The Disastrous Split At Surat In 1907

Surat, on the banks of the Tapti River, hosted the Congress session on December 26, 1907. Rumours that the Moderates wanted to scuttle the four Calcutta resolutions enthralled the Extremists. The ridicule and venom hurled at the Moderates in Surat's mass meetings the previous three days had left them deeply hurt. As a result, the delegates met in a frenzy of anticipation and rage. The extremists demanded assurances that the four resolutions would pass. To force the Moderates to do so, they decided to object to Rash Behari Ghose, the duly elected President for the year.

 

•    The 1600 delegates were shouting, fighting, and throwing chairs at each other in no time. Meanwhile, an unknown assailant threw a shoe at the dais, striking Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjea. The cops arrived and cleared the room. The Congress session had come to an end. 

 

•    The rulers were the only ones to emerge victorious. Minto immediately wrote to Morley, declaring Surat's "Congress collapse" a "great triumph for us."

 

•    Tilak had foreseen the danger and made hasty preparations to avoid it. But he was powerless in the face of his followers. ‘Instead of leading his party, he (Tilak) allowed himself to be led by some of its wild spirits,' wrote Lajpat Rai, a participant from the Extremist side, later. 

 

•    He agreed to waive his opposition to Dr. Rash Behari Ghose's election and leave the four Calcutta resolutions to the Subjects Committee twice at my request in Surat, but the moment I left him, he found himself helpless in the face of the volume of opinion that surrounded him.” 

 

•    Tilak was taken aback by the suddenness of the Surat debacle. Tilak had not expected it because, as Aurobindo Ghose later wrote, he saw the split as a "catastrophe." “As a great national fact and for its unrealized possibilities,” he regarded the Congress. He was now attempting to repair the damage. He sent a virtual letter of regret to his opponents, accepted Rash Behari Ghose as the Congress's President, and pledged his support for the party's unity. 

 

•    Pherozeshah Mehta and his colleagues, on the other hand, were adamant. They believed they were on a sure thing. The government responded by launching a massive counter-offensive against the extremists. Extremist publications were outlawed. Tilak, their main leader, was imprisoned for six years in Mandalay.

 

•    Their ideologue, Aurobindo Ghose, was involved in a revolutionary conspiracy case and, after being found not guilty, gave up politics and fled to Pondicherry to pursue religion.

 

•    B.C. Pal took a break from politics, and Lajpat Rai, who had been a helpless onlooker in Surat, went to Britain in 1908, returned in 1909, and then went to the United States for a long stay. 

 

•    Extremists were unable to form a viable alternative party or maintain their movement. 

 

•    The Moderates were allowing themselves to be led astray by their own erroneous beliefs. They abandoned all of the radical measures adopted at the Congress sessions in Benaras and Calcutta, scorned all attempts at unity from the Extremists, and expelled them from the party. 

 

•    They thought they were going to rebuild a "resuscitated, renovated, reincarnated Congress," as Pherozeshah Mehta put it. However, the Congress's spirit had vanished, and all attempts to resurrect it had failed. 

 

•    They had lost the respect and support of political Indians, particularly the youth, and had been reduced to a small group. The majority of the Moderate leaders withdrew into their shells; only Gokhale persisted, aided by a small group of Servants of India Society co-workers. And the vast majority of politically aware Indians lent their support to Lokamanya Tilak and the militant nationalists, however passively.

 

•    The national movement as a whole began to wane after 1908. In 1909, Aurobindo Ghose noted the change: ‘When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of millions of men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country.” However, while the upsurge had passed, the arousing nationalist sentiments had not. The public awaited the next stage. Tilak was released in 1914, and he picked up the movement's threads.

 

•    The ‘constitutional' reforms of 1909 disappointed the Moderates and the country as a whole. The Indian Councils Act of 1909 increased the number of elected members in both the imperial and provincial legislative councils.

 

•    The majority of the elected members were still chosen through a process of indirect election. A member of the Governor-Executive General's Council was to be appointed by an Indian. Thirty-six of the Imperial Legislative Council's sixty-eight members were officials, while five were nominated non-officials. Six of the twenty-seven members elected were big landlords, and two were British capitalists. 

 

•    The Act gave members the ability to introduce resolutions and increased their ability to ask questions. Separate budget items could be voted on separately. However, the reformed councils remained advisory bodies with no real power. They also didn't include any democratic or self-government elements.

 

•    The British government's undemocratic, foreign, and exploitative nature remained unchanged. Morley openly declared in Parliament: ‘If it could be said that this chapter of reforms led directly or necessarily up to the establishment of a Parliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have nothing at all to do with it.’

 

•    The real goal of the Morley-Minto Reforms was to splinter the nationalist ranks and stifle Indian unity by encouraging the spread of Muslim communalism. 

 

•    To achieve the latter goal, the Reforms established a separate electorate system in which Muslims could only vote for Muslim candidates in constituencies set aside for them. This was done to promote the idea that Hindu and Muslim political, economic, and cultural interests were distinct and not intertwined. 

 

•    The establishment of separate electorates was one of the poisonous trees that would bear a bitter fruit in the future.