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Rabindranath Tagore’s letter to the then Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, in which he had formally announced the renunciation of his Knighthood, after the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. This letter was published in ‘The Statesman’ on 3 June 1919.
Your Excellency,
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The enormity of the measures taken
by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has,
with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as
British subjects in India. The disproportionate severity of the
punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying
them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised
governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote.
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Considering that such treatment has
been meted out to a population, disarmed and resource less, by a power which
has the most terribly efficient organisation for destruction of human lives,
we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less
moral justification. The accounts of the insults and sufferings by our
brothers in Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every
corner of India, and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts
of our people has been ignored by our rulers- possibly congratulating
themselves for imparting what they imagine as salutary lessons.
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This callousness has been praised
by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, which have in some cases gone to the
brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least
check from the same authority, relentlessly careful in something every cry of
pain of judgment from the organs representing the sufferers. Knowing
that our appeals have been in vain and that the passion of vengeance is
building the noble vision of statesmanship in our Government, which could so
easily afford to be magnanimous, as befitting its physical strength and
normal tradition, the very least that I can do for my country is to take all
consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my
countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror.
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The time has come when badges of
honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and
I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the
side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are
liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings. And these are the
reasons which have compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due reference
and regret, to relieve me of my title of knighthood, which I had the honour
to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for
whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration.
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Yours faithfully,
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Rabindranath Tagore
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Calcutta,
6, Dwarakanath Tagore Lane,
May 30, 1919
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