as we have built and peopled the buildings. Now we
have gone too far to retreat, being “tied and bound with the chain of
our own sins.” The speech continues. We made that florid sentence. That
torrent of verbiage is ours. We taught him what was constitutional and
what was unconstitutional in the days when Calcutta smelt. Calcutta
smells still, but we must listen to all that he has to say about the
plurality of votes and the threshing of wind and the weaving of ropes of
sand. It is our own fault absolutely.
The speech ends, and there rises a gray Englishman in a black
frock-coat. He looks a strong man, and a worldly. Surely he will say:
“Yes, Lala Sahib, all this may be true talk, but there’s a _burra krab_
smell in this place, and everything must be _safkaroed_ in a week, or
the Deputy Commissioner will not take any notice of you in _durbar_.” He
says nothing of the kind. This is a Legislative Council, where they call
each other “Honorable So-and-So’s.” The Englishman in the frock-coat
begs all to remember that “we are discussing principles, and no
consideration of the details ought to influence the verdict on the
principles.” Is he then like the rest? How does this strange thing come
about? Perhaps these so English office fittings are responsible for the
warp. The Council Chamber might be a London Board-room. Perhaps after
long years among the pens and papers its occupants grow to think that it
really is, and in this belief give _résumés_ of the history of Local
Self-Government in England.
The black frock-coat, emphasizing his points with his spectacle-case,
is telling his friends how the parish was first the unit of
self-government. He then explains how burgesses were elected, and in
tones of deep fervor announces: “Commissioners of Sewers are elected in
the same way.” Whereunto all this lecture? Is he trying to run a motion
through under cover of a cloud of words, essaying the well-known
“cuttle-fish trick” of the West?
He abandons England for a while, and _now_ we get a glimpse of the
cloven hoof in a casual reference to Hindus and Mahomedans. The Hindus
will lose nothing by the complete establishment of plurality of votes.
They will have the control of their own wards as they used to have. So
there is race-feeling, to be explained away, even among these beautiful
desks. Scratch the Council, and you come to the old, old trouble. The
black frock-coat sits down, and a keen-eyed, black-bearded Englishman
rises with one hand in his pocket to explain his views on an alteration
of the vote qualification. The idea of an amendment seems to have just
struck him. He hints that he will bring it forward later on. He is
academical like the others, but not half so good a speaker. All this is
dreary beyond words. Why do they talk and talk about owners and
occupiers and burgesses in England and the growth of autonomous
institutions when the city, the great city, is here crying out to be
cleansed? What has England to do with Calcutta’s evil, and why should
Englishmen be forced to wander through mazes of unprofitable argument
against men who cannot understand the iniquity of dirt?
A pause follows the black-bearded man’s speech. Rises another native, a
heavily-built Babu, in a black gown and a strange head-dress. A snowy
white strip of cloth is thrown _jharun_-wise over his shoulders. His
voice is high, and not always under control. He begins: “I will try to
be as brief as possible.” This is ominous. By the way, in Council there
seems to be no necessity for a form of address. The orators plunge _in
medias res_, and only when they are well launched throw an occasional
“Sir” toward Sir Steuart Bayley, who sits with one leg doubled under him
and a dry pen in his hand. This speaker is no good. He talks, but he
says nothing, and he only knows where he is drifting to. He says: “We
must remember that we are legislating for the Metropolis of India, and
therefore we should borrow our institutions from large English towns,
and not from parochial institutions.” If you think for a minute, that
shows a large and healthy knowledge of the history of Local
Self-Government. It also reveals the attitude of Calcutta. If the city
thought less about itself as a metropolis and more as a midden, its
state would be better. The speaker talks patronizingly of “my friend,”
alluding to the black frock-coat. Then he flounders afresh, and his
voice gallops up the gamut as he declares, “and therefore that makes all
the difference.” He hints vaguely at threats, something to do with the
Hindus and the Mahomedans, but what he means it is difficult to
discover. Here, however, is a sentence taken _verbatim_. It is not
likely to appear in this form in the Calcutta papers. The black
frock-coat had said that if a wealthy native “had eight votes to his
credit, his vanity would prompt him to go to the polling-booth, because
he would feel better than half-a-dozen _gharri-wans_ or petty traders.”
(Fancy allowing a _gharri-wan_ to vote! He has yet to learn how to
drive!) Hereon the gentleman with the white cloth: “Then the complaint
is that influential voters will not take the trouble to vote. In my
humble opinion, if that be so, adopt voting papers. _That_ is the way to
meet them. In the same way--The Calcutta Trades’ Association--you
abolish all plurality of votes: and that is the way to meet _them_.”
Lucid, is it not? Up flies the irresponsible voice, and delivers this
statement: “In the election for the House of Commons plurality are
allowed for persons having interest in different districts.” Then
hopeless, hopeless fog. It is a great pity that India ever heard of
anybody higher than the heads of the Civil Service. The country appeals
from the _Chota_ to the _Burra Sahib_ all too readily as it is. Once
more a whiff. The gentleman gives a defiant jerk of his shoulder-cloth,
and sits down.
Then Sir Steuart Bayley: “The question before the Council is,” etc.
There is a ripple of “Ayes” and “Noes,” and the “Noes” have it, whatever
it may be. The black-bearded gentleman springs his amendment about the
voting qualifications. A large senator in a white waistcoat, and with a
most genial smile, rises and proceeds to smash up the amendment. Can’t
see the use of it. Calls it in effect rubbish. The black frock-coat
rises to explain his friend’s amendment, and incidentally makes a funny
little slip. He is a knight, and his friend has been newly knighted. He
refers to him as “Mister.” The black _choga_, he who spoke first of all,
speaks again, and talks of the “_sojorner_ who comes here for a little
time, and then leaves the land.” Well it is for the black _choga_ that
the sojourner does come, or there would be no comfy places wherein to
talk about the power that can be measured by wealth and the intellect
“which, sir, I submit, cannot be so measured.” The amendment is lost,
and trebly and quadruply lost is the listener. In the name of sanity and
to preserve the tattered shirt-tails of a torn illusion, let us escape.
This is the Calcutta Municipal Bill. They have been at it for several
Saturdays. Last Saturday Sir Steuart Bayley pointed out that at their
present rate they would be about two years in getting it through. Now
they will sit till dusk, unless Sir Steuart Bayley, who wants to see
Lord Connemara off, puts up the black frock-coat to move an adjournment.
It is not good to see a Government close to. This leads to the formation
of blatantly self-satisfied judgments, which may be quite as wrong as
the cramping system with which we have encompassed ourselves. And in the
streets outside Englishmen summarize the situation brutally, thus: “The
whole thing is a farce. Time is money to us. We can’t stick out those
everlasting speeches in the municipality. The natives choke us off, but
we know that if things get too bad the Government will step in and
interfere, and so we worry along somehow.” Meantime Calcutta continues
to cry out for the bucket and the broom.