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absconders through the old channels of dacoities and obtained their funds from elsewhere. The House will appreciate the immense strength this lent to the organisation. I do not propose to labour the point, because the existence of a terrorist conspiracy is common ground with the majority of this Council, and I think I can go so far as to say that no member of the Council has any reasonable doubt upon the subject. I will only add to the testimony already received that of a prominent revolutionary who is an absconder. In a leaflet quite recently distributed, and proscribed by Government only last week, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, whose revolutionary history may be familiar to many of you, says: Those who say that there is no revolutionary party in India and so the promulgation of the repressive laws is an oppression, are not telling the truth; for such an organisation of a very big size really exists in India. This party are endeavouring to bring about independence of India through armed revolution." I would like, however, to say a few words as to the nature, extent and danger of the conspiracy. I will first quote from a synopsis of the scheme of organisation drawn up some time ago by a leader who is now a State prisoner. After touching on the system of discipline and the sphere of activities, he lays down under the heading topography a series of sub-heads under which information should be collected and recorded; the last five headings are significant, namely:

Government institutions-(a) courts, (b) thanas, (c) treasury and (d) post and telegraph offices.

Police stations-number and reserved armed police.
Railway station and railway line.

European quarters.

Houses of monied men-necessary information.

The next heading is "information and spying"; the first four sub-heads here are

(1) Activities of other groups.

(2) Activities of Government. (3) Government strength.

(4) Sources of accumulating strength-() men, () money, (e)

ammunition.

Coming to training, this is divided into physical and military; the military is subdivided into (1) shooting, (2) dagger practices, (3) explosives, (4) lathi.

Under the heading Intellectual Training is comprised, I quote the words "a comprehensive study of the last revolutionary movement with a view to reorganise the society on a stronger basis by being more careful than on the former occasion. Enforcement of the principle of secrecy and strict military discipline so far as practical works are concerned."

I do not think it is necessary to add any comments on these quotations.

As regards the extent of the conspiracy I will refer to papers found recently with another member who is now under restraint under the Ordinance. He had been commissioned to organise outside this Province by a secret committee, and a copy of the resolutions of that committee were found on him. I will quote five of these resolutions

(1) That only two departments be set up at present(a) Propaganda.

(b) Collection of funds and arms,

(2) That the following immediate steps be taken as regards
propaganda through newspapers and magazines which
can be utilised by members of different centres-

(a) to set up a campaign against the C.I. D. activities;
(b) to set up a campaign against repressive laws and

measures;

(c) to criticise Congress activities that hinder the work of the association;

(d) to preach social revolutionary ideas and communistic principles;

(e) to collect stories, episodes and other material for publication.

(3) That every possible care be taken as regards the secrecy of the activities of the Association.

(4) That every district organiser should try his best to help the local clubs and associations with principles that may directly or indirectly promote the cause of revolution, and to try to become members of the Congress and take part in its activities whenever advisable, keeping in view the rules of the Association.

(5) That to provide workers with work it is necessary to divide the district activities into three channels

(a) village works;

(b) secret works ;

(c) local social functions and activities connected with clubs and associations.

These papers mentioned 23 districts in one area outside this Province in which there are already district organisers at work and the member now under restraint was on his way to strengthen the organisation in those districts.

To emphasise the danger of the conspiracy let me refer for a moment to the question of arms. I have seen it stated that there can be no stock of arms because the police in making their arrests on 25th October did not come across them. I should have been very much surprised if the police had made any seizure of arms on that occasion. Even in the old conspiracy, it was a cardinal principle that the arms of the revolutionary society should not be kept with the leaders or those prominent in direct action, but should be scattered among those whose activities were thought not yet to be suspected by the police. I was not in India at the time-on 25th October-but a perusal of speeches and the daily papers shows, I think, that there was a very general idea that Government was about to take some action, and I think we may take it as perfectly certain that the terrorist party were well aware of the rumours. It was exceedingly unlikely that they would have left any arms in any place which they thought there was the remotest chance of the police searching. As to the existence of the arms and bombs, we have, besides our secret information, the fact that they have been used on several occasions. We know that bombs bave been prepared in Calcutta; six bombs and one unloaded shell were found at the Ward Institution, Manicktala, but our investigations showed that many more shells had been made, and a recent case in Faridpore under the Explosives Act shows that the preparation was not confined to Calcutta; we know that individual weapons and small parcels of weapons have been smuggled through the customs in considerable

numbers; 34 revolvers and automatic pistols have been recovered by the police in Calcutta during the year; of these 17 were captured in attempts at smuggling. But dangerous as past experience has shown these comparatively small number of weapons to be in the hands of men of this type, an even greater danger would be the possession by these men of a large store of firearms sufficient to encourage the madness of open revolution and anarchy. We know that during the last war the revolutionary party made desperate efforts, with German help, to get a cargo of arms landed in India; they failed, but during the past year at least three more attempts have been made. Unfortunately, in post-war conditions it is far easier than before to obtain firearms, and there are adventurers in most countries who are willing to provide firearms to anyone who can pay the price and arrange for the receipt. We know that there is one organisation in Germany and another under a well-known leader in the Far East which have for some time been endeavouring to get consignments of arms into India. Members of the Council may recollect that within the last year there have been accounts of a considerable number of seizures of arms on ships at Durban, Colombo, Shanghai, Singapore and other places. We have reliable information confirmed from sources with which the Bengal Police have nothing whatever to do, that the ultimate destination of at least two of the cargoes seized was in India.

I will not further labour the point of the existence of the terrorist conspiracy; it has been admitted by those who have been loudest in denouncing our attempts to deal with it. I do not propose to repeat here what has been said elsewhere of the evils of terrorism, the dangers of its growth and the insidious nature of its spreading into all walks of public or even private life. I think the Council will agree that the unrestricted growth of a terrorist group is incompatible with the existence of any government, whether Swaraj or not. The evil, therefore, has to be tackled and I know of only two ways of doing it. The first, which is one that has been strongly pressed on us in the Press and in speeches, is the punitive line; to simplify criminal procedure and to rely on the punishment in the Courts of those who commit offences. We have tried this during many years in the past; many cases broke down through the impossibility of getting our witnesses into Court, through intimidation, through the murder of witnesses, approvers and police officers, but it is true, and this is the fact that is made much of by those who press this course on us, that in a certain number of cases we did obtain convictions. But the cardinal fact is that the terrorists emerged from these often very lengthy trials stronger than at the beginning, while the forces of Government were weaker. I have previously quoted in this Council the testimony of the revolutionaries to this fact, and I may perhaps quote it again: "Government realised that very little harm was done to the revolution. A few persons were punished but the revolutionary movement went on as usual in the country." This fact has been empaasised by the Bengal Government in all the correspondence that led up after many years to the Defence of India rules. Lastly, I may quote the conclusions of the Rowlatt Committee: "We may say at once that we do not expect very much from punitive measures. The conviction of offenders will never check such a movement as that which grew up in Bengal, unless all leaders can be convicted at the outset. Further, the real difficulties have been the scarcity of evidence due to various causes and the want of

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reliance, whether justified or not, on such evidence as there has been. The last difficulty is fundamental and cannot be remedied. No law can direct a Court to be convinced when it is not." The second alternative is the one we propose to take, viz., to meet the danger not by punitive but by preventive measures; it has always been and will continue to be our policy to place before the Courts all cases of offences against the ordinary law where we can do so without endangering our system of intelligence, but the essence of this method is to acquire information as to the terrorist organisation and the doings of its members, and to take preventive action only when it is necessary to prevent crime or paralyse the activities of the conspiracy. In this, two things are of the highest importance; first, that the organisation shall not know the extent of our knowledge; we know from past experience that their uncertainty on this point has a very crippling effect; second, that our methods of working and our sources of information shall not, directly or indirectly, be divulged or endangered; any rashness or carelessness on this point will deprive us of all information in the future. follows from these two essentials that we cannot take the public into our confidence; but we can point to the past, to the Rowlatt Committee's Report, to that of Mr. Justice Beachcroft and Mr. Justice Chandravarkar; the whole of the workings of our intelligence system were laid bare before the gentlemen, almost entirely judicial, who composed these committees, and we are prepared to stand by their verdict. Let me quote the verdict of Mr. Justices Beachcroft and Chandravarkar: "The total number of cases advised on by us is 806. In six of the total number of cases examined by us we have advised Government that there are not sufficient grounds, in our opinion, for believing that the parties concerned have acted in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of British India, and that, therefore, they should be unconditionally released. In the rest we have advised that the parties have, in our opinion, so acted." The two Judges before whom the cases of the persons arrested under the Ordinance have been placed, have in every case agreed with the opinion of Government that there are reasonable grounds for belief. I should like to mention specifically three cases which have been used in the Press to throw doubts on the efficiency, if not on the bona fides, of our methods of working. The first two are those of Babu Aswini Kumar Dutt and Babu Krishna Kumar Mitra: it has been said that no one will believe that they had anything to do with terrorist crime and that, therefore, the secret information of the police must have been false, and Government may equally well be deceived by such false information now. I never knew Babu Aswini Kumar Dutt, but I hope that Babu Krishna Kumar Mitra will not be ashamed if I call him my friend, and I wholeheartedly acquit him of sympathy with terrorist crime. But as far as I know no one has ever accused him or Babu Aswini Kumar Dutt of promoting crime, still less of taking part in it. The Bengal Government asked for the arrest, under Regulation III, of Babu Krishna Kumar Mitra in 1908 b cause his violent boycott speeches and his activity in organising volunteers involved the danger of internal commotion. In the same way the Eastern Bengal Government asked for the use of Regulation III, in the case of Babu Aswini Kumar Dutt, because of his whirlwind campaign of anti-Government speeches and of his control of the Braja Moban Institution, from which a stream of seditious preachers was constantly pouring. In both these cases the activities for which

these gentlemen were restrained were open and public; there was no need of secret police information and there was none; there was no question of Government being deceived or of police information being false, and the argument that it is sought to found on these two cases falls to the ground. The third case is founded on a report of a statement in Parliament by Mr. Scurr, that he "understood that the only charge against the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation was that he had attended a meeting at which there was talk of criminal conspiracy." It would be interesting to know who supplied this information to Mr. Scurr and what was the particular meeting he referred to; but after the repeated declarations of Government it ought not to be necessary to inform the Council that Mr. Scurr's information is entirely wrong, and that if the information in the possession of Government did not convince them that all the conditions necessary for action under the Ordinance were completely fulfilled in this case the gentleman in question would not remain uuder restraint.

I will not trouble the Council with much discussion of the theory that our action has been directed not against the terrorist conspiracy but against a political party, the Swaraj party, because I think there are very few persons who really hold that theory. It is said that 62 of the persons arrested were Swarajists. I have no personal knowledge of the political labels of any of these persons except three, but I do know that out of 111 persons now under restraint 69 have either been convicted of political crime or been previously restrained for personal participation in revolutionary activities; these persons at all events were revolutionaries before they were Swarajists. I would remind the Council that on the 20th August 1923, when warning the House of the imminent danger of the revival of terrorism, I said: "If this danger is to be met, it must be met with the support of this Council and I feel confident that Government can count on the support of this Council, on the support of all parents in Bengal, and of all true lovers of Bengal in every endeavour we have to make to stamp out this insidious conspiracy." At that time there was no political Swaraj party. On the 25th January 1924, within a month of the leader of the Swaraj party being offered office by His Excellency, I said in this Council: "We cannot divest ourselves of the responsibility, and as long as there are powers at our hand which may be sufficient to enable us to deal with the situation it is undoubtedly our duty to use them. If those powers are not sufficient then we shall come to the Council and ask for further powers, and the Council may prefer to give us those powers in another form, but the power to be given must be efficient. I am optimistic enough to believe that should the occasion arise the Council will give us those powers because the alternative is the triumph of anarchy and murder." After these clear warnings of the measures that it would probably be necessary to take to deal with the terrorist menace, warnings uttered at a time when the Swaraj party either did not exist in this Council or had just been offered responsible office in the Government, when we do take the measures foreshadowed against the terrorist organisation the public are asked to believe-firstly, that we are fools enough to desire to crush any political party acting legally and constitutionally; secondly, that we had the prescience to lay our plans over a year ago; and thirdly, that we are so stupidly inefficient in our measures to that end that the chief comment on our action was not that we 104 Ꭰ