-046_Shall India be Free (T. L. G.).htm

Shall India be Free ?

THE LOYALIST GOSPEL

                       LIBERTY is the first requisite for the sound health and vigorous life of a nation. A foreign despotism is in itself an unnatural condition and if permitted, must bring about other unhealthy and unnatural conditions in the subject people which will lead to fatal decay and disorganisation. Foreign rule cannot build up a nation -- only the resistance to foreign rule can weld the discordant elements of a people into an indivisible unity. When a people, predestined to unity, cannot accomplish its destiny, foreign rule is a provision of Nature by which the necessary compelling pressure is applied to drive its jarring parts into concord. The unnatural condition of foreign rule is brought in for a time in order to cure the previous unnatural condition of insufficient cohesiveness; but this can only be done by the resistance of the subject people; for the incentive to unity given by the alien domination consists precisely in the desire to get rid of it; and if this desire is absent, if the people acquiesce, there can be no force making for unity. Foreign rule was therefore made to be resisted; and to acquiesce in it is to defeat the very intention with which Nature created it.
        These considerations are not abstract ideas, but the undeniable teaching of history which is the record of the world's experience. Nationalism takes its stand upon this experience and calls upon the people of India not to allow themselves to fall into the acquiescence in subjection which is the death-sleep of nations, but to make that use of the alien domination which Nature intended, -- to struggle against it and throw it off for unity, for self-realisation, as an independent national organism. In this country, however, there is a class of wise men who regard the rule of the British bureaucracy as a dispensation of Providence, not only to create unity but to preserve it. They preach therefore a gospel of faith in the foreigner, distrust of our countrymen and acquiescence in alien rule as a godsend from on

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high and an indispensable condition for peace and prosperity. Even those whose hearts rebel against a doctrine so servile, are intellectually so much dominated by it that they cannot embrace Nationalism with their whole heart and try to arrive at a compromise between subjection and independence, -- a half-way house between life and death. Their ingenuity discovers an intermediate condition in which the blessings of freedom will be harmoniously wedded with the blessings of subjection; and to this palace in fairyland they have given the name of Colonial Self-Government. If it were not for the existence of this Moderate opinion and its strange parti-coloured delusions, we would not have thought it worth while to go back to first principles and show the falsity of the Loyalist gospel of acquiescence. But the Moderate delusion is really a by-product of the Loyalist delusion; and the parent error must be demolished first, before its offspring can be corrected. The Moderates are a hybrid species, emotionally nationalist, intellectually loyalist. It is owing to this double nature that their delusions acquire an infinite power for mischief. People listen to them because they claim to be Nationalist and because a sincere Nationalist feeling not infrequently breaks through the false Loyalist reasoning. Moreover by associating themselves with the Moderates on the same platform the Loyalists are enabled to exercise an influence on public opinion which would otherwise not be accorded to them. The gospel according to Sir Pherozshah Mehta would not have such power for harm if it were not allowed to represent itself as one and the same with the gospel according to Mr. Gokhale.
        What then are the original ideas from which the Loyalist gospel proceeds? It has a triple foundation of error. First comes the postulate that disunion and weakness are ingrained characteristics of the Indian people and an outside power is necessary in order to arbitrate, to keep the peace and to protect the country from the menace of the mightier nations that ring us in. Proceeding from this view and supporting it, is the second postulate that there must be an entire levelling down and sweeping away of all differences, aristocrat and peasant, Brahmin and Sudra, Bengali, Punjabee and Maratha, all must efface their characteristics and differences before any resistance to foreign domination can be

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attempted, even if such resistance were desirable. The third postulate is that a healthy development is possible under foreign domination and that this healthy development must be first effected before we can dream of freedom or even of becoming a nation. If these three postulates are granted, then the Loyalist creed is unassailable; if they are proved unsound, not only the Loyalist creed but the standpoint of the Moderates ceases to have any basis of firm ground and becomes a thing in the air. The Nationalist contention is that all these three postulates are monuments of political unreason and have no firm foundation either in historical experience or in the facts we see around us or in the nature of things. They are inconsistent with the fundamental nature of foreign domination; they ignore the experience of all other subject nations; they disregard human nature and the conditions of human development in communities. The Loyalist gospel is as untrue as it is ignoble.

The Mask is Off

The Anglo-Indian journals are trying to assure the public that everything is quiet in Jamalpur under the shadow of the British sword. The accounts that are appearing in various Indian journals put a very different complexion on the situation. It appears, to begin with, that the Gurkhas who were called in to preserve the peace are being allowed in cooperation with local hooligans to break it. The case of image-breaking is being deliberately put off and the whole energy of the executive is devoted to terrorising the Hindus. Several pleaders, a Muktear, a Naib of Ramgopalpur and a Superintendent of the Gauripur estate, along with other leading gentlemen of Jamalpur have been arrested. "The number of Mahomedan arrests," writes one correspondent, "is simply nil". Comment is hardly necessary. The alliance of the British bureaucracy with hooliganism stands confessed. To take advantage of Mahomedan riots in order to further terrorise by legal proceedings the assaulted Hindus, is the first preoccupation of the local magistrates. We have pointed out already that the procedure is to give scope and room enough for anti-Swadeshi

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violence and pillage and then to punish the Swadeshists for the crime of self-defence or even simply for the crime of being assaulted. The mask is off.

A Loyalist in a Panic

Not only the Englishman but the Indian Mirror has been seriously frightened by the course of events in the Punjab. No wonder. The lion spirit of the Punjab was not burned on the pyre with Runjit Singh; it only went to sleep for a while after Chilianwala and is now again awake. The Mirror is uneasy for the safety of the Empire. The Mirror does not mind very much what may happen in East Bengal, but if discontent spreads to the Punjab, it may affect the Sikhs, and then what would become of the British Empire and the Indian Mirror? The remedy proposed by our senile contemporary is that we should stop all political agitation by putting off all public meetings until the country is quiet and that Babu Bepin Chandra Pal should not go about stirring up the people of Southern India "as regards Swadeshi, Boycott, Swaraj and other things". Sir Denzil Ibbertson is also advised to cure the evil by kindness, -- a wise counsel to which, no doubt, he will incline his patient ear; for where can he find a better well-wisher than the Indian Mirror? It appears that the meetings addressed by Srijut Bepin Chandra "are not likely to lessen the political unrest; on the contrary, they are decidedly adding fuel to the fire". Well, what else should be their object? To lull the country back into sleep and submission? The Mirror reminds us of a venerable old woman awakened at night by the noise of burglars in the house and recommending everybody to turn over and sleep or pretend to sleep until the house is quiet, -- and the burglars, unopposed, have done their business. But we thought that the Mirror had discovered the Extremists to be a small and insignificant party without any following in the country. What does it matter what such a party is or is not doing? The country, the Mirror declared, is at the back of the Moderate Party. Has that comforting belief so soon gone to pieces?

Bande Mataram, April 27, 1907

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