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continued..... To force the Moderates to guarantee that the four resolutions would be passed, the extremists decided to object to the duly elected President for the year, Rash Behari Ghose. Both sides came to the session prepared for a confrontation. In no time, the 1600 delegates were shouting coming to blows and hurling chairs at eachother. In the meantime some unknown person hurled a shoe at the dias which hit Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjea. The police came and cleared the hall. The Congress session was over and the only victorious party at the end of the day were the rulers. Tilak had seen the coming danger and made last minute efforts to avoid it. But he was helpless before his followers. The suddenness of Surat fiasco took Tilak by surprise. He now tried to undo the damage. He sent a virtual letter of regret to his opponents, accepted Rash Behari Ghose as the President of the Congress and offered his cooperation in working for Congress unity. But Pherozeshah Mehta and his colleagues won't relent. They thought they were on a sure wicket. The Government immediately launched a massive attack on the extremists. Extremist newspaper were suppressed. Tilak, their main leader, was sent to Mandalay jail for six years. Aurobindo Ghose, their ideologue, was involved in a revolutionary conspiracy case and immediately after being judged innocent left politics and settled down in French Pondicherry and took up religion. B.C. Pal temporarily retired from politics and Lala Lajpat Rai left for Britain in 1908. The moderates were indulging in their own foolish beliefs. They gave up all radical measures adopted at the Benares and Calcutta sessions of the Congress, spurned all overtures for unity from the extremists and excluded them from the party. After 1908 the national movement as a whole declined. In 1909, Aurobindo Ghosh 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 in the country.' But while the upsurge was gone, the aroused nationalist sentiments did not disappear. The people waited for the next phase. In 1914, Tilak was released and he picked up the threads of the movement. next page >> |
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