We are now referring to the events that passed with such dramatic rapidity in the course of the year 1909. India was then seething with political excite ment and vague hopes of a more promising future. There were sporadic outbreaks of uncontrollable feeling, but not of any appreciable magnitude to alarm level-headed statesmen, at the helm of affairs. Those were feelings of disappointment over pledges that lay unredeemed and brilliant flourishes of rhetoric that led neither to political reform worth mentioning nor even to amelioration of the sad lot of the peasantry and the masses.
The ground-down peasantry were overburdened with new—and in a measure oppressive—impositions in the Chenab Canal Colony. The volume of dis content was swelling because of the sad havoc caused by the repeated visitations of plague and famine, whose memories still lingered and rankled in the minds of prince and peasant alike ; 50,000,000 '? people carried away, in a little over two decades, by famine and plague alone, in spite of famine-relief operations and the discovery of the rat-flea ! So much for the masses. As for the educated classes, their minds were being burdened, tortured, driven forward by new ambitions concerning India. They were dreaming dreams and seeing visions. Some saw India exalted on a temple-throne. Others thought of the honourable place she was destined to take among the nations. But the actual realisation bore no analogy to the dreams or the tragic suffering mentally endured by those in whose blood burned the consuming fires of patriotism or whose imaginations were electrified by Japan's astounding victories over Russia, as if these were symbols that Asia's age-long secular slavery to Europe was coming to an end. Before Lord Minto's 1 assumption of Viceroyalty, it was young India's misfortune to be saddled with a Viceroy, ablest no doubt among any on whose shoulders the burden of government has fallen, and possessing great capacity for work, but impatient of new ideals that throbbed in the heart of new India ; imperious and dictatorial to a degree ; disdainful of public opinion and with political vision tainted with the worst ideals of unscrupulous imperialism. It is hardly necessary to mention the name of this distinguished individual. Never before or since has Indian self-respect been more remorselessly crushed or legitimate Indian ambitions more contemptuously scouted. When a history of the repressive measures directed against the renascent sense of nationhood in India comes to be written surely a whole page must be dedicated to this chauvinistic viceroy, who in other respects, has no doubt rendered remarkable services to India.
It is to Gokhale's credit that passing through the ordeals of these highly critical and trying times, and sharing, to a large degree, the experiences and emotions that were pulsating in the breasts of his countrymen, he never let fall one word from his lips that might be construed as a counsel of despair, nor encouraged another to send round a word that might unlock the floodgates of passion and rancour.
He seldom broke faith or went back on his word, / unless he was convinced that he had taken a false ' step or the facts on which he relied were tainted at their source or misinterpreted in the heat of the moment.
It is true that at the Surat Congress of igo6, he condemned the lettres de cachet issued by Lord Curzon as reminiscent of Aurangzeb's severity, and that, moreover, he fully upheld and supported the now historic resolution on boycott of Lancashire goods. But in all this, we see no divergence from his normal behaviour. He would always urge the adoption of mild and moderate measures until the resources of human patience were exhausted, and he saw no ground for hope that the authorities were likely to yield to the reasonable and persistent pressure of moderate appeal. Besides, in his economic creed he was a convinced and consistent protectionist, as most Indian capitalists and publicists are, and from his place in the Imperial Council his speeches urged the abolition of excise duty on Indian cotton. But under the tension of those times, the transition from a mild form of protection for nascent industries to the wholesale boycott of all goods of foreign origin, was very much accelerated by the trying episodes of the Curzonian regime. Besides, the sentiments he then expressed were not so much individual as one of a group of related convictions that heralded the advent of a new industrial India.
Mr. M. K. Gandhi has been, no doubt, the veteran protagonist of the rights of Indian Labour in the colonies of the Empire. And it is only for the last few years, since the outbreak of war, that he has retired, having won the brightest laurels open to meritorious and effective service of a patriotic nature. His propaganda, organised as it was, of passive resist ance, achieved partial success occasionally when appeals and entreaties appeared futile and the pressure, reluctantly exerted by Home authorities was quietly ignored or speciously explained away. But it must be here recorded that though Mr. Gandhi was the veteran leader on the spot, Mr. Gokhale was an equally earnest and convinced advocate of the grievances of Indentured Labour in the Council Chamber, nor must it be forgotten that on his election to the Viceregal Council, after the inauguration of the Minto-Morley Reforms, the first brilliant speech that he delivered, and which was conspicuous for its reasonableness and masterly presentation of facts, was one that eloquently and with great emotion ' championed the cause of the Indian labourer, whose indignities and oppressions make very sad reading.