{"id":2684,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2684"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:13","slug":"146-bande-mataram-26-9-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/06-07-bande-mataram\/146-bande-mataram-26-9-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-146_Bande Mataram 26-9-07.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tBande
\n\tMataram<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n\t{ CALCUTTA, September
\n\t26th, 1907 } <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

\t<\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Chowringhee Pecksniff and Ourselves
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe collapse of the Bande
\nMataram <\/i>prosecution and acquittal of Srijut Aurobindo Ghose, which have been
\nwelcomed with relief and joy by our countrymen all over India, are naturally
\ngall and wormwood to the opponents of Indian Nationalism; but to none has the
\nfiasco caused bitterer disappointment than to the Friend of India in
\nChowringhee. Sharing the common but mistaken impression that our paper depends
\non the writings of one man for its continued existence, the
\nStatesman <\/i>had evidently hoped that with the incarceration of Srijut
\nAurobindo Ghose the one paper in Bengal which it fears and which has ruthlessly
\nexposed the falsehood and duplicity of its sanctimonious Liberalism, would be
\nremoved out of its path. It cannot conceal its chagrin and mortification at the
\ndisappointment of its cherished hopes, and as a <\/span>
\n
\npis aller<\/i>,<\/span> it tries
\nto discredit the Bande Mataram <\/i>and informs our subscribers that they
\nought not to support us any longer because it has been proved that we are either
\nguilty of having put forward a false defence or of the unpardonable immorality
\nof having an editorial staff instead of a single Editor. The tone and method of
\nthis attack are worthy of this unctuous and mealy-mouthed Pecksniff of
\nAnglo-Indian journalism. It un scrupulously supports its malicious insinuations
\nby calling the witnesses summoned by the prosecution "defence witnesses" as if
\nthe accused had put men into the witness-box to tell a false story: and it
\nshelters itself from the charge of libel by the use of `if’s and `or’s. Yet it
\nhas the impudence to claim a superior sense of honour for English pamphleteers
\nand editors! "The great English political writers", it says, "have never been
\nafraid to own their handiwork and we cannot recall a single instance   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 692<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tin which an English
\n\tpamphleteer or Editor has endeavoured to evade the law by raising technical
\n\tdifficulties as to his share of responsibility." There are three separate
\n\tinsinuations in this carefully written sentence; first, it is hinted that
\n\tSrijut Aurobindo Ghose was the real writer of the correspondence, "Politics
\n\tfor Indians", but falsely denied his handiwork; secondly that he was the
\n\tresponsible Editor of the paper and his denial of responsibility was
\n\t"technical" and untrue; thirdly, that any writer for the paper was morally
\n\tbound to accept responsibility for anything that might appear in the paper
\n\tas a part of the political propaganda in which he was engaged and Aurobindo
\n\tGhose, knowing himself to be so bound, evaded his responsibility out of
\n\tfear. Certainly the writer of this article need not disown his handiwork or
\n\tevade his responsibility, for he has brought the art of safe slander to its
\n\tutmost possible perfection. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tWe have no hesitation in
\n\tsaying that if we had invented a system of divided responsibility with the
\n\tobject of baffling a possible bureaucratic prosecution, we should have been
\n\tentirely within our rights. In England a publicist or propagandist has
\n\talways had the advantage of being tried by a jury of his own peers and in
\n\tall but rare cases enjoyed every reasonable chance of a fair trial, but the
\n\treverse is the case in countries circumstanced as India is circumstanced
\n\ttoday. Where the whole armoury of an absolute power is arrayed against him,
\n\tthe Judge a servant of his prosecutor, the law an instrument specially
\n\tdesigned for his suppression, the wealth and power of a despotic executive
\n\tand the activity of a not over-scrupulous police his pursuers, and his only
\n\tsupporters are his own patriotism and the sympathy of his people, the
\n\tNationalist is entitled to use any means for his own self-defence which will
\n\tnot be inconsistent with his mission nor injure his claim to national
\n\tsympathy and support. He owes no moral obligation of quixotic candour to
\n\tantagonists who themselves recognise no moral obligation in their struggle
\n\twith him. Whatever he owes, is to his people and the mission he has to
\n\tdischarge. If he will serve his country best by leaping into the fire, that
\n\tis his duty; if self-defence is more to the interests of the country and the
\n\tcause, no other consideration    <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 693<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tought to weigh with him. The
\n\tprimary object of the Nationalist organs must be to keep up their propaganda
\n\tuntil it is rendered physically impossible by the growing severity of
\n\tbureaucratic enactments. Bhupendranath and Basanta deliberately exposed
\n\tthemselves to the worst effects of bureaucratic wrath in order to give an
\n\texample to the country of heroic self-sacrifice and a living demonstration
\n\tof the spirit of Swarajism; but they did it in the full confidence that the
\n\tYugantar <\/i>would continue undaunted and unchanged in the course it
\n\tconceived to be its duty to the nation. Had they exposed themselves with the
\n\tknowledge that their disappearance would have meant the death of the paper,
\n\ttheir action would have been heroic but foolish, an outburst of patriotic
\n\tsentiment but not an act of patriotic wisdom. To allow the voice of
\n\tNationalism to be silenced would be to play into the hands of the adversary
\n\tto whom we owe no duty. The gospel of National ism has to be preached with
\n\tunflinching candour, but Nationalist organs will be perfectly within their
\n\trights if they protect their writers so long as it is humanly possible to
\n\tprotect them and so prolong their own career of propagandist usefulness.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tNo such arrangement was made
\n\tin the case of the Bande<\/i> Mataram<\/i>. Had we intended to protect
\n\tourselves, we would have done it by the simple and convenient Japanese
\n\tdevice of a jail editor. The device imputed to us would be neither illegal
\n\tnor immoral, but it would be cumbrous and unsafe. It is perfectly true that
\n\tit throws great difficulties in the way of the prosecution, but it is
\n\tequally obvious that it leaves the bureaucracy free to single out anyone
\n\tthey choose for harassment and does not protect him at all, since the police
\n\thave only to be clever enough in their choice of witnesses and the
\n\tarrangement of the evidence, and the accused, whether really responsible or
\n\tnot, is doomed. Everybody can feel that if Anukul Mukherji had had more
\n\tbackbone and lied more cleverly in the cross-examination, Srijut Aurobindo
\n\tGhose would now be a convict in the Central Jail. Had we thought of putting
\n\tforward a false defence, we could have done it very effectively by producing
\n\tan Editor on the spot. There were at least three men on the staff who were
\n\tanxious to immolate themselves in this manner, and it was only   
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 694<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tprevented by the refusal of
\n\tthe accused to accept any such sacrifice and by the singular conduct of the
\n\tprosecution in calling the officers of the Company as their witnesses. The
\n\tmoment Srijut Sailendranath Ghose entered the witness box, there was no
\n\tcourse left open to the defence but to take their stand on the facts as
\n\telicited by the prosecution. For a member of the staff to come forward and
\n\tby a splendid falsehood take upon himself the responsibility of the matter
\n\tcomplained of, if not of the whole editorial function, would have been
\n\tmorally permissible; but it was obviously impossible for the Secretary of
\n\tthe Company to perjure himself by fixing a non-existent responsibility on
\n\tany particular individual. The one defect in the conduct of the defence was
\n\tthat the circumstances which brought about the state of things described by
\n\tthe Secretary, were not elicited in cross-examination. When we come to deal
\n\twith the facts of the case in detail, we shall mend that deficiency and our
\n\treaders will see that the evolution of that arrangement was natural and even
\n\tinevitable. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tIn the diatribe of the
\n\tChowringhee Pecksniff against us there is one bit of Pecksniffian logic
\n\twhich we fail to appreciate. He seems to think that a paper cannot be
\n\trespectable unless it has a single autocratic Editor and that the readers of
\n\ta paper not so blessed must be disreputable. Why, pray? We had always
\n\tthought that what one man could do in the way of management, could be done
\n\tas well by a board or committee of men acting in unison and with one clearly
\n\tunderstood policy; we used even to think that such conjoint management was
\n\tin politics the characteristic of democratic times. But Chowringhee
\n\tliberalism evidently thinks no arrangement respectable which does not
\n\tinvolve absolute control by a single master-mind. It argues that the
\nBande Mataram <\/i>policy being the joint product of several minds must be the
\n\tresult of distracted counsels, since only an autocrat can think clearly.
\n\tAfter that we can hardly be surprised at the affection of the Friend of
\n\tIndia for absolutism and absolutist methods or the support it has given to
\n\tthe new Grand Mogul who now governs India on mediaeval principles from
\n\tWestminster. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 695<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, September 26th, 1907 }   The Chowringhee Pecksniff and Ourselves   The collapse of the Bande Mataram prosecution and acquittal of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-06-07-bande-mataram","wpcat-54-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684","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=2684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}