Presidential Address to the Indian National Congress, Cawnpore

[p. 756] FRIENDS,—I have asked the permission of this great gathering to address you in a language that is not ours because to-day I have been made the mouthpiece of a nation in struggle, the consolation of a nation in sorrow, the heart-beat of a nation in agony and the promise of a nation determined to win freedom at the uttermost sacrifice. You have before you in two national tongues and in one foreign language something of that unkindled fuel of my heart that I have piled up, awaiting your kindling hands to bring radiance to that dead wood. You having elected me at so grave an hour of the nation's history, have done something that throughout centuries may serve to redeem for one moment the shame and degradation of your fallen manhood, in giving to a mere woman, the woman who for years and years rocked the cradle and sung lullaby to that national standard which is the emblem of your own regeneration, you have gone back to the earliest inspiration that built your civilization and admitted the woman a co-sharer and comrade in the secular and spiritual evolution of a people. And though I be unworthy and have not in me one single quality that fits me for so great an honour—even I, weak, and unworthy though I be, am of that spiritual descent that knows no mortality; I am of that descent that has for mothers the purity of Sita, the courage of Savitri and the faith of Damayanti and having this for ancestry, the meanest woman becomes consecrated, perhaps by tradition, to serve and to succour her land.

To-day we are gathered together under the shadow of a tragedy. During the last forty years in city [p. 757] after city of this great continent, the races of India have gathered together and sent messages of hope or mandates of battle to the world. To-day we are bowed down with tragedy. Hundreds of our young men are rotting in prison because they dared to love the country and for that crime there is no redress to-day in the law of the land. (Shame, shame.) There are sick prisoners—brave men the emblem of whose faith is the black turban—unreleased, though they say peace has been made. And though the signatories of that peace have bravely surrendered themselves and accepted the terms, those who drew up the terms of that treaty did not realize or fulfil their obligations and the Sikh prisoners are still rotting in the northern jails. (Cries of 'Shame, shame'.)

Only the other day when the preparation for this great assembly was being made, how in a moment's caprice without reason—and no reason is forthcoming because there is no reason—workers in the United Provinces were arrested on a most monstrous charge—so monstrous indeed that it makes one ashamed to think that the bureaucracy is so bankrupt of its lies that it has stooped to something trivial and unworthy of Britain as that.

But more than that tragedy of the young and the brave in the prison, is our sorrow for the brave and dead, whose faces we shall never see again. Last year when my leader Mahatma Gandhi was presiding over the destinies of our people there was one by his side—there was one at his elbow—there was one in his counsel, there was one in his confidence, there was a comrade of his hope, there was a sharer in his struggle—and he is no more with us to day. He was called the friend of the poor—they called him Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das. In the land that produced Lord Sri Gouranga, was born that man who in his soul was a worthy incarnation of Chaitanya's love and whose whole life was a mystic rhapsody of sacrifice because to him to die for his country was more than the tragedy of things—and dying on the battle-field—dying of the victor's wound—he so loved his people, that soldier on his death-bed—lying on his bed of arrows—he stretched forth his [p. 758] hand to the enemy and said: "Here even now make peace though I can carry the struggle to the utmost end of death. For the peace of my people, for the prosperity of my nation, I will make peace with you if you be men enough to make peace with me and mine."

And very soon after this king had passed away to the unseen kingdom of the next world, there died a patriot of the nation. Long before you and I were born, his voice was thundering against the heavens saying: "Liberty for my stricken people." He was one of those who founded this great Congress over which I have been called upon to preside to-day. And we miss not from our midst but from this world Sir Surendra Nath Banerjea and when we realize that he was one of the founders of this great national ideal of deliverance from bondage, we cannot fail to realize that Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das but confirmed and completed the dream that was a dream of the youth, Surendra Nath Banerjea.

But not politicians alone, not the soldiers on the battlefield alone, will win the liberty of India or raise our prestige in the eyes of the world. While Deshabandhu was fighting for liberty, while Sir Surendra Nath in his early days was dreaming of liberty, there was a man in Western India in the sanctuary of his academic seclusion, saying: 'Let the patriots fight for to-day. I will see that yesterday shines once more before the world ignorant of the beauty of yesterday,' and so Ramakrishna Bhandarkar lighted the long-extinguished lamp of Sanskrit learning and lifted it high above the tumult of the world and showed to the dazzled Europeans the secrets of our ancient Vedic civilization.

Others also have died, alas! To them also we offer our most mournful tribute. But let us remember the highest tribute, the loftiest memorial that we can offer to our illustrious dead, is to make our lives a more radiant remembrance of their dreams, their deeds, their hopes and aspirations and their failures and achievements also. How to-day shall we raise that memorial, how to-day shall the [p. 759] living justify, how to-day shall the living vindicate and immortalize the dreams, the aspirations and sacrifices of the dead? Oh, my friends, to-day where shall I find the language, where shall I find that living fire that shall kindle in your hearts an undying fire of which Basanti Devi has spoken to you in her message? How shall I stir your hearts, how shall I light that flame that cannot die so that your slavery, so that your disunion, so that all the things that make you hungry and naked and forlorn, oppressed and battered, shall be burnt in that undying fire? We are to-day a people disorganized. We are to-day a people bowed down in the storm of reaction and hatred. Only the other day we were saying: 'Behold! Liberty is at hand.' Only the other day we said: 'Out of South Africa there came a wizard across the seas.' We said: 'Here comes the magician.' We said: 'Here comes the great sorcerer and by some magic he shall teach us deliverance from bondage' and throughout the length and breadth of this great sorrowing country went the magic fire—that was called "Non-Co-operation," "Non-Co-operation." The old saw visions. The young dreamed dreams; women saw their souls lit up like so many lamps extinguished. The young men said: "Let every drop of blood in me become a sacred sacrifice for the liberty of my people." The old said: "Oh God! give us youth again so that we may live to die for that ideal." And thousands went to prison. Thousands took the vow of poverty and the rich became poor and the poor became hungry and the hungry became corpses, but, we to-day, we are unable to sustain the might of that doctrine. We have not the courage, we have not the nobility, we have not the faith of our fathers to sustain the epic sacrifice. And so we are to-day in the grip of despair, we are to-day in the grip of hateful reaction which comes after a great epoch of life and sacrifice. How shall we rise out of that terrible despair? I said the other day only: "In the battle for liberty, fear is the one unforgivable sin." And to-day we are traitors because we are afraid, we are unpardonably sinful because we know despair. How shall I raise you out of [p. 760] that despair? How should I bring together the scattered, demoralised, hostile and conflicting forces of the Indian people.

Oh my brothers! if to-day you are to realise that your brethren in South Africa are threatened with extermination because the rulers of that land say: "Who are you, slaves of India to-day who dare to interfere with the extermination of your slave kindred over here." Our brothers in South Africa have sent their ambassadors to us in their hour of agony. They have come to the last desperate stage when they cannot stand alone and they come to you with hands of supplication saying: "Oh, rise out of slavery because your slavery is the guarantee of our death in that country; your freedom is the prophecy of our honour in the eyes of the world." What answer shall you make to your Colonies? In East Africa, in Kenya, where our people have been living for centuries making historic Colonies of India—where sailors from Cambay showed to Vasco De Gama the way to India, the Eldorado, India the Eldorado, the dream of the world—there they say to your people: 'You shall not be anything but inferior because you belong to a slave nation called India.' In South Africa where your people by the sweat of their brow and blood of their lives have built up that beautiful Natal, they say to us: "You shall not trade here; you shall not live here; you are the Asiatic menace that we must cut off from our lives," and we, with all the tyranny of our social system, with all the curse of disunion, with all the dishonour of our bondage, have not the power of authority to say to them: "Thus far and no further, because the million-armed and free India stands before her stricken children in South Africa."

Friends, you have not the power to-day to resist a single wrong against you. Only a few weeks ago I went up to the Frontiers—to that old Peshawar where the people of Central Asia pour down. I went to the historic Khyber Pass and I saw the Khyber caravans out of Central Asia coming with hundreds of camels loaded with food and [p. 761] spices and all those things that come to India for traffic; and standing on that ancient highway I realized how India has always known the Khyber guarding her own destiny—how even to-day history might repeat itself and how again that ancient Khyber might once more be the road of destiny to India, not the road of India's freedom, but once again the road of India's new slavery. And yet millions of men growing up, marrying and giving in marriage, building their homes, breeding children and amassing wealth—has any one of you the power to defend the honour of your homes, the sanctuary of your shrines? You unarmed, defenceless, as I have said, cowards by compulsion, have you to-day the right to be free when you dare not guard your frontiers of the mountains or your frontiers of the oceans against the enemy that might overcome you as through the centuries he has overcome you in the past? Shall you not say from this platform of the Congress, one of the first essentials of our regeneration is that military training and education that will make us a free people and enable us to guard our peace that nobody would dare to attack us in war? Shall you not form a National Militia that the old may take courage and the young be filled with enthusiasm and ecstasy? Will you not say that the highways of the oceans are open to your people— to your own ships and supplement your own defences on land? Will you not see to it that your commerce to-day is again in your own hands—you people, exploited by roads and by seas by White races, Yellow races and Brown races of the world? You talk of the wealth of India—exploited in every inch of you, every fibre of you— * * * * * * * * —by the cupidity of the nations who for economic gain would suck your blood dry to-day—what are you doing to prevent the terror of exploitation against you? What are you, my people, going to do to become human again intellectually? To-day you are a mere imitation—cheap imitation—the fifth rate imitation of second rate models of the West. You have forgotten your own art. You have forgotten your own language. You do not know how to evolve your [p. 762] own music. You have betrayed your own inheritance because you have run after false gods and your intellect has bowed down in worship to the gods that slave you and your imagination burns incense at the shrines of those that devour the honour of your race. What effort will you make to give to your children that right place in the world which is theirs? The Nations of the West say: "Oh, these slaves! We have nothing common." The Nations of America, of Africa, of Asia say: "What can we hope from that slave nation called India!"

Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das talked and dreamed of Asiatic Federation and yet when I think of the Asiatic Federation, I wonder if a slave nation dare to send a message to any free nation in either hemisphere of the world. But even slaves must have ties with the outer world and I would ask you to remember that India cannot remain in isolation but Indian nationalism can only be a unit of that great international development of the world—and slaves though we be to-day, without the right to send our message of hope to the outer world, at least let us try to create bonds of friendship with the outer world saying: "Our time is coming when we shall make good those pledges that we send you and in equal comradeship of effort and liberty help you fulfil the great ideal of the world brotherhood and world peace." But, friends, you cannot do this without those things that are necessary for the production of the great world ties and sense of kinship. You have no press to-day that can educate the outer world in the authentic affairs of the Indian nation. You have no ambassadors whom you can send to friendly countries saying: 'These are our ideals that we shall achieve'—saying: 'These are our miseries which we shall overcome,' and not saying to them: 'We ask your succour,' because no brave race could take succour from any other race of the world, but saying: 'These are the ambitions of the Indian people—these are the ideals of the Indian people, therefore oh, sympathetic and progressive people of the world, keep a place for us on that pilgrimage of yours towards the [p. 763] fulfilment of the world's destiny.' And then my brothers and my sisters, Hindus, Mussalmans, Parsis and Christians, Eurasians and Europeans, whoever be here, I want to say to you that the ideal of India can only be the great ideal of peace. The whole synthesis of the Indian genius is that all those gifts, that come to a weaker nation, that are now Indian, but came across the Khyber or came across the oceans whether to conquer—whether to live in the East—whether to trade—whether to be friends or whether as sanctuary or for succour—the synthesis of the Indian genius is built up of the civilization that every race has brought to this great hospitable land of ours. And to-day if we talk of freedom we can only do so in terms of that great composite ideal that builds up the Indian nation. And yet the world is shaking at the dreadful clamour of our internecine troubles. Whoever goes round this great country—instead of those lovely Bhajans that one should hear—those lovely songs—of peace and friendship—instead of those lovely lullabies sung to the little children—and yours is a land of beauty—yours is the land of peace—but instead of those lovely Bhajans and sweet lullabies, does he not hear the lullabies of children sung to the tune of hatred—does he not hear Bhajans singing the hymn of hate within the boundaries of the great India herself. To-day the hand of the Hindu is against his Muslim brother and the hand of the Muslim is raised against his Hindu comrade. And yet do you dare talk of Swaraj when you with your own hands are crumbling into dust all the dreams that ever were dreamt of a free and united India. This is not the moment, I know, to draw in too sharp an outline or in too living a colour that tragic picture of our disunion and feuds. And yet until we find some supreme solution for this greatest of ills that is eating like a canker into the very vitals of life, believe me, there can be no Swaraj for the Indian people. And what is the remedy for this dreadful disease? And what is it that has brought this disease so prominently to our eyes? What is the poison which is vitiating our very life-blood? What is the remedy, I ask?

Oh, my friends, do you think that Swaraj to-day is a thing that can be taken in piecemeal on communal lines or [p. 764] racial lines or on lines of creed, caste or province? Is it not an organic thing—the very life-blood of our being that we cannot separate—that we cannot divide and yet keep, a living Swaraj? Why should the Hindus, the great majority, proud of their ancient civilization, forget that the basic glory of their culture has been the recognition of the beauty of all creeds and acceptance of all classes, giving them sanctuary, hospitality, succour, sympathy, unity, friendship and love offered in real generosity to all those who came to our doors. Is it not Hinduism to have apotheosis of tolerance and reverence for all good and for all the beauty of the world and shall the Hindus be so untrue to their inheritance that they shall to-day stand in isolation and say: 'Swaraj will be won on the strength of the Hindu people and let the Mussalmans stand aside'? That is to deny the fundamental principle, that great Vedic faith which belongs to you and to me as the imperishable heritage, that no foreign invasion has been able to corrupt or to defraud. But when, on the other hand, seven crores of Indian Moslems turn their faces beyond the frontiers of India and are also deeply preoccupied with the sorrows of Islam in other lands they forget that India their Mother is bleeding of her manifold wounds. What shall I say to my Moslem brothers—has not their Prophet taught them that paradise lies at the feet of the Mother and shall I not ask my Moslem brothers to turn their eyes and come back to the feet of the Mother in whose benediction lies their paradise? Shall not their recognition in its fullest measure of the Indian nationality be the greatest of gifts that Islam can give to India to crown the great gifts that came across the desert to my India? Shall not the Hindus and Moslems cease to talk of majority and minority—of safeguards and protection—of neutrality and hostility—and shall they not say: "India, our Motherland is the one bond of union, and though we the Mussalmans may belong to the desert called Arabia and though we the Hindus come of the forest culture of the Vedas, we are indissolubly bound together." Let the desert and the forest meet together in one paradise of culture whose name is Indian Liberty for the Indian Nation. Oh, my friends, how shall we solve [p. 765] this problem, I do not know. Some say to me: Give us separate communal representation and all things will be well. Others say: Give us a joint electorate and all things will be well. Oh, is it so easy to treat the fatal disease with a few canting formulae of separate or joint representation or is there any magic in the number of seats given to one community or the other? If the remedy is so easy—a mere incantation of a number of seats or separate representation—some jugglery of the polling booth—I would say: Give it and be done with it. But the disease is very deep indeed and the name of that disease is 'distrust' and 'hatred' and it cannot be cured, believe me, until the women of the race say: "No more shall our little children be cradled to the lullaby of this hymn of internecine hate"—until the women of the race say—until the sisterhood and motherhood of India say: "We shall stop this dreadful disease that perpetuates our slavery and makes us the mockery of the civilized world;" and then and then only shall there be hope for this unhappy country. But that is not the end of our catalogue of sins.

To-day in this country you and I stand branded as the parasites of the city—we stand arraigned for our neglect and forgetfulness and for our betrayal of the needs of the poor. What shall a few thousand palaces in the city—what shall a few banks that hold your coffers and gold—what shall a few Universities here and a few Universities there and a few modern appliances to show how far you come in line with modern Western things—do to help the poor? Is this to be the criterion of your progress? No, no. Believe me, your progress, your liberty, your achievement will only be worth having when there is food in every home in the villages (cries of 'Hear, hear')—when there is cloth enough to cover the shame of the naked women—when there is milk enough to moisten the lips of the suffering children who die of want in a land that is full of harvest. When Mahatma Gandhi gave to the world the wonderful [p. 766] creed, he made the spinning wheel the centre of our great redemption. To-day, the poet Tagore, with his poet's vision and seer's vision has sent you a message to say: 'Direct your love and service to the cradle of your people where nature's milk has run dry—where joys are extinct and where life is on the wane.' What are you and I doing to still the hunger—those million mouths in hunger that cry for bread? What are you and I doing—with our intellect, with our powers, with our prestige—with our wealth and with our fame—to meet that myriad-handed supplicant gesture that says: "Oh, save us from death for the pangs of hunger are terrible within our vitals." Shall you not, young men, come out in your hundreds and thousands as missionaries of salvation to go over the length and breadth of this agricultural country—this agricultural country whose harvests are transhipped to feed millions of little children elsewhere when the mouths of your own little children are smitten by your hands unto death? Shall you not use your intellect—shall you not use your talent—shall you not use the plenty that you amass in the city to go back to the poor who have fed you? They have tilled the soil that you may reap the harvest. They rot in poverty so that you may benefit. But you have condemned them to be living corpses in the midst of harvest. You have enjoyed, you have slept, you have married, you have lived and been famous and powerful, while those who are your Annadata—those on whom you live, they are dying to-day in their hunger and misery. From them comes the cry of anguish saying: "We are dying—our little children are dying—we are naked—our women are naked—send us clothes, send us food, send us money, send us men." How shall you men, go and work amidst the villagers unless you are true to the old tradition that makes the household feed the missionaries, the Sanyasis, the Bairagis of your race. Unless you do your duty and set them free from all material care, those missionaries who shall go forth and redeem the villagers from hunger, from poverty, from disease, from misery, from death—how shall they be able [p. 767] to give their lives for the cause? And remember, friends, because there is not enough food in the villages in this great agricultural country, men crowd into cities—are herded together like animals—work for a pittance—starve, exposed to temptations and vices—become nothing but the churning house of every disease that comes. These men are exposed without any sheet-anchor to temptation they cannot resist. Is it not your duty to so organize the labour in the city—the labour in the great industrial towns—so that your work in the villages—your beneficent work that will set free the villagers—shall be complemented and completed by the work you do for the industrial workers in the crowded cities? Do you not know how they are exploited so that the coffers of the profiteers might be swelled, and do you not also know how many of you who seek after fame—how many of you who seek power or prestige or political gain—exploit these men, their poverty, their honesty, the misery they suffer from. But let it not be said of us as a nation that we have brought the tactics of the West into the East, rather let us revive our own ideals, and in serving labour let us not make a new class war in this country where there are already too many castes and creeds. Let us therefore discipline labour and discipline the capitalist as well. Let us teach both of them that they are equal partners in the service of India so that the industrial development of India—the commercial development of India—shall not be the work of labour only or of the capitalists only, but the result of their equitable and fruitful co-operation—each working with the other in the service of the land.

Friends, I do not know, because I have not the knowledge—I have not the qualification—how to deal with all the other problems that face us. But whatever constitution you wish to evolve out of our knowledge or experience of India—whether it be some day absolute independence—whether it be as Deshabandhu used to say, freedom through interdependence with other free nations—whether it should be in the initial stage self-Government [p. 768] on the lines of that constitution which has been evolved by one of your ex-Presidents—that great Irish woman who has made for herself an Indian soul and whose name is Annie Besant—or whether it should be evolved as a temporary measure—mark you, as a temporary measure, out of that demand which is the minimum demand—of rights to be given at once—that was put forward in the Indian Legislative Assembly by the chosen representatives of the Indian people—whatever form your initial constitution may take, remember that one-third of India belongs to the great Indian Chiefs and one of your initial duties is to evolve some policy of friendship, without interference, with the Indian States and Native Chiefs of India so that they on their part might come in line with the great ideal of—I do not know—of what is now called British India. And let not the Princes believe for a moment that we want to crush them by any subtlety or device, hidden or covert * * * * * * * * * and let them feel that some day when we have the great Federation of free India, the Indian States will come in line with it as an integral unit of greater India working on the same basis of democratic Freedom with the people of India. And side by side with the Indian States I place the Frontier Provinces of India. They are always ruled by martial law. You cry out against the martial law in the Punjab—you cry out against the martial law in Malabar—but what about those people—Hindus and Mahomedans, Afridis, Usufees and Afghans—living always under the shadow of martial law and being denied even the ordinary amenities of life. The ordinary redress of law is not granted to them. When I was in the Frontier Provinces, friend after friend told me: “Will not the Congress and the people of India do something to help us to get the ordinary normal amenities of life?” But as I said already, the Congress should take all these interests as mere auxiliary work, and I have suggested in that little pamphlet that the Congress should be divided into departments of activities and each department should be worked by men or women who have enthusiasm and capacity and experience [p. 769] to minister to all the growing and divergent needs of the people. One of these departments should deal with village reconstruction with a band of eager, self-less missionaries of whom I have spoken; the other with the fortune or misfortune of our people overseas and yet another with foreign propaganda and publicity in India, so that there will remain not one single village or hamlet in India whose people shall not be educated in their civic rights and social rights and duties and their political rights, so that our people shall know how wrong a system it is that governs them with an iniquitous fiscal policy that ruins their trade and deprives them of their rightful place in the economic and industrial progress of the world.

But when all is said and done, remember the work of the Congress is the attainment of Swarajya. The Congress after five years has to-day returned to its great political duty as the one channel through which Swarajya must be attained. How shall we work for this. You all know that the Congress is divided to-day. Though united, it has two wings. One wing is presided over by Mahatma Gandhi—that group of Congressmen, I believe the influential group who refused to change with the changing time and who say: "We shall seek Swarajya through Mahatma Gandhi's gospel alone." And so to-day within the Congress itself the only political group actually battling with the bureaucratic tyranny is the Swarajya Party which had for its leader the brilliant Deshabandhu and which has to-day for its leader that man who chose poverty having once been a prince of men—Motilal Nehru. How shall a single party give battle to the powerful bureaucracy? To-day is it not the duty of the Liberals, the Conventionalists or Independents—no matter what particular label they attach to their names—no matter what be their shibboleths—to return to the Congress—shall they not come to the common field of battle and united and firm say to the Bureaucracy: "We shall not serve you any longer, we shall not any longer suffer the insults and insolence of the bureaucracy's challenge to our manhood." Shall they not stand together and say whether within the Councils or without: "We [p. 770] stand to fight for our rights and we shall not be deprived of our rights an hour longer and we must have our rights which belong to us." There is a demand which is called the National Demand which was given as an ultimatum to the Government. What is the will of the people—what is the mandate to your representatives in the Legislative Assembly—are you prepared to still have the devastating passion that disintegrates your manhood—are you prepared to say: 'Let us wait a little longer—when so many centuries have gone into slumber with this brand of slavery, let a century still go by, let us still be patient?' Oh, if I could destroy that patience of yours—if I could break that devastating patience of yours! Oh, if I could redeem India from her horrible patience! Say to your chosen representatives: 'Our patience is at an end—we cannot wait. Come out of that Assembly and Council of yours if within a week the answer does not come that shall guarantee your Swaraj.' Say to them: 'We will not wait that you should go there and make the Assembly a debating ground for eloquence and rhetoric.' Say to them: 'Come out and work and redeem the country by your work. We have had enough of it. We have had enough of constitutional requests denied by constitutional Imperialists.' To-day we want you to go to the country and say: 'Oh, men and women of India, we tried and we have failed to shake the mighty, we come back to the poor, we come back to the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed and ask for their mandate for our sacrifice.' Do you think by mere promise from White Hall or Simla or Delhi the poor would be fed, the naked clothed and shame wiped out from the forehead of your manhood? In your millions you must stand together and march shoulder to shoulder through stage after stage of sacrifice till the last sacrifice is demanded of you.

I am not afraid of the ultimate sacrifice. I am only a woman. I am only a woman but I am the standard bearer of your honour and I will see to it—the women of India will see to it—that you men shall no more betray the heritage of our nation. The Indian woman calls: 'Oh, my [p. 771] men, stand up and say what is manhood but sacrifice, what is life except to die that our children may be reborn in their heritage of freedom.' And if men falter, as they have done through centuries, go to your homes and let me, a mere woman—let me go to the world and say: 'Mother, rise, we redeem you from bondage, rise from the nightmare of slavery. Shall it be left to the women to say that thy sons were faithless but thy daughters have saved thee.' Bande Mataram. (Applause and prolonged cheers.)

[p. 772] PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

The following is the Presidential Address, copies of which were printed and circulated :

Friends,—Were I to ransack all the treasuries of human language I fear I should fail to discover words of adequate power or beauty to translate my deep and complex emotion in acknowledging the signal honour you have done me, by entrusting to my unskilled hands the high burden and responsibility of so exalted an office, which for two score years has been ennobled by the brilliant and memorable achievements of my distinguished predecessors both of our own and of alien race. I am fully aware that you have bestowed upon me the richest gift in your possession, not merely as gracious recompense for such trivial service as I may have been privileged to render at home or abroad; but rather in generous tribute to Indian womanhood and as token of your loyal recognition of its legitimate place in the secular and spiritual counsels of the nation. In electing me to be the chief among your chosen servants, through a period so fraught with grave issues and fateful decisions, you have not created a novel precedent. You have only reverted to an old tradition and restored to Indian woman the classic position she once held in a happier epoch of our country's story; symbol and guardian alike of the hearth-fires, the altar-fires and the beacon-fires of her land. Poignantly conscious as I am of my own utter unworthiness to interpret so exquisite, so austere an ideal of wisdom, devotion and sacrifice, as embodied through the ages in the radiant heroines of our history and legend, I trust, that to the fulfilment of the lofty task you have allotted me, even I might bring some glowing ember of the immortal faith that illumined the vigil of Sita in her forest exile, and bore the feet of Savitri undaunted to the very citadels of Death.

The accepted convention of this august assembly imposes upon me, alas, the duty of placing before you a [p. 773] formal document of plans and policies of work for the coming year. I therefore, contrary to the impulse and custom of a life-time, am vainly groping for appropriate phrases that might serve dimly to foreshadow some of the thoughts that can only find spontaneous expression when I stand in your midst and the inspiration of your living presence shall give to my heart its voice of hope, and to my words their wings of fire.

Before we reach the central purpose of our labours in this northern city, to which we have journeyed from the farthest ends of India, let us offer our mournful homage to the memory of our illustrious dead—to that great patriarch of our national renaissance, Surendranath Banerjea, who for well-nigh half a century assailed the heavens with the thunders of his splendid oratory in indignation at the burning wrongs of his people; to Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, the famous scholar of the Deccan, who with patient and dedicated hands rekindled the lamp of our ancient Sanskrit culture, and lifted it high above the clamour and conflict of political throngs, to Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das, kingliest of dreamers, whose whole being was a Vaishnavite rhapsody of incomparable passion for the liberty of his Motherland, who died with his hand outstretched in a royal gesture of reconciliation towards a powerful antagonist against whom he had fought so often with such reckless and victorious chivalry.

Would that he were with us to-day to guide us aright in our anxious deliberations and help us to apprehend the true and tragic significance of the stupendous problems that call for immediate settlement and cannot with impunity be deferred to a more convenient season! A singular combination of domestic and international circumstances has conspired to implicate us against our will and almost without our knowledge in a labyrinth of intricate and unparalleled difficulties that threaten the stability and integrity of our national existence. Our imperative duty, therefore, is to survey with eyes unhooded by their habitual illusion, the sinister and melancholy spectacle of our abject helplessness born of our foolish disunion and [p. 774] nourished by our long dependence upon the caprice or the compassion of Imperial policies. What means shall we devise, what schemes shall we evolve to deliver ourselves from the manifold dangers that encompass us? How shall we combat the deadly forces of repression that challenge our human rights of liberty, how defeat the further encroachment of ruthless and rapacious Imperialist exploitation that despoils the remnants of our moral and material heritage? How circumvent the insidious and ingenious aggression of other foreign races eager to profit by the conditions of our economic and intellectual servitude? How shall we avert the implacable doom that menaces our unfortunate kindred in the Colonies, how quell the rampant forces of reaction or divert the disaster of our internecine feuds?

The answers that we need are fully enshrined in the magnificent Gospel of sacrifice enunciated by Mahatma Gandhi, in which he vainly strove to teach us the heroic secret of national self-redemption. But we, so long disinherited from the epic faith that sustained our brave forefathers, were too weak and unworthy to respond for more than a brief period to the demands of that noble and exacting creed. Whatever may be the verdict of history, it cannot be gainsaid that the movement of non-violent non-co-operation that swept like a tempest over the country shook the very foundations of our national life, and though to-day it is quiescent and its echoes are almost still, it has irrevocably changed the aspect of our spiritual landscape.

However remote may be all our programmes for the future from the principles and ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, they must inevitably be permeated by the influence of these recent years which have permanently shifted the currents of our political thoughts and altered the direction of our political destiny.

We need to-day some transcendent miracle of intrepid and enduring statesmanship to enable us to remobilize, reconcile and discipline our scattered and demoralised energies to a supreme unanimous effort for the final [p. 775] deliverance of India from the last shackles of her political subjection; and to devise a comprehensive scheme that shall act as a natural and indispensable auxiliary of political emancipation, and include within the scope of its interest or benediction all the enterprises and endeavours that substantially contribute to the social, economic, industrial and intellectual advancement of India, consistently with the requirements of her own peculiar conditions and in accordance with the finest ideals of modern progress.

To give concrete expression to our decision in regard to these ancillary activities, the Indian National Congress should create definite departments to be governed by groups of men and women specially qualified by their capacity or enthusiasm to administer to the vital and divergent wants of the people. The main divisions might be few but should include within their sphere of responsibility all cognate matters. To my mind it is of paramount importance to formulate a practical scheme of village reconstruction on the lines of Deshabandhu Das's dream. For this purpose we must try to enlist a large band of missionary patriots of burning zeal who set free from material wants by the pious charity of the householders of the country as in ancient times, should carry through the length and breadth of the land the beneficent evangel of self-reliance and self-respect, taking the immemorial twin symbols of the plough and the spinning wheel as the central text of the teaching that shall liberate our unhappy peasantry from the crushing misery and terror of hunger, ignorance and disease. Closely allied to the task of village reorganisation, is the task of organising the industrial workers in the crowded cities, who are so often compelled to live under conditions that degrade and brutalize them; and who, dislocated from the steadying influences of the familiar traditions and associations of the rural homes they leave in search of bread, are so hopelessly exposed to the temptations of immorality and vice. It should be our endeavour to assist in securing for them improved housing conditions, better wages and a cleaner atmosphere, and to establish an equitable and harmonious co-operation between [p. 776] Capital and Labour as a valuable joint asset of national progress.

I am appalled at the criminal apathy of our general attitude towards the urgent problem of Indian education. The surpassing evil of foreign domination has been to enslave our imagination and intellect and alienate us from the glorious tradition of our national learning. We are to-day no more than the futile puppets of an artificial and imitative system of education which, entirely unsuited to the special trend of our racial genius, has robbed us of our proper mental values and perspectives, and deprived us of all true initiative and originality in seeking authentic modes of self-expression. It is pre-eminently our duty towards the young generation to so recreate our educational ideals as to combine in felicitous and fruitful alliance all the lovely regenerating wisdom of our Eastern culture with all the highest knowledge of art and science, philosophy and civic organisation evolved by the younger people of the West.

In addition, I would insist with all the force at my command on including a complete course of military training as an integral part of national education. Is it not the saddest of all shameful ironies that our children whose favourite lullabies are the battle songs of Kurukshetra and whose little feet march gaily to the stirring music of Rajput ballads, should be condemned to depend for the safety of their homes, the protection of their sanctuaries, the security of their mountain and ocean frontiers, on the fidelity and strength of foreign arms? The savage Massai, the primitive Zulu, the Arab and the Afridi, the Greek and the Bulgar may all carry their tribal weapons and claim their inalienable right to defend the honour of their race, but we whose boast it is that we kindled the flame of the world's civilization are alone defrauded of our privilege and have become cowards by compulsion, unfit to answer the world's challenge to our manhood, unable to maintain the sanctity of our homes and shrines.

[p. 777] Whatever the experiments recommended by the Commission now sitting to explore the avenue of the military advancement for our people, it is incumbent upon the Congress to form forthwith a national militia by voluntary conscription, of which the nucleus might well be the existing volunteer organisations. Further we should also carefully consider the question of nautical as well as naval and aerial training to equip the nation for all purposes of defence against invasion or attack.

Let it not be said of us, however, that our selfish absorption in our own domestic affairs has made us oblivious of the distress and difficulty of our kinsmen in foreign lands. Our adventurous compatriots, who have crossed the seas to seek their livelihood in the dominions and colonies have from time to time been subjected to restrictive and repressive legislation. The White Paper still stands as a reproach against our failure to redress the wrongs of the Indian community in Kenya. But in the whole chronicle of civilized legislation there has never been so cruel and relentless an outrage against humanity as is deliberately embodied in the anti-Asiatic Bill, which is calculated to exterminate the Indian community from South Africa.

Shall we not send across the seas a loving and ready response to their heart-rending cry for succour, and, through their ambassadors whom we welcome to-day, offer to our harassed and afflicted brothers in South Africa the assurance that India stands behind their courageous struggle to vindicate their inherent civic and human rights against the onslaught of such terrific injustice and oppression?

Never before has our duty to our kindred in foreign countries been so vividly brought home to our minds; nor the necessity of establishing a close and living contact with all their changing fortunes. We should not lose a single moment in forming an Overseas Department in the Congress manned by those who can keep themselves vigilantly aware of all the legislations and enactments that adversely or otherwise affect Indian settlers abroad.

[p. 778] Here my heart pleads with me to remember those sorrowful and lonely exiles, pining in strange and far off corners of the earth, consumed with a desperate hunger and nostalgia for a glimpse of their Motherland, to which they cannot return because, once they sought to serve her and win her freedom in ways unrecognised by the common law. But many amongst them surely have made fullest atonement for all the fervent folly of their too impatient youth. Surely they, who have been chastened in the searching crucibles of dreadful suffering and privation, have been refashioned to become consecrated vessels of selfless service for the amelioration of the poor, the fallen and the depressed.

I cannot conceive how we have allowed ourselves to be so heavily handicapped by the lack of an efficient publicity which is the first essential of any campaign. We should therefore take immediate steps to form a department for widespread political propaganda and for the education of the masses in all matters pertaining to their civic and social interests, to the wrongs under which they labour, the struggles in which the nation is engaged, the iniquitous and unstable fiscal and financial policies so ruinous to the prosperity of the country. I am confident that we could secure the willing co-operation of those who, otherwise prevented from active participation in public affairs, would gladly place their expert knowledge at our disposal, to advise us on questions connected with the revival of cottage industries, on commerce, railway, shipping, co-operative banking and all other branches of development necessary for our material welfare.

The nationalist press both Vernacular and English, should be amongst the accredited channels of our propaganda; above all a reliable foreign news service should be established to transmit to all the chief centres of the world the correct version of Indian affairs, and friendly embassies appointed to foster feelings of goodwill and understanding between India and the people of other lands.

And now I approach with the utmost hesitation and regret, the most baffling and most tragic of all the problems [p. 779] before us. I, who have dedicated my life to the dream of Hindu-Muslim unity, cannot contemplate without tears of blood the dissensions and divisions between us that rend the very fabric of my hope. I have tried to arrive at a just appreciation of the many unfortunate causes that have brought about so deep a gulf between the two communities, and tended to quicken such a sharp and importunate sense of aloofness on the part of my Muslim brothers, which, to the profound alarm and resentment of the Hindu community, manifests itself in a growing and insistent demand for separate and preferential rights and privileges in academic, official, civic and political circles of life. Though I am convinced that the principle of communal representation, whether through a joint or a separate electorate, frustrates the conception of national solidarity, I am compelled to recognise that situated as we are to-day, in an atmosphere so tense and dark and bitter with unreasoning communal jealousy, suspicion, fear, distrust and hatred, it is not possible to reach any satisfactory or abiding readjustment without the most earnest and patient collaboration between Hindu and Muslim statesmen of undeniable patriotism, to whom we should entrust the delicate and difficult task of seeking some sovereign remedy for so devastating a disease.

I beseech my Hindu brothers to rise to the height of their traditional tolerance which is the basic glory of our Vedic faith and try to comprehend how intense and far-reaching a reality is the brotherhood of Islam, which constrains seventy millions of Indian Mussalmans to share with breathless misery the misfortunes that are so swiftly overtaking the Islamic countries and crushing them under the heel of the military despotism of foreign powers.

In their turn I would implore my Muslim comrades not to permit their preoccupation with the sorrows of Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Arabia to obliterate the consciousness of their supreme duty to India their motherland, who must always have the first claim upon their devotion and allegiance.

If Hindus and Mussalmans would both learn to practise the divine qualities of mutual forbearance and [p. 780] accord to one another perfect liberty of worship and modes of living, without the tyranny of fanatical interruptions of one another's appointed rituals and sacrifices, if they would but learn to reverence the beauty of each other's creeds and the splendour of each other's civilizations, if the women of the two communities would but join together in the intimate friendship of their common sisterhood, and nurture their children in an atmosphere of mutual sweetness and harmony, how near we should come to the fulfilment of our heart's desire!

We should grossly fail in our duty to our neighbours were we to omit to try and foster cordial ties of sympathy and trust between ourselves and the princes and the people of the great Indian States, scrupulously refraining from all interference in their internal concerns but always ready to serve in their wider interests.

Nor can we afford to ignore the claims of the frontier provinces which, owing to their peculiar geographical and strategic position on the map, are governed by a form of perpetual martial law. We should render them all the assistance in our power, in their efforts to obtain the normal civic and social amenities which are so abundantly enjoyed by their sister provinces.

These are some of the accessory features of our work. The real function, however, of the Indian National Congress is the speedy attainment of Swaraj.

There is a large and influential section of Congressmen who still cling with touching and jealous loyalty to the orthodox creed of Non-Co-operation. Sternly refusing to take cognizance of legislative bodies they devote themselves to the pursuit of Mahatma Gandhi's benevolent mission, propagating the cult of the spinning wheel and ministering to the lowly and pitiful outcastes of our society whom, in our arrogance, we have so long deprived of their elementary human rights.

To-day therefore, the Swaraj Party with its highly disciplined organisation and its striking record of success is [p. 781] the only political body within the Congress engaged in actual combat with bureaucratic authority. Is it not in this crucial hour the unmistakable duty of all the other political parties in the country, irrespective of their particular labels and particular beliefs, to return to the Congress which invites them with open doors, and coalesce all their divided energies and talents in devising a common programme of action in pursuance of a common goal?

All of them have openly acknowledged that the Reforms of 1919 which were to have created a new era of progress have proved nothing but a mirage and the powers they professed to transfer to the people nothing but a deceptive myth. All of them surely, are tacitly agreed upon some common maximum of the wrongs they are still prepared to endure, some common minimum of the rights they are now determined to enforce. And whatever be my own personal conviction, they at all events are all in favour at least as an initial form of self-government of the ideal of Dominion Status, so elaborately expounded in the Commonwealth of India Bill, and more succinctly and emphatically embodied in the National Demand which has been endorsed by the representatives of all political schools in the Legislative Assembly. Below the limits of that demand the Indian nation cannot descend without irretrievable damage to its dignity and self-respect. It is now for the Government to make the responsive gesture that shall decide our future attitude. If the response be sincere and magnanimous, with ample guarantees of goodwill and good faith on its part, it will necessitate an immediate revision of our present policy. But if by the end of the Spring Sessions we receive no answer or an answer that evades the real issues or proves unworthy of our acceptance, the National Congress must clearly issue a mandate to all those who come within its sphere to vacate their seats in the Central and Provincial Legislatures and inaugurate from Kailas to Kanyakumari, from the Indus to the Brahmaputra, an untiring and dynamic campaign to arouse, consolidate, educate and prepare the Indian people for all the progressive and ultimate stages of our united struggle [p. 782] and teach them that no sacrifice is too heavy, no suffering too great, no martyrdom too terrible, that enables us to redeem our Mother from the unspeakable dishonour of her bondage, and bequeath to our children an imperishable legacy of Peace.

In the battle for liberty, fear is the one unforgivable treachery and despair, the one unforgivable sin.

With palms uplifted in ardent supplication, I pray that, to us, in our coming hour of travail, may be granted in sufficient measure an invincible faith and an inflexible courage, and that He in whose name we begin our labours to-day will in the hour of our triumph keep us humble and in the beautiful words of our ancient invocation

Lead us out of the Unreal into the Real, Out of the Darkness into the Light, Out of Death into Immortality.