Pal's most effective weapon—which he has seldom employed—would be passive resistance. In a country of teeming millions like India, a revolution based on physical force is unnecessary. For the achievement of political liberty,—according to him —passive resistance is enough. Boycott Manchester dhotis that drape your bodies and Western institu tions that drug your souls—and you are free. To the writer's best knowledge, Pal has always repudiated physical force as a solvent of political difficulties and has insisted on the need for moral regeneration and the development of self-respect. From an article that he contributed in 1915 to the Amrita Bazaar Patrika, entitled " The Coming of Surendra Nath," it seems that he had then relin quished his previous utopian idea that the machinery of government could be easily paralysed through the systematic boycott by the people of British courts of justice, colleges and schools. He called the period of severe unrest, when forces of anarchism reared their heads in India, as the kindergarten stage of the Indian political life when people did not take the right orientation of things and did not know how to use the new-born forces.
But it must not be considered that Pal is reaction ary in his attitude towards the progressive elements in modern culture. Being one of the finest products of Western culture Pal feels more at home in London than even in Calcutta. Besides, he is free from the social trammels that impede freedom of movement and efficiency in action.
Pal believes—or used to believe—that the key to the future lies in the hands of the people themselves. This point he elucidates in these trenchant words : " If the Government were to come and tell me to-day ' take Swaraj,' I would say thank you for the gift, but I will not have that which I cannot acquire by my own hand. Our programme is that we shall so work in the country, so combine the resources of the people, so organise the forces of the nation, so develop the instincts of freedom in the community, that by this means we shall—shall in the imperative, compel the submission to our will of any power that , may set itself against us." Pal is thus no fire-brand, but a visionary with a hatred of shams and deep instinctive love for reality. But he has initiated no practical experiments whereby his ideals could, even in part, be transmuted into action. At the same time, he is the chief pioneer in a movement of ideas according to which self-respect is better than supplication and national freedom better than the so-called political reforms that may be nothing more than a lubrication of the wheels of the bureaucratic machinery.
Pal is thus a philosopher of the political renaissance, a Mazzini of the Indian stage of transition. His ideals have spread their contagious influence through the ranks of moderates and extremists alike, and much of the virility of the Indian National Congress propaganda to-day is due to its permeation with the teachings he vigorously delivered during the period of severe tension in India, both in Bengal and in Madras, even though for years he has studiously abstained from attending meetings of the Congress.
His coldness towards the Congress is not so much due to his extremist leanings, as to the thread-bare discussions that formed the sequels to the moving of resolutions at the annual sittings of the Congress. The sight of venerable delegates mounting the Congress platform, and reading learned dissertations or delivering perfervid orations, once a year, would only move Pal's ridicule. He would feel that the
Congress resolutions left the authorities quite unmoved, and that it were sheer waste of breath to deliver learned speeches to which those at the helm of affairs were not even willing to lend an attentive ear. He would rather see the evolution of a superior type of character and self-confidence in the people which would urge the Government to advance, or rather demand that it should progress.
Pal is a powerful journalist and wields a very facile pen. He writes to various Indian periodicals and to some English and American journals besides. He is at his best while writing of the forces that have created new India.
During his last visit to England he delivered several lectures on India, but though his speeches were learned and instinct with fervour, his blunt, tactless presentation of truths did not win for him many new converts. With his transparent sincerity he lacks the rare gift of judicious utterance. A mere intellectual presentation of opinions, tinged with burning conviction, but regardless of the psychology of the people addressed, is not always a successful operation, however rich the content, or brilliant the method of delivery.
He is, beyond dispute, one of the ablest orators of New Bengal : while his love for the Motherland borders on religious frenzy.
Apropos of his programme for passive resistance he says : " We can make the Government impossible without entirely making it impossible for them to find people to serve them. The administration may be made impossible in a variety of ways. It is not actually that every Deputy Magistrate should say : I won't serve in it. But if you create this spirit in the country the Government service will gradually imbibe this spirit, and a whole office may go on strike. This does not put an end to the Administration, but it creates endless complications in the work of Administration, and if these complications are created in every part of the country, the Adminis tration will have been brought to a deadlock, and made none the less impossible, for the primary thing is the prestige of the government and the boycott strikes at the root of that prestige. . . . We can reduce every Indian in Government service to the position of a man who has fallen from the dignity of Indian citizenship. . . . Passive resistance is recognised as legitimate in England. It is legitimate in theory even in India, and if it is made illegal by new legislation, these laws will infringe on the primary rights of personal freedom. . . . With out positive training no self-government will come to the boycotter. It will come through the organ isation of our village life ; of our Taluks and districts. Let our programme include the setting up of machinery for popular administration, and running parallel to, but independent of, the existing adminis tration of the Government." We are of opinion that during the initial stages of the political agitation in India, PM's views and ideas have been of considerable utility in arousing the people from the slumber of centuries. But under existing conditions in India when political self-con sciousness is expressing itself in definite demands, only organisation along peaceful lines would achieve what intellectually, Pal has stated with such precision and force. Propaganda must become systematic, practical and be conducted on intelligent lints, with the hard-headedness of a bank manager and the specialised aptitude of the expert.