{"id":2061,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2061"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:11","slug":"13-the-right-of-association-vol-08-karmayogin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/08-karmayogin\/13-the-right-of-association-vol-08-karmayogin","title":{"rendered":"-13_The Right of Association.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t The Right of Association<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t MY FRIEND Pandit Gispati Kavyatirtha has somewhat shirked today his duty as it was set down for him in the programme and left it to me. I hope you will not mind if I depart a little from the suggestion he has made to me. I would like, instead of assuming the role of a preacher and
\n\ttelling you your duties which you know well enough yourselves, to take, if you will allow me, a somewhat wider subject, not
\n\tunconnected with it but of a wider range. In addressing you today I wish to say a few words about the general right of
\n\tassociation especially as we have practised and are trying to practise it in India today. I choose this subject for two reasons, first, because it is germane to the nature of the meeting we are holding, and secondly, because we have seen arbitrary hands laid
\n\tupon that right of association which is everywhere cherished as a sign and safeguard of liberty and means of development of a
\n\tcommon life. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t There are three rights which are particularly cherished by
\n\tfree nations. In a nation the sovereign powers of Government may be enjoyed by the few or the many, but there are three
\n\tthings to which the people in European countries cling, which they persistently claim and after which, if they have them not,
\n\tthey always aspire. These are first, the right of a free Press, secondly, the right of free public meeting, and thirdly, the right
\n\tof association. There is a particular reason why they cling to these three as inherent rights which they claim as sacred and
\n\twith which authority has no right to interfere. The right of free speech ensures to the people the power which is the greatest
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tSpeech delivered at Howrah, Bengal, on 27 June 1909. Text published in the
\n<\/i>Bengalee <\/font>
\non 29 June; thoroughly revised by Sri Aurobindo and republished in three issues of the<\/font><\/i>
\n\tKarmayogin
\n<\/font>
\n\tin July and August.<\/font><\/i><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tmeans for self-development, and that is the power of spreading the idea. According to our philosophy it is the idea which is
\n\tbuilding up the world. It is the idea which expresses itself in matter and takes to itself bodies. This is true also in the life
\n\tof humanity; it is true in politics, in the progress and life of a nation. It is the idea which shapes material institutions. It is the
\nidea which builds up and destroys administrations and Governments. Therefore the idea is a mighty force, even when it has
\n\tno physical power behind it, even when it is not equipped with means, even when it has not organised itself in institutions and associations. Even then the idea moves freely abroad through the minds of thousands of men and becomes a mighty force. It
\n\tis a power which by the very fact of being impalpable assumes all the greater potency and produces all the more stupendous
\n\tresults. Therefore the right of free speech is cherished because it gives the idea free movement, it gives the nation that power
\n\twhich ensures its future development, which ensures success in any struggle for national life, however stripped it may be of
\n\tmeans and instruments. It is enough that the idea is there and that the idea lives and circulates. Then the idea materialises itself, finds means and instruments, conquers all obstacles and goes on developing until it is expressed and established in permanent
\n\tand victorious forms. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis right of free speech takes the form first of a free Press. It
\n\tis the Press which on its paper wings carries the idea abroad from city to city, from province to province until a whole continent is
\n\tbound together by the links of one common aspiration. The right of public meeting brings men together. That is another force.
\n\tThey meet together on a common ground, moved by a common impulse, and as they stand or sit together in their thousands, the
\n\tforce of the idea within moves them by the magnetism of crowds. It moves from one to another till the hidden shakti, the mighty force within, stirred by the words thrown out from the platform travels from heart to heart and masses of men are not only
\n\tmoved by a common feeling and common aspiration, but by the force of that magnetism prepared to act and fulfil the idea. Then comes the right of association, the third of these popular rights.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tGiven the common aspiration, common idea, common enthusiasm and common wish to act, it gives the instrument which
\n\tbinds men to strive towards the common object by common and associated actions; the bonds of brotherhood grow, energy
\n\tincreases, the idea begins to materialise itself to work in practical affairs and that which was yesterday merely an idea, merely a word thrown out by the eloquence of the orator, becomes a question of practical politics. It becomes work for it begins to work
\n\tand fulfil itself. Therefore the people prize these rights, consider them a
\n\t\t\tvaluable asset, cling to and cherish and will not easily sacrifice
\n\t\t\tthem. Therefore they resent the arbitrary interference which takes
\n\t\t\tfrom them what they consider indispensable for the preparation of
\n\t\t\tnational life. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAssociation
\n\t\t\tis the mightiest thing in humanity; it is the instrument by which humanity moves, it is the means by which it grows, it is the power by which it progresses towards its final development. There are three ideas which are of supreme moment to human life and have become the watchwords of
\n\thumanity. Three words have the power of remoulding nations and Governments, liberty, equality and fraternity. These words cast forth into being from the great stir and movement of the eighteenth century continue to act on men because they point to
\n\tthe ultimate goal towards which human evolution ever moves. This liberty to which we progress is liberation out of a state
\n\tof bondage. We move from a state of bondage to an original liberty. This is what our own religion teaches. This is what our
\n\town philosophy suggests as the goal towards which we move,
\nmukti
\n<\/i>
\n\tor <\/font>
\n\t
\n\tmoksha<\/font><\/i><\/font><\/font>. We are bound in the beginning by a lapse
\n\tfrom pre-existent freedom, we strive to shake off the bonds, we move forward and forward until we have achieved the ultimate
\n\temancipation, that utter freedom of the soul, of the body, of the whole man, that utter freedom from all bondage towards
\n\twhich humanity is always aspiring. We in India have found a mighty freedom within ourselves, our brother-men in Europe
\n\thave worked towards freedom without. We have been moving on parallel lines towards the same end. They have found out the
\n\tway to external freedom. We have found out the way to internal<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tfreedom. We meet and give to each other what we have gained. We have learned from them to aspire after external as they will
\n\tlearn from us to aspire after internal freedom. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEquality is the second term in the triple gospel. It is a thing
\n\twhich mankind has never accomplished. From inequality and through inequality we move, but it is to equality. Our religion,
\n\tour philosophy set equality forward as the essential condition of emancipation. All religions send us this message in a different
\n\tform but it is one message. Christianity says we are all brothers, children of one God. Mohammedanism says we are the subjects
\n\tand servants of one Allah, we are all equal in the sight of God. Hinduism says there is one without a second. In the high and the
\n\tlow, in the Brahmin and the Shudra, in the saint and the sinner, there is one Narayana, one God and he is the soul of all men. Not until you have realised Him, known Narayana in all, and the Brahmin and the Shudra, the high and the low, the saint and the sinner are equal in your eyes, then and not until then you have knowledge, you have freedom, until then you are bound
\n\tand ignorant. The equality which Europe has got is external political equality. She is now trying to achieve social equality.
\n\tNowadays their hard-earned political liberty is beginning to pall a little upon the people of Europe because they have found it
\n\tdoes not give perfect well-being or happiness and it is barren of the sweetness of brotherhood. There is not fraternity in this
\n\tliberty. It is merely a political liberty. They have not either the liberty within or the full equality or the fraternity. So they are
\n\tturning a little from what they have and they say increasingly, “Let us have equality, let us have the second term of the gospel
\n\ttowards which we strive.” Therefore socialism is growing in Europe. Europe is now trying to achieve external equality as the
\n\tsecond term of the gospel of mankind, the universal ideal. I have said that equality is an ideal even with us but we have not tried
\n\tto achieve it without. Still we have learned from them to strive after political equality and in return for what they have given us
\n\twe shall lead them to the secret of the equality within. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAgain there is fraternity. It is the last term of the gospel. It
\n\tis the most difficult to achieve, still it is a thing towards which<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tall religions call and human aspirations rise. There is discord in life, but mankind yearns for peace and love. This is the reason
\n\twhy the gospels which preach brotherhood spread quickly and excite passionate attachment. This was the reason of the rapid
\n\tspread of Christianity. This was the reason of Buddhism’s rapid spread in this country and throughout Asia. This is the essence
\n\tof humanitarianism, the modern gospel of love for mankind. None of us have achieved our ideals, but human society has
\n\talways attempted an imperfect and limited fulfilment of them. It
\n\tis the nature, the
\n<\/font>
\n
\ndharma
\n<\/font>
\n<\/i><\/font>
\n\t<\/font>of humanity that it should be unwilling to stand alone. Every man
\n\t\t\tseeks the brotherhood of his fellow and we can only live by
\n\t\t\tfraternity with others. Through all its differences and discords
\n\t\t\thumanity is striving to become one. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn India in
\n\t\t\tthe ancient times we had many kinds of association, for our life was much more complex and developed than it became afterwards. We had our political associations, we had our commercial associations, our educational, our religious associations. As in Europe, so in India men united together for
\n\tmany interests and worked in association for common ideals. But by the inroads of invasion and calamity our life became
\n\tbroken and disintegrated. Still, though we lost much, we had our characteristic forms in which we strove to achieve that ideal of
\n\tassociation and unity. In our society we had organised a common village life. It was a one and single village life in which every man felt himself to be something, a part of a single organism. We had the joint family by which we tried to establish the principle of
\nassociation in our family life. We have not in our social developments followed the path which Europe has followed. We have
\nnever tended to break into scattered units. The principle of association, the attempt to organise brotherhood was dominant in our life. We had the organisation of caste of which nowadays we hear such bitter complaints. It had no doubt many and possibly inherent defects, but it was an attempt, however imperfect, to base society upon the principle of association, the principle of
\n\tclosely organising a common life founded on common ideas, common feelings, common tendencies, a common moral discipline and sense of corporate honour. Then we had an institution<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\twhich in its form was peculiar to India, which helped to bind men together in close brotherhood who had a common guru or
\n\tthe initiation into a common religious fraternity. All these we had. Then the impact of Europe came upon us and one by one
\n\tthese institutions began to be broken. Our village life is a thing of the past. The village has lost its community, it has lost its
\n\tideals, it has lost that mutual cordiality and binding together by an intimate common life which held it up and made its life sweet
\nand wholesome. Everywhere we see in the village moral deterioration and material decay. Our joint family has been broken.
\n\tWe are scattering into broken units and brother no longer looks upon brother. There is no longer the bond of love which once
\n\theld us together, because the old ties and habit of association are being broken up. Our caste has lost its reality. The life has
\n\tgone from within it and it is no longer an institution which helps towards unity, a common life or any kind of brotherhood. For
\n\tonce the idea is broken, the ideal within which is the principle of life is impaired, the form breaks up and nothing can keep it
\n\ttogether. Therefore we find all these things perishing. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWell, we have been losing these things which were part
\n\tof our associated life. But on the other hand we looked at the civilised nations of the West who are rushing upon us and breaking our society to pieces, and we saw that in those nations there were other centres of association, other means of uniting together. However imperfectly we began to seize upon them and try to use them, our life in the nineteenth century was a weak and
\n\tfeeble life. It had no ideals, no mighty impulses behind to drive or uplift it. It was bewildered and broken by the forces that came
\n\tupon it; it did not know how to move and in what direction to move. It tried to take whatever it could from the life of the rulers.
\nIt strove to take their political associations and develop that principle of association. But our political associations had a feeble
\n\tlife bound together only by a few common interests which by ineffective means they tried to establish or protect. Political association among us led to very little action, for it was an association which looked mainly to others for help and did not look to the sources of strength within. These and other kinds of associations<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\twhich we then tried to form tended mainly in one direction. They were institutions for the exchange of thought, associations for
\nthe spread of knowledge, by which we instinctively but imperfectly tried to encourage and express the growing idea that was
\nwithin us. This was the one real value of most of our political associations. Then there came the flood of national life, the mighty
\nawakening which appeared first in Bengal. The principle of association began to take a new form, it began to assume a new
\n\tlife. It no longer remained a feeble instrument for the expression of the growing idea within us, it began to become an instrument
\n\tindeed. It began to become a power. How did this new kind of association grow and to what objects did it address itself? The
\nmovement was not planned by any human brain, it was not foreseen by any human foresight. It came of itself, it came as a flood
\n\tcomes, as a storm comes. There had been slow preparations which we did not institute or understand. These preparations
\n\twere mainly among the young men, the rising generation, the hope of India. There the spirit first awoke. At first it was not what
\n\twe would call an association; it was only a temporary union of young men for a temporary cause. They called themselves by a
\n\tname which has since become terrible to many of our friends of the Anglo-Indian Press. They called themselves volunteers. For
\n\twhat did they volunteer? They volunteered for service to the representatives of the nation who came together to deliberate for
\nthe good of the people. This is how it first came, as an idea of service, the idea of service to those who worked for the motherland.
\n\tOut of that grew the idea of service to the Mother. That was the first stage and the root from which it grew into our political
\n\tlife. Then there was another stream which rose elsewhere and joined the first. Our Anglo-Indian brothers to whom we owe so
\n\tmuch and in so many ways, did us this service also that they always scoffed at us as weaklings, men who were doomed to
\n\tperpetual slavery and had always been a race of slaves because the people of Bengal had no martial gift, because they are not
\n\tphysically strong, because whoever chooses to strike them can strike and expect no blow in return. Therefore they were unfit
\n\tfor self-government, therefore they must remain slaves for ever.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Our Anglo-Indian friends do not proclaim that theory now.
\n\tThey have changed their tone. For the spirit of the nation could bear the perpetual reproach no longer, the awakening Brahman
\n\twithin our young men could bear it no longer. Associations grew up for physical exercise and the art of self-defence and grew into those Samitis which you have seen flourishing and recently suppressed. We were determined to wash the blemish away. If this was the blemish, to be weak, if this was the source of our degradation we determined to remove it. We said, “In spite
\n\tof our physical weakness we have a strength within us which will remove our defects. We will be a race of brave and strong
\n\tmen. And that we may be so, we will establish everywhere these associations for physical exercise.” That, one would think, was
\n\tan innocent object and had nothing in it which anyone could look upon with suspicion. In fact we never thought that we
\n\tshould be looked upon with suspicion. It is the Europeans who have trumpeted physical culture as a most valuable national
\n\tasset, the thing in which the English-speaking nations have preeminently excelled and which was the cause of their success and
\n\tenergy. That was the second seed of association. <\/p>\n

There was a third seed and it was the thing for which our hearts yearned, the impulse towards brotherhood. A new kind of association came into being. That was the association which
\n\tstood by labour and service and self-sacrifice, whose object of existence was to help the poor and nurse the sick. That was the flowering out of the Hindu religion. That was what Swami Vivekananda preached. That was what Aswini Kumar Dutta strove to bring into organised existence. That was what the Ramakrishna Mission, the Little Brothers of the Poor at Barisal tried to effect. This
\n\twas the third way in which the new association established itself, the third seed of union, the third
\n\tstream of tendency seeking fulfilment.
\n\tAll these streams of tendency came together, they united themselves and have been in their broad united purifying current the glory of our national life for the last three years. These Samitis of young men by labour, by toil for the country, worship of the motherland held themselves together and spread the habit of association and the<\/p>\n

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growth of brotherhood over the land. That is their spirit and ideal and that the way in which these associations have been
\n\testablished. <\/p>\n

These are the associations which have now been crushed out of existence under a charge which cannot be and has not been maintained, a charge which has been disproved over and
\n\tover again. It is a monstrous charge. The charge is that these associations are associations of hatred and violence, associations
\n\tfor rebellion and dacoity. That is the charge under which these associations have been suppressed. I have come recently back from Barisal. While I was there I heard and read something of the work of the young men’s association in Barisal, the association called the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti which with its network covered the whole district of Bakarganj. This association grew out of a much smaller association started by Aswini Kumar Dutta called the Little Brothers of the Poor. What was the work commenced by these Little Brothers of the Poor? When epidemic broke out, when cholera appeared in all its virulence, the young
\n\tmen of the Barisal Brajamohan College went out in bands. They nursed the sick, they took charge of those who had been abandoned, they took up in their arms those whom they found lying on the roadside. They were not deterred in those moments by the prejudice of caste or by the difference of creed. The orthodox Brahmin took up in his bosom and nursed the Mohammedan
\n\tand the Namasudra. They did not mind the epidemic or fear to catch the contagion. They took up and nursed them as brother nurses brother and thus they rescued many from the grasp of death. Aswini Kumar Dutta is in exile. How did he establish that influence which caused him to be thought dangerous? By philanthropy, by service. While ordinary colleges under the control of
\n\tthe Government were mere soulless machines where they cram a few packets of useless knowledge into the brain of the student,
\n\tAswini Kumar breathed his own lofty and noble soul into the Brajamohan College and made it an engine indeed out of which men were turned, in which hearts and souls were formed. He breathed his noble qualities into the young men who grew up in
\n\tthe cherishing warmth and sunlight of his influence. He made<\/p>\n

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his college an institution which in the essentials of education was a model for any educational institution in the world. This
\n\tis how he built up his influence among the educated class. They followed him because he had shaped their souls between his
\n\thands. It is therefore that they loved him, it is therefore that they saw no fault in him. His influence among the common
\n\tpeople was built up by love, service and philanthropy. It was out of the seed he planted that the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti grew.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

What was the work of this Samiti, the existence of which could no longer be tolerated in the interests of the peace and safety of the Empire? First of all it continued with that blessed
\n\twork which the Little Brothers of the Poor had begun, nursing, serving, saving the poor, the sick and the suffering. They made
\n\tit their ideal to see that there was no sick man or sick woman of however low a class or depressed a caste, of whom it could be
\n\tsaid that they went unhelped in their sickness in the Bakarganj District. That was the first crime the association committed.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The second crime was this. These young men went from house to house seeking out the suffering and the hungry when
\n\tfamine broke out in the country. To those who were patiently famishing they brought succour, but they did more. There were many people who belonged to the respectable classes on whom the hand of famine was laid. They would not go for help to the
\n\trelief works; they would not complain and show their misery to the world. The young men of Barisal sought out these cases and secretly, without injuring the feelings of the suffering, they gave help and saved men and women from starvation. This was the
\n\tsecond crime of the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti. <\/p>\n

Then there was another. The social life of Bengal is full of discord and quarrels. Brother quarrels with brother and quarrels with bitter hatred. They carry their feud to the law-courts; they
\n\tsin against the Mother in themselves and in others; they sow the seed of lasting enmity and hatred between their families. And
\n\tbeyond this there is the ruin, the impoverishment of persistent litigation. The young men of the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti said, “This should not be tolerated any more. We will settle their<\/p>\n

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differences, we will make peace between brother and brother. We will say to our people, `If there is any dispute let us try to
\n\tsettle it first. If you are dissatisfied with our decision you can always go to the law-courts; but let us try first.'” They tried,
\n\tand hundreds of cases were settled out of court and hundreds of these seeds of enmity and hatred were destroyed. Peace and love
\n\tand brotherhood began to increase in the land. This was their third crime.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Their fourth offence is a great crime nowadays. These young men had the hardihood to organise and help the progress of Swadeshi in the land. There was no violence. By love, by persuasion, by moral pressure, by appeals to the Samaj and the interests of the country, they did this work. They helped the growth of our industries; they helped it by organising the condition for their growth, the only condition in which these infant, these feeble and languishing industries can grow, the general determination
\n\tto take our own goods and not the goods of others, to give preference to our Mother and not to any stranger. In no other
\n\tdistrict of Bengal, in no other part of India was Swadeshi so well organised, so perfectly organised, so peacefully and quietly organised as in Barisal. That was the last and worst crime they committed. For these crimes they have been proclaimed, they have been forbidden to exist. This Swadesh Bandhab Samiti carried organisation to a perfection which was not realised in other districts because it is not every district which can have an Aswini Kumar Dutta or a Satis Chandra Chatterji. But the same impulse was there, the same tendencies were there. I do not know any single society of the kind in Bengal which has not
\n\tmade some attempt to help the people in times of famine or to bring succour to the sick and suffering or to remove quarrels and discord as well as to help the growth of Swadeshi by organising that exclusive preference to which we have given the name of boycott. These were general offences, common crimes.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

But there was another thing that led to the suppression. This was an association that had that very dangerous and lethal weapon called the lathi. The use of the lathi
\n\t\t\tas a means of self-defence was openly taught and acquired, and if that was not<\/p>\n

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enough there was the imagination of a very highly imaginative police which saw hidden behind the lathi the bomb. Now nobody ever saw the bombs. But the police were quite equal to the occasion; they thought there might be bombs. And what
\n\tif there were not? Their imagination was quite equal to realising any bomb that could not be materialised,
\n\t\t\t\u2013in baithak-khanas and elsewhere. The police suspected that the lathi was the father of the bomb. Their procedure was simple with the simplicity of the highest detective genius. When they heard of a respectable-sized dacoity, they immediately began to reason it out. They said, “Now why are there so many dacoities in the land? Obviously the lathi fathered the bomb and the bomb fathers the dacoities. Who have lathis? The Samitis. Therefore it is proved. The Samitis are the dacoits.” Our efficient police have always shown a wonderful ability. Generally when a dacoity is committed, the police are nowhere near. They have not altered that; that golden rule still obtains. They are not to be found when the dacoity takes place. They only come up when the dacoity is long over and say, “Well, this is the work of the National volunteers.” They look round to see what is the nearest Samiti and, if they find any which has been especially active in furthering Swadeshi, they say, “Here is the Samiti.” And if there is anyone who was somewhat active in connection with the work of the Samiti, they say at once, “Well, here is the man.” And if he is a boy of any age from twelve upwards, so much the better. The man or boy is instantly arrested and
\n\tput into hajat. After rotting there some days or weeks, the police can get no evidence and the man has to be released. That does not frighten the courageous police; they immediately arrest the next likely person belonging to the Samiti. So they go on persevering until they lose all hope of finding or creating evidence. Sometimes they persist, and members of the Samitis, sometimes mere boys, have to rot in hajat until the case goes up to a court of justice and the judge looks at the case and after he has patiently heard it out has to ask, “Well, but where is the evidence?”\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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in the villages, that wherever there was any man in a village who was physically strong the police wrote down his name in
\n\tthe black book of budmashes. He was at once put down as an undesirable. That was the theory, that a man who is physically strong must be a hooligan. Physical development was thus stamped out of our villages and the physique of our villagers began to deteriorate until this movement of Akharas and Samitis came into existence to rescue the nation from absolute physical deterioration and decay. But this was an immortal idea in the mind of our police and it successfully effected transmigration.
\n\tIt took this form, that these Samitis encourage physical education, they encourage lathi-play, therefore they must be the nurseries of violence and dacoity and factories of bombs. Our rulers seem to have accepted this idea of the police. So perhaps this is the crime these Samitis have committed. Nothing has been proved of all this easy theorizing. It is yet to be known when and where the bomb has been associated with the work of the Samitis in Eastern Bengal. There was indeed a great dacoity in Eastern Bengal and the theory was started that it was done by one of the Samitis, but even our able detective police were unable to prove any association in that case. They did catch hold of some young men apparently on principle. There is a
\n\tconfidential rule, \u2013it is confidential but the public have come to know of it,
\n\t\t\t\u2013that “somebody must be punished for the day’s work.” That was the circular of a Lieutenant-Governor of this province and the police no doubt thought it ought to
\n\tbe observed faithfully. So they caught hold of some likely men and the people so charged were about to be “punished for the
\n\tday’s work”; but fortunately for them a judge sat upon the High Court Bench who remembered that there was such a thing as
\n\tlaw and another thing called evidence, things whose existence was in danger of being forgotten in this country. He applied the
\n\tlaw, he insisted on having the evidence, and you all know the result.\n\t<\/p>\n

These associations, then, which were the expression of our growing national life and the growing feeling of brotherhood
\n\tamong us, did such work as I have described, and these were<\/p>\n

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the ways, guiltless of any offence in the eyes of the law, in which they did their work. Still they have been suppressed not
\n\tbecause they were criminal, but because their existence was inconvenient. It has always been the case that when established
\n\t\t\tinstitutions of government were unwilling to move with the times,
\n\t\t\tthey have looked with suspicion upon the right of association and the right of free speech, they have discouraged the right of a free Press and the right of public meeting. By destroying these instruments they have thought to arrest the progress which they did not love. This policy has never permanently succeeded, yet it is faithfully repeated with that singular stupidity which seems natural to the human race. The sword of Damocles hangs over our Press. It is nominally free, but we never know when even that simulacrum of freedom may not be
\n\ttaken from it. There is a law of sedition so beautifully vague and comprehensive that no one knows when he is committing
\n\tsedition and when he is not. There is a law against the preaching of violence which enables a Magistrate whenever he chooses
\n\tto imagine that your article advocates violence, to seize your machine. The press is taken away and of course the case goes
\n\tup to the High Court, but by that time the paper suffers so much that it becomes difficult or impossible for it to rear its
\n\thead again. There is a notification by which, as I pointed out in Beadon Square the other day, a meeting becomes peaceful or criminal not according to the objects or to the behaviour of the people assembled but according as the sun is up or the sun is down. There is a law of proclamation by which our right of association can be taken from us whenever they
\n\tplease by a stroke of the pen. The British people have certain traditions, they have certain ways of thinking and fixed ideas
\n\tof which they cannot entirely get rid. It is for that reason they have not yet passed a law entirely and expressly suppressing
\n\tthe freedom of the Press or the right of public meeting. But even that may come. What should we do under these circumstances? We see the sword of Damocles hanging lower and lower over our heads. Our association may be declared criminal and illegal at any moment. The executive can any moment<\/p>\n

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it pleases confiscate our press. We ourselves are liable to be arrested and harassed at any moment without evidence, “on
\n\tsuspicion”, by an irresponsible and apparently unpunishable police. Under whatever difficulties and whatever restrictions may be put upon us, we must of course go on. But the restrictions may be greater in future. The sword is hanging lower
\n\tand lower over our heads. Still we cannot stop in our work. The force within us cannot be baulked, the call cannot be denied.
\n\tWhatever penalty be inflicted on us for the crime of patriotism, whatever peril we may have to face in the fulfilment of our duty to our nation, we must go on, we must carry on the country’s work.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

After all what is an association? An association is not a thing which cannot exist unless we have a Chairman and a Vice-Chairman and a Secretary. An association is not a thing which cannot meet unless it has its fixed meeting place. Association is a thing which depends upon the feeling and the force within us. Association means unity, association means brotherhood, association
\n\t\t\tmeans binding together in one common work. Where there is life,
\n\t\t\twhere there is self-sacrifice, where there is disinterested and unselfish toil, where there are these things within us, the work cannot stop. It cannot stop even if there be one man who is at all risks prepared to carry it on. It is only after all the question of working, it is not a question of the means for
\n\twork. It is simply a question of working together in common in one way or in another. It is a matter of asking each other
\n\tfrom time to time what work there is to be performed today and what is the best way of performing it, what are the best
\n\tmeans of helping our countrymen, what work we shall have to do tomorrow or the day after and having settled that to do it
\n\tat the appointed time and in the appointed way. That is what I mean when I say that it is a question of working and not of
\n\tmeans. It is not that these things cannot be done except by the forms which our European education has taught us to value.
\n\tWhatever may be the difficulties we can go on with the work. The association that we shall have will be the association of
\n\tbrothers who are united heart to heart, of fellow-workers joined<\/p>\n

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hand-in-hand in a common labour, the association of those who have a common motherland. It is the association of the whole country, to which every son of India and every son of Bengal ought by the duty of his birth to belong, an association which
\n\tno force can break up, the association of a unity which grows closer day by day, of an impulse that comes from on high and has
\n\tdrawn us together in order that we might realise brotherhood, in order that the Indian nation may be united and united not merely in the European way, not merely by the common selfinterest, but united by love for the common country, united by the ideal of brotherhood, united by the feeling that we are all sons of one common Mother who is also the manifestation of
\n\tGod in a united humanity. That is the association which has been coming into being, and has not been destroyed, since the
\n\tmovement came into existence. This is the mighty association, which unites the people of West Bengal with the people of East
\n\t\t\tand North Bengal and defies partition, because it embraces every son
\n\t\t\tof the land, \u2013bhai bhai ek thain<\/i>, or brother and brother
\n\tmassed inseparably together. This is the ideal that is abroad and is waking more and more consciously within us. It is not merely a
\n\tcommon self-interest. It awakens God within us and says, “You are all one, you are all brothers. There is one place in which you
\n\tall meet and that is your common Mother. That is not merely the soil. That is not merely a division of land but it is a living
\n\tthing. It is the Mother in whom you move and have your being. Realise God in the nation, realise God in your brother, realise God in a wide human association.” This is the ideal by which humanity is moved all over the world, the ideal which is the
\n\tdharma <\/i>of the Kaliyuga, and it is the ideal of love and service which the young men of Bengal so thoroughly realised, love and service to your brothers, love and service to your Mother and this is the association we are forming, the great association
\n\tof the people of Bengal and of the whole people of India. It increases and will grow for ever in spite of all the obstacles that
\n\trise in its way. When the spirit of Aswini Kumar Dutta comes into every leader of the people and the nation becomes one great Swadesh Bandhab Samiti, then it will be accomplished.<\/p>\n

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This is for ever our national ideal and in its strength our nation will rise whatever law they make; our nation will rise and live
\n\tby the force of the law of its own being. For the fiat of God has gone out to the Indian nation, “Unite, be free, be one, be
\n\tgreat.”<\/p>\n

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The Right of Association   MY FRIEND Pandit Gispati Kavyatirtha has somewhat shirked today his duty as it was set down for him in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-08-karmayogin","wpcat-44-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061","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=2061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}