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The Martyrdom of Bepin Chandra
WE HAVE
felt considerable delicacy hitherto in writing on the prosecution of Srijut
Bepin Chandra Pal for refusing to take the oath in the Bande Mataram Case,
as that prosecution has arisen directly out of our own. In fact, all the more
important events of recent occurrence in Calcutta have been so closely
connected, directly or indirectly, with this case that we have been practically
compelled to keep our lips closed on current public affairs. The imprisonment
of the Nationalist orator and propagandist, the most prominent public figure of
the New Party in Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal has been condemned to six months' simple imprisonment, the maximum penalty permitted by the law for the crime of possessing a conscience, Mr. Hume asked for a conviction on the ground that Bepin Babu had baulked the prosecution in the Bande Mataram Case. Apart from the large assumption involved in the assertion that his evidence would have materially assisted the prosecution, this appears to us a singular plea for a lawyer to put forward. It has not yet been made a crime punishable under the Penal Code to baulk a Government prosecution and if it was the intention to draw the Magistrate's attention to the political bearings of the case, it was at least maladroit to allow the suggestion to be palpable. We will take it, however, that the Magistrate sentenced Bepin Babu for a breach of the law which the defendant did not deny, not for an action of which there was no evidence and which is not an offence under the law. What then was Bepin Babu's offence? Certainly
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it
was not that he carried the policy of Boycott beyond the limits of legality and
preferred adhesion to his own political programme before the dictates of the
alien's law. That would have been an action which, however pardonable or
praiseworthy in the eyes of patriots engaged in a life and death struggle with
the bureaucracy, must necessarily figure as a serious offence in the eyes of the
bureaucracy itself and we could hardly quarrel with its servant for trying to
serve the interests of his employers by the infliction of a severe punishment.
But it was distinctly declared by Bepin Babu that it was not as a boycotter, not
with the political intention of making the working of the bureaucratic law
courts impossible, that he declined to give evidence or take the oath. The
boycott in
Page-530 obey the law, it is not as citizens but as members of the social order who are interested in its maintenance and in the maintenance of peace and order so long as, and no longer than, that order and peace do not militate against the well-being of the society instead of promoting it. The moment obedience to the law involves a wound to society, the individual is brought face to face with a difficult case of conscience. It was in such a difficult situation that Bepin Babu found himself. He was called on to associate himself as a prosecution witness with a political policy carried on under the forms of law, a policy which he considered fatal to the well-being and peace of the nation, but which he had no means of challenging except by the passive protest of refusing to perform the function required of him. He had to obey either the dictates of his conscience or the requirements of the law and he held the imperative command of his conscience a more sacred and binding law than the Penal Code. The law had a right to assert itself by inflicting on him a nominal or slight penalty, it had no right to punish a man vindictively for obeying his conscience. The Magistrate thought perhaps that he was serving the interests of the present system and ensuring its stability by putting Bepin Pal in prison for six months, but what has he really done? Merely made people believe that the bureaucracy is so savage in its repression, so enamoured of power, that for its sake it will not even allow a man to possess a conscience, that an honest and reluctant protest on the part of a distinguished and honourable man against a misuse of the law will be punished by it with eager severity if it happens to conflict with its own interests or its repressive policy. The country will not suffer by the incarceration of this great orator and writer, this spokesman and prophet of Nationalism, nor will Bepin Chandra himself suffer by it. He has risen ten times as high as he was before in the estimation of his countrymen: if there are any among them who disliked or distrusted him, they have been silenced, for good we hope, by his manly, straightforward and conscientious stand for the right as he understood it. He will come out of prison with his power and
Page-531 influence doubled, and Nationalism has already become the stronger for his self-immolation. Posterity will judge between him and the petty tribunal which has treated his honourable scruples as a crime.
Bande Mataram,
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