Surendranath Banerjea
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Surendranath Banerjea was one of the early leaders in the history of the
Indian freedom movement. He was a great leader and at the same time
professor, newspaper editor and social reformer. Due to his refusal to accept defeat he was known as 'Surrender Not'. He traveled around the country to spread awareness about the poor and exploited people of India through his speeches. He was a member of the Indian National Congress and even presided over two of the party's sessions. The following speech was given by Surendranath at the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress in 1916 while moving the resolution on self-government. The resolution was a great step in the history of the movement, as this demand had never been made before by the congress party, which was the largest political organization in India at the time. |
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WHY SELF-GOVERNMENT
28 December 1916 |
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Why is it
that we want self-government? We want self-government in the interests
of the Empire to which we are so proud to belong. We want
self-government in the interests of the administration and for the
efficiency of the administration. We want self-government for
self-protection. And finally, we want self-government for the higher
national ends, for the moral and spiritual elevation of our people.
I say we want self-government in the interest of the Empire. Who knows
what will happen twenty years hence? Who knows what strife, what
struggle, what difficulties there may be in the womb of the future? Who
knows that another war more sanguinary and more devastating than the
one, which is now desolating Europe, may not again set in the world?
We have anarchism. What is it due to? I have no hesitation in saying and saying it from this platform, saying it publicly with all the weight of responsibility upon my shoulders-I will say this, that anarchism in Bengal is the product of past misrule (hear, hear). It has its roots in the economic and industrial conditions. We suggested this remedy in the address that we presented to His Excellency the Viceroy, We are asked to co-operate, but His Excellency left untouched the root causes of anarchism. How has the Bureaucracy grappled with this? Repression is their only remedy. One coercive measure after another has followed in rapid succession-the Seditious Meetings Act, the Press Act, the Defence of India Act - and God knows what other Acts may be in store for us. And what has been the result? Anarchy frowns in the land and casts its darkening shadow over the horizon. Anarchy remains unchecked. The Bureaucracy has failed to grapple with it, as the Bureaucracy was responsible for producing it. In the words of Edmund Burke conciliation and not repression is the sovereign cure of all public distempers, Grant us self-government and I will guarantee that in six years time anarchy will disappear from this land. If we had self-government what do you think we should do? Suppose I was the President of the Republic - which I shall never be- suppose I was the President, what do you think I should do? The first thing I should do would be to pass a law in favour of free and compulsory education. The next thing I would do would be the separation of judicial and executive functions. The third thing would be to improve the police. And how? By importing into the higher branches of the service a strong Indian element capable of looking after the inferior grades. Lastly, I would abolish the duty on salt. We have been pressing these things for years together but we could not get them. We want self-government finally for the highest ends of the national system, for the moral elevation of our people. Political inferiority involves normal degradation. It is galling to our self-respect. The mind and the conscience of a free man are not the mind and conscience of a slave. A nation of Graves would never have produced a Patanjali, a Buddha, or a Valmiki. We want self-government in order that we might wipe off from us the badge of political inferiority and lift our heads among the nations of the earth and fulfill the great destinies that are in store for us under the blessing of Divine Providence. We want self-government not only in our own interests but also for the sake of humanity at large. In the morning of the world on the banks of the Ganges and on the banks of the Jamuna the Vedic Rishis -sang those hymns which represent the first yearnings of infant humanity towards the Divine ideal. In the morning of the world before the Eternal City had been built on the seven hills we were the spiritual preceptors of mankind. Kashi was built. Kashi was flourishing before Babylon. Our past takes us back to the dim twilight of history. In those days when world was sunk into barbarism we were the guides and instructors of mankind. Has our mission been fulfilled now? It has been frustrated but not fulfilled. It has to be fulfilled. It must be fulfilled so that Europe may be rescued from the gross materialism, from the degraded culture which at the present moment have heaped the battlefields of Europe with hecatombs of the dead. It is our mission to become once again the spiritual guides of mankind, but we cannot fulfill that mission unless and until we ourselves are emancipated, we ourselves are free. That is the first indispensable equipment for the discharge of that great mission. |
