Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
If we review the present position we find that during the past year
there has been some subsidence of the acute stage of the malady, or
rather it has taken a different turn. The bulk of the reasonable
inhabitants have become wearied of the senseless agitation which brings
annoyance and suffering without doing them good. There is less active
boycott and the ordinary citizen has become less amenable to the leaders
of the agitation. But in spite of this, two circumstances stand
out--first, the local leaders have not in general abated one tittle of
their efforts to enforce the boycott, and where in any locality they
showed signs of resting, their chiefs are ready to urge them forward;
secondly, the perversion of our young men has reached a most alarming
stage, not merely from the point of view of the crime and the sense of
insecurity that it engenders, but also from the more general aspect of
the character and prospects of the rising generation. Many parents have
most bitter reason to lament their failure to guide, control, and
restrain their children. On the 7th August boycott celebrations occurred
at the headquarters of each district of the Dacca division, and at a
number of places in the interior. The boycott vow was everywhere renewed
and at several meetings speeches were delivered, the tendency and object
of which was to excite renewed disaffection and to stir up zeal for the
cause. The observances for the 16th October were prescribed in an order
of the chiefs published in the Calcutta papers, and the local leaders
did their best to carry out these instructions. Rakhibandan bathing,
abstinence from cooked food, and the solemn renewal of the boycott vow
were the principal features. In some places public meetings were held
and again the tone of several speakers was most reprehensible. District
conferences and other similar meetings played their usual important part
in the year's programme. In the Dacca division, Jhalakati, Faridpur, and
Pangsa were selected as the theatres of those performances. The
resolutions were varied in character, but however guarded and mild their
phraseology, the speeches advocated boycott in its most blatant form,
and sentiments were expressed tending to keep alive the most pernicious
and dangerous characteristics of the political and social situation.
Similar conferences, in which the boycott played a prominent part, and
in which ill-feeling against the Government was excited, were held in
August and September at Pabna and Dinajpur, and in the Sylhet district
in October a series of meetings took place. In a portion of the Faridpur
district, the unsettled condition of which has for some time been a
cause of anxiety, the inhabitants are mostly Namasudras. The ostensible
object of these meetings was to raise the social condition of the
people, but it appears from the accounts published in the Press that the
Anti-Partition agitation and the boycott of foreign goods were urged and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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