Chapter 37 - A Session Of Congress

Paid goons, throwing tables, spitting.

The 1907 Surat Session of Congress was a scene of wild anarchy. As a novelist, I don’t think I could have come up with this if I had tried. I am constrained by my imagination of what a Congress session in 1907 would be like. Reality has no such constraints.

Tilak wants to put up Lala Lajpat Rai to be the Congress President. He’s confident of his winning, because Lala Lajpat Rai had just been released from Mandalay, for having successfully protested laws restricting the sale of agricultural land in Punjab. [Interesting tidbit: Sardar Ajit Singh worked with him on this, and also was sent to Mandalay. Ajit Singh is the uncle of Shaheed Bhagat Singh.] Besides, Tilak’s followers are firmly behind him, as well as Bipin Pal’s followers from Bengal.

However, Gopalkrishna Gokhale and the old guard of the Indian National Congress are shit scared. They play all kinds of dirty tricks to keep Tilak’s men away. The session was supposed to be in Nagpur, but they moved it to Surat so it’s less convenient for Tilak’s followers to come in large numbers. And then they misled them about the venue and timing, so they would be too late. And they put up a loyalist, Rashbehari Ghosh for President, who’d then be elected unanimously.

When Tilak tried to protest, all hell broke loose.

I’m not sure where I found this description of it, but it was one of the descriptions I worked off of.

On 30 December 1907 the Session was broken by disorder: a group of paid hooligans rushed for Tilak. Maharashtrian Extremists mounted a counterattack. A Mahratta shoe flew through the air, rebounding off Banerjea and striking Mehta. Pandemonium broke loose. Sri Aurobindo, surrounded by his guard of Bengalis, watched calmly as chairs were thrown and heads broken. At one point Satyen Bose rushed up to him and said, “I have a pistol with me, shall I shoot Suren Banerjea?” “For Heavens sake, don’t do that!” Sri Aurobindo replied. Soon Satyen, Barin, and the other young men found a way to escort him out of the pavilion. As he walked through the doorway, a Moderate supporter spat on him from above.

This chapter is me trying to fictionalize this pandemonium. I’m sure without me talking about these facts, the casual reader will assume I’m making things up from contemporary examples of Parliament sessions to make the Congress look bad.

A Session Of Congress

Surat, Bombay Presidency.