{"id":2745,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2745"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:35","slug":"231-bande-mataram-2-5-08-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\/231-bande-mataram-2-5-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-231_Bande Mataram 2-5-08.html"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, May 2nd, 1908 } <\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nNationalist Differences
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nA great deal of capital is being made by the Moderate Press of the difference of attitude between Bengal and Maharashtra
\nNationalism over the acceptance of the creed. The Mahratta Nationalists are many of them willing to sign the creed on the
\nunderstanding that it is not put forward as an ultimate aim of Indian political effort. The Bengal Nationalists, with one or two
\nexceptions, are determined to have nothing to do with the creed on any conditions, so long as it is put forward as a creed at
\nall or as a clause of exclusion. They take this attitude, on three grounds, first, because they believe the creed to be irrational and
\nimpracticable, secondly, because it is opposed to the doctrines they have always publicly professed, and thirdly, because they
\nconsider no Congress session has the right to bind down individual delegates or future sessions to a particular statement of belief
\nor precise definition of objects which would limit the aspirations of a people. To sign it would be against their reason, against
\ntheir conscience and against their rights. The Mahrattas take a different standpoint. Mr. Tilak at the Nationalist Conference in
\nSurat declared that absolute autonomy must be the ultimate goal of our efforts, but a partial autonomy may be a halfway house,
\nthe former being then the ideal of the party, the latter a practical and immediate aim of present-day politics. From this standpoint the original draft in Mr. Gokhale’s Constitution which described Colonial self-government as an ultimate goal was objectionable, but the statement of self-government in the Empire
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe exact date of the articles published here under “May 2nd” is uncertain. They<\/font><\/i>
\nappeared in the daily edition of 1 or 2 May. Both these issues have been lost. The articles<\/i>
\nwere reprinted in the weekly edition of 3 May.<\/i>
\n   
\n2 May 1908<\/i>
\n1085<\/i> <\/font>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tPage \u2013
\n\t1084<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nas an immediate goal was permissible. When the Convention
\nwas first held at Surat, many of the Nationalist delegates from Maharashtra saw no objection to signing the creed as it stood,
\nand some of them went to the Pandal and offered to sign but were turned away. It was because the Bengal delegates refused
\nto sign that the party as a whole did not appear at the Pandal to resume the struggle for progress. The position taken up by Mr.
\nTilak and the Mahrattas has not altered. They object to binding down the future by a creed, but they would not object to signing
\na statement putting self-government within the Empire as an immediate object if such signature be necessary for unity; they
\nrefuse however to associate themselves with any creed, clause or subscription which would have the result of excluding a large
\nsection of the Progressive party. There are and always will be minor differences of opinion among the Nationalists, but they
\nare united on three cardinal principles: 1. That nothing short of absolute autonomy can permanently satisfy Indian aspiration;
\n2. That prayer, petition and protest can never be an effective method of political agitation; 3. That passive resistance and
\nself-help can alone advance the country at the present stage.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\n__________<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nIdeals Face to Face
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nA new ordeal always brings with it a new awakening. The ordeal of Partition brought with it a great industrial awakening with
\npolitics as its undercurrent, a sort of economico-political self-realisation. All that such an awakening could do for the political
\nfuture of the country has now been done. The ordeal of the Risley Circular brought with it a great educational awakening
\nwith politics as its impulse, a sort of politico-educational self-realisation. The ordeal of the Congress split will also bring with
\nit a fresh awakening. This time the awakening will be political with a religious undercurrent. It is time that the nation rose
\nabove Swadeshi to Swaraj. It is time that it left the path of self-realisation through disguises and side-issues and flung itself
\nfrankly and wholly into the attempt to win Swaraj. The Surat    <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1085<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tsplit took place over the side-issue of the President’s election, but
\nthe Convention’s attitude has brushed away all side-issues and brought to the front the question of Swaraj. The future success
\nof the Nationalist party depends on the boldness with which it takes up the real point at issue and affirms its beliefs. If it hedges,
\nthen the Convention will have a sort of sanction for its attitude which will give it a moral force otherwise entirely lacking to
\nits action. The ideal of unqualified Swaraj has a charm for the national mind which is irresistible if it is put before it in the
\nnational way by minds imbued with Indian feeling and free from the gross taint of Western materialism. Swaraj as a sort of European ideal, political liberty for the sake of political self-assertion, will not awaken India. Swaraj as the fulfilment of the ancient life
\nof India under modern conditions, the return of the Satyayuga of national greatness, the resumption by her of her great role of
\nteacher and guide, self-liberation of the people for the final fulfilment of the Vedantic ideal in politics, this is the true Swaraj for
\nIndia. Of all the proud nations of the West there is an end determined. When their limited special work for mankind is done they
\nmust decay and disappear. But the function of India is to supply the world with a perennial source of light and renovation. Whenever the first play of energy is exhausted and earth grows old and weary, full of materialism, racked with problems she cannot
\nsolve, the function of India is to restore the youth of mankind and assure it of immortality. She sends forth a light from her bosom which floods the earth and the heavens, and mankind bathes in it like St. George in the well of life and recovers strength, hope
\nand vitality for its long pilgrimage. Such a time is now at hand. The world needs India and needs her free. The work she has to do
\nnow is to organize life in the terms of Vedanta, and that is a work she cannot do while overshadowed by a foreign power and a
\nforeign civilisation. She cannot do it without taking the management of her own life into her own hands. She must live her own
\nlife and not the life of a part or subordinate in a foreign Empire. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tAll political ideals must have relation to the temperament
\nand past history of the race. The genius of India is separate from that of any other race in the world, and perhaps there is no
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tPage \u2013
\n\t1086<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\trace in the world whose temperament, culture and ideals are
\nso foreign to her own as those of the practical, hard-headed, Pharisaic,
\n\tshop-keeping Anglo-Saxon. The culture of the Anglo-Saxon is the very antipodes of Indian culture. The temper of the Anglo-Saxon is the very reverse of the Indian temper. His ideals
\nare of the earth, earthy. His institutions are without warmth, sympathy, human feeling, rigid and accurate like his machinery,
\nmeant for immediate and practical gains. The reading of democracy which he has adopted and is trying to introduce first in the
\ncolonies because the mother country is still too much shackled by the past, is the most sordid possible, centred on material aims
\nand void of generous idealism. In such a civilisation, as part of such an Empire, India can have no future. If she is to model
\nherself on the Anglo-Saxon type she must first kill everything in her which is her own. If she is to be a province of the British
\nEmpire, part of its life, sharing its institutions, governed by its policy, the fate of Greece under Roman dominion will surely
\nbe hers. She may share the privileges and obligations of British citizenship,\u2014 though the proud Briton who excludes the Indian
\nfrom his colonies and treats him as a lower creature, will perish rather than concede such an equality,\u2014 but she will lose her
\nIndian birthright. She will have to pass a sponge over her past and obliterate it from her life, even if she preserves the empty
\nrecords of it in her schools. The degradation of a great nation, by the loss of her individuality, her past and her independent future,
\nto the position of a subordinate satellite in a foreign system, is the ideal of the Convention. It is sheer political atheism, the negation
\nof all that we were, are and hope to be. The return of India on her eternal self, the restoration of her splendour, greatness,
\ntriumphant Asiatic supremacy is the ideal of Nationalism. Is it doubtful which ideal will be more acceptable to the nation, that
\nwhich calls on it to murder its instincts, sacrifice its future and deny its past for the advantage of an inglorious security, or that
\nwhich asks it to fulfil itself by the strenuous reassertion of all that is noble and puissant in the blood it draws from such an
\nheroic ancestry as no other nation can boast? <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe ideal creates the means of attaining the ideal, if it is
\n   
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1087<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\titself true and rooted in the destiny of the race. All that can be said for
\n\tthe Convention’s ideal is that it saves the professor of the ideal from the
\n\twrath of the bureaucracy. Otherwise it is as grotesquely out of proportion
\n\tto the strength of the people who profess it as any which the Nationalist
\n\tcan uphold. It has no exciting virtue of divine enthusiasm which can inspire
\n\tto heroic effort and enable a fallen nation to shake off its weakness, turn
\n\tcowards into heroes and selfish men into self-denying martyrs of the cause,
\n\tand yet the effort it demands for realisation is as heroic as anything which
\n\tthe Nationalist expects from the people. The pride of race, the pride of
\n\tempire, the pride of colour are the three invincible barriers which stand
\n\tbetween it and its realisation. What force have the Conventionalists to set
\n\tagainst these? Tears and supplications, appeals to British justice and
\n\tBritish generosity\u2014 nothing else. They are not serious in their ideal and do
\n\tnot really hold it but flaunt it as a counterpoise to the Nationalist ideal
\n\tso that the country may be deceived into thinking they have an aim and a
\n\tpolicy. They have none. A false ideal is always a veil for something else,
\n\tand the Convention creed is with some a veil for secret hopes of liberty
\n\twhich they dare not avow and with others a veil for the absence of any aim
\n\texcept the hope of securing a few peddling reforms in the existing system of
\n\tadministration. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe future is with the Nationalist ideal because there is no
\n\tother. But the danger is that the false shadow of an ideal which is now
\n\tbeing put forward as a reality will be accepted as a convenient instrument
\n\tfor self-protection against the anger of the bureaucracy. The temptation it
\n\tholds out is one to which all new faiths are exposed, that which was the
\n\tchief danger of Christianity in the days of persecution, to which, for a
\n\tfleeting moment, Mahomed is said to have succumbed when harassed by the Koraish, the temptation of securing a respite from persecution by a false
\n\tprofession which, masking itself as a harmless piece of diplomacy, will
\n\treally be a fatal stab at the very heart of the new religion. This
\n\ttemptation must be religiously eschewed and the true issue boldly proclaimed
\n\tif Nationalism is to fulfil its divinely-appointed mission.  
\n\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tPage \u2013 1088<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, May 2nd, 1908 }   Nationalist Differences   A great deal of capital is being made by the Moderate Press 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-2745","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\/2745","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=2745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}