The following is taken from the speech delivered by the Hon. Mr.
Hammond, the officiating Chief Secretary of the Bihar and Orissa
Government, during the recent debate in the Provincial Council on the
political situation. _The Pioneer 1st February, 22._
Has the hon. member read what has just happened in Guntur, in Madras,
where rents are being withheld? Is he aware that not in one but in two
or three districts in the Province there have been refusals to pay
chaukidari taxes; that we have read not one but several speeches
advocating this refusal? May I tell the Council that barely three or
four days ago, in the district of Puri, a Panch assessor was murdered
while endeavouring to collect chaukidari tax? Swami Vidyanand and others
who followed and desclaimed against repressive laws enquired what have
the "volunteers" done? It is a pertinent question, and, with your
permission, Sir, I will give a few instances by way of answer. Time does
not allow me to go through all their nefarious activities, but if Hon.
members want to know what the "volunteers" have done, apart from
enforced _hartal_ and the ordinary common forms of secret intimidation,
ask the widow of the Mahomedan, Mazir Ali Kalal, whose corpse was
exhumed in Ranchi, thrown upon the public road and the face beaten in
with a brick; ask Gopi Khar at Chatra, who on the 3rd January was beaten
and taken with his face blackened through the town because his wife
committed the foul crime of selling food to those who visited liquor
shops. Is that persuasion? Is this _Ahimsa_? ask the woman of Kateya,
Mussammatt Paremia Koerin, near Siwan, who was stripped naked and driven
through the village by a howling mob. She complained as well she might
to the Government police officer, who, when he went to hold an enquiry
was attacked by a mob--a demonstration in force of soul-force! A speaker
later in the debate declaimed against those, the Planters and the
police, whose courage, he said, "took the form of delight in tyrannising
over the poor and of oppressing their fellow-countrymen." I ask in all
sincerity what are these cases I have related but a disgraceful
tyranny; are they not, indeed, 'oppression of the poor?' "What right?" I
shall be asked "have you to lay these crimes at the doors of the
non-co-operation party?" The answer is, that when men publicly oppose
the funeral it is not irrational to believe that they are concerned with
the subsequent exhumation of the corpse. In the other cases I have
mentioned evidence has been taken and there is the judicial finding.