Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/104

This page needs to be proofread.
88
A NATION IN MAKING

occasion, to the accompaniment of the khol and the kartal. The effect was very great. The people swarmed in crowds, sometimes from villages far away, and they followed us, they attended our meetings and heard our addresses. Music played an important part in these demonstrations. We had read Vaishnava literature to some purpose, and Sankirton has ever since then formed a prominent feature as an instrument of popular and political propa- gandism in Bengal. We took the fullest advantage of it, and with admirable results. Babu Barada Prosanna Roy was the sweet singer of our party. He composed his own songs and sang them with thrilling effect. It is to be borne in mind that not one of those who were engaged in this work received any remuneration of any kind. It was to them entirely a labour of love; and from week to week and from month to month they were engaged in it, at great personal sacrifice and inconvenience.

The names of these worthies deserve to be commemorated. First and foremost amongst them was Krishna Kumar Mittra, then in the prime of life, but still retaining, despite age and heavy domestic bereavement, a superb enthusiasm for public work. A saintly character, he will, I hope, be remembered by after-gener- ations, if they care to treasure the memories of the good and the true, as one of the worthiest and most selfless among his contemporaries. Essentially a man of religion, politics is a part of his religion. He leavens every sphere of his public work with the devout spirit of religion. He reminds one of the old Puritans. Ascetic in his temperament, unbending in his convictions, careless of the good things of life, and remorseless in his hatred of shams and shows. But he differs from the Puritans of old in the sweet amiability that suffuses his nature. Every good endeavour finds a responsive echo in his heart. There was no stauncher friend of the Swadeshi movement, or more unflinching opponent of the Partition of Bengal, than Krishna Kumar Mittra; and he suffered for his devotion to the cause of his country by his deportation. In his case deportation was the unkindest cut of all; for he had always been a firm supporter of constitutionalism and a thorough-going opponent of revolutionary movements. At the interview I had with Lord Morley at the India Office in 1909, I told him that Krishna Kumar Mittra's deportation was a grievous blunder; and this view, I believe, is now admitted even by the officials themselves. The fact demonstrates, if indeed any demonstration were needed, how unsafe and dangerous it is to punish men upon ex-parte police