OTHER BOOKS BY LAJPAT RAI
YOUNG INDIA
An Interpretation and a History of the Nationalist Movement from Within
Price $1.50 net
ENGLAND'S DEBT TO INDIA
A Historical Narrative of Britain's Fiscal Policy in India
Price $2.00 net
THE ARYA SAMAJ
An Account of its Origins, Doctrines and Activities
Price $1.75 net
OBTAINABLE FROM ALL BOOKSELLERS
AN OPEN LETTER
TO
THE RIGHT HONORABLE
DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN
BY
LAJPAT RAI
NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
MCMXVII
Copyright, 1917, by Lajpat Rai
Printed in the United States of America
AN OPEN LETTER
TO
THE RIGHT HONORABLE
DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN
AN OPEN LETTER
TO
THE RIGHT HONORABLE
DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
Prime Minister of Great Britain
Sir: I am an Indian who has, by the fear of your Government in India been forced to seek refuge in the United States, at least for the period of the war. In 1907, when Lord Minto's Government decided to put into operation an obsolete Regulation of the East India Company (III of 1818) against me, in order to put me out of the way, for a while, without even the form of a trial, Lord Morley, the then Secretary of State for India, defending his action, gave me the highest testimonial as far as my private character was concerned. You must have heard that speech though it would be presumptuous to imagine that you remember it.
MY CREDENTIALS
Even my worst enemies have not been able to point out anything in my life which would give any one even the shadow of a reason to say that, in my private life, I have not been as good and honorable a person as any British politician or diplomat or proconsul, is or has been or can be. My record as a wage-earner is as clean and as honorable as that of the best of Britishers engaged in governing India.
Mr. H. W. Nevinson, than whom a more truthful and honorable publicist is not known in British life, has said in his work, "The New Spirit in India," that once when he told a high Anglo-Indian official that I was a good man held in great esteem by my countrymen, the latter remarked, that because I had a high character in private life, I was the more dangerous as an agitator.
I am reciting all this as evidence of my credentials to speak on behalf of my countrymen. Just now I am a mere exile. For the present, I cannot think of returning to India, unless in course of time I begin to feel that by running the risk of being hanged or imprisoned, I should be doing a greater service to my country, than by remaining outside. I am now in the fifty-third year of my life, out of which more than thirty-four were spent in the limelight of public gaze. I am a man of family with children and grandchildren and have had my share, however small, of the good things of the world. Political freedom for India has been a passion to me ever since I was a boy. However hard the life of an exile or a convict may be, I am prepared to risk everything in the cause of my country.
In the language of that prince of political exiles, Joseph Mazzini, the word "exile," is perhaps the most cursed in the dictionary of man. It dries up the springs of affection; it deprives its victims of the sweet babblings and lispings of his little ones with whom every man of age loves to beguile the evening of his days; it closes the avenues of all comfort that are associated with that sweet word home; it shuts the doors of heaven and makes life a continued agony, hanging on the slender thread of such pity and hospitality as one may receive from the generous and kind-hearted foreigner.
INDIA COMPARED WITH GREAT BRITAIN
How can I ask you who have perhaps never left your country except for some pleasant trips on the Continent, to put yourself in my position, if possible, for a moment only, and imagine how I long to kiss the soil, with which are mixed the bones of my mother and other forbears; how I miss the loving embrace of my beloved father, the sweet, expectant, imploring eyes of my widowed daughter, the devoted look of my wife and the kindly affectionate hand-shake of good and devoted friends. Nor can you realize how an Indian loves his country. How can you, of dark, sombre, fog ridden and misty climes, who are born of a chill atmosphere, of treacherously changing weather, who count hours of sunshine and months of darkness and fog and rain and snow and sleet, enter into the feelings of one whose country is a perpetual sunshine, and where universal light reignsa country where weather is neither treacherous nor continually and rapidly changing, where beautiful dawns, starry nights, moonlit fields, resplendent waters, snow-clad hills and joyous rivers constantly and unremittingly fill one's mind with the sublimity, grandeur and beauty of nature; where one needs no stimulants to make him feel lighter and happier. An Indian needs no alcohol to forget his troubles. He has only to go to the Himalaya, or to the banks of Ganga, Brahmputra, Sindh or their numerous tributaries by which the land is blessed and fertilized. Oh, no! It is impossible for you to understand how passionately an Indian loves his country. He would rather starve in India than be a ruler of men in a foreign climate. For him, India is the land of Godsthe Deva Bhm of his forefathers. It is the land of knowledge, of faith, of beatitudethe Gnan Bhm, the Dharma Bhm and the Punni-Bhm of the ancient Aryas. It is the land of the Vedas and of the heroesthe Veda Bhm and the Vir Bhm of his ancestors. Yes, to him, it is the land of lands, the only place where he wishes to live, and more so, where he wishes to die. For a Hindu to die anywhere but in India, is as if he had been damned to hell. He shudders at the idea. To him, it is unthinkable. You may call it foolish, unpractical, sentimental and unprogressive; but there it isa mighty fact of life into which no foreigner can penetrate.
Every Englishman loves his country, its darkness, its fog, its sleet and rain nothwithstanding. Who does not love his country and who does not say:
Home, kindred, friends and countrythese Are ties with which we never part; From clime to clime, o'er land and seas, We bear them in our heart; But, oh! 'tis hard to feel resigned, When they must all be left behind!
J. Montgomery .
If then, an Indian decides to be an exile, voluntarily and maybe for life, he only does so either under a grave sense of duty or of danger. The duty lies in speaking the truth about political conditions in India and the danger in being effectively prevented from doing so if he remains there. No Indian can speak the whole truth while in India. The criminal laws of your Governmentyour Penal and Criminal Codes, Seditious Meetings and Conspiracy Acts, and Press Laws, your tribunals presided over by your own people unaided by jurorseffectively gag his mouth.
All honor to those who, though they cannot speak the whole truth, yet keep the fire burning in India and do as much as considerations of policy and expediency permit. If they do not speak the whole truth, they have at least the consolation of being at home, in the heart of their family and surrounded by their dear ones. For a political exile, however, there is nothing else to do, unless he has to carry on a fight for his living also, in which case he will divide his time between the two, that of earning bread and crying for justice for his country. Happily I have been comparatively free from much anxiety about the first. The only justification for my condition of exile, then, is that I continue to speak the truth about conditions in India and draw the attention of the world to them.
