In Defence of Freedom: The Role of Rammohun Roy and Rabindranath Tagore

by SUBRATA MUKHERJEE

A Bengali play, adapted from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, was recently not allowed to be staged by the district administration of Hooghly in West Bengal. The administration so acted as a CPI-M leader submitted a written objection, the latter having perceived that enactment of the play would create disaffection among the voters against the CPI-M. The Chief Minister however later on publicly opined against this decision, but nevertheless the prevention of staging of an inconvenient play is reminiscent of the colonial era and the protests organised by Raja Rammohun Roy and Rabindranath Tagore.

The British had tried to muffle the vernacular press and had curtailed the rights of Indians. Rammohun was the pioneer in starting the vernacular press. He had published two journals, one in Persian and the other in Bengali. In 1823, along with Chanda Kumar Tagore, Dwarkanath Tagore, Harchandra Ghose, Gauri Charan Banerji and Prasanna Kumar Tagore, the Raja sent a petition to the Court of Law demanding freedom of the press. It was a historic petition, one that Rammohun’s biographer, Collet, described as “Areopagitica of Indian History”. The petition’s basic argument was that human excellence stemmed from the freedom to think and express oneself. A free press is extremely beneficial to society. It helps the government to enhance its public esteem and respect.

However, the petition was rejected by the Court, and Rammohun appealed to the King. There was also a long debate with the Court of Directors. Even Bentinck, who had banned the barbarous practice of sati, did not remove this restriction on the press. It was withdrawn much later in 1835 by Governor-General Metcalfe.

Meanwhile, plague had assumed epidemic proportions in India. The British terrorised the locals of Bombay. Tilak and the Nathu brothers protested against the atrocities, but their effort was futile. On June 23, 1897, two members of the Plague Prevention Committee, M.W.C. Rand and Lieutenant Hyerst, were assassinated by two Maharashtrian youth. Tilak was arrested on the charge that he had published a report on the Shivaji festival in his newspaper, Kesari, on June 15, 1897. And this had allegedly incited the people. The Nathu brothers were arrested and their property confiscated.

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THE British and Anglo-Indian community wanted the curbs on the press to be revived. In Pune, the cultural capital of Maharashtra, people were terrorised by the police. Surprisingly, the Congress didn’t respond to these developments. The Bombay Congress had several noted lawyers; yet they never volunteered to defend Tilak. In Calcutta, Tagore along with Hirendranath Dutta, Sisir Kumar Ghose and other leaders started raising funds to defend Tilak in court. A sum of Rs 17,000 was raised and two eminent lawyers from Calcutta were sent to Bombay. The Indian Association also advanced assistance. The hearing in the case began on September 8 and on October 15—without any jury trial—Tilak was imprisoned for 18 months. Though he was sentenced in a political case, he was denied all the benefits that a political prisoner was entitled to and confined as an ordinary prisoner. He was not even allowed to take the Gita with him. It was only at the intervention of the famous Indologist, Max Mueller, that he was allowed to read the book in jail. In the case relating to the assassination of Rand, the two brothers, Damodar and Balkrishna Chapekar, were hanged. The Nathu brothers were not acquitted and the government refused to disclose their whereabouts.

After a few months, the 1897 Amaravati Congress took place. Far from planning a course of action, the party made only a feeble protest against the imprisonment of Tilak and the Nathu brothers, the punitive action of the police, the Press Act and the reform of the Criminal Act. The President of the Congress session, Shankaran Nair, called them “blunders and mistakes”. At this juncture, the government tried to enact the dreaded Vernacular Press Act, directed against the Bengali press which was becoming increasingly critical of the British. To silence the vernacular press, the “sedition bill” was added to the Penal Procedure Code which transferred the power of punishment from the court and jury to the District Magistrate.

Tagore responded to these measures in his essay, Kanthrodh, by asserting that the language of his essay was Bengali—the language of the weak and defeated. He added that the authorities were scared of this language because it was alien to them. The darkness of ignorance leads to the fear of the unknown. The poet argued that a legislation to silence the press was suggestive of a critical time for the nation; there would be few to articulate the real feelings because of the fear of severe punishment. But the very fact that the government was compelled to take such draconian measures was an acknowledgement of the reality that it was scared of the increasing strength of the nationalists.

Referring to the Revolt of 1857, Tagore pointed out that the stifling of the people’s voice had been counter-productive. He was equally critical of the “moderate” Congress leadership for its failure to oppose the crippling curbs. In his reckoning, the Congress was mindless; Tilak and the Nathu brothers were wrongly punished without any cognisable offence.

Tagore’s reply, which he intentionally advanced in Bengali, was testament to his commitment to secure elementary civil and political rights. It was also a warning that stifling the voice of dissent was always counter-productive.

Both Raja Rammohun Roy and Rabindranath Tagore realised that if one had to reach out to the average Indian, one would have to communicate in Indian languages.

It is amusing that the adaptation of Animal Farm had raised no cavil when it was staged in Kolkata. But when the message of the play was sought to be conveyed in rural Bengal, it raised the hackles of the authorities. The attitude of our ruling elite is no different from the colonial masters. It was expected that after the Emergency elementary rights, such as free expression, would be observed all over the country. However, the tendency to stifle dissent through intimidation and terror is still manifest. And this was reflected in the decision to ban the play. The brave and principled protests of Rammohun and Tagore should strengthen our resolve to protest, condemn and compel the authorities not to introduce draconian measures that can stifle the right to dissent and free speech.

The author is a former Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.