India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947; India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
We have given this extract to show the real cause of the growth of the
revolutionary movement among the Sikhs. Let the reader omit, if he can,
for a moment, all references to active revolutionary propaganda and he
will find that the underlying cause of this trouble was _economic_. Why
did the Sikhs want to emigrate to Canada? Why did they stake all their
possessions on the venture? Why were they unwilling to return to India
at all? Because the economic conditions at home were so bad and the
prospects abroad so good. At home their lands were not sufficient to
absorb all their energies, the income was not sufficient to keep body
and soul together and, in a majority of cases, what they made from land
was hardly more than sufficient to pay Land Revenue to the Government
and interest to the money-lender. There was nothing to bind them to
their homes except the love of home land and the domestic ties. These
melted away in the presence of dire necessity. In extreme need they
left their homes to make more money to be able to pay their debts, to
redeem their lands, if possible to purchase more land and to make life
bearable and tolerable. When they came in the open world they found
insurmountable barriers between them and plenty. They had helped in
making the empire; the empire had enough land for all her sons and
daughters; men were urgently needed to bring land into cultivation and
otherwise to develop the empire; men of other races and colours were not
only welcome but were being induced to come and settle by offers of all
kinds. They, and they alone, were unwelcome and barred.
Add to this the attitude and the record of the Punjab Government towards
political agitation and political agitators, to use their own favorite
expressions. The Punjab Government was the first to resuscitate the old
Regulation III of 1818 for the purpose of scotching a legitimate
agitation against an obnoxious legislative measure. A wise and sagacious
Government would have dropped the legislation which it was eventually
found necessary to veto to maintain peace. The deportations drove the
seeds of unrest deeper. The other contributory causes may be thus summed
up:
(1) The Punjab Government has been the most relentless of all local
governments in India in suppressing freedom of speech and press.
(2) The Punjab Government at one time was very foolishly zealous in
persecuting the Arya Samajists and in making a mountain out of a
molehill about the letters found in the possession of Parmanand.
(3) The sentences which the Punjab Courts have passed in cases of
seditious libel are marked by such brutality as to make them notably
unique in the history of criminal administration in India.
(4) The strangulation of all open political life by direct and indirect
repression led to the adoption of secret methods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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