{"id":2742,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2742"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:34","slug":"216-bande-mataram-9-4-08-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\/216-bande-mataram-9-4-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-216_Bande Mataram 9-4-08.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, April 9th, 1908 } <\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Asiatic Role
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe genius of the Hindu is not for pure action, but for thought and aspiration realized in action, the spirit premeditating before
\nthe body obeys the inward command. The life of the Hindu is inward and his outward life aims only at reproducing the
\nmotions of his spirit. This intimate relation of his thought and his actions is the secret of his perpetual vitality. His outward
\nlife, like that of other nations, is subject to growth and decay, to periods of greatness and periods of decline, but while other
\nnations have a limit and a term, he has none. Whenever death claims his portion, the Hindu race takes refuge in the source of all
\nimmortality, plunges itself into the fountain of spirit and comes out renewed for a fresh term of existence. The elixir of national
\nlife has been discovered by India alone. This immortality, this great secret of life, she has treasured up for thousands of years,
\nuntil the world was fit to receive it. The time has now come for her to impart it to the other nations, who are now on the verge of
\ndecadence and death. The peoples of Europe have carried material life to its farthest expression, the science of bodily existence
\nhas been perfected, but they are suffering from diseases which their science is powerless to cure. England with her practical
\nintelligence, France with her clear logical brain, Germany with her speculative genius, Russia with her emotional force, America
\nwith her commercial energy have done what they could for human development, but each has reached the limit of her peculiar
\ncapacity. Something is wanting which Europe cannot supply. It is at this juncture that Asia has awakened because the world
\nneeded her. Asia is the custodian of the world’s peace of mind, the physician of the maladies which Europe generates. She is
\n   
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\n <\/p>\n

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\n\tcommissioned to rise from time to time from her ages of
\n\tself-communion, self-sufficiency, self-absorption and rule the world for a season so that the world may come and sit at her feet to
\nlearn the secrets she alone has to give. When the restless spirit of Europe has added a new phase of discovery to the evolution
\nof the science of material life, has regulated politics, rebased society, remodelled law, rediscovered science, the spirit of Asia,
\ncalm, contemplative, self-possessed, takes possession of Europe’s discovery and corrects its exaggerations, its aberrations by the
\nintuition, the spiritual light she alone can turn upon the world. When Greek and Roman had exhausted themselves, the Arab
\nwent out from his desert to take up their unfinished task, revivify the civilisation of the old world and impart the profounder
\nimpulses of Asia to the pursuit of knowledge. Asia has always initiated, Europe completed. The strength of Europe is in details,
\nthe strength of Asia in synthesis. When Europe has perfected the details of life or thought, she is unable to harmonize them
\ninto a perfect symphony and she falls into intellectual heresies, practical extravagances which contradict the facts of life, the
\nlimits of human nature and the ultimate truths of existence. It is therefore the office of Asia to take up the work of human
\nevolution when Europe comes to a standstill and loses itself in a clash of vain speculations, barren experiments and helpless
\nstruggles to escape from the consequences of her own mistakes. Such a time has now come in the world’s history.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIn former ages India was a sort of hermitage of thought and peace apart from the world. Separated from the rest of humanity
\nby her peculiar geographical conformation, she worked out her own problems and thought out the secrets of existence as in a
\nquiet ashram <\/i>from which the noise of the world was shut out. Her thoughts flashed out over Asia and created civilisations, her
\nsons were the bearers of light to the peoples; philosophies based themselves on stray fragments of her infinite wisdom; sciences
\narose from the waste of her intellectual production. When the barrier was broken and nations began to surge through the Himalayan gates, the peace of India departed. She passed through centuries of struggle, of ferment in which the civilisations
\n\tborn
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tof her random thoughts returned to her developed and insistent,
\nseeking to impose themselves on the mighty mother of them all. To her they were the reminiscences of her old intellectual
\nexperiments laid aside and forgotten. She took them up, rethought them in a new light and once more made them part
\nof herself. So she dealt with the Greek, so with the Scythian, so with Islam, so now she will deal with the great brood of
\nher returning children, with Christianity, with Buddhism, with European science and materialism, with the fresh speculations
\nborn of the world’s renewed contact with the source of thought in this ancient cradle of religion, science and philosophy. The
\nvast amount of new matter which she has to absorb, is unprecedented in her history, but to her it is child’s play. Her
\nall-embracing intellect, her penetrating intuition, her invincible originality are equal to greater tasks. The period of passivity
\nwhen she listened to the voices of the outside world is over. No longer will she be content merely to receive and reproduce, even
\nto receive and improve. The genius of Japan lies in imitation and improvement, that of India in origination. The contributions of
\noutside peoples she can only accept as rough material for her immense creative faculty. It was the mission of England to bring
\nthis rough material to India, but in the arrogance of her material success she presumed to take upon herself the role of a teacher
\nand treated the Indian people partly as an infant to be instructed, partly as a serf to be schooled to labour for its lords. The farce is
\nplayed out. England’s mission in India is over and it is time for her to recognise the limit of the lease given to her. When it was
\nGod’s will that she should possess India, the world was amazed at the miraculous ease of the conquest and gave all the credit
\nto the unparalleled genius and virtues of the English people, a fiction which England was not slow to encourage and on which
\nshe has traded for over a century. The real truth is suggested in the famous saying that England conquered India in a fit of
\nabsence of mind, which is only another way of saying that she did not conquer it at all. It was placed in her hands without her
\nrealising what was being done or how it was being done. The necessary conditions were created for her, her path made easy,
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\n\tthe instruments given into her hands. The men who worked for
\nher were of comparatively small intellectual stature and with few exceptions did not make and could not have made any mark in
\nEuropean history where no special Providence was at work to supplement the deficiencies of the instruments. The subjugation
\nof India is explicable neither in the ability of the men whose names figure as the protagonists nor in the superior genius of
\nthe conquering nation nor in the weakness of the conquered peoples. It is one of the standing miracles of history. In other
\nwords, it was one of those cases in which a particular mission was assigned to a people not otherwise superior to the rest of
\nthe world and a special faustitas <\/i>or decreed good fortune set to watch over the fulfilment of the mission. Her mission once
\nover, the angel of the Lord who stood by England in her task and removed opponents and difficulties with the waving of his hand,
\nwill no longer shield her. She will stay so long as the destinies of India need her and not a day longer, for it is not by her own
\nstrength that she came or is still here, and it is not by her own strength that she can remain. The resurgence of India is begun,
\nit will accomplish itself with her help, if she will, without it if she does not, against it if she opposes.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tLove Me or Die <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Editor of the Urdu Swarajya <\/i>has been warned to refrain
\nfrom seditious writings. The Magistrate in conveying the warning unctuously remarked that “the Government never dissuades
\nrighteous criticism, it is only a disaffectionate feeling that it wants to check.” The heart of the bureaucracy is evidently in
\nthe right place; it is so anxious to be loved that it is ready to chop off the head of anyone who refuses to love it. The bureaucracy
\nhas sometimes been compared by editors with exuberant pens to the Emperor Nero, a comparison which it has resented by
\nputting the writer in prison; but it is written in history that Nero suffered precisely from this amiable weakness. He wanted to be
\nloved and anyone who had a “disaffectionate feeling" for him 
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tor criticised “unrighteously” his character or his flute-playing
\nor his poetry or his acting, was in instant danger of being taught affection by the sword. Nero also did not want to dissuade
\n“righteous” criticism, but then the judge of the righteousness of the criticism was Nero himself. The love-sick despot is a more
\ndifficult kind of animal to tackle than the more ferocious species. “Obey me or perish” is the attitude of the latter, and it is one
\nwhich can be appreciated if not admired. But “love me or die” is a principle of government to which human nature cannot so
\neasily accustom itself. It is too ethereal for the grossness of our base terrestrial composition.
\n   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1023<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 9th, 1908 }   The Asiatic Role   The genius of the Hindu is not for pure action, but for…<\/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-2742","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\/2742","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=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}