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The official benches merely gave a courteous hearing to the incisive criticisms proceeding from men of such undisputed capacity as Mehta and Gokhale and bore less patiently with the Ciceronian periods of the great Bengalee tribune Surendranath Banerjee. Government paid little or no heed to them. Equally powerless had been their passionate protest against the Partition.
The condition of the police, for instance, is a case in point, for any survival of the bad old native traditions is due very largely to the insufficiency of European control. Mr. Gokhale has himself admitted as one of the reasons for founding his society of "Servants of India" the necessity of "building up a higher type of character and capacity than is generally available in the country."
Gokhale for meeting it, partly by raising the import duties from 5 to 7-1/2 per cent, and imposing other taxes, and partly by wholesale retrenchment in other departments, the financial difficulty is not the only one to be overcome.
Mr. Gokhale himself seems to have awakened to this danger, when in an eloquent speech delivered by him at Lucknow, in support of Swadeshi in 1907, he protested, rather late in the day, against the "narrow, exclusive, and intolerant spirit" in which some advocates of the cause were seeking to promote it, and laid stress upon the importance of capital as well as of enterprise and skill as an indispensable factor of success.
Another, is that all competitive examinations are held in London. Mr. Gokhale very rightly urges that it is a great deal to require of an Indian that he should have to come all the way to England for these examinations on the chance of passing, and suggests their being held simultaneously in India and in England.
It was, however, short-lived, as misunderstandings occurred as to its interpretation. The struggle broke out afresh until another provisional settlement promised to lead to a permanent solution, when Mr. Gokhale, after consultation with the India Office during a visit to England, was induced in 1912 to proceed to South Africa and use his good offices in a cause which he had long had at heart.
The dominant feature of the Session was that in spite of wide divergences of views, the proceedings were generally dignified, sometimes even to the verge of dulness, and with one or two exceptions they were marked by good feeling on all sides. It would be unfair not to give to Mr. Gokhale his full share of credit for this happy result.
Gokhale, before he died, obtained a promise from him that for at least a year he would not attempt to give practical expression to the extreme views which he had already set forth in the proscribed pamphlet Hind Swaraj. At an early age Mr.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale put the whole matter very plainly in 1911: One of the fundamental conditions of the peculiar position of the British Government in this country is that it should be a continuously progressive Government. I think all thinking men, to whatever community they belong, will accept that.
Presently, however, things took at least a temporary turn for the better. The extremists were, after all, a small minority, and cool heads, both British and Indian, were seeking a way out of the impasse. Conservative Indian leaders like Mr. Gokhale condemned terrorism, and besought their countrymen to seek the realization of their aspirations by peaceful means.
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