{"id":1062,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:19","slug":"45-the-assossination-of-prince-ito-vol-02-karmayogin-volume-02","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/02-karmayogin-volume-02\/45-the-assossination-of-prince-ito-vol-02-karmayogin-volume-02","title":{"rendered":"-45_The Assossination of Prince Ito.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nThe Assassination of Prince Ito<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nA<\/b><\/font>
\nGREAT <\/b><\/span>man has fallen, perhaps the greatest force in the field of
\npolitical action that the nineteenth century produced, the maker of Japan, the
\nconqueror of Russia, the mighty one who first asserted Asia’s superiority over
\nEurope in Europe’s own field of glory and changed in a few years the world’s
\nfuture. Some would say that such a death for such a man was a tragedy. We hold
\notherwise. Even such a death should such a man have died, in harness, fighting
\nfor his country’s expansion and greatness, by the swift death in action,
\nwhich, our scriptures tell us, carry the hero’s soul straight to the felicity
\nof heaven. The man who in his youth lived in imminent deadly peril from the
\nswords of his countrymen because he dared to move forward by new paths to his
\nGod-given task, dies in his old age by a foreign hand because, at the expense
\nof justice and a nation’s freedom, he still
\nmoved forward in the path of his duty. It is a difficult
\nchoice that is given to men of action in a world where love, strength and
\njustice are not yet harmonised, and he who chooses in sincerity and acts
\nthoroughly, whether he has chosen well or ill, gathers punya<\/i> for himself in this world and the next.
\nThen he was building a nation and he lived
\nto do his work, for his death would not have profited. He was building an
\nEmpire when he died and by his death that empire will be established. The soul
\nof a great man, fulfilled in development but cut off in the midst of his work,
\nenters into his following or his nation and works on a far wider scale than was
\npossible to him in the body. Korea will gain nothing by this rash and untimely
\nact, the greatest error in tactics it could have committed. The Japanese is the
\nlast man on earth to be deterred from his ambition or his duty by the fear of
\ndeath, and the only result of this blow will be to harden Japan to her task.
\nShe has science, organisation, efficiency, ruthlessness,
\nand she will grind the soul out of Korea until it is indistinguishable from
\nJapan. That is the only way to perpetuate a conquest, to kill the soul of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 256<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

the subject
\nnation, and the Japanese know it. A subject nation struggling for freedom must
\nalways attract Indian sympathy, but the Koreans have not the strength of soul
\nto attain freedom. Instead of seeking the force to rise in their own manhood,
\nthey have always committed the unpardonable sin against Asiatic integrity of
\nstriving to call in an European power against a brother Asiatic. The Koreans
\nhave right on their side, but do not know how to awaken might to vindicate the
\nright. The Japanese cause is wrong from the standpoint of a higher morality
\nthan the merely patriotic, but they believe intensely in their religion of
\npatriotic duty and put all their might into its observance. It is not difficult
\nto predict with which side the victory will be.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Prince Hirobumi Ito was the
\ntypical man of his nation, as well as its greatest statesman and leader. He
\nwent ahead of it for a while only to raise it to his level. He had all its
\nvirtues in overflowing measure and a full share of its defects and vices.
\nAbsolutely selfless in public affairs, quiet, unassuming, keeping himself in
\nthe background unless duty called him into prominence, calm, self-controlled,
\npatient, swift, energetic, methodical, incapable of fear, wholly devoted to the
\nnation \u2014 such is the Japanese, and such was Ito. As a private man he had the
\nJapanese defects. Even in public affairs, he had something of the narrowness, unscrupulousness in method and preference of
\nsuccess to justice of the insular and imperial Japanese type. Added to these
\ncommon characteristics of his people he had a genius equal to that of any
\nstatesman in history. The eye that read the hearts of men, the mouth sealed to
\nrigid secrecy, the rare, calm and effective speech, the brain that could
\nembrace a civilisation at a glance and take all that was needed for his purpose,
\nthe swift and yet careful intellect that could divine, choose and arrange, the
\npower of study, the genius of invention, the talent of application, a diplomacy open-minded but never vacillating,
\na tireless capacity for work, \u2014 all these he had on so grand a scale that to
\nchange the world’s history was to him a by no means stupendous labour. And he
\nhad the ancient Asiatic gift of self-effacement. In Europe a genius of such
\ncolossal proportions would have filled the world with the mighty bruit of his personality
\n; but Ito worked in silence and in the
\nshade, covering his steps,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 257<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

and it was only by
\nthe results of his work that the world knew him. Like many modern Japanese, Ito was a sceptic. His country was the God of his
\nworship to whom he dedicated his life, for whom he lived and in whose service
\nhe died. Such was this great Vibhuti, who
\ncame down to earth in a petty family, an Eastern island clan, a nation apart
\nand far behind in the world’s progress, and in forty years created a nation’s
\ngreatness, founded an Empire, changed a civilisation and prepared the
\nliberation of a continent. His death was worthy of his life. For there are only
\ntwo deaths which are really great and carry a soul to the highest heaven, to
\ndie in self-forgetting action, in battle, by assassination, on the scaffold
\nfor others, for one’s country or for the right, and to die as the Yogin dies, by his own will, free of death and
\ndisease, departing into that from which he came. To Ito, the sceptic, the
\npatriot, the divine worker, the death of the selfless hero was given.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 258<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n


\nHOME<\/font><\/span><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Assassination of Prince Ito   A GREAT man has fallen, perhaps the greatest force in the field of political action that the nineteenth century…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-02-karmayogin-volume-02","wpcat-23-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}