Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches/Benares Incident
BENARES INCIDENT
[There appeared in the 'New India' a charge against Mr. Gandhi as having spoken something to he taken an exception to by the public while addressing a large audience at the "Hindu University Pavilion," Benares to which Mr. Gandhi replied as under]:—
Mrs. Besant's reference in New India and certain other references to the Benares incident perhaps render it necessary for me to return to the subject, however disinclined I may be to do so. Mrs. Besant denies my statement with reference to her whispering to the Princes. I can only say that if I can trust my eyes and my ears I must adhere to the statement I have made. She occupied a seat on the left of the semi-circle on either side of the Maharaja of Dharbanga, who occupied the Chair, and there was at least one Prince, perhaps, there were two who were sitting on her side. Whilst I was speaking Mrs. Besant was almost behind me. When the Maharajas rose Mrs. Besant also had risen. I had ceased speaking before the Rajas actually left the platform. She was discussing the incident with a group round her on the platform. I gently suggested to her that she might have refrained from interrupting, but that if she disapproved of the speech after it was finished she could have then dissociated herself from my sentiments. But she, with some degree of warmth, said: "How could we sit still when you were compromising every one of us on the platform? You ought not to have made the remarks you did." This answer of Mrs. Besant's does not quite tally with her solicitude for me which alone, according to her version of the incident, prompted her to interrupt the speech. I suggest that if she merely meant to protect me she could have passed a note round or whispered into my ears her advice. And, again, if it was for my protection why was it necessary for her to rise with Princes and to leave the hall as I hold she did along with them?
So far as my remarks are concerned I am yet unable to know what it was in my speech that seems to her to be open to such exception as to warrant her interruption. After referring to the Viceregal visit and the necessary precautions that were taken for the Viceroy's safety I showed that an assassin’s death was anything but honourable death and said that anarchism was opposed to our Shastras and had no room in India, I said then where there was an honourable death it would go down to history as men who died for their conviction. But when a bomb thrower died, secretly plotting all sorts of things, what could he gain? I then went on to state and deal the fallacy that, had not bomb throwers thrown bombs we should never have gained what we did with reference to the Partition movement. It was at about this stage that Mrs. Besant appealed to the chair to stop me. Personally, I will desire a publication of the whole of my speech whose trend was a sufficient warrant for showing that I could not possibly incite the students to deeds of violence. Indeed it was conceived in order to carry on a rigorous self-examination.
I began by saying that it was a humiliation for the audience and myself that I should have to speak in English. I said that English having been the medium of instruction it had done a tremendous injury to the country, and as I conceive I showed successfully that, had we received training during the past 50 years in higher thought in our own vernaculars, we would be to-day within reach of our goal. I then referred to the self-government Resolution passed at the Congress and showed that whilst the All-India Congress Committee and the All-India Muslim League would be drawing up their paper about the future constitution their duty was to fit themselves by their own action for self-government. And in order to show how short we feel of our duty I drew attention to the dirty condition of the labyrinth of lanes surrounding the great temple of Kasi Visvanath and the recently erected palatial buildings without any conception as to the straightness or width of the streets. I then took the audience to the gorgeous scene that was enacted on the day of the foundation and suggested that if a stranger not knowing anything about Indian life had visited the scene he would have gone away under the false impression that India was one of the richest countries in the world,—such was the display of jewellery worn by our noblemen. And turning to the Maharajas and the Rajahs I humourously suggested that it was necessary for them to hold those treasurers in trust for the nation before we could realise our ideals, and I cited the action of the Japanese noblemen who considered it a glorious privilege even though there was no necessity for them, to dispossess themselves of the treasures and lands which were handed to them from generation to generation. I then asked the audience to consider the humiliating spectacle of the Viceroy's person having to be protected from ourselves when he was our honoured guest. And I was endeavouring to show that the blame for these precautions was also on ourselves in that they were rendered necessary because of the introduction of organised assassination in India. Thus I was endeavouring to show on the one hand how the students could usefully occupy themselves in assisting to rid the society of its proved defects, on the other, to wean themselves even in thought from methods of violence.
I claim that with twenty years' experience of public life in the course of which I had to address on scores of occasions turbulant audiences. I have some experience of feeling the pulse of my audience. I was following closely how the speech was being taken and I certainly did not notice that the student world was being adversely affected. Indeed some of them came to me the following morning and told me that they perfectly understood my remarks which had gone home. One of them a keen debater even subjected to cross-examination and seemed to feel convinced by a further development of the argument such as I had advanced in the course of my speech. Indeed I have spoken now to thousands of students and others of my countrymen throughout South Africa, England and India; and by precisely the arguments that I used that evening I claimed to have weaned many from their approval of anarchical methods.
Finally, I observe that Mr. S. S. Setlur of Bombay, who has written on the incident to the Hindu in no friendly mood towards me, and who I think in some respects totally unfairly has endeavoured to tear me to pieces, and who was an eye witness to the proceedings, gives a version different from Mrs. Besant's. He thinks that the general impression was not that I was encouraging the anarchists but that I was playing the role of an apologist for the Civilian bureaucrat. The whole of Mr. Setlur's attack upon me shows that if he is right I was certainly not guilty of any incitement to violence and that the offence consisted in my reference to jewellery, etc.
In order that the fullest justice might be done both to Mrs. Besant and myself I would make the following suggestion. She says that she does not propose to defend herself by quoting the sentence which drove the Princes away and that would be playing into the enemy's hands; according to her previous statement my speech is already in the hands of the detectives so that so far as my safety is conceraed her forbearance is not going to be of the slightest use. Would it not therefore be better that she should either publish a verbatim report if she has it or reproduce such sentiments in my speech as in her opinion, necessitated her interruption and the Princes' withdrawal.
I will therefore conclude this statement by repeating what I have said before; that but for Mrs. Besant's interruption I would have concluded my speech within a few minutes and no possible misconception about my views on anarchism would have arisen.