Moderates versus the Extremists

All the cards are on the table. With the entire Congress party going for the idea of Swaraj, will a fight break out? Amidst the internal fight, another force brews in the back. With the parties splitting and internal competition, will the idea of a free of India stay a far-fetched dream?

Group photo of the ‘Extremists’ at the Surat Session in 1907 showing Sri Aurobindo, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak (with a stick in hand), Saiyad Haidar Reza, Ganesh Srikrishna Khaparde and Ashwini Kumar Dutt. The picture misses other important leaders who believed in moderate approaches like Dadabhai Naroji, Surendranath Banerjee or Gopal Krishna Gokhale. This shows the sense of divide between the two groups; Image source: sriaurobindoinstitute.org

Known for being synonymous with Indian politics- the Congress party had been part of the Indian polity since the freedom movement of India. But what about the internal tactics that were at play within the party? This is the story behind the curtain of the fiasco of the Surat split.

Since the Bengal partition, feelings of Swaraj swelled and reached their pinnacle. The Congress seemed to be failing at every step. The 1906 Calcutta Session was about bound to turn ugly.

The Calcutta session saw the friction between two different thought processes that emerged. One was ‘the Moderates’ that believed in raising their voices in a legal and constitutionalized way. This would lead to the British noticing the misery of the Indian people and making rules accordingly. This way they will win the fight and get the Indian people the life they deserve without creating chaos in the lives of people. Then there is the other group ‘the Extremists’ who believed that the British had no compassion for the Indian people and only had their best interest for their own native country. Their method of protest was through boycott, strikes and mass mobilization. It is worth mentioning that the extremists were not violent in any way (not to be confused with ‘the Revolutionaries’).

After the Bengal division, hell broke loose and all the existing friction ignited into a fire. The ‘Swadeshi movement’ thus began in Bengal. While the moderates wished to keep the boycott in the swadeshi movement restricted to Bengal, the extremists wanted each and everyone in India to carry forward this movement. They didn't stop there, for the extremists had a new demand and that was ‘Swaraj.’

Bal Gangadhar Tilak rose as the leader of the extremists, the leader who proclaimed the famous saying, “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it.” At first, the moderates and the extremists agreed on the notion of Swaraj (self-government); the boycott of British goods and services and their schools and courts and promoting feelings of nationalism among all classes. But turns out it only seemed so as the moderates were still hoping to revert to their previous methods of constitutionalised ways. They decided not to raise their voices then even though they were in majority as their position was compromised looking at what happened to Bengal.

Later the extremists came to know that the moderates wished to back away from the goal of Swaraj, boycott and National Education. The Moderates were planning on forming a new constitution that contradicted the notion of Swaraj and they were planning to exclude the extremists by making the acceptance of this constitution a mandatory condition to join the creed of the Congress.

The final card they played was to move the next session from Nagpur to Surat. The reason was that Nagpur was a part of the Maratha kingdom, an extremist zone and Surat was in Gujarat that was more moderate at that time ( it got revolutionised when Gandhi arrived).

The session at Surat began and as suspected the Moderates were in majority (though by a small margin). They presented a constitution just as the rumours had said. The constitution by the Moderates was made in such a way that squashed any hope of extremists gaining a majority in the near future.

The young extremists, mostly from Maharashtra, realised that they don't have a majority. Feeling agitated they dug their heels on the idea if we can’t swamp it, we’ll split it! It meant if they couldn't completely enforce their ideals on everyone they are better off on themselves.

The older extremists like Bal Gangadhar Tilak tried to take over the situation by trying to read their proposal but the Moderate president, Dr Rash Behari Ghose refused him permission to speak. Tilak kept on reading the resolution regardless of the protest causing a tremendous uproar. The dogs of war had slipped.

The young moderates lifted their chairs to hurl them at Tilak. Seeing this, the young Maratha extremists became furious. A shoe was hurtled aimed at the President which accidentally hit Surendra Nath Banerji on his shoulder. Both the parties charged towards each other and the leaders from the different parties had to flee the platform. Along with the chairs, the session broke. This was the entire episode of the infamous ‘Surat Split’ of 1907, the only session in the history of Congress that was suspended in between.

The extremists were expelled from Congress. At the same time the British smiled cunningly they were always hoping for such a result. Of course, the British preferred the moderates. To be honest they hardly paid any attention to the moderates. However, the boycott method used by the extremist was a pain in the head for them. If the extremists were expelled from Congress, they would on their own and they could easily target each one of them to repress the entire nationalist movement.

The main leaders of the extremists: Bal Gangadhar Tilak was leading the Swadeshi movement in Maharastra and Lala Lajpat Rai was doing the same in Punjab. Both of them were arrested by the British. Sri Aurobindo Ghosh on the other hand became a sanyasi leaving politics forever after splitting from Congress. The nationalism movement that had reached its epitome because of the partition of Bengal had now halted after the split.

We already know the story has a better end when Tilak came back from prison from Burma and the entire Congress was reunited along with the Muslim League that had brewed amidst the internal fight of Congress.

As of now, there’s only one justifiable conclusion to this story, “United we stand, divided we fall.”