{"id":2718,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2718"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:26","slug":"141-bande-mataram-12-9-07-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\/141-bande-mataram-12-9-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-141_Bande Mataram 12-9-07.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, September
\n\t12th, 1907 } <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Martyrdom of Bipin Chandra
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nWe have felt considerable delicacy hitherto in writing on the prosecution of Srijut Bipin Chandra Pal for refusing to take the
\noath in the Bande Mataram <\/i>case, as that prosecution has arisen directly out of our own. In fact all the more important events
\nof recent occurrence in Calcutta have been so closely connected, directly or indirectly, with this case that we have been practically
\ncompelled to keep our lips closed on current public affairs. The imprisonment of the Nationalist orator and propagandist, the
\nmost prominent public figure of the New Party in Bengal, is nevertheless a matter of capital importance on which we cannot
\nremain silent. Without touching on the relations of this affair with the Bande Mataram
\n<\/i>case we shall say what we have to say
\non the political aspect of the vindictive sentence passed by the third Presidency Magistrate, an obscure servant of the bureaucracy, on the man with a great and historic mission whom the strange incongruous humour of Fate brought before his petty
\njudgment-seat. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nSrijut Bipin Chandra Pal has been condemned to six months’
\nsimple imprisonment, the maximum penalty permitted by the law for the crime of possessing a conscience. Mr. Hume asked
\nfor a conviction on the ground that Bipin Babu had baulked the prosecution in the
\nBande Mataram <\/i>case. Apart from the large assumption involved in the assertion that his evidence would have materially
\nassisted the prosecution this appears to us a singular plea for a lawyer to put
\nforward. It has not yet been made a crime punishable under the Penal Code to
\nbaulk a Government prosecution and if it was the intention to draw the
\nMagistrate’s attention to the political bearings of the case, it was at least   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 672<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tmaladroit to allow the suggestion to be palpable. We will take it,
\nhowever, that the Magistrate sentenced Bipin Babu for a breach of the law which the defendant did not deny, not for an action of
\nwhich there was no evidence and which is not an offence under the law. What then was Bipin Babu’s offence? Certainly it was
\nnot that he carried the policy of Boycott beyond the limits of legality and preferred adhesion to his own political programme
\nbefore the dictates of the alien’s law. That would have been an action which, however pardonable or praiseworthy in the
\neyes of patriots engaged in a life and death struggle with the bureaucracy, must necessarily figure as a serious offence in the
\neyes of the bureaucracy itself and we could hardly quarrel with its servant for trying to serve the interests of his employers by the
\ninfliction of a severe punishment. But it was distinctly declared by Bipin Babu that it was not as a boycotter, not with the political
\nintention of making the working of the bureaucratic law-courts impossible that he declined to give evidence or take the oath.
\nThe boycott in Bengal has not yet been extended in practice to the law courts, and even in theory it is proposed to extend it only
\nto voluntary resort to the protection of the alien authorities and not to cases in which one is compelled to them by a warrant
\nor a summons. A few men like Bhupendranath Dutt who have realised freedom in their souls and refuse to be bound by any
\nlimitations of an alien making, may decline to have anything to do with the law which the nation had no hand in framing and
\nthe courts over which the nation has no control, but this has not yet become the accepted policy of the New Party and there was
\nno moral compulsion on its leader to make any such refusal. If it had been an ordinary case of crime, he would not have refused to
\ngive evidence. It was, in fact, as an individual case of conscience that he regarded the question. In his first statement Bipin Babu
\ndeclared that it was the duty of a citizen to refuse to take any part in such cases which are manifestly unjust and injurious to
\nsociety and the peace of the country. In his later statement the expression about the duty of the citizen was, wisely we think,
\ndropped: for we in India are not citizens and having no rights of citizenship cannot be saddled with any duties of citizenship.
\n   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 673<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tThe members of a subject nation absolutely destitute of any
\ninalienable rights cannot have any moral obligations as citizens: they can only have moral obligations as patriots and subject
\nto their patriotic obligations, as members of a social order. If therefore we recognise any obligation to respect and obey the
\nlaw, it is not as citizens but as members of the social order who are interested in its maintenance and in the maintenance of
\npeace and order so long as and no longer than that order and peace do not militate against the well-being of the society instead
\nof promoting it. The moment obedience to the law involves a wound to society, the individual is brought face to face with a
\ndifficult case of conscience. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIt was in such a difficult situation that Bipin Babu found
\nhimself. He was called on to associate himself as a prosecution witness with a political policy carried on under the forms of
\nlaw, a policy which he considered fatal to the well-being and peace of the nation, but which he had no means of challenging
\nexcept by the passive protest of refusing to perform the function required of him. He had to obey either the dictates of his con
\nscience or the requirements of the law and he held the imperative command of his conscience a more sacred and binding law than
\nthe Penal Code. The law had a right to assert itself by inflicting on him a nominal or slight penalty, it had no right to punish
\na man vindictively for obeying his conscience. The Magistrate thought perhaps that he was serving the interests of the present
\nsystem and ensuring its stability by putting Bipin Pal in prison for six months, but what has he really done? Merely made people
\nbelieve that the bureaucracy is so savage in its repression, so enamoured of power, that for its sake it will not even allow a
\nman to possess a conscience, that an honest and reluctant protest on the part of a distinguished and honourable man against a
\nmisuse of the law will be punished by it with eager severity if it happens to conflict with its own interests or its repressive policy.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tThe country will not suffer by the incarceration of this great orator and writer, this spokesman and prophet of Nationalism,
\nnor will Bipin Chandra himself suffer by it. He has risen ten times as high as he was before in the estimation of his countrymen: if
\n   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 674<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tthere are any among them who disliked or distrusted him, they
\nhave been silenced, for good we hope, by his manly, straightforward and conscientious stand for the right as he understood
\nit. He will come out of prison with his power and influence doubled, and Nationalism has already become the stronger for
\nhis self-immolation. Posterity will judge between him and the petty tribunal which has treated his honourable scruples as a
\ncrime.    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 675<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, September 12th, 1907 }   The Martyrdom of Bipin Chandra   We have felt considerable delicacy hitherto in writing on the…<\/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-2718","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\/2718","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=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}