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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, February 21st, 1908 } <b{ CALCUTTA, February 21st, 1908 }
The Latest Sedition Trial
We do not generally concern ourselves with the results of trials in bureaucratic law-courts. The law that is now recognised by the civilised world is the will of a people. The law that is really binding on a people is the mature deliberation of its own representatives as to the proper wont and scope of individual activity in relation to the common weal. Law if it is to be beneficial to society cannot be divorced from the truths established by science, on the contrary it derives its binding force from being based on them. That a bureaucratic law is not so much meant to ensure social well-being but designed for restricting even a legitimate freedom of action sanctioned by science has been amply illustrated in the judgment of the Police Magistrate of Calcutta in the Nabasakti case. The Magistrate was confronted with the difficulty that neither common sense nor jurisprudence can penalise the preaching of a political truth. The strange syllogism with which he has sought to bring the preaching of an ideal within the purview of the bureaucratic law is ridiculous to the extreme. The Magistrate in his judgment does not seem even to know his own mind. In the earlier part of his judgment he talks as if the preaching of independence as an ideal were in itself sedition. "To my mind," he says in powerful magisterial fashion, "the meaning and intention of this article admit of no doubt whatever. The writer is advocating independence and the article is seditious." Later on he has misgivings. Glimpses of a common sense buried deep away under long habits of reading political necessity into judicial interpretation seem to visit the official mind: "The ideal of national independence is one which appeals to Englishmen with very strong force, and it is one which when
Page – 883 reasonably and temperately expressed will always meet with a great deal of sympathy. There is undoubtedly at the present day, a growing belief amongst men of liberal and statesmanlike views that India will at a future date attain this national independence. Moreover it is an object with which the use of force need not be associated at all for it is an object attainable by constitutional means. I believe therefore that no Liberal Government would ever take serious exception to the temperate expression of the ideal." The only fault to be found with this expression of a commonsense view of things is that the Magistrate seems to lay down the proposition that it depends on the feelings and views of Englishmen whether the preaching of independence is seditious or not. That is so in practice, no doubt, but judicially it is a strange principle of interpretation. On this ground, clearly stated by the Magistrate, that the preaching of national independence is not in itself seditious and does not become seditious unless coupled with excitations to revolt or violence or with matter tending to bring the Government into hatred or contempt,— the Printer of the Nabasakti was entitled to an acquittal. But the Magistrate immediately afterwards falls back from light into a thick fog in which he flounders helplessly for some way of unsaying what he has said. "An Indian writer, however, who holds up national independence as an immediate panacea for the wrongs of his countrymen, is a mere visionary, and it is most unfortunate that so much of the political writing in Bengali newspapers should be the crude product of ignorant and ill-trained minds." And he goes on to say that the accused had published articles of this description and coupled them with others inciting to violence. Therefore he is convicted of sedition. Are we then to understand that the Printer is found guilty of sedition not because he advocated independence but because he advocated independence in an ignorant and ill-trained manner and his article was a crude product? If an article is to be declared seditious merely because it does not please the literary taste of a Police Court Magistrate, a new terror will be added to the law of sedition. Or are we to understand
Page – 884 that the article is not seditious, is quite innocent, since to preach independence is not seditious, but it is declared seditious because other articles in the paper which contain nothing about independence, are violent in tone? So far as we can see from the judgment of this learned Magistrate, the article in question is not seditious, though it may or may not be "a crude product"; the other articles are not seditious though they may come under some other section of the Penal Code than 124A, and in any case they are not the subject matter of the charge. But because one article preaches independence and another which has no connection with it is written in a violent tone, therefore the first non-seditious article is transmuted into sedition by some strange magisterial alchemy. We come out of the reading of this judgment with a bewildered brain and only one clearly grasped idea, viz., that whether what we write is seditious or not, depends not on the law, but on the state of "public opinion" in England and Anglo-India, and on the intellectual vagaries of a Magistrate who cannot even misinterpret the law consistently. And after all that is "all we know or need to know" on the subject of the law of sedition. __________
Boycott and British Capital
We published yesterday a communicated article on the economic danger of excepting from the Boycott British manufactures produced on Indian soil. The note of warning which the writer strikes is one which was long ago raised by Srijut Bipin Chandra Pal on similar grounds. The danger of an invasion of our market by British capital on a gigantic scale, the transference of Manchester to the banks of the Hughly is not a danger of the immediate moment. But in the future, if the pressure of a spreading Boycott and the growth of Indian industry on English trade with India becomes a strangling pressure, the first economic result would inevitably be the migration of English capital to this country to compete under more favourable circumstances. This however presupposes that the conditions in favour of British capital as against Indian remain as good as they have been in
Page – 885 the past. There are, however, strong considerations on the other side. There is first the natural reluctance of capital to leave its own nest where it is safest unless it is sure of compensating gains. There is the fact that a wholesale migration of a great manufacture to a distant country is conceivable in theory, but hardly practicable and certainly unprecedented. Most powerful obstacle of all is the comparative insecurity of Indian soil to British capital. The possibility that England's rule in India may some day cease either by invasion from outside, convulsion from within or a peaceful departure, must always be present to the eye of so timid an entity as capital, and so long as the present unrest and the exploitation of it by enterprising journalists continues, we need not fear wholesale industrial invasion; but the unrest is likely to last so long as the bureaucracy maintain their present uncompromising attitude and Indian democracy does not come by its own. On economic grounds, we fancy the danger from Anglo-Indian manufactures is not pressing. Boycott on political grounds is a different matter. So far at least the sentiment of the country has been for condoning the advantage to British capital for the sake of the advantage to Indian labour. ___________
Unofficial Commissions
The self-appointed Unofficial Commission consisting of Srijuts Bhupendranath Bose and U. N. Mukherji has issued its report and findings on the Police hooliganism at Mymensingh. The report is interesting reading and we appreciate the trouble taken by these gentlemen out of purely patriotic motives, but when all is done we are compelled to ask, Cui bono? What is the utility of these so-called commissions, whom do they benefit and how do they help either to mend such illegal outrages as have been committed or to prevent their recurrence in future? As commissions they are open to the objection that two eminent gentlemen travelling to Mymensingh to interview the victims of outrage, do not form a Commission, since there is no recognized or unrecognized power in the country which has commissioned
Page – 886 them and is prepared to take action on their report. As a judicial proceeding, their enquiry is open to the objection that the findings are given on the unsifted statements of one side only. As a collection of facts from the personal statements of sufferers and eyewitnesses, the report is indeed invaluable. But still what purpose does it serve? The country did not need this report to believe the statements of our own countrymen in preference to those of the Police or the officials, and in all other ways the action of these two public-spirited gentlemen is entirely infructuous. It is the old idea of placing our grievances— before whom? The tribunal of British justice is discredited and the tribunal of Indian patriotism not yet erected. Meanwhile outrages of the Mymensingh type are likely to remain a standing feature of the present struggle between darkness and light, liberty and absolutism, until Democracy arises and in no uncertain language forbids them. __________
The Soul and India's Mission
Wind and Water
Wind and water are always types of the human soul in our literature. Wind is so light a substance that we cannot grasp it, water so fluid that we cannot seize it. When the soul is in a state of lightness and fluidity, it is then that it is compared to wind and water. When it is hard and rigid, then it is a stone. Wind and water are the light and fluid soul, stone the hard and rigid. Soul is variable and not easily distinguished from the European description of mind. Such a description may seem fanciful but it is true. Whoever has practised pranayama knows that sometimes the breath is as light and fluid as wind or water, sometimes as hard and rigid as stone. This changefulness of the soul is the true reason for Maya. If the soul were not changeable, it would be too much akin to the Brahman,— but because it is changeable, it lays itself open to the influence of Maya.
Page – 887 Light
Light is an emanation from the sun, but the sun is itself an emanation from God. When it is full of Him, then it is full of light. So the ancient Rishis used to say that He was in the sun. Yo'sau purushah, etc. But this was only a manner of speaking. When the sun is full of God's presence, it is full of light and heat, when it is empty of Him, the light and heat are withdrawn. So too the human soul is like the sun. When it is full of light and heat, it is said to be alive, when the light and heat are withdrawn, it is said to die. But this too is only a manner of speaking. The soul is imperishable. When the body feels the presence of God within, it is conscious of life, but when the light and heat of His presence are withdrawn it ceases to become active and conscious. This is called death. There is no hard and fast line to be drawn between life and death. The one is only the positive, the other the negative of God's presence. __________
Body and Soul
Soul is a presence, body a piece of Maya. When the body is full of the presence of the soul it lives, but when the soul withdraws from it, it dies. In other words, the soul while in the body feels a sense of imprisonment which ceases as soon as the body falls from it. This is the work of Maya who lives by creating the sense of restriction in the illimitable and free Brahman. Maya is the negative quality of Brahman making for darkness, Vidya, the positive quality making for light. They subsist together in the soul, and sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other. When Maya prevails, the soul thinks itself bound, when Vidya prevails, it thinks itself free. But there is no bondage. So too when a people feels itself bound and subject it acquiesces in its bondage, but the moment a light from God is sent into it and the prophet of God is commissioned from on high, the nation wonders at its blindness and wakes to the sense of its inalienable freedom.
Page – 888 Immortality
Death, we have said, is a mere phase. There is no death, only the change from bondage to freedom. Death of the body is the first release from physical bondage, death of the soul the last release from spiritual bondage. The soul does not really die, but merely shakes off the false sense of separateness from Brahman. Who then will fear death? Death is no enemy, no King of Horrors, but a friend who opens the gates of Heaven to the aspiring soul. Heaven is a myth in the opinion of modern science, but if Heaven means eternal happiness then Heaven is no myth. It is the state of the soul released from Maya, rejoicing in the sense of its own illimitable being; and those attain it who are in this world able to rise above the self to the knowledge of the higher self either by Yoga or by selfless action for the sake of others. Heaven awaits the patriot who dies for his country, the saint who passes from this life with the thought of God in his heart, the soldier who flings his life away at the bidding of his nation, all who can put the thought of self away from them. __________
Rest
When the soul is at rest, peace unutterable becomes its possession. How is rest to be attained? By the thought of Brahman. Whoever thinks of Him at the time of death, passes into Him. Not the mere act of intellectual cognition, but the thought which dwells in the heart. The heart is the meeting place of God and the Soul. When the two meet then all action ceases, and rest becomes the possession of the soul. Whoever wishes to realise this truth must try to seek God in his heart. If he can find Him there, he will experience rest. __________
Final Cessation
Nirvana is the goal of the soul's progress. Nirvana is the cessation of all phenomenal activity. Saints and sages are agreed in all religions on this one common truth, that so long as the
Page – 889 phenomenal world is present to the soul, there can be no communion with God. Whoever imagines that by communion with the phenomenal world he can reach God, is committing error, for the two are incompatible. The West is full of interest in phenomena, and it is for this reason that no great religion has ever come out of the West. Asia on the other hand is full of interest in Brahman and she is therefore the cradle of every great religion. Christianity, Mahomedanism, Buddhism and the creeds of China and Japan are all offshoots of one great and eternal religion of which India has the keeping. __________
India's Mission
So with India rests the future of the world. Whenever she is aroused from her sleep, she gives forth some wonderful shining ray of light to the world which is enough to illuminate the nations. Others live for centuries on what is to her the thought of a moment. God gave to her the book of Ancient Wisdom and bade her keep it sealed in her heart, until the time should come for it to be opened. Sometimes a page or a chapter is revealed, sometimes only a single sentence. Such sentences have been the inspiration of ages and fed humanity for many hundreds of years. So too when India sleeps, materialism grows apace and the light is covered up in darkness. But when materialism thinks herself about to triumph, lo and behold! a light rushes out from the East and where is Materialism? Returned to her native night.
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