{"id":2035,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2035"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:03","slug":"44-nationalist-organisation-vol-08-karmayogin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/08-karmayogin\/44-nationalist-organisation-vol-08-karmayogin","title":{"rendered":"-44_Nationalist Organisation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\tNationalist Organisation
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTHE TIME has now come when it is imperative in the
\ninterests of the Nationalist party that its forces should
\n\tbe organised for united deliberation and effective work.
\nA great deal depends on the care and foresight with which
\n\tthe character and methods of the organisation are elaborated
\nat the beginning, for any mistake now may mean trouble and temporary disorganisation hereafter. It is not the easy problem
\nof providing instruments for the working of a set of political ideas in a country where political thought has always been clear
\nand definite and no repressive laws or police harassment can
\n\tbe directed against the dissemination of just political ideals and
\nlawful political activities. We have to face the jealousy, suspicion
\n\tand hostility of an all-powerful vested interest which it is our
\navowed object to replace by Indian agencies, the opposition,
\n\tnot always over-nice in its methods, of a rich and influential
\nsection of our own countrymen, and the vagueness of thought
\n\tand indecisiveness of action common to the great bulk of our
\npeople even when they have been deeply touched by Nationalist
\n\tsentiment and ideals. To form a centre of order, clear, full and
\npowerful thought, swift effectiveness, free and orderly deliberation, disciplined and well-planned action must be the object of
\nany organisation that we shall form. Two sets of qualities which ought not to be but often are conflicting, are needed for success:
\nresolute courage and a frank and faithful adherence to principle
\n\t\t\ton the one side and wariness and policy on the other. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first
\n\t\t\tmistake we have to avoid is the tendency to perpetuate or imitate
\n\t\t\told institutions or lines of action which are growing out of date.
\n\t\t\tThe Nationalist party is a young and progressive force born of tendencies, aims and necessities which
\nwere foreign to the nineteenth century, and, being a party of the future and not of the immediate past, it must look, in all it does<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-254<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tand creates, not to the past but to the future. There are still in the
\nparty the relics of the old desire to raise up a rival Congress and
\n\tassert our claim to be part legatees of the institution which came
\nto a violent end at Surat. Our claim stands and, if a real Congress is again erected, it must be with the Nationalists within it and not
\nexcluded. The strength of the demand in the country for a United
\n\tCongress is a sufficient vindication of the claim. But if we try still
\nfarther to enforce it by holding a rival session and calling it the
\n\tCongress, we shall take an ill-advised step calculated to weaken
\nus instead of developing our strength. A technical justification
\n\tmay be advanced by inviting men of all shades of opinion to
\nsuch a session, but as a matter of fact none are likely to attend a
\n\tsession summoned by pronounced Nationalists unless they are
\npronounced Nationalists themselves. A United Congress can be
\n\teffectively summoned only if we are able to effect a combination
\nof Nationalists, advanced Moderates and that large section of
\n\topinion which, without having pronounced views, are eager to
\nrevive a public body in which all opinions can meet and work
\n\ttogether for the good of the country. Such a combination would
\nsoon reduce Sir Pherozshah’s Rump Congress to the lifeless and meagre phantasm which it must in any case become with the
\nlapse of time and the open development of the Mehta-Morley alliance. But to create another Rump Congress on the Nationalist side would be to confound confusion yet worse without any
\n\tcompensating gain. It would moreover throw on the shoulders
\nof the Nationalists a portion of the blame for perpetuating the
\n\tsplit, which now rests entirely on the other side.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf a Nationalist Rump Congress is inadvisable and inconsistent with the dignity of the Nationalist party and its aversion
\nto mere catchwords and shams, an imitation of the forms and working of the old Congress is also inadvisable. We were never
\nsatisfied with those forms and that working. The three days’
\n\tshow, the excessively festal aspect of the occasion, the monstrous
\npreponderance of speech and resolution-passing over action and
\n\twork, the want of true democratic rule and order, the weary
\nwaste of formal oratory without any practical use or object, the
\n\tincapacity of the assembly for grappling with the real problems<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-255<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tof our national existence and progress, the anxiety to avoid
\npublic discussion which is the life-breath of democratic politics,
\n\tthese and many other defects made the Congress in our view
\nan instrument ill-made, wasteful of money and energy and the
\n\tcentre of a false conception of political deliberation and action.
\nIf we imitate the Congress, we shall contract all the faults of
\n\tthe Congress. Neither can we get any help from the proceedings of the Nationalist Conference which met at Surat; for that was a loose and informal body which only considered certain
\nimmediate questions and emergencies arising out of the Surat session. Yet a centre of deliberation and the consideration of
\npast progress and future policy is essential to the building of
\n\tthe Nationalist party into an effective force conscious of and
\ncontrolling its mission and activities. We shall indicate briefly
\n\tthe main principles on which we think the organisation of such
\na body should be based. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first question is of the scope and object of the institution. In the first place, we must avoid the mistake of making
\n\tit a festival or a show occasion intended to excite enthusiasm
\nand propagate sentiment. That was a function which the Indian
\n\tNational Congress had, perhaps inevitably, to perform, but a
\nbody which tries to be at once a deliberative assembly and a
\n\tnational festival, must inevitably tend to establish the theatrical and holiday character at the expense of the practical and
\n\tdeliberative. National festivals and days of ceremony are the
\nbest means of creating enthusiasm and sentiment; that is the
\n\tfunction of occasions like the 7th August and the 16th October,
\nthe Shivaji Utsav and similar celebrations. We must resolutely eschew all vestiges of the old festival aspect of our political
\nbodies and make our assembly a severely practical and matter-of-fact body. Secondly, we must clearly recognise that a body
\nmeeting once a year cannot be an effective centre of actual yearlong work; it can only be an instrument for deliberation
\nand the determination of policy and a centre of reference for
\n\twhose consideration and adjudgment the actually accomplished
\nwork of the year may, in its main features and the sum of its fulfilment, be submitted. The practical work must be done by quite<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-256<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tdifferent organisations, provincial and local, carrying out the
\npolicy fixed by the deliberative body but differently constituted; for, as the object of an executive body is entirely different from
\nthe object of a deliberative body, so its constitution, rules and
\n\tprocedure must be entirely different. In fact our All-India body
\nmust be not a Congress or Conference even, but a Council,
\n\tand since in spite of Shakespeare and Sj. Baikunthanath Sen,
\nthere is much in a name and it largely helps to determine our attitude towards the thing, let us call our body not the Nationalist Congress, Convention or Conference, but the Nationalist
\n\tCouncil.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf the body is to be a Council, its dimensions must be of such
\n\ta character as to be manageable and allow of effective discussion
\nin the short time at our disposal. A spectacular Congress or
\n\tConference gains by numbers, a Council is hampered by them.
\nTherefore the maximum number of delegates must be fixed and
\n\tapportioned to the different parts of the nation according to
\ntheir numbers. Secondly, in the proceedings themselves all elements of useless ornament and redundance must be purged out,
\nsuch as the long Presidential Speech, the Reception Committee Chairman’s speech and the division of the proceedings into the
\nsecret and effective Subjects Committee sittings and the public
\n\tdisplay of oratory in the full assembly. The first two features are
\nobviously useless for our purpose and a mere waste of valuable
\n\ttime. With the disappearance of the spectacular aspect usually
\nassociated with our public bodies, the reason for the mere display of oratory also disappears. The only other utility of the
\ndouble sitting is that the full assembly forms a Court of Appeal
\n\tfrom the decision of the Subjects Committee and an opportunity
\nto the minority for publicly dissenting from any decision by
\n\ta majority which they might otherwise be supposed to have
\nendorsed. The necessity for the first function arises from the
\n\timperfectly representative character of the Subjects Committee,
\nas it is at present elected; the necessity for the second function
\n\tfrom the absence of publicity in its proceedings. If the whole
\nCouncil sits as Subjects Committee, the necessity for the Court
\n\tof Appeal or the public assertion of dissent will not occur. The<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-257<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tonly justification for the existence of the Subjects Committee in
\nour present political bodies is their unwieldy proportions, the
\n\tonly reason for its secrecy the attempt to conceal all difficulties
\nin the way of coming to a unanimous conclusion; and neither of
\n\tthese reasons will have any existence in a Nationalist Council.
\nThe subjects can be fixed by a small executive body existing
\n\tthroughout the year, which will be in charge of all questions
\nthat may arise in connection with the Council, subject to approval or censure by the Council itself at its annual meeting. The
\nresolutions on these subjects can be formed in the Council and additional resolutions can be brought forward, if the Council
\napproves. All unnecessary oratory should be avoided and resolutions formulating policy of a standing character can be first got
\nout of the way by a formal motion of them from the Chair. After this preliminary, the Council can go into Committee to consider,
\napprove or amend the report of progress made by the Secretaries
\n\tfor the past year, and, on the second day, resolutions demanding
\ndebate and deliberation may be discussed in full Council.
\n\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe next question is the procedure and constitution. We
\ndesire no autocratic President, no oligarchy of ex-Presidents and
\n\tlong-established officials, no looseness of procedure putting a
\npremium on party trickery and unfair rulings. The only body
\n\tof officials will be two general secretaries and two secretaries
\nfor each province, forming the executive body of the Council,
\n\twho will be for the most part recorders of provincial work and summoners of the Council and will have no power to direct or control its procedure. Instead of an autocratic and influential
\nPresident we should have a Chairman who will not intervene
\n\tin the discussion with his views, but confine himself to guiding
\nthe deliberations as an administrator of fixed rules of procedure
\n\twhich he will not have the power to depart from, modify or
\namplify. He must therefore be, like the Speaker of the House of
\n\tCommons, not an active and prominent leader who cannot be
\nspared from the discussion, but a man of some position in the
\n\tparty whose probity and fairness can be universally trusted.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe last question is that of the electorate. We throw out the
\n\tsuggestion that, in the first place, we should cease to be bound by<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-258<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe British provincial units which are the creation of historical
\ncircumstances connected with the gradual conquest of India by
\n\tthe English traders, and have no correspondence with the natural
\ndivisions of the people, and should adopt divisions which will
\n\tbe favourable to the working out of the Nationalist policy. And
\nsince the main work of the party will have to be done through
\n\tthe vernacular, the most natural and convenient divisions will be
\nthose of the half dozen or more great literary languages, minor or
\n\tdialectal tongues of inferior vitality being thrown under the great
\nvernaculars to which they geographically or by kinship belong. It
\n\twas the programme of the Nationalist party in Bengal to create a
\nregister of voters throughout the country, who could form a real electorate. Such a conception would have been impracticable
\nin the old days when the people at large took no active part
\n\tin politics; it was fast approaching the region of practicability
\nwhen the repressions broke the natural course of our national
\n\tdevelopment and introduced elements of arbitrary interference
\nfrom above and a feeble and sporadic Terrorist reaction from
\n\tbelow, the after-swell of which still disturbs the country. Sj. Bipin
\nChandra Pal has written advocating the creation of a register of Nationalists, as a basis for organisation. This is, no doubt,
\nthe only sound basis for a thoroughly democratic organisation, but so long as the after-swell lasts and the tempest may return,
\nso long as police misrule does not give way to the complete
\n\trestoration of law and order, a register of Nationalists would
\nonly be a register of victims for investigators of the Lalmohan and Mazarul Haq type to harass with arrests, house-searches,
\nbinding down under securities, prosecutions with no evidence or tainted evidence, and the other weapons which Criminal Procedure and Penal Code supply, and against which there can be
\n\tno sufficient redress under an autocratic regime not responsible
\nto any popular body, leaning on the police rather than on the
\n\tpeople and master of the judiciary. In these circumstances we
\ncan only create convenient limited electorates for the election of
\n\tour council delegates, awaiting a more favourable condition of
\nthings for democratising the base of our structure. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn these principles we can establish a deliberative body<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-259<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\twhich will give shape, centrality and consistency to Nationalist
\npropaganda and work all over the country. We invite the attention of the leading Nationalist workers throughout India to our
\nsuggestion. The proposal has been made to hold a meeting of Nationalists at Calcutta at which a definite scheme and rules
\nmay be submitted and, as far as possible, adopted in action
\n\tso that the work may not be delayed. No United Congress is
\npossible this year, and if or when it comes, the existence of our
\n\tbody which is avowedly a party organisation will not interfere
\nwith our joining it.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-260<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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