Thanks of Congress

X, Resolved — That in view to his approaching departure, this
Congi'ess puts on record an expression of the high sense entertained,
not only in the Bombay Presidency but throughout India, of the
ability, integrity and impartiality that have characterised Lord
Rcay's administration, as also of the gratitude which the whole
countrj' feels to be his due for the sympathy that he has ever ex-
tended to Indian aspirations and efforts.

XV. Resolved — That the Fifth Indian National Congress
hereby tenders its heart-felt thanks to its President, Sir William
Wedderburn, as well for his ready sacrifice of personal and political
considerations involved by his journey from England to India, as
for that courtesy, im])artiality and never failing sympathy, which
characteristics of his long and honourable career as an official of
this coniitry, have marked his control of the proceedings of this
assembly.

Formal

XIV. Resolved — That the Sixth Indian National Congress
do assemble at some City in Bengal, the exact place to be fixed
hereafter, on the 26th of December, 1890.

XII. Resolved— That Mr. A. 0. Hume, C.B., be re-elected
General Secretary of the National Indian Congress for the ensuing
year.



96 HOW INDIA WROUfiHT FOR FREEDOM

CHARLES BRADLAUGH, M.P.

The presentation of the Couufress address to Mr.
Charles Bradlaugh, M.P., took place on the same
evening, December 28th, at 7 p.m. The table on
the platform — 18 feet by 4^ feet — was piled up from
end to end with addresses in caskets of Indian work,
rugs, mats, carvings, sent from every part of India,
In-ought in many case.s by poor men, who had come
hundreds of miles to give them. Characteristically,
he would not accept valuable gifts, such as a splendid
Kashmir shawl. Mr. Pherozeshah Mehta was voted
to the chair, and made a brief speech, voicing India's
love and gratitude for '' the high and unselfish endea-
vours " of one who was a stranger to them, to
promote India's " welfare, its prosperity and its best
interests '\

Sir William Wedderlmrn i-ead the address of the
Congress :

To Charles T3riullnnL;li, Esq., Member for Nortlianiptoii
in tlie Parliament of Great Britain and Ireliuid.

Sir, — On behalf of the Fiftli Indian National Congress,
assembled at B()nil)ay, we bef>- to offer you our united and
most lu'ai'tfelt welcome, and through you we desire to
convey our thanks to tlie (^lectors of Nortlumipton who
have permitted you to esjxmsc the cause of India.

You come to us a straiii^er in person, not repute. Kor
your disinterested advocacy of the claims (founded on the
unaiisweral)le demands of Iniman progre.ss and the solemn
promises of tlieir Queen) preferred by millions— -whose
appeals for justice liave evoked a widespi'ead response
since you a)'oused the people of Great Uritain into a
sympatlietic i-ecoonitiiin nf Indiii's needs will eiislirine



THE FIFTH CONGRESS 97

your name for all time in the proudest and most imperish-
able of huma.n homes, the hearts and traditions of a
loving- and a grateful race.

Brilliant as was the tribute of national respect which
your illness elicited from the fellow-countrymen who for
long years had been the daily spectators of your labours
and your triumphs in England, you have won, Sir, in the
mental distress and prayerful anxiety with which the
population of India followed you in the tribulation of your
sickness, a homage the more unique and tender that it is
not matched in the recorded history of any living states-
man. They have appreciated the unflinching courage
with which, throughout your political career, you have
confronted error and have championed truth. You have
enchained their admiration by your inalienable fidelity to
the popular cause.

Proud in your possession of such qualities, and
thankful for your efforts in our cause, we trust that you
may be spared to complete the great work j'ou have
begun, and to read the vindication of your generous
interpretation of our political aspirations, as well in the
ever closer union of India and of England, as in the
quickened vigour and expanding energies of a country
regenerated by the partial redemption of pledges too
long permitted to remain unfulfilled. — We have, etc.

In reply, Mr. Bradlaugh said :

Sir William, and Delegates of the Indian National
Congress, I thank you not so much for myself, for I have
not yet deserved the tribute you pay me. I thank you
for my Electors, without whom I should not have the
right to do all the work I do. And in their name, and
because I believe that their example will be followed
by other constituencies, I feel grateful to you, and only
do not translate my gratitude into words because no words
can express what I feel.

A few of the caskets only were taken up, as
. specimens of all, and a few of the articles of Indian
9



98 HOW IKDIA WROUGHT FOR FREEDOM

manufacture were presented, and a list of some of
the places, sending addresses and gifts, was read. An
hour Avas occupied in even this slight summarising,
for, as the Report says, " there was scarcely a town
of any size " from which an address had not been
sent. Mr. Bradlaugh then rose and said :

Friends, fellow-subjefts, and fellow-citizens ! I ad-
dress you as friends, for the g-reeting you have given me
entitles me to use the same language to you as I would
use to those at home, and you have made me feel since I
have been in Bombay that the word " home " has a wider
significance than I had given it. I have learned that if
1 have only a little home, I have a larger one in.j'our
sympathies and in your affections, and, as I trust to de-
serve by future work, in your love. I address yoti as
fellow-subjects ; we are here loyal to one rule with the
best of loyalty. That is no real loyalty which is only
blind submission. Real loyalty means that the governed
"he.lp the governors *T:»y leaving lifEte for the Government
to do. Real loyalty means that the claim of right is
made with the consciousness of duty ; and I feel proud to
"be a fellow-subject with you in the hope that the phrase
fellow-citizens may grow into a reality even l)efore my
life-time ends. I pray your indulgence to-night, for
it is the first speech I liave made since I looked into the
blackness of the grave, and I am not sure how far I can
trust my tongue to interpret what I would wish to say.
Of one thing I am sure, you have overrated alike my work
and my ability. (No, No.) I pray you, be as indulgent to
me as you have been generous ; and if you disagree with
what I say, let me say it in my own poor fashion, so that
you may find at least my meaning clear to you. I am
only here as a visitor l)y your courtesy, a member of a
great assem1)ly, tlie Mother of Parliaments in the world,
of which 1 am one of the poorest members ; and as to any
force that I may luive had in advocating the cause of
those to whom I beh)ng at home, let me say 1 was sorry
to hear tliat I w.is lliaukcd foi' my work in the })opuhir



THE FIFTH CONGRESS 99

cause. For whom should I work, if not for the people ?
Born of the people, trusted by the people, I will die
of the people. And I know no geographical or race
liuaitations. If the Nationality — pardon the word — to
which I am proud to belong has raised its Empire, the
rule carries with it the duty on the part of every citizen
to recognise that which I recognise in you, a lawful con-
stitutional association for the assertion of your just claims
and for the advancement of your homes and interests.

I will ask you not to expect too much. One
man is only a water-drop in the ocean of human life :
you are the breeze driving the water-drop on the
western side of the seas and, by your encouragement,
adding others to it, and giving it a force that shall wash
it into the old rock of prejudice that hindered, you will
make those on the other side hear, as I have heard, the
clear English sounds, which show that you share our
language, our traditions, and our hopes, and are willing
to work with us and to make common cause w^ith us.

Not only do not expect too much, but do not expect
all at once. Great as this assembly is in its suggestive-
ness, by its delegates travelling hundreds and thousands
of miles, you are yet only the water-drop of the two
hundred and ten millions whom you number under our
Empire, yours and mine — not mine against yours, not
English against Indian, but our common Empire for
common purposes. Don't be disappointed if, of a just
claim, only something is conceded. It is new, but shall
be every day coming ; it is new, but you have those who
stand in the House of Commons to plead for you ; not I
alone, but members as devoted to you as I can possibly
be ; and I hope soon to see added to their ranks, with the
authority of his knowledge and of the position which his
presiding here has given him — Sir William Wedderburn.
I would remind you, as an encouragement to you to be
patient, that in England great reforms have always been
slowly won. Those who first enterprised them were
called seditious, and sometimes sent to gaol as criminals ;
but the speech and thought lived on. No imprisonment
can crush a truth ; it may hinder it for a moment, it may



100 HOW INDIA WROUGHT FOR FREEDOM

delay it for an hour, but it gets an electric elasticity
inside the dungeon walls, and it grows, and moves the
whole world when it conies out. Your presence here
to-day confutes and answers in anticipation one sneer
that I have heard spoken within tlie walls of Parliament.
It is said : " There is no Indian Nation, there can be no
Indian National Congress ; there is no Indian people,
there are only two hundred millions of diverse races and
diverse creeds." The lesson I read here is that this
Congress movement is an educational movement, hammer-
ing upon the anvil of millions of men's brains, until it
welds into one common Avhole men whose desire for
political and social reforms is greater than all distinctions
of race and creed.

It will be my duty, as it is my right, to present to
Parliament directly I get back, on the very day of its
opening, the claim you make to have the Bill considered.
On the second day the Bill will be introduced. For so
much I can answer ; but I can answer for nothing more.
I think it is possible the Government may introduce
some Bill themselves. If they do, it will take precedence
of, but it will not avoid, the one you have charged me
with ; because the Grovernment Bill, in Committee, will
come under the discussion of Parliament on every one
of the propositions that you desire in the Bill you have
charged me with. It is not easy work. There are
differences ; and I have been glad to see that you can
meet and discuss differences as you have done. You
have shown that you can meet together and listen to one
another, and that you are Avorthy of public trust, and
the right of electing and being elected, to help to make
the laws which you so discuss.

Then you may take it that on your own Bill, or the
Government Bill, this decision of the House of Commons
will be taken. You can help that decision ; j^ou have a
constitutional right, not of coming into the House and
l)eing heard yourselves, but of sending your petitions
there from every division, from far oft" Sindh, from every
part ; and I would ask you, if you want to make me
really your mouthpiece in that House, send signatures



r



THE FIFTH CONGRESS 101



to petitions which you understand, by the thousand, by
the hundred thousand, by the million, if you can, so that
India's people may kneel — and there is no shame in
kneeling — on the threshold where the Mother of Parlia-
ments sits, and ask that she may do the same justice to
those six, seven or eight thousand miles away that she
has done to those who can assemble and make themselves
heard with the living- voice.

We — you will permit me to say " we " although I
am only a guest — are here engaged in no seditious move-
ment. We are not even seeking (though if we did, there
would be no great crime in the high endeavour) to
transplant the democratic Institutions of England to this
land. We are only seeking in the hill which is hard to
climb, to carve steps in which the strongest may stand,
and through coming generations help the weaker brethren
to higher posts. It is said that there are many who
stand aloof from this movement. I, looking at you,
wonder that in its infancy so many have joined in it. It
is said that there are influential men of this party and
of that who have not yet come. Oh ! but the sun's
rays grow as the sun rises. You are the dawn ; I see the
day ; and I do not count the rays which are yet below the
horizon, but I take account of the gilding of the clouds
from the rays that I see.

I feel that I should like to have the title that some
have given me in sneer, and some in hearty meaning, of
" Member for India ". Dead men, whose measure I
cannot hope to cope with, have partly held that title.
But I should love to hold it, not simply by great efforts
made on great occasions, Ijut by simple doings whenever
there is injustice to be touched. I know how little one
can do, but little though one man can do, I will tell you
what he can do. When, after rain and storm, the waters
have gathered, one man may make a little boring through
which the water begins to percolate that washes all
away ; and I will try to be that one m.an, leaving
greater ones than I can ever be to swim on the tide when
the water flows.



102 now INDIA wROiionr i'X)ii fijeedom

I am here, because I believe you loyal to tlie law vvliii^li
I am bound to support. I am here, because I beh'evo you
wish, as we in hjUfyhmd have done, to win witliin the
limits of the Constitution the most perl'ect ecjuality and
rii^ht for all. I have no riglit to offer advice to you ; but
if 1 had, and if I dared, 1 would say to you, men from
lands almost as scpai-ate, althou<j;h within your own con-
tinent, as Knoland is from you ; 1 would say to you,
men with race traditions and caste views and religious
differences ; that in a. j^reat Empire like ours, all we have
the rifj^ht to is equality before the law for all, equality of
opportunity for all, equality of expression for all, penalty
on none, favoritism to none ; and 1 believe that in this
L?reat ConoTess 1 see tlie i^'erm of tluit which may be as
fruitful ;is the most hopeful tree that grows under your
sun.

I am glad to see that you have women amongst you,
glad, altliougli they are few ; glad, for they are your
mothers and teach your cliildren ; glad, for in our land
tlie wives may count through their luisbands, and gr-eat
thoughts and great endeavours are not made less because
the man turns to the woman for counsel in his hour of
need, and thus makes the woman stronger than the man.

I fear 1 have already spoken to you too long, if not
for you, at any rate, for myself. I beg you — the most
eloquent whom I have heard among you — to put into
your own words and your own thoughts what you would
have me say of hope for you ; and let that })e said. One
thing be sure of : I will only advocate the right. J must
judge the right I advocate, and I may not always judge
it as you do ; but as long as you let me speak for you, I
will only speak that which seems to me to be right and
true. In this movement no force save the force of brain ;
no secret union ; all <jpen, frank, before the Law. So far
as one man may, and so far as one nnan's speech
can do, Englisli liberty shall put itself f)n the side
of yours. This is the first, and it may be the last,
speech that I may ever make to you ; but let me beg
of you to tliird<, .ind let me thirds, tli;it you are



TUV. V]VTJT nONORESB 103

lisieiiiii*^', iiiid that, if I do riglitly, you will ])e
<j;'eiiei'ous with inc in your judgiueiit ; aud that even if
1 do not always ])Iead with the voice that you would
speak with, you will believe that J have done my best,
iirid that 1 meant my best to be f^rcater happiness for
India's people;, greatei- peace for Britain's rule, f^reater
coiid'oi't I'oi" tlie whole of Britain's su})jeets.

'J'lie wliolo speech was punctiiiited witli clieers
wliicli we have omitted; we Iiave only inserted one
cry, wliei'e it was needed to explain tlie words wliich
followed, '^riie sp(H*cli was closed wiili tuniultuous
aj)pliiuse- — his lii'st speecli in India, and alas! liis la,st.



CHAPTER VI



The Sixth Congress met at Calcutta in the Tivoli
Grardens, in a big temporary Hall — into which 8,000
people managed to crowd themselves — on December
26th, 1890, and it sat for four days, the 26th, 27th,
29th, and 30th December, the Congress Hall being
lent on the 28th to the Social Conference. The list
shows the names of 677 delegates made up as fol-
lows :



Beng-al ...

N. W. P. and Oudh

Panjab ...

Bombay

Berar, C. P., and Secunderabad

Madras ...



Without Certificates . . .



377
148

18
47
29

58

677
25

702



The limitation of the numbers of delegates, decided
by the previous Congress, had been carried out ;
at 5 delegates per million of population, (see Re-
solution XIII [a] 1889). 995 delegates should have
been elected ; a little over 1,000 were elected, as a



THE SIXTH CONGRESS



105



matter of fact, but only 702 attended, of whom 25 did
not register with the required certificates, and so
their names were omitted. But that the popular
interest was undiminished was shown by the packing
of the Hall, the largest that had yet been erected,
7,000 visitors attending on the first day, and the
number being never less than 4,000. The Report says
that many of these came from other Provinces, and
would have been counted as delegates but for the
enforcement of the demand for certificates of elec-
tion. The feeling of resentment against the wrongs
under which India was suffering had increased con-
siderably, and it is well to recognise the long growth
of this feeling until it developed into the " unrest,"
which formed so prominent a feature of the first
decade of the twentieth century, and finally gave
birth to a party which sought, in despair, the break-
ing of the English connexion. Only the concession
of the reforms of 1910 revived the hopes of the
Constitutionalists, and enabled them to remain firm
in their declared creed of Self-Government within
the Empire. In 1890, there was angry opposition
in India to the trans-frontier policy then in favour,
and especially to the cruel invasion of Afghanistan,
which caused so much misery. The official report
of the Congress of 1890 concluded with the following
indictment :

Although our present Viceroy seems not only desirous
of seeing and judging for himself, but thoroughly imbued
with the true spirit of Liberalism ; although in every
Province there remain still some faithful few, who
deprecate and deplore all the evil that is on foot ; although



106 HOW INDIA WROUGHT FOR FREEDOM

throughout Great Britain signs appear that, here and
there, her people are commencing to realise the grave
responsibility in regard to India which has devolved upon
them, the administration of India still remains, alas ! as a
whole, " linked with some virtues but a thousand crimes ".
Millions of educated and patriotic men (than whom no
more loyal or loving subjects are numbered in the vast
J]mpire that owns the sway of our beloved Queen-Empress)
are treated as political helots to gratify the class
prejudices and amour propre and fill the pockets of a
handful of bureaucrats, the average men amongst whom
are, positively, less qualified for rule, in India, than a very
considerable proportion of those whom J]ngland permits
them to misgovern.

India's people, free-born British subjects, are denied
the smallest fraction of those fundamental political
privileges which, as British citizens, are their inherent
birthright.

Ninety-five per cent of all the most important and
responsible offices in the country are monopolised by
Europeans, on salaries fully double of those that would
secure quite as, in many cases far more, competent Indians
for the majority of these posts.

One-fifth of the entire population tremble on the
verge of starvation, to perish by millions whenever the
smallest natural calamity of drought or flood increases by
one iota the insecurity of their position, and the money
Avrung from our pauper population, by the cruel taxation
of the first necessaries of life — the money which is all our
Government has had to show for the 20 odd millions who
in recent years have succumbed to famine and its conse-
quences — is ruthlessly squandered in bloodshed, and in
wicked, and idiotically mismanaged, aggressions on
feebler neighboui-s, to gratify the ignoble cravings for
personal distinctions and titles of individual members of
a Simla cabal.

Almost every indigenous art and industry' has been
crushed, and agriculture, the one art on which now depend



THE SIXTH CONGRESS 107

nearly 90 per cent of the population, is slowly deteriorat-
ing under a grasping rack-renting system of temporary
settlements and, with it, our crops and our cattle.

The masses are being persistently demoralised ;
despite the distinct orders of the House of Commons, an
iniquitous system of excise, calculated to stimulate
drunkenness and all its attendant crimes and vices, is
still retained, only slightly and superficially reformed in
some Provinces, in all its original iniquity in others.

Under a barl^arous and obsolete system, miscalled
Justice, Executive and Judicial, Fiscal and Police powers
are so combined in one functionary, that jjowers professedly
granted for one purpose are practically utilised in further-
ance of others, for which no civilised Government in the
woidd would, nowadays, dare to confer them.

There is practically no justice in India for the poor
against the rich, or the non-official against the official, and
the police, who should be the protectors of the poor and
the honest, are their terror and their worst oppressors.

What wonder, if some of us, who come of sterner
sires, at times, despairing of justice at the hands
of man, cry out in bitterness of heart : " How long,
O Lord, how long? " But the patient East, sublime in
its resignation and charity, longs only to forgive and to
forget the past, and prays only for justice, however tardy,
in the present ; and wrongs that long since would have
roused Teutonic or Gallic nations to frenzy, tolerated in
remembrance of the civic peace and order, education and
other benefits, unquestionably conferred by England,
awaken in the mind of India's people (far truer Christ-
ians, though they know it not, than that proud Nation
which permits all this evil, and is answerable for it,
before God and man) only the mild reproaches embodied
in the words with which we headed this article :

Of course we have to submit resignedly to this ruinous, this
unprincipled trans-frontier policy of the Government imtil we
succeed in awakening the conscience of our British fellow-subjects.
We are British subjects, now, of our own free choice ; we have
thrown in our lot with England for better and for worse, and it is



108 HOW INDIA WROUGHT FOR FREEDOM

this which enhances England's sin in permitting the continuance of
this hateful policy. Will our British brethren never awake ?

Alas ! No mortal can reply — tlieir slumber has been
long — but they may yet awake.

At 2 p.m. the Chair was taken by Mr. Mano Mohan
Ghose, the Chairman of the Reception Committee,
who, after defending the Congress from the various
attacks made on it, and defining its position, called on
Sir Romesh Chandra Mittra to propose the President,
and he moved the election of Mr. Pherozeshah
M. Mehta; it was seconded by Nawab Shamshoodowla,
supported by Mr, Ananda Charlu and Nawab Ghulam
Rubbani, and carried by acclamation.

Mr. Pherozeshah M. Mehta, taking the presidential
chair and saying, truly, that it was the highest honour
that India had to give, began by vindicating the right
of the Parsi as a true son of India, after thirteen
centuries of home in the Motherland. He welcomed
Mr. Caine as one of the elected delegates and thanked
him for his work, and then, after warm words of
gratitude to Mr. Bradlangh for the untiring energy,
the indefatigable care, the remarkable ability, with
which he had worked for India in the House of
Commons, he turned to the consideration of his Bill,
and of its result. Lord Cross' India Councils
Bill. In a few scathing words he disposed of
Lord Salisbury's absurd view that " Government by
representation .... did not fit eastern traditions or
eastern minds," and quoted Mr. Chisholm Anstey,