{"id":2732,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2732"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:31","slug":"200-bande-mataram-20-3-08-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\/200-bande-mataram-20-3-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-200_Bande Mataram 20-3-08.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
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\n\t
\n\tBande Mataram<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, March 20th, 1908 } <\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nUnity by Co-operation
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nOf all the little bodies which we are trying to build up for the regeneration of the country, those are the true centres of strength
\nwhich come nearest to the ideal of love and justice, which bind their members together in a close and affectionate unity, which
\nform a league of brotherhood and mutual help, which without attempting to absorb all into themselves are always ready to
\ncome to the assistance of similar societies and of everyone who is in need of help. The country is a large one, the difficulties
\nof organization are enormous, and no single organization can hope to monopolise the work. What we need is not a single
\nall-embracing organization, but a number of smaller ones harmoniously co-operating together, free from jealousy, willing to
\ngive the first place to the others, provided the work progresses. The various Samitis which have sprung into existence in Calcutta
\nare all doing good work, as has been shown by the success of the Ardhodaya Yog arrangements, and they form a source of energy,
\nlittle units of strength which are bound to become the basis of the future organization of the country. But these Samitis are at
\npresent disconnected and without a connecting bond. They join together when some great occasion calls for their united action,
\nbut they again fall apart as soon as the call is over, and pursue their isolated path. What is needed now is a machinery which
\nwill keep them in touch with each other without permitting any mutual interference; each unit should be independent in its
\nwork and its constitution, but the leaders should be in constant communication so that all the Samitis may be cognizant of each
\nother’s work and ready to help whenever help is needed. Moreover when occasion calls for united action the leaders should
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\n\tbe in a position to take advantage of each other’s help without
\nloss of time; they should feel that they can immediately lay their hands on the strength they stand in need of and apply it at the
\nright place and moment. If this can be done, the recent success at the Ardhodaya Yog will be a starting-point for the better organization of the country and for the beginning of a series of similar successes which will gradually make the nation feel the source of
\nstrength within itself and learn to utilise it in every department of activity. We are apt to get each absorbed in his own little
\nsphere of action, to set an exaggerated value upon it and try to carry it out by our own unaided and isolated strength, so that
\nthe work progresses slowly, is partial, limited and halting in its success and carried on under crushing difficulties which interfere
\nwith its perfection and usefulness. There are several Nationalist journals which are doing each in its own line a great work for
\nthe country, but they are working in an isolated fashion, each absorbed in its own struggle to survive, each exposed to attack
\nfrom the same powerful adversary, yet careless of the other,\u2014 a condition of things which gives enormous advantages to
\nthe enemy who is already powerful enough to crush them and would have crushed them long ago if there had not been a greater
\nPower which willed that these little flickering lights should not be extinguished. During the Nationalist Conference at Surat it was
\ndecided to set on foot a Press Conference for the better preservation of and mutual assistance and constant communication
\nbetween the papers which are struggling under heart-breaking difficulties, with the constant threat of prosecution hanging over
\nthem, to keep the lamp of hope and faith burning in the temple of the Mother. No further step has been taken in this direction, at
\nleast in Bengal, and it is time that it should be taken up in earnest and a Conference of the Nationalist Press in Calcutta arranged
\nby which that Press should become a common body associated for mutual assistance and support. A typical instance of the
\ndifficulties which result from the absence of such a Conference is the temporary disappearance of
\nNew India <\/i>while Srijut Bipin
\nChandra Pal was in jail. That disappearance should never have been allowed; as a point of honour, if nothing else, the paper
\n   <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\tshould have been maintained at any cost; but there was no
\ncommon body, no common action. Each organ of Nationalism was struggling with its own difficulties, absorbed in itself and
\noblivious of the advantages of co-operation.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tThere are many other departments of work which are suffering from the same want of co-operation between the workers, and it is unnecessary to enumerate them. Each of them should be organised separately on the basis not of an impossible centralisation, but of harmonious co-operation. When each is united
\nwithin itself, the higher unity for which we are hoping will naturally come into existence. That organization will be most vital,
\nlasting and sound which comes as a natural growth, developing in answer to growing needs and formed by the closer union of
\nunits which have grown up independently and preserved their separate life within the general unity. Life is organic because it
\nevolves from the separate to the united, from the individual to the group, from the cell to the organism, and what we require
\nin India is political life, not a manufactured unity. All our previous attempts at union have been failures because we did not
\nrecognize this law of growth.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tThe Early Indian Polity
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe principle of popular rule is the possession of the reins of government by the mass of the people, but by the possession is
\nnot intended necessarily the actual exercise of administration. When the people are able to approve or to disapprove of any action of the Government with the certainty that such approval or disapproval will be absolutely effective, the spirit of democracy
\nis present even if the body is not evolved. India in her ancient polity possessed this spirit of democracy. Like all Aryan nations
\nshe started with the three great divisions of the body politic, King, Lords and Commons, which have been the sources of the
\nvarious forms of government evolved by the modern nations. In the period of the Mahabharata we find that the King is merely the
\nhead of the race, possessed of executive power but with no right   
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\n\tto legislate and even in the exercise of his executive functions
\nunable to transgress by a hair’s breadth the laws which are the sum of the customs of the race. Even within this limited scope
\nhe cannot act in any important matter without consulting the chief men of the race who are usually the elders and warriors;
\noften he is a cipher, a dignified President, an ornamental feature of the polity which is in the hands of the nobles. His position
\nis that of first among equals, not that of an absolute prince or supreme ruler. We find this conception of kingship continued till
\nthe present day in the Rajput States; at Udaipur, for instance, no alienation of land can take place without the signature of all the
\nnobles; although the Maharaja is the head of the State, the sacred descendant of the Sun, his power is a delegated authority. The
\nrule of the King is hereditary, but only so long as he is approved of by the people. A tyrannical king can be resisted, an unfit heir
\ncan be put aside on the representation of the Commons. This idea of kingship is the old Aryan idea, it is limited monarchy
\nand not the type of despotism which is called by the Western writers Oriental, though it existed for centuries in Europe and
\nhas never been universal in Asia. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe Council of Chiefs is a feature of Indian polity universal
\nin the time of the Mahabharata. That great poem is full of accounts of the meetings of these Councils and some of the most
\nmemorable striking events of the story are there transacted. The Udyoga Parva especially gives detailed accounts of the transactions of these Council meetings with the speeches of the princely orators. The King sits as President, hears both sides and seems
\nto decide partly on his own responsibility, partly according to the general sense of the assembly. The opinion of the Council
\nwas not decided by votes, an invention of the Greeks, but as in the older Aryan systems, was taken individually from each
\nCouncillor. The King was the final arbiter and responsible for the decision, except in nations like the Yadavas where he seems to
\nhave been little more than an ornamental head of an aristocratic polity.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tFinally, the Commons in the Mahabharata are not represented by any assembly, because the times are evidently a period
\n    <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\tof war and revolution in which the military caste had gained an
\nabnormal preponderance. The opinion of the people expresses itself in public demonstrations of spontaneous character, but
\ndoes not seem to have weighed with the proud and self-confident nobles who ruled them. This feature of the Mahabharata is
\nobviously peculiar to the times, for we find that the Buddhist records preserve to us the true form of ancient Indian polity.
\nThe nations among whom Buddha lived were free communities in which the people assembled as in Greek and Italian States
\nto decide their own affairs. A still more striking instance of the political existence of the Commons is to be found in the
\nRamayana. We are told that on the occasion of the association of Rama as Yuvaraj in the government, Dasaratha summoned
\na sort of States General of the Realm to which delegates of the different provinces and various orders, religious, military and
\npopular were summoned in order to give their sanction to the act of the King. A speech from the throne is delivered in which
\nthe King states the reasons for his act, solicits the approval of his people and in case of their refusal of sanction, asks them
\nto meet the situation by a counter-proposal of their own. The assembly then meets “separately and together”, in other words,
\nthe various Orders of the Realm consult first among themselves and then together and decide to give their sanction to the King’s
\nproposal.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tThe growth of large States in India was fatal to the continuance of the democratic element in the constitution. The idea of representation had not yet been developed, and without the
\nprinciple of representation democracy is impossible in a large State. The Greeks were obliged to part with their cherished
\nliberty as soon as large States began to enter into the Hellenic world; the Romans were obliged to change their august and
\ncherished institutions for the most absolute form of monarchy as soon as they had become a great Empire; and democracy
\ndisappeared from the world until the slow development of the principle of representation enabled the spirit of democracy to
\nfind a new body in which it could be reborn. The contact with Greek and Persian absolutism seems to have developed in India
\n   
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\n\tthe idea of the divinity of Kinghood which had always been a
\npart of the Aryan system; but while the Aryan King was divine because he was the incarnate life of the race, the new idea saw a
\ndivinity in the person of the King as an individual,\u2014 a conception which favoured the growth of absolutism. The monarchy
\nof Chandragupta and Asoka seems to have been of the new type, copied perhaps from the Hellenistic empires, in which the
\nnobles and the commons have disappeared and a single individual rules with absolute power through the instrumentality
\nof officials. The Hindu King, however, never became a despot like the Caesars, he never grasped the power of legislation but
\nremained the executor of laws over which he had no control nor could he ignore the opinion of the people. When most absolute,
\nhe has existed only to secure the order and welfare of society, and has never enjoyed immunity from resistance or the right to
\ndisregard the representations of his subjects. The pure absolutist type of monarchy entered India with the Mahomedans who had
\ntaken it from Europe and Persia and it has never been accepted in its purity by the Hindu temperament.
\n    <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, March 20th, 1908 }   Unity by Co-operation   Of all the little bodies which we are trying to build up…<\/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-2732","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\/2732","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=2732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}