| A forgotten prophet of Indian nationalism | |||
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By: V Sundaram, IAS, Retd. June 01, 2006 Views expressed here are author’s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is at the bottom. 
FeedbackBipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) of the famous national triumvirate ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’ is an almost forgotten figure today. In the early part of his political life he almost hypnotized all his countrymen in India. He was the chief shining star of the agitation against the Partition of Bengal which came to be popularly known as the Swadeshi Movement. Bipin Chandra Pal was born in Sylhet in undivided Bengal on November 7, 1858. He passed his matriculation examination at the age of 16 in 1875. He entered Presidency College, Calcutta. He could not complete his college education because his father disinherited him for having joined Brahmo Samaj. Soon after leaving the college, he joined as a Headmaster, first at the Cuttack Academy, then at the National School in Sylhet and finally at a school in Bangalore. Both as a teacher and as a journalist he made a great mark right from the beginning of his career. He joined the Indian National Congress in 1886 and left it after the split in the Congress at the Surat session in 1907. He rejoined the Indian National Congress in 1916 at the Lucknow session and left it again in 1921. Thrice he visited England, in 1896, 1908 and 1919. The most important event in Bipin Chandra Pal's life was his refusal to give evidence against Arbindo Gosh in a sedition case against him in 1907 for which he suffered rigorous imprisonment for six months. But this made him a national hero. His last days were passed in poverty. He died on May 20, 1932, a sad and disenchanted man. On August 12, 1901, Bipin Chandra Pal started an English Weekly called "New India". In its inaugural issue, as founder-editor, Pal declared its ideals in stirring tones: "Its stand point is intensely national in spirit, breathing the deepest veneration for the spiritual, moral and intellectual achievements of Indian civilization and distinctly universal in aspiration". "New India" focused primarily on the economic and educational reconstruction of India with special emphasis on cultural regeneration rather than lopsided political agitation alone. When the British Government announced their plan of partition of Bengal in December 1903, it was Bipin Chandra Pal who constructed the revolutionary political philosophy of Young Bengal and succeeded in annexing Madras or South India to that revolutionary creed. It is not therefore surprising that early Tamil Revolutionary Nationalists like Maha Kavi Bharathi, Va. Ve. Su. Iyer, Subramaniya Siva, and Va. Vu. Chidambaram Pillai and many others came under the revolutionary spell of Bipin Chandra Pal in the first decade of 20th century. The "Swadeshi Movement" in Bengal heralded a new Age in our national history. Swadeshi was instantly identified as the highest form of patriotism and "Swadeshism" became the cradle of New India. It was an intensely spiritual movement and aimed at the emancipation of India in every sense, of every Indian. With fervent national calls for the boycott of British goods, schools, courts and administration came stirring appeals for embracing "Swadeshi" in all spheres of life, indigenous manufactures, national education, language, literature and above all "Swaraj" or political freedom became the life breath of the nation. The Swadeshi Movement was not just a political movement or an economic movement. It was a movement for total emancipation of every Indian in all walks of life political, economic, social, cultural and above all spiritual. The nation would not from the very beginning have raised the cry of "BANDE MATARAM" all the way in that context and in that connection and thrown itself into the "Swadeshi Movement" with such feverish energy, passion, impetuosity and vigorous enthusiasm if that movement had not embraced all aspects of national life. In every sense of the word it was "A Total Revolution" the kind of revolution which Jayaprakash Narain wanted to create after the imposition of emergency by Indira Gandhi in 1975. "Bande Mataram" was on the lips of every revolutionary and every freedom fighter after the partition of Bengal. "Swadeshi", "British Boycott" and "Bande Mataram" all became vital, vigorous and vibrant inter-changeable watchwords of all freedom fighters in India. Bipin Chandra Pal was among the first to vigorously articulate the new philosophy of organized resistance to British rule. On the first anniversary of the "Swadeshi Movement" and "Boycott Movement" in 1906, Bipin Chandra Pal with a modest capital of Rs.500/- took the bold decision to launch an English Daily, "Bande Mataram" which was to create a special niche for itself in the history of our freedom movement. Bipin Chandra Pal invited Arbindo Ghoshe to join the Editorial team of "Bande Mataram". Arbindo Gosh readily accepted. "Bande Mataram" now could boast of a highly talented editorial team with Bipin Chandra Pal as Editor, Arbindo Gosh as Assistant Editor and Hemnendra Prasad Ghoshe, Shyam Sundar Chakravarthi and Bijoy Chatterjee as Assistants. Thus was started the unique political partnership of Bipin Chandra Pal and Arbindo Ghoshe. Arbindo Ghoshe was a powerful writer and master of the written word. He preferred to work behind the scenes. Bipin Chandra Pal on the other hand was a powerful orator and loved to be on stage amidst the people. Both these outstanding leaders understood and complemented each other. In an article in "Bande Mataram" dated September 18, 1906, he wrote: "If we may not oppose physical force by physical force, we may yet make the administration in India absolutely impossible any day. Our ideal is freedom, which means absence of all foreign control. Our method is passive resistance which means an organized determination to refuse to render any voluntary and honorary service to the Government". Writing in the same journal in the same vein in April 1907, Arbindo Ghoshe elaborated: "The struggle with the Government may take two forms violent and non-violent. Wresting our demands from the Government by use of force and causing harm or damage is violent resistance. Refraining from helping the Government in every way is passive resistance. To create a deadlock in the administration by passive resistance was the program of work of the extremists". At the Calcutta session of the Indian national Congress held in December 1906, Ambika Charan Majumdar moved the Congress Resolution supporting Boycott and Swadeshi and Bipin Chandra Pal seconded it. In a fiery speech Bipin Chandra Pal said: "You will have observed the word "Boycott" attached to the word "Movement". It means that it shall move, move from point to point, move from city to city, move from division to division, move from Province to Province till we realize the highest destiny of our people as a nation in the comity of nations I mean "Swaraj". Bipin Chandra Pal literally and figuratively carried the message of Boycott Movement and Swadeshi Movement from Province to Province. In January 1907, he set out on a long tour of the new Province of East Bengal besides Allahabad and Benares in the United Provinces, Cuttack in Orissa, Visakapattinam, Vizayana-garam, Kakkinada, Rajamundry in present Andhra Pradesh and lastly Madras City. His passionate eloquence and oratory moved multitudes. Bipin Chandra Pal delivered five lectures on the Madras Beach from May 2, 1907 to May 9, 1907 wherein he expounded the philosophy, goal, programme and strategy of the national movement in considerable detail. Maha Kavi Bharathi, Subrbamania Siva, and Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri attended all these lectures on the Madras Beach. Rt Hon Srinivasa Sastri has recorded his impressions of Bipin Chandra Pal: "Babu Bipin Chandra Pal burst into full fame in Madras as a preacher of the new political creed. For several days on the sands of the Beach, he spoke words hot with emotion and subtle logic, which were wafted by the soft evening breeze to tens of thousands of listeners invading their whole souls and setting them aflame with the fever of a wild consuming desire. Oratory had never dreamed of such triumphs in India; the power of the spoken words had never been demonstrated on such a scale". Bengal of the glorious days of Surendranath Banerjea, Bunkim Chandra Chatterjee, Arbindo Ghoshe, Bipin Chandra Pal and Rabindranath Tagore has been buried fathoms deep by a vicious and criminal four-fold combination of menaces of what I call "Macaulayism", "Marxism", "Muslimism" and "Missionaryism" today. If Rabindranath Tagore were to come back to life in today's seemingly spiritually and culturally dead Bengal, I can only imagine, he would cry out only the following words in desperation: Where the mind is full of fear And the head is held low Where knowledge is costly And the world has been broken up Into fragments by narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depths of diabolic untruth Where tireless striving stretches its arms Towards transcendental destruction Where the turgid waters of Communist unreason Have completely swamped the tiny islands Of enlightened humanist reason Where the mind is led forward By thee into never ending vistas Of thoughtless Stalinist action Or actionless Leninistic thought Into that hell of 21st century Maoist Bengal My father Let not Let not Let not My beloved Bengal of 21st century arise! V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.
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