{"id":2765,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2765"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:42","slug":"03-new-lamps-for-old-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\/03-new-lamps-for-old-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-03_New Lamps for Old.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
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\n\t
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\n\tNew Lamps for Old \u00ad I <\/a>
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\n\tIf the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall
\n\tinto a ditch? So or nearly so runs an apophthegm of the Galilean prophet,
\n\twhose name has run over the four quarters of the globe. Of all those pithy
\n\tcomments on human life, which more than anything else made his teaching
\n\teffective, this is perhaps the one which goes home deepest and admits of the
\n\tmost frequent use. But very few Indians will be found to admit \u2014 
\n\tcertainly I myself two years ago would not have admitted, \u2014  that it
\n\tcan truthfully be applied to the National Congress. Yet that it can be so
\n\tapplied, \u2014  nay, that no judicious mind can honestly pronounce any
\n\tother verdict on its action, \u2014  is the first thing I must prove, if
\n\tthese articles are  to have any<\/span> raison d’\u00eatre<\/i>. <\/span>
\n\tI am quite aware that in doing this my motive and my
\n\tprudence may be called into question. I am not ignorant that I am about to
\n\tcensure a body which to many of my countrymen seems the mightiest outcome of
\n\tour new national life; to some a precious urn in which are guarded our
\n\tbrightest and noblest hopes; to others a guiding star which shall lead us
\n\tthrough the encircling gloom to a far distant paradise: and if I were not
\n\tfully confident that this fixed idea of ours is a snare and a delusion,
\n\tlikely to have the most pernicious effects, I should simply have suppressed
\n\tmy own doubts and remained silent. As it is, I am fully confident, and even
\n\thope to bring over one or two of my countrymen to my own way of thinking,
\n\tor, if that be not possible, at any rate to induce them to think a little
\n\tmore deeply than they have done. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tI know also that I shall stir the bile of those good
\n\tpeople who are so enamoured of the British Constitution that they cannot
\n\tlike anyone who is not a partisan. "What!" they will say "you pretend to be
\n\ta patriot yourself, and you set yourself with a light heart to attack a body
\n\tof patriots, which has no reason at all for existing except patriotism, \u2014
\n\tnay, which is the efflorescence,   
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\n\tthe crown, the summit and coping-stone of patriotism? How
\n\twickedly inconsistent all this is! If you are really a friend to New India,
\n\twhy do you go about to break up our splendid unanimity? The Congress has not
\n\tyet existed for two lustres; and in that brief space of time has achieved
\n\tmiracles. And even if it has faults, as every institution, however excellent
\n\tit may be, must have its faults, have you any plausible reason for telling
\n\tour weakness in the streets of Gath, and so taking our enemies into the
\n\tsecret?" Now, if I were a strong and self-reliant man, I should of course go
\n\tin the way I had chosen without paying much attention to these murmurers,
\n\tbut being, as I am, exceedingly nervous and afraid of offending anyone, I
\n\twish to stand well, even with those who admire the British Constitution. I
\n\tshall therefore find it necessary to explain at some length the attitude
\n\twhich I should like all thinking men to adopt towards the Congress.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tAnd first, let me say that I am not much moved by one
\n\targument which may possibly be urged against me. The Congress, it will be
\n\tsaid, has achieved miracles, and in common gratitude we ought not to expose
\n\tit to any sort of harsh or malevolent criticism. Let us grant for the moment
\n\tthat the Congress has achieved miracles for us. Certainly, if it has done
\n\tthat, we ought to hold it for ever in our grateful memory; but if our
\n\tgratitude goes beyond this, it at once incurs the charge of fatuity. This is
\n\tthe difference between a man and an institution; a great man who has done
\n\tgreat things for his country, demands from us our reverence, and however he
\n\tmay fall short in his after-life, a great and high-hearted nation \u2014 
\n\tand no nation was ever justly called great that was not high-hearted \u2014 
\n\twill not lay rude hands on him to dethrone him from his place in their
\n\thearts. But an institution is a very different thing, it was made for the
\n\tuse and not at all for the worship of man, and it can only lay claim to
\n\trespect so long as its beneficent action remains not a memory of the past,
\n\tbut a thing of the present. We cannot afford to raise any institution to the
\n\trank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our own
\n\tmachinery. However I will at once admit that if an institution has really
\n\tdone miracles for us, \u2014  and miracles which are not mere conjuring
\n\ttricks, but of a   
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\n\tdeep and solemn import to the nation, \u2014  and if it
\n\tis still doing and likely yet to do miracles for us, then without doubt it
\n\tmay lay claim to a certain immunity from criticism. But I am not disposed to
\n\tadmit that all this is true of the Congress.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\tIt is within the recollection of most of us to how
\n\t\tgiddy an eminence this body was raised, on how prodigious a wave of
\n\t\tenthusiasm, against how immense a weight of resisting winds. So sudden
\n\t\twas it all that it must have been difficult, I may almost say
\n\t\timpossible, even for a strong man to keep his head and not follow with
\n\t\tthe shouting crowd. How shall we find words vivid enough to describe the
\n\t\tfervour of those morning hopes, the April splendour of that wonderful
\n\t\tenthusiasm? The Congress was to us all that is to man most dear, most
\n\t\thigh and most sacred; a well of living water in deserts more than
\n\t\tSaharan, a proud banner in the battle of Liberty, and a holy temple of
\n\t\tconcord where the races met and mingled. It was certainly the nucleus or
\n\t\tthrice-distilled essence of the novel modes of thought among us; and if
\n\t\twe took it for more than it really was, \u2014  if we took it for our
\n\t\tpillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night; if we worshipped it
\n\t\tas the morning-star of our liberty; if we thought of old myths, of the
\n\t\ttrumpets that shook down Jericho or the brazen serpent that healed the
\n\t\tplague, and nourished fond and secret hopes that the Congress would
\n\t\tprove all this and more than this; \u2014  surely our infatuation is to
\n\t\tbe passed by gently as inevitable in that environment rather than
\n\t\tcensured as unnatural or presuming.
\n\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\tIf then anyone tells me that the Congress was itself
\n\t\ta miracle, if in nothing else, at any rate in the enthusiasm of which it
\n\t\twas the centre, I do not know that I shall take the trouble to disagree
\n\t\twith him; but if he goes on and tells me that the Congress has achieved
\n\t\tmiracles, I shall certainly take leave to deny the truth of his
\n\t\tstatement. It appears to me that the most signal successes of this body
\n\t\twere not miracles at all, but simply the natural outcome of its
\n\t\tconstitution and policy. I suppose that in the sphere of active politics
\n\t\tits greatest success is to be found in the enlargement of the
\n\t\tLegislative Councils. Well, that was perhaps a miracle in its way. In
\n\t\tEngland a very common trick is to put one ring under a hat and produce
\n\t\tin another part of the room   
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\n\twhat appears to be the same ring and is really one
\n\texactly like it \u2014  except perhaps for the superscription. Just such a
\n\tmiracle is this which the Congress has so triumphantly achieved. Another
\n\tconjuring trick, and perhaps a cleverer one, was the snatch vote about
\n\tSimultaneous Examinations, which owed its success to the sentimentalism of a
\n\tfew members of Parliament, the self-seeking of others and the carelessness
\n\tof the rest. But these, however much we may praise them for cleverness, are,
\n\tas I hope to show later on, of no really deep and solemn import to the
\n\tnation, but simply conjuring tricks and nothing more. Over the rest of our
\n\tpolitical action the only epitaph we can write is "Failure." Even in the
\n\tfirst flush of enthusiasm the more deep-thinking among us were perhaps a
\n\tlittle troubled by certain small things about the Congress, which did not
\n\tseem altogether right. The barefaced hypocrisy of our enthusiasm for the
\n\tQueen-Empress, \u2014  an old lady so called by way of courtesy, but about
\n\twhom few Indians can really know or care anything \u2014  could serve no
\n\tpurpose but to expose us to the derision of our ill-wishers. There was too a
\n\tlittle too much talk about the blessings of British rule, and the
\n\tinscrutable Providence which has laid us in the maternal, or more properly
\n\tthe step-maternal bosom of just and benevolent England. Yet more appalling
\n\twas the general timidity of the Congress, its glossing over of hard names,
\n\tits disinclination to tell the direct truth, its fear of too deeply
\n\tdispleasing our masters. But in our then state of mind we were disposed to
\n\tpass over all this as amiable weaknesses which would wear off with time. Two
\n\tstill grosser errors were pardoned as natural and almost inadvertent
\n\tmistakes. It was true that we went out of our way to flatter Mr. Gladstone,
\n\ta statesman who is not only quite unprincipled and in no way to be relied
\n\tupon, but whose intervention in an Indian debate has always been of the
\n\tworst omen to our cause. But then, we argued, people who had not been to
\n\tEngland, could not be expected to discern the character of this astute and
\n\tplausible man. We did more than flatter Mr. Gladstone; we actually
\n\tcondescended to flatter "General" Booth, a vulgar imposter, a convicted
\n\tcharlatan, who has enriched himself by trading on the sentimental emotions
\n\tof the English middle-class. But here   
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\n\ttoo, we thought, the Congress has perhaps made the common
\n\tmistake of confounding wealth with merit, and has really taken the "General"
\n\tfor quite a respectable person. In the first flush of enthusiasm, I say,
\n\tsuch excuses and such toleration were possible and even natural, but in the
\n\tmoment of disillusionment it will not do for us to flatter ourselves in this
\n\tway any longer. Those amiable weaknesses we were then disposed to pass over
\n\tvery lightly have not at all worn off with time, but have rather grown into
\n\tan ingrained habit; and the tendency to grosser errors has grown not only
\n\tinto a habit, but into a policy. In its broader aspects the failure of the
\n\tCongress is still clearer. The walls of the Anglo-Indian Jericho stand yet
\n\twithout a breach, and the dark spectre of Penury draws her robe over the
\n\tland in greater volume and with an ampler sweep.  
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\n\tNew Lamps for Old \u00ad II
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\n\tBut after all my present business is not with negative
\n\tcriticism. I want rather to ascertain what the Congress has really done, and
\n\twhether it is so much as to condemn all patriots to an Eleusinian silence
\n\tabout its faults. My own genuine opinion was expressed, perhaps with too
\n\tmuch exuberance of diction, \u2014  but then the ghost of ancient enthusiasm
\n\twas nudging my elbow \u2014  when I described the Congress as a well of
\n\tliving water, a standard in the battle, and a holy temple of concord. It is
\n\ta well of living water in the sense that we drink from it assurance of a
\n\tliving political energy in the country, and without that assurance perhaps
\n\tthe most advanced among us might not have been so advanced: for it is only
\n\tone or two strong and individual minds, who can flourish without a
\n\tsympathetic environment. I am therefore justified in describing the Congress
\n\tas a well of living water; but I have also described it as the standard
\n\tunder which we have fought; and by that I mean a living emblem of our cause
\n\tthe tired and war-worn soldier in the mellay can look up to and draw from
\n\ttime to time fresh funds of hope and vigour. Such, and such only, is the
\n\tpurpose of a banner. One does not like to say that what must surely be
\n\tapparent even to a rude intelligence, has been beyond the reach of
\n\tintellects trained at our Universities and in the liberal professions. Yet
\n\tit is a fact that we have entirely ignored what a casual inspection ought at
\n\tonce to have told us, that the Congress is altogether too unwieldy a body
\n\tfor any sort of executive work, and must solely be regarded as a convenient
\n\talembic, in which the formulae of our aspirations may be refined into clear
\n\tand accurate expression. Not content with using a banner as a banner, we
\n\thave actually caught up the staff of it with a view to breaking our enemy’s
\n\theads. So blind a misuse must take away at least a third part of its virtue
\n\tfrom the Congress, and if we are at all to recover the loss, we must
\n\trecognize the    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n\tlimits of its utility as well as emend the device upon
\n\tit.
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\n\tThe Congress has been, then, a well of living water and a
\n\tstandard in the battle of liberty; but besides these it has been something
\n\twhich is very much better than either of them, good as they too undoubtedly
\n\tare; it has been to our divergent races and creeds a temple, or perhaps I
\n\tshould be more correct in saying a school of concord. In other words the
\n\tnecessities of the political movement initiated by the Congress have brought
\n\tinto one place and for a common purpose all sorts and conditions of men, and
\n\tso by smoothing away the harsher discrepancies between them has created a
\n\tcertain modicum of sympathy between classes that were more or less at
\n\tvariance. Here, and not in its political action, must we look for any direct
\n\tand really important achievement; and even here the actual advance has as a
\n\trule been absurdly exaggerated. Popular orators like Mr. Pherozshah Mehta,
\n\twho carry the methods of the bar into politics, are very fond of telling
\n\tpeople that the Congress has habituated us to act together. Well, that is
\n\tnot quite correct: there is not the slightest evidence to show that we have
\n\tat all learned to act together; the one lesson we have learned is to talk
\n\ttogether, and that is a rather different thing. Here then we have in my
\n\topinion the sum of all these capacities, in which the Congress has to any
\n\tappreciable extent promoted the really high and intimate interests of the
\n\tcountry. Can it then be said that in these lines the Congress has had such
\n\tentirely beneficial effects as to put the gag on all harsher criticism? I do
\n\tnot think that it can be properly so said. I admit that the Congress has
\n\tpromoted a certain modicum of concord among us; but I am not prepared to
\n\tadmit that on this line of action its outcome has been at all complete and
\n\tsatisfying. Not only has the concord it tends to create been very partial,
\n\tbut the sort of people who have been included in its beneficent action, do
\n\tnot extend beyond certain fixed and narrow limits. The great mass of the
\n\tpeople have not been appreciably touched by that healing principle, which to
\n\tdo the Congress justice has very widely permeated the middle class. All this
\n\twould still leave us without sufficient grounds to censure the Congress at
\n\tall severely, if only it were clear that its present line of action was   
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\n\ttending to increase the force and scope of its
\n\tbeneficence: but in fact the very contrary appears. We need no soothsayer to
\n\taugur that, unless its entire policy be remodelled, its power for good, even
\n\tin the narrow circle of its present influence, will prove to have been
\n\talready exploited. One sphere still remains to it; it is still our only
\n\tgrand assurance of a living political energy in the country: but even this
\n\twell of living water must in the end be poisoned or dried up, if the inner
\n\tpolitical energy of which it is the outward assurance remains as poor and
\n\tbounded as we now find it to be. If then it is true that the action of the
\n\tCongress has only been of really high import on one or two lines, that even
\n\ton those lines the actual result has been petty and imperfect, and that in
\n\tall its other aspects we can pronounce no verdict on it but failure, then it
\n\tis quite clear that we shall get no good by big talk about the splendid
\n\tunanimity at the back of the Congress. A splendid unanimity in failure may
\n\tbe a very magnificent thing in its way, but in our present exigencies it is
\n\tan unanimity really not worth having. But perhaps the Congress enthusiast
\n\twill take refuge in stinging reproaches about my readiness to publish our
\n\tweakness to the enemy. Well, even if he does I can assure him that however
\n\tstinging his reproaches may be, I shall not feel at all stung by them. I
\n\tleave that for those honest people who imagine that, when they have got the
\n\tCivil Service and other lucrative posts for themselves, the Indian question
\n\twill be satisfactorily settled. Our actual enemy is not any force exterior
\n\tto ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness,
\n\tour hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism. I really cannot see why we
\n\tshould rage so furiously against the Anglo-Indians and call them by all
\n\tmanner of opprobrious epithets. I grant that they are rude and arrogant,
\n\tthat they govern badly, that they are devoid of any great or generous
\n\temotion, that their conduct is that of a small coterie of masters surrounded
\n\tby a nation of Helots. But to say all this is simply to say that they are
\n\tvery commonplace men put into a quite unique position. Certainly it would be
\n\tvery grand and noble, if they were to smother all thought of their own
\n\tpeculiar interests, and aim henceforth, not at their own promotion, not at
\n\ttheir own enrichment, but at the   
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\n\tsole good of the Indian people. But such conduct is what
\n\twe have no right to expect save from men of the most exalted and chivalrous
\n\tcharacter; and the sort of people England sends out to us are not as a rule
\n\texalted and chivalrous, but are usually the very reverse of that. They are
\n\treally very ordinary men, \u2014  and not only ordinary men, but ordinary
\n\tEnglishmen \u2014  types of the middle class or Philistines, in the graphic
\n\tEnglish phrase, with the narrow hearts and commercial habit of mind peculiar
\n\tto that sort of people. It is something very like folly to quarrel with them
\n\tfor not transgressing the law of their own nature. If we were not so dazzled
\n\tby the artificial glare of English prestige, we should at once acknowledge
\n\tthat these men are really not worth being angry with: and if it is idle to
\n\tbe angry with them, it is still more unprofitable to rate their opinion of
\n\tus at more than a straw’s value. Our appeal, the appeal of every high-souled
\n\tand self-respecting nation, ought not to be to the opinion of the
\n\tAnglo-Indians, no, nor yet to the British sense of justice, but to our own
\n\treviving sense of manhood, to our own sincere fellow-feeling \u2014  so far
\n\tas it can be called sincere \u2014  with the silent and suffering people of
\n\tIndia. I am sure that eventually the nobler part of us will prevail, \u2014 
\n\tthat when we no longer obey the dictates of a veiled self-interest, but
\n\treturn to the profession of a large and genuine patriotism, when we cease to
\n\thanker after the soiled crumbs which England may cast to us from her table,
\n\tthen it will be to that sense of manhood, to that sincere fellow-feeling
\n\tthat we shall finally and forcibly appeal. All this, it will be said, may be
\n\tvery true or very plausible, but it is after all made up of unsupported
\n\tassertions. I quite admit that it is more or less so, nor did I at all
\n\tintend that it should be otherwise; the proof and support of those
\n\tassertions is a matter for patient development and wholly beside my present
\n\tpurpose. I have been thus elaborate with one sole end in view. I wish even
\n\tthe blindest enthusiast to recognise that I have not ventured to speak
\n\twithout carefully weighing those important considerations that might have
\n\tinduced me to remain silent. I trust that after this laboured preface even
\n\tthose most hostile to my views will not accuse me of having undertaken
\n\tanything lightly or rashly. In my own opinion    <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\tI should not have been to blame even if I had spoken
\n\twithout this painful hesitation. If the Congress cannot really face the
\n\tlight of a free and serious criticism, then the sooner it hides its face the
\n\tbetter. For nine years it has been exempt from the ordeal; we have been
\n\tcontent to worship it with that implicit trust which all religions demand,
\n\tbut which sooner or later leads them to disaster and defeat. Certainly we
\n\thad this excuse that the stress of battle is not the time when a soldier can
\n\tstop to criticize his weapon: he has simply to turn it to the best use of
\n\twhich it is capable. So long as India rang with turbulent voices of
\n\tcomplaint and agitation, so long as the air was filled with the turmoil of
\n\tan angry controversy between governors and governed, so long we could have
\n\tlittle leisure or quiet thought and reflection. But now all is different;
\n\tthe necessity for conflict is no longer so urgent and has even given place
\n\tto a noticeable languor and passivity, varied only by perfunctory public
\n\tmeetings. Now therefore, while the great agitation that once filled this
\n\tvast peninsula with rumours of change, is content to occupy an obscure
\n\tcorner of English politics it will be well for all of us who are capable of
\n\treflection, to sit down for a moment and think. The hour seems to have come
\n\twhen the Congress must encounter that searching criticism which sooner or
\n\tlater arrives to all mortal things; and if it is so, to keep our eyes shut
\n\twill be worse than idle. The only good we shall get by it is to point with a
\n\tfresh example the aphorism with which I set out. "If the blind lead the
\n\tblind, shall they not both fall into a ditch?"  
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\n\t\t"Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."
\n\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t"The little that is done seems nothing when we look
\n\t\tforward and see how much we have yet to do."
\n\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tThus far I have been making a circuit, in my
\n\tdisinclination to collide too abruptly with the prepossessions of my
\n\tcountrymen and now that I am compelled to handle my subject more intimately
\n\tand with a firmer grasp, nothing but my deliberate conviction that it is
\n\tquite imperative for someone to speak out, has at all persuaded me to
\n\tcontinue. I have at the very outset to make distinct the grounds on which I
\n\tcharge the Congress with inadequacy. In the process I find myself bound to
\n\tsay many things that cannot fail to draw obloquy upon me: I shall be
\n\tcompelled to outrage many susceptibilities; compelled to advance many
\n\tunacceptable ideas; compelled, \u2014  worst of all, \u2014  to stroke the
\n\twrong way many powerful persons, who are wont to be pampered with unstinted
\n\tflattery and worship. But at all risks the thing must be done, and since it
\n\tis on me that the choice has fallen, I can only proceed in the best fashion
\n\tat my command and with what boldness I may. I say, of the Congress, then,
\n\tthis, \u2014  that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it
\n\tproceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and
\n\twhole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right
\n\tmethods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be
\n\tleaders; \u2014  in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by
\n\tthe blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tTo begin with, I should a little while ago have had no
\n\thesitation in saying that the National Congress was not really national and
\n\thad not in any way attempted to become national<\/i>. But that was before
\n\tI became a student of Mr. Pherozshah Mehta’s   
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\n\tspeeches. Now to deal with this vexed subject, one must
\n\ttread on very burning ground, and I shall make no apology for treading with
\n\tgreat care and circumspection. The subject is wrapped in so thick a dust of
\n\tcontroversy, and legal wits have been so busy drawing subtle distinctions
\n\tabout it, that a word which was once perfectly straightforward and simple,
\n\thas become almost as difficult as the Law itself. It is therefore incumbent
\n\ton me to explain what I wish to imply, when I say that the Congress is not
\n\treally national. Now I do not at all mean to re-echo the Anglo-Indian
\n\tcatchword about the Hindus and Mahomedans. Like most catchwords it is
\n\twithout much force, and has been still farther stripped of meaning by the
\n\tpolicy of the Congress. The Mahomedans have been as largely represented on
\n\tthat body as any reasonable community could desire, and their
\n\tsusceptibilities, far from being denied respect, have always been most
\n\tassiduously soothed and flattered. It is entirely futile then to take up the
\n\tAnglo-Indian refrain; but this at least I should have imagined, that in an
\n\tera when democracy and similar big words slide so glibly from our tongues, a
\n\tbody like the Congress, which represents not the mass of the population, but
\n\ta single and very limited class, could not honestly be called national. It
\n\tis perfectly true that the House of Commons represents not the English
\n\tnation, but simply the English aristocracy and middle class and yet is none
\n\tthe less national. But the House of Commons is a body legally constituted
\n\tand empowered to speak and act for the nation, while the Congress is
\n\tself-created: and it is not justifiable for a self-created body representing
\n\tonly a single and limited class to call itself national. It would be just as
\n\tabsurd if the Liberal party, because it allows within its limits all sorts
\n\tand conditions of men, were to hold annual meetings and call itself the
\n\tEnglish National Congress. When therefore I said that the Congress was not
\n\treally national, I simply meant that it did not represent the mass of the
\n\tpopulation.
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\n\tBut Mr. Pherozshah Mehta will have nothing to do with
\n\tthis sense of the word. In his very remarkable and instructive Presidential
\n\taddress at Calcutta, he argued that the Congress could justly arrogate this
\n\tepithet without having any direct support   
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\n\tfrom the proletariate; and he went on to explain his
\n\targument with the profound subtlety expected from an experienced advocate.
\n\t"It is because the masses are still unable to articulate definite political
\n\tdemands that the functions and duty devolve upon their educated and
\n\tenlightened compatriots to feel, to understand and to interpret their
\n\tgrievances and requirements, and to suggest and indicate how these can best
\n\tbe redressed and met." This formidable sentence is, by the way, typical of
\n\tMr. Mehta’s style, and reveals the secret of his oratory, which like all
\n\tgreat inventions is exceedingly simple: it is merely to say the same thing
\n\ttwice over in different words. But its more noteworthy feature is the idea
\n\timplied that because the Congress professes to discharge this duty, it may
\n\tjustly call itself national. Nor is this all; Calcutta comes to the help of
\n\tBombay in the person of Mr. Manmohan Ghose, who repeats and elucidates Mr.
\n\tMehta’s idea. The Congress, he says, asserting the rights of that body to
\n\tspeak for the masses, represents the thinking portion of the Indian people,
\n\twhose duty it is to guide the ignorant, and this in his opinion sufficiently
\n\tjustifies the Congress in calling itself national. To differ from a
\n\tsuccessful barrister and citizen, a man held in high honour by every
\n\tgraduate in India, and above all a future member of the Viceroy’s Council,
\n\twould never have been a very easy task for a timid man like myself. But when
\n\the is reinforced by so respectable and weighty a citizen as Mr. Manmohan
\n\tGhose, I really cannot find the courage to persevere. I shall therefore
\n\tamend the obnoxious phrase and declare that the National Congress may be as
\n\tnational as you please, but it is not a popular body and has not in any way
\n\tattempted to become a popular body.
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\n\tBut at this point someone a little less learned than Mr.
\n\tPherozshah Mehta may interfere and ask how it can be true that the Congress
\n\tis not a popular body. I can only point his attention to a previous
\n\tstatement of mine that the Congress represents not the mass of the
\n\tpopulation, but a single and limited class. No doubt the Congress tried very
\n\thard in the beginning to believe that it really represented the mass of the
\n\tpopulation, but if it has not already abandoned, it ought now at least to
\n\tabandon the   
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\n\tpretension as quite untenable. And indeed when Mr.
\n\tPherozshah Mehta and Mr. Manmohan Ghose have admitted this patent fact \u2014 
\n\tnot as delegates only, but as officials of the Congress \u2014  and have
\n\teven gone so far as to explain the fact away, it is hardly requisite for me
\n\tto combat the fallacy. But perhaps the enquirer not yet satisfied, may go on
\n\tto ask what is that single and limited class which I imagine the Congress to
\n\trepresent. Here it may be of help to us to refer again to the speeches of
\n\tthe Congress leaders and more especially to the talented men from whom I
\n\thave already quoted. In his able official address Mr. Manmohan Ghose asks
\n\thimself this very question and answers that the Congress represents the
\n\tthinking portion of the Indian people. "The delegates present here today" he
\n\tgoes on "are the chosen representatives of that section of the Indian people
\n\twho have learnt to think, and whose number is daily increasing with
\n\tmarvellous rapidity." Perhaps Mr. Ghose is a little too facile in his use of
\n\tthe word "thinking". So much at the mercy of their instincts and prejudices
\n\tare the generality of mankind, that we hazard a very high estimate when we
\n\tcall even one man out of ten thousand a thinking man. But evidently by the
\n\tthinking portion Mr. Ghose would like to indicate the class to which he
\n\thimself belongs; I mean those of us who have got some little idea of the
\n\tmachinery of English politics and are eager to import it into India along
\n\twith cheap Liverpool cloths, shoddy Brummagem wares, and other useful and
\n\tnecessary things which have killed the fine and genuine textures. If this is
\n\ta true interpretation he is perfectly correct in what he says. For it is
\n\treally from this class that the Congress movement draws its origin, its
\n\tsupport and its most enthusiastic votaries. And if I were asked to describe
\n\ttheir class by a single name, I should not hesitate to call it our new
\n\tmiddle class. For here too English goods have driven out native goods: our
\n\tsociety has lost its old landmarks and is being demarcated on the English
\n\tmodel. But of all the brand new articles we have imported, inconceivably the
\n\tmost important is that large class of people \u2014  journalists,
\n\tbarristers, doctors, officials, graduates and traders \u2014  who have grown
\n\tup and are increasing with prurient rapidity under the aegis of the British
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\n\tthis class I call the middle class: for, when we are so
\n\tproud of our imported English goods, it would be absurd, when we want labels
\n\tfor them, not to import their English names as well. Besides this name which
\n\tI have chosen is really a more accurate description than phrases like
\n\t"thinking men" or "the educated class" which are merely expressions of our
\n\town boundless vanity and self-conceit. However largely we may choose to
\n\tindulge in vague rhetoric about the all-pervading influence of the Congress,
\n\tno one can honestly doubt that here is the constituency from which it is
\n\treally empowered. There is indeed a small contingent of aristocrats and a
\n\tsmaller contingent of the more well-to-do ryots: but these are only two
\n\tflying-wheels in the great middleclass machine. The fetish-worshipper may
\n\tdeclare as loudly as he pleases, that it represents all sorts and conditions
\n\tof people, just as the Anglo-Indians used to insist that it represented no
\n\tone but the Bengali Babu. Facts have been too strong for the Anglo-Indian
\n\tand they will be too strong in the end for the fetish-worshipper. Partisans
\n\ton either side can in no way alter the clear and immutable truth \u2014 
\n\tthese words were put on paper long before the recent disturbances in Bombay
\n\tand certainly without any suspicion that the prophecy I then hazarded would
\n\tbe fortified by so apt and striking a comment. Facts are already beginning
\n\tto speak in a very clear and unambiguous voice. How long will the Congress
\n\tsit like careless Belshazzar, at the feast of mutual admiration? Already the
\n\tdecree has gone out against it; already even the eyes that are dim can
\n\tdiscern, \u2014  for has it not been written in blood? \u2014  the first
\n\tpregnant phrase of the handwriting upon the wall. "God has numbered the
\n\tkingdom and finished it." Surely after so rough a lesson, we shall not wait
\n\tto unseal our eyes and unstop our ears, until the unseen finger moves on and
\n\twrites the second and sterner sentence. "Thou art weighed in the balance and
\n\tfound wanting." Or must we sit idle with folded hands and only bestir
\n\tourselves when the short hour of grace is past and the kingdom given to
\n\tanother more worthy than we?  
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\n\tI repeat then with renewed confidence, but still with a
\n\tstrong desire to conciliate Mr. Pherozshah Mehta, that the Congress fails,
\n\tbecause it has never been, and has made no honest endeavour to be, a popular
\n\tbody empowered by the fiat of the Indian people in its entirety. But for all
\n\tthat I have not managed to bring my view into coincidence with Mr. Mehta’s.
\n\tIt is true he is not invincibly reluctant to concede the limits, which hedge
\n\tin the Congress action and restrict its output of energy; but he is quite
\n\taverse to the dictum that by not transgressing the middleclass pale the
\n\tCongress has condemned itself, as a saving power, to insignificance and
\n\tultimate sterility. The bounded scope of its potency and the subdued tone
\n\twhich it affects, are, he opines, precisely what our actual emergencies of
\n\tthe moment imperatively demand; wider activity and a more intense emphasis
\n\twould be in his view highly unadvisable and even injurious and besides it
\n\tdoes not at all signify whether we are fortified by popular sympathy or are
\n\tnot; for is not Mr. Pherozshah Mehta there with all the enlightenment of
\n\tIndia at his back to plead temperately \u2014  temperately, mind you; we are
\n\tnothing if not temperate \u2014  for just and remedial legislation on behalf
\n\tof a patient and suffering people? In plain words a line of argument is
\n\tadopted amounting to this: \u2014  "The Congress movement is nothing if not
\n\ta grand suit-at-law, best described as the case of India
\nvs. <\/i>Anglo-India, in which the ultimate tribunal is the British sense of
\n\tjustice, and Pherozshah Mehta, Mr. Umesh Chandra Bonnerji and the other
\n\teminent leaders of the bar are counsel for the complainant. Well then when
\n\tso many experienced advocates have bound themselves to find pleas for him,
\n\twould it not be highly rash and inopportune for the client to insist on
\n\tconducting his own complaint?" Now it is abundantly clear that, judged as it
\n\tstands, this line of argument, though adroit beyond cavil and instinct   
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\n\twith legal ingenuity, will nevertheless not answer. I am
\n\tnot going to deny that Mr. Pherozshah Mehta and the enlightenment of India,
\n\tsuch as it is, are pleading, undoubtedly with temperance and perhaps with
\n\tsincerity, for something or other, which for want of a more exact
\n\tdescription, we may call remedial legislation. But so far there has been
\n\tnothing at all to prevent me from denying that the analogy of the law-court
\n\tholds; this sort of vicarious effort may be highly advantageous in judicial
\n\tmatters, but it is not, I would submit, at all adequate to express the
\n\treviving energies of a great people. The argument, I say, is not complete in
\n\titself, or to use a vernacular phrase, it will not walk; it badly wants a
\n\tcrutch to lean upon. Mr. Mehta is clever enough to see that and his legal
\n\tacumen has taken him exactly to the very store where or not at all he must
\n\tdiscover an efficient crutch. So he goes straight to history, correctly
\n\tsurmising that the experience of European races is all that we, a people new
\n\tto modern problems, can find to warn or counsel us, and he tells us that
\n\tthis sort of vicarious effort has invariably been the original step towards
\n\tprogress: or, to put it in his own rhetorical way, "History teaches us that
\n\tsuch has been the law of widening progress in all ages and all countries,
\n\tnotably in England itself." Here then is the argument complete, crutch and
\n\tall; and so adroit is it that in Congress propaganda it has become a phrase
\n\tof common parlance, and is now in fact the stereotyped line of defence.
\n\tCertainly, if he is accurate in his historical data, Mr. Mehta has amply
\n\tproved his case; but in spite of all his adroitness, I suspect that his
\n\ttrend towards double-shotted phrases has led him into a serious difficulty.
\n\t"In all ages and all countries" is a very big expression, and Mr. Mehta will
\n\tbe exceedingly lucky if it will stand a close scrutiny. But Mr. Manmohan
\n\tGhose at least is a sober speaker; and if we have deserted his smooth but
\n\tperhaps rather tedious manner for a more brilliant style of oratory, now at
\n\tany rate, when the specious orator fails us, we may well return to the
\n\trational disputant. But we shall be agreeably disappointed to find that this
\n\tvivid statement about the teaching of History is Mr. Ghose’s own legitimate
\n\toffspring and not the coinage of Mr. Mehta’s heated fancy: indeed, the
\n\tlatter has done nothing but   
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\n\tconvey it bodily into his own address. "History teaches
\n\tus" says Mr. Ghose "that in all ages and all countries it is the thinking
\n\tclasses who have led the unthinking, and in the present state of our society
\n\twe are bound not only to think for ourselves, but also to think for those
\n\twho are still too ignorant to exercise that important function." When we
\n\tfind the intellectual princes of the nation light-heartedly propagating such
\n\tgross inaccuracies, we are really tempted to inquire if high education is
\n\tafter all of any use. History teaches us! Why, these gentlemen can never
\n\thave studied any history at all except that of England. Would they be
\n\tignorant otherwise that mainly to that country, if not to that country
\n\talone, their statement applies, but that about most ages and most countries
\n\tit is hopelessly inaccurate? Absurd as the statement is, its career has been
\n\tneither limited nor obscure. Shot in the first instance from Mr. Ghose’s
\n\tregulation smoothbore, it then served as a bullet in Mr. Pherozshah’s patent
\n\tnew double-barrelled rifle, and has ultimately turned out the stock
\n\tammunition of the Congress against that particular line upon which I have
\n\tinitially ventured. Here then the argument has culminated in a most
\n\timportant issue; for supposing this line of defence to be adequate, the
\n\tgravest indictment I have to urge against the Congress goes at once to the
\n\tground. It will therefore be advisable to scrutinize Mr. Ghose’s
\n\tlight-hearted statement; and if the policy he advocates is actually stamped
\n\twith the genuine consensus of all peoples in all ages, then we shall very
\n\treadily admit that there is no reason why the masses should not be left in
\n\ttheir political apathy. But if it is quite otherwise and we cannot discover
\n\tmore than one precedent of importance, then Mr. Ghose and the Congress
\n\tchairmen will not make us dance to their music, charm they never so wisely,
\n\tand we shall be slow to admit even the one precedent we have got without a
\n\tvery narrow scrutiny. If then we are bent upon adopting England as our
\n\texemplar, we shall certainly imitate the progress of the glacier rather than
\n\tthe progress of the torrent. From Runnymede to the Hull riots is a far cry;
\n\tyet these seven centuries have done less to change partially the political
\n\tand social exterior of England, than five short years to change entirely the
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\n\tsocial exterior of her immediate neighbour. But if Mr.
\n\tGhose’s dogmatic utterance is true of England, I imagine it does not apply
\n\twith equal force to other climes and other eras. For example, is it at all
\n\ttrue of France? Rather we know that the first step of that fortunate country
\n\ttowards progress was not through any decent and orderly expansion, but
\n\tthrough a purification by blood and fire. It was not a convocation of
\n\trespectable citizens, but the vast and ignorant proletariate, that emerged
\n\tfrom a prolonged and almost coeval apathy and blotted out in five terrible
\n\tyears the accumulated oppression of thirteen centuries. And if the example
\n\tof France is not sufficient to deprive Mr. Ghose’s statement of force, let
\n\tus divert our eyes to Ireland, where the ancient and world-wide quarrel
\n\tbetween Celt and Teuton is still pending. Is it at all true that the
\n\tinitiators of Irish resistance to England were a body of successful lawyers,
\n\tremarkable only for a power of shallow rhetoric, and deputed by the sort of
\n\tmen that are turned out at Trinity College, Dublin? At any rate that is not
\n\twhat History tells us. We do not read that the Irish leaders annually
\n\tassembled to declaim glib orations, eulogistic of British rule and timidly
\n\tsuggestive of certain flaws in its unparalleled excellence, nor did they
\n\tsuggest as a panacea for Irish miseries, that they should be given more
\n\tposts and an ampler career in the British service. I rather fancy Turlough
\n\tO’Neill and his compeers were a different sort of men from that. But then it
\n\tis hardly fair perhaps to cite as an example a disreputable people never
\n\tprolific of graduates and hence incapable of properly appreciating the
\n\textraordinary blessings which British rule gives out so liberally wherever
\n\tit goes. Certainly men who preferred action to long speeches and appealed,
\n\tby the only method available in that strenuous epoch, not to the British
\n\tsense of justice but to their own sense of manhood, are not at all the sort
\n\tof people we have either the will or the power to imitate. Well then let us
\n\treturn to our own orderly and eloquent era. But here too, just as the main
\n\tstrength of that ancient strenuous protest resided in the Irish populace led
\n\tby the princes of their class, so the principal force of the modern subtler
\n\tprotest resides in the Irish peasantry led by the recognized chiefs of an
\n\tunited people. I might go on and   
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\n\tcull instances from Italy and America but to elaborate
\n\tthe matter further would be to insult the understanding of my readers. It
\n\twill be sufficient to remind them that the two grand instances of ancient
\n\thistory point to an exactly similar conclusion. In Athens and in Rome the
\n\tfirst political quarrel is a distinct issue between the man of the people
\n\tand a limited, perhaps an alien, aristocracy. The force behind Cleisthenes
\n\tand the constituency that empowered Tiberius Gracchus were not a narrow
\n\tmiddle class, but the people with its ancient wrongs and centuries of
\n\tpatient endurance. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIf then, as we are compelled to infer, Mr. Mehta’s
\n\tstatement is entirely inaccurate of remoter ages and in modern times
\n\taccurate of one country alone, we shall conclude that whatever other proof
\n\the may find for his lame argument, that crutch at least is too large and
\n\tmust go to the ground. But Mr. Mehta, too acute and experienced a pleader to
\n\tbe disheartened by any initial failure, will no doubt pick up his crutch
\n\tagain and whittle it down to the appropriate size. It may be quite correct,
\n\the will perhaps tell me, that his statement applies with appreciable force
\n\tto England and to England alone but when all is said, it does not eventually
\n\tmatter. In allowing that his statement does generally apply to England, I
\n\thave admitted everything he seriously wants me to admit, for England is
\n\tafter all that country which has best prospered in its aspirations after
\n\tprogress, and must therefore be the grand political exemplar of every nation
\n\tanimated by a like spirit, and it must be peculiarly and beyond dispute such
\n\tfor India in her present critical stage of renascence. I am quite aware that
\n\tin the eyes of that growing community which Mr. Ghose is pleased to call the
\n\tthinking class, these plausible assertions are only the elementary axioms of
\n\tpolitical science. But however confidently such statements are put before
\n\tme, I am not at all sure that they are entirely correct. I have not quite
\n\tmade up my mind that England is indeed that country which has best prospered
\n\tin its aspirations after progress and I am as yet unconvinced that it will
\n\teventually turn out at all a desirable exemplar for every nation aspiring to
\n\tprogress, or even for its peculiar pupil, renascent India. I shall therefore
\n\tfeel more disposed to probe   
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\n\tthe matter to the bottom than to acknowledge a very
\n\tdisputable thesis as in any way self-evident. To this end it is requisite
\n\tclosely to inquire what has actually been the main outcome of English
\n\tpolitical effort, and whether it is of a nature to justify any implicit
\n\treliance on English methods or exact imitation of English models.  
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\n\tWe have then to appreciate the actual conditions of
\n\tEnglish progress, in their sound no less than their unsound aspects: and it
\n\twill be to our convenience to have ready some rough formulae by which we may
\n\thandle the subject in an intelligible way. To this problem Mr. Surendranath
\n\tBanerji, a man who with all his striking merits, has never evinced any power
\n\tof calm and serious thought, proffers a very grandiloquent and
\n\theart-stirring solution. "We rely" he has said "on the liberty-loving
\n\tinstincts of the greatest representative assembly in the world, the
\n\tpalladium of English Liberty, the sanctuary of the free and brave, the
\n\tBritish House of Commons" and at this inspiriting discharge of oratory there
\n\twas, we are told, nor do we wonder at it \u2014  a responding volley of loud
\n\tand protracted applause. Now when Mr. Banerji chooses to lash himself into
\n\tan oratorical frenzy and stir us with his sounding rhetoric, it is really
\n\timpracticable for anything human to stand up and oppose him: and though I
\n\tmay hereafter tone down his oriental colouring to something nearer the hue
\n\tof truth, yet it does not at present serve my purpose to take up arms
\n\tagainst a sea of eloquence. I would rather admit at once the grain of sound
\n\tfact at the core of all this than strip off the costly integuments with
\n\twhich Mr. Banerji’s elaborate Fancy chooses to invest it. But when Mr.
\n\tBanerji’s words no longer reverberate in your ears, you may have leisure to
\n\tlisten to a quieter, more serious voice, now unhappily hushed in the grave,
\n\t\u2014  the voice of Matthew Arnold, himself an Englishman and genuine lover
\n\tof his country, but for all that a man who thought deeply and spoke sanely.
\n\tAnd where according to this sane and powerful intellect shall we come across
\n\tthe really noteworthy outcome of English effort? We shall best see it, he
\n\ttells us, not in any palladium or sanctuary, not in the greatest
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\n\tmiddle class vulgarised and a lower class brutalized: and
\n\tno clear-sighted student of England will be insensible to the just felicity
\n\twith which he has hit off the social tendencies prevailing in that country.
\n\tHere then we have ready rough formulae by which we may, at the lowest,
\n\tbaldly outline the duplicate aspect of modern England: for now that we have
\n\tadmitted Mr. Banerji’s phrase as symbolic of the healthy outcome creditable
\n\tto English effort, we can hardly be shy of admitting Matthew Arnold’s phrase
\n\tas symbolic of the morbid outcome discreditable to it. But it is still open
\n\tto us to evince a reasonable doubt whether there is any way of reconciling
\n\ttwo items so mutually destructive: for it does seem paradoxical to rate the
\n\tproduces of institutions so highly lauded and so universally copied at a low
\n\tgrade in the social ladder. But this apparent paradox may easily be a vital
\n\ttruth; and in establishing that, as I hope to establish it, I shall have
\n\tincidentally to moot another and wider theorem. I would urge that our entire
\n\tpolitical philosophy is rooted in shallow earth, so much so indeed that
\n\twithout repudiation or radical change we cannot arrive at an attitude of
\n\tmind healthily conducive to just and clear thinking. I am conscious that the
\n\targument has hitherto been rather intangible and moved too largely among
\n\twide abstract principles. Such a method is by its nature less keenly
\n\tattractive to the general readers than a close and lively handling of
\n\tcurrent politics, but it is required for an adequate development of my case,
\n\tand I must entreat indulgence a step or two further, before I lay any grasp
\n\ton the hard concrete details of our actual political effort.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\tNow the high value at which Mr. Mehta appraises
\n\t\thistory as our sole available record of human experience in the mass
\n\t\twill clearly be endorsed by every thoughtful and judicious mind. But to
\n\t\tsustain it at that high level of utility, we must not indulge in hasty
\n\t\tdeductions based on a very partial scrutiny, but must group correctly
\n\t\tand digest in a candid spirit such data as we can bring within our
\n\t\tcompass. If we observe this precept, we shall not easily coincide with
\n\t\this opinion that European progress has been of a single texture. We
\n\t\tshall rather be convinced that there run through it two principles of
\n\t\tmotion distinct in nature and   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tadverse in event, the trend of whose divergence may be
\n\troundly expressed as advance in one direction through political methods and
\n\tin another direction through social methods. But as the use of these
\n\ttime-worn epithets might well promote misconception and drag us into
\n\tside-issues, I will attempt a more delicate handling and solicit that close
\n\tattention without which so remote and elusive a subject cannot come home to
\n\tthe mind with proper force and clearness. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tIn bringing abstractions home to the human
\n\t\tintelligence, it is perhaps best to dispel by means of near and concrete
\n\t\tspecimens that sense of remoteness which we shrink from in what is at
\n\t\tall intangible. Hence I shall attempt to differentiate by living
\n\t\tinstances the two principles which I suggest as the main motors of
\n\t\tprogress. The broad cast of national thought in England prevalent from
\n\t\tvery early times, may not inappropriately stand for the sort of progress
\n\t\tthat runs after a political prize. The striking fact of English history
\n\t\t\u2014  the fact that dwarfs all others \u2014  is, without doubt, the
\n\t\tregular development from certain primordial seeds and the continuous
\n\t\tbranching out, foliation and efflorescence of the institution which Mr.
\n\t\tBanerji has justly termed the greatest representative assembly in the
\n\t\tworld. This is highly typical of the English school of thought and the
\n\t\texaggerated emphasis it lays on the mould and working of institutions.
\n\t\tHowever supreme in the domain of practical life, however gifted with
\n\t\tcommercial vigour and expansive energy, the English mind with its short
\n\t\trange of vision, its too little of delicacy and exactness, its inability
\n\t\tto go beyond what it actually sees, is wholly unfit for any nice
\n\t\tappraisal of cause and effect. It is without vision, logic, the spirit
\n\t\tof curiosity, and hence it has not any habit of entertaining clear and
\n\t\thigh ideals, any audacity of experiment, any power of finding just
\n\t\tmethods nicely adopted to produce the exact effect intended: \u2014  it
\n\t\tis without speculative temerity and the scientific spirit, and hence it
\n\t\tcannot project great political theories nor argue justly from effect to
\n\t\tcause. All these incapacities have forced the English mind into a
\n\t\tcertain mould of thought and expression. Limited to the visible and
\n\t\tmaterial, they have put their whole force into mechanical invention;
\n\t\tvoid of curiosity,   
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\n\tthey have hazarded just so much experiment and no more,
\n\tas was necessary to suit existing institutions to their immediate wants;
\n\tinexact, they have never cared in these alterations to get at more than an
\n\tapproximation to the exact effect intended; illogical and without subtlety,
\n\tthey have trusted implicitly to the political machines, for whose invention
\n\tthey have a peculiar genius, and never cared to utilize mightier forces and
\n\ta subtler method. Nor is this all: in their defect of speculative
\n\timagination, they are unable to get beyond what they themselves have
\n\texperienced, what they themselves have effected. Hence, being unscientific
\n\tand apt to impute every power to machinery, they compare certain sets of
\n\tmachines, and postulating certain effects from them, argue that as this of
\n\ttheir own invention has been attended by results of the highest value, it is
\n\ttherefore of an unique excellence and conserves in any and every climate its
\n\tefficiency and durability. And they do not simply flaunt this opinion in the
\n\tface of reason, but, by their stupendous material success and vast
\n\texpansion, they have managed to convince a world apt to be impressed by
\n\texternals, that it is correct, and even obviously correct. Yet it is quite
\n\tclear that this opinion, carefully analysed, reduces itself to a logical
\n\tabsurdity. By its rigid emphasizing of a single element it slurs over others
\n\tof equal or superior importance: it takes no account of a high or low
\n\tquality in the raw material, of variant circumstances, of incompatibilities
\n\tarising from national temperament, and other forces which no philosophical
\n\tobserver will omit from his calculations. In fact it reduces itself to the
\n\tstatement, that, given good machinery, then no matter what quality of
\n\tmaterial is passed through it, the eventual fabric will be infallibly of the
\n\tmost superior sort. If the Indian intellect had been nourished on any but
\n\tEnglish food, I should be content with stating the idea in this its simplest
\n\tform, and spare myself a laborious exegesis; but I do not forget that I am
\n\taddressing minds formed by purely English influences and therefore capable
\n\tof admitting the rooted English prejudice that what is logically absurd, may
\n\tbe practically true. At present however I will simply state the motive
\n\tprinciple of progress exemplified by England as a careful requisition and   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\thigh appraisal of sound machinery in preference to a
\n\tscientific social development. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tBut if we carry our glance across the English Channel, we
\n\tshall witness a very different and more animating spectacle. Gifted with a
\n\tlighter, subtler and clearer mind than their insular neighbours, the French
\n\tpeople have moved irresistibly towards a social and not a political
\n\tdevelopment. It is true that French orators and statesmen, incapacitated by
\n\ttheir national character from originating fit political ideals, have adopted
\n\ta set of institutions curiously blended from English and American
\n\tmanufactures; but the best blood, the highest thought, the real grandeur of
\n\tthe nation does not reside in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies; it
\n\tresides in the artistic and municipal forces of Parisian life, in the firm
\n\tsettled executive, in the great vehement heart of the French populace \u2014 
\n\tand that has ever beaten most highly in unison with the grand ideas of
\n\tEquality and Fraternity, since they were first enounced on the banner of the
\n\tgreat and terrible Republic. Hence though by the indiscreet choice of a
\n\tmachine, they have been compelled to copy the working of English machinery
\n\tand concede an undue importance to politics, yet the ideals which have
\n\tgenuinely influenced the spirit which has most deeply permeated their
\n\tnational life are widely different from that alien spirit, from those
\n\tborrowed ideals. I have said that the French mind is clearer, subtler,
\n\tlighter than the English. In that clarity they have discerned that without
\n\thigh qualities in the raw material excellence of machinery will not suffice
\n\tto create a sound and durable national character, \u2014  that it may indeed
\n\tdevelop a strong, energetic and capable temper, but that the fabric will not
\n\tcombine fineness with strength, will not resist permanently the wear and
\n\ttear of time and the rending force of social problems: \u2014  through that
\n\tsubtlety they divined that not by the mechanic working of institutions, but
\n\tby the delicate and almost unseen moulding of a fine, lucid and invigorating
\n\tatmosphere, could a robust and highly-wrought social temper be developed: \u2014 
\n\tand through that lightness they chose not the fierce, sharp air of English
\n\tindividualism, but the bright influence of art and letters, of happiness, a
\n\twide and liberal culture, and   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tthe firm consequent cohesion of their racial and social
\n\telements. To put all this briefly, the second school of thought I would
\n\tindicate to my readers, is the preference of a fine development of social
\n\tcharacter and a wide diffusion of happiness to the mechanic development of a
\n\tsound political machinery. Here then as indicated by these grand examples we
\n\thave our two principal motors of progress; a careful requisition, for the
\n\tsake of evolving an energetic national character and high level of capacity,
\n\tof a sound political machinery; and the ardent, yet rational pursuit, for
\n\tits own sake, of a sound and highly-wrought social temper.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tIt may be worth while here to develop a point I have
\n\tbroadly suggested, that with these distinct lines of feeling accord distinct
\n\ttypes of racial character. The social ideal is naturally limited to peoples
\n\tdistinguished by a rare social gift and an unbounded receptivity for novel
\n\tideas along with a large amount of practical capacity. The ancient Athenian,
\n\tpre-eminent for lightness of temper and lucidity of thought, was content
\n\twith the simplest and most nakedly logical machinery, and principally sought
\n\tto base political life on equality, a wide diffusion of culture, and a large
\n\tand just social principle. Moreover, as the subtlest and hence the most
\n\tefficient way of conserving the high calibre of his national character, he
\n\tchose the infusion of light, gaiety and happiness into the common life of
\n\tthe people. Clear in thought and felicitous in action, he pursued an ideal
\n\tstrictly consonant with his natural temper and rigidly exclusive of the
\n\tanomalous: and so highly did he attain, that the quick, shifting, eager
\n\tAthenian life, with its movement and colour, its happy buoyancy, its rapid
\n\tgenius, or, as the Attic poet beautifully phrases it, walking delicately
\n\tthrough a fine and lucid air, has become the admiration and envy of
\n\tposterior ages. The modern Frenchman closely allied by his clear habit of
\n\tmind to the old Athenian, himself lucid in thought, light in temper and not
\n\twithout a supreme felicity of method in practical things, evinces much the
\n\tsame sentiments, pursues much the same ideals. He too has a happily-adjusted
\n\texecutive machinery, elaborated indeed to fit the needs of a modern
\n\tcommunity, but pervaded by a thoroughly clear and logical spirit. He also
\n\thas a passionate craving for equality    <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
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\n

\n\tand a large and just social principle, and prefers to
\n\tconserve the high calibre of his national character by the infusion of
\n\tlight, gaiety and happiness into the common life of the people. And he too
\n\thas so far compassed his ideal that a consensus of competent observers have
\n\tpronounced France certainly the happiest, and, taken in the mass, the most
\n\tcivilized of modern countries. But to the Englishman or American, intellect,
\n\tlucidity, happiness are not of primary importance: they strike him in the
\n\tlight of luxuries rather than necessities. It is the useful citizen, the
\n\tadroit man of business, the laborious worker, whom he commends with the
\n\twarmest emphasis and copies with the most respectful emulation. Such a cast
\n\tof mind being entirely incompatible with social success, he directs his
\n\twhole active powers into the grosser sphere of commerce and politics, where
\n\tpractical energy, unpurified by thought, may struggle forward to some vulgar
\n\tand limited goal. To put it in a concrete form Paris may be said to revolve
\n\taround the Theatre, the Municipal Council and the French Academy, London
\n\tlooks rather to the House of Commons and New York to the Stock Exchange. I
\n\ttrust that I have now clearly elucidated the exact and intimate nature of
\n\tthose two distinct principles on which progress may be said to move. It now
\n\tremains to gauge the practical effect of either policy as history indicates
\n\tthem to us. We in India, or at any rate those races among us which are in
\n\tthe van of every forward movement, are far more nearly allied to the French
\n\tand Athenian than to the Anglo-Saxon, but owing to the accident of British
\n\tdomination, our intellects have been carefully nurtured on a purely English
\n\tdiet. Hence we do not care to purchase an outfit of political ideas properly
\n\tadjusted to our natural temper and urgent requirements, but must eke out our
\n\tscanty wardrobe with the cast-off rags and threadbare leavings of our
\n\tEnglish Masters and this incongruous apparel we display with a pompous
\n\tself-approval which no unfriendly murmurs, no unkind allusions are allowed
\n\tto trouble. Absurd as all this is, its visible outcome is clearly a grave
\n\tmisfortune. Prompted by our English instruction we have deputed to a mere
\n\tmachine so arduous a business as the remoulding of our entire destinies,
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tneeding as it does patient and delicate manual adjustment and
\na constant supervising vigilance\u2014 and this to a machine not efficient and carefully pieced together but clumsy and made on
\na rude and cheap model. So long as this temper prevails, we shall never realise how utterly it is beyond the power of even
\nan excellent machine to renovate an effete and impoverished national character and how palpably requisite to commence
\nfrom within and not depend on any exterior agency. Such a retrospect as I propose will therefore be of peculiar value, if it
\nat all induces us to acknowledge that it is a vital error, simply because we have invented a clumsy machine, to rest on our oars
\nand imagine that expenditure of energy in other directions is at present superfluous.
\n   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 39<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t
\n\tNew Lamps for Old
\n \u00ad VI <\/a> <\/font><\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tThat this intimate organic treatment of which I speak is really
\nindispensable, will be clearly established by the annals of ancient Rome. The Romans were a nation quite unique in the
\ncomposition and general style of their character; along with a predilection for practical energy, a purely material habit of
\nmind, and an indifference to orderly and logical methods which suggest a strong affinity to the Anglo-Saxon temperament, they
\npossessed a robust and clear perception, and a strong practical contempt for methods pronounced by hard experience to be
\nineffectual, which are entirely un-English and allied rather to the clarity and impatience of the Gaul. Moreover their whole
\ncharacter was moulded in a grand style, such as has not been witnessed by any prior or succeeding age\u2014 so much so that the
\nstriking description by which the Greek ambassador expressed the temper of the Roman Senate, might with equal justice be
\ntransferred to the entire people. They were a nation of Kings: that is to say, they possessed the gift of handling the high things
\nof life in a grand and imposing style, and with a success, an astonishing sureness of touch, only possible to a natural tact in
\ngovernment and a just, I may say a royal instinct for affairs. Yet this grand, imperial nation, even while it was most felicitous
\nabroad in the manner and spirit in which it dealt with foreign peoples, was at home convulsed to a surprising extent by the
\nworst forms of internal disorder:\u2014 and all for the want of that clear, sane ideal which has so highly promoted the domestic
\nhappiness of France and Athens. At first, indeed, the Romans inexpert in political methods, were inclined to repose an implicit
\ntrust in machinery, just as the English have been inclined from the primary stages of their development, and just as we are led to
\ndo by the contagious influence of the Anglomaniac disease. They hoped by the sole and mechanic action of certain highly lauded
\n   
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\n\tinstitutions to remove the disorders with which the Roman body
\npolitic was ailing. And though at Rome no less than among ourselves, the social condition of the poor filled up the reform
\nposters and a consequent amelioration was loudly trumpeted by the popular leaders, yet the genuine force of the movement
\nwas disposed, as is the genuine force of the present Congress movement, to the minimising of purely political inequality. But
\nwhen the coveted institutions were in full swing, a sense gradually dawned on the people that the middle class had the sole
\nenjoyment of any profit accruing from the change, as indeed it is always to the middle class alone that any profit accrues from the
\nelimination of merely political inequality; but the great Roman populace untouched by the change for which they had sacrificed
\ntheir ease and expended their best and highest energies, felt themselves pushed from misery to misery and broke out again
\nin a wild storm of rebellion. But to maintain a stark persistence in unreason, to repose an unmoved confidence in the bounded
\npotency of a mechanic formula, proved ineffectual by the cogent logic of hard experience, they had no thought, or if they
\nhad the thought, they being a genuinely practical race, and not like the English, straining after practicality, had not the disposition. Hence that mighty struggle was fought out with perplexed watchwords, amid wild alarms and rumours of battle and in a
\nconfused medley of blood, terror and unspeakable desolation. In that horror of great darkness, the Roman world crashed on from
\nruin to ruin, until the strong hand of Caesar stayed its descent to poise it on the stable foundation of a sane and vigilant policy
\nrigorously enforced by the fixed will of a single despotic ruler. But the grand secret of his success and the success of those puissant autocrats who inherited his genius and his ideals, was the clear perception attained to by them that only by social equality
\nand the healing action of a firm despotism, could the disorders of Rome be permanently eradicated. Maligned as they have been
\nby those who suffered from their astuteness and calm strength of will, the final verdict of posterity will laud in them that terrible
\nintensity of purpose and even that iron indifference to personal suffering, which they evinced in forcing the Caesarian policy to
\n   
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\n\tits bitter but salutary end. The main lesson for us however is
\nthe pregnant conclusion that the Romans, to whom we cannot deny the supreme rank in the sphere of practical success, by
\nattempting a cure through external and mechanic appliances entailed on themselves untold misery, untold disorder, and only by
\na thorough organic treatment restored the sanity, peace, settled government and calm felicity of an entire world.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tBut perhaps Mr. Mehta will tell me “What have we to do with the ancient Romans, we who have an entirely modern
\nenvironment and suffer from disorders peculiar to ourselves?” Well, the connection is not perhaps so remote as Mr. Mehta
\nimagines: I will not however press that point, but rather appeal to the instance of two great European nations, who also have an
\nentirely modern environment and suffer or have suffered from very similar maladies\u2014 and so end my long excursion into the
\ndomain of abstract ideas.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tAs the living instances most nearly suggesting the diversity
\nof impulse and method, which is my present subject, I have had occasion to draw a comparison between these two peoples, whom, by a singular caprice of antithesis, chance has put into close physical proximity, but nature has sundered as far
\nas the poles in genius, temper and ideals. Whatever healthy and conservative effects accrue from the close pursuit of either
\nprinciple, whatever morbid and deleterious effects accrue from the close pursuit of either principle, will be seen operating to
\nthe best advantage in the social and political organism of these two nations. The healthy effects of the one impulse we shall
\nfind among those striking English qualities which at once catch the eye, insatiable enterprise, an energetic and pushing spirit,
\na vigorous tendency towards expansion, a high capacity for political administration, and an orderly process of government;
\nthe morbid effects are social degradation and an entire absence of the cohesive principle. The better qualities have no doubt
\ngrown by breathing the atmosphere of individualism and been trained up by the habit of working under settled and roughly
\nconvenient forms; but after all is said, the original high qualities of the raw material enter very largely into the credit side of
\n   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n\tthe account. Even were it not so, we are not likely, tutored by
\nEnglish instruction, to undervalue or to slur over the successful and imposing aspect of English attainment. Hence it will be
\nmore profitable for us, always keeping the bright side in view, to concentrate our attention on the unsounder aspects which we
\ndo not care to learn, or if we have learned, are in the habit of carefully forgetting. We may perhaps realize the nature of that
\nunsounder aspect, if we amplify Matthew Arnold’s phrase:\u2014 an aristocracy no longer possessed of the imposing nobility of
\nmind, the proud sense of honour, the striking pre-eminence of faculty, which are the saving graces\u2014 nay, which are the very
\nlife-breath of an aristocracy; debased moreover by the pursuit, through concession to all that is gross and ignoble in the English
\nmind, of gross and ignoble ends:\u2014 a middle class inaccessible to the influence of high and refining ideas, and prone to rate
\neverything even in the noblest departments of life, at a commercial valuation:\u2014 and a lower class equally without any germ
\nof high ideas, nay, without any ideas high or low; degraded in their worst failure to the crudest forms of vice, pauperism
\nand crime, and in their highest attainment restricted to a life of unintelligent work relieved by brutalising pleasures. And indeed
\nthe most alarming symptoms are here; for it may be said of the aristocracy that the workings of the Time-Spirit have made
\na genuine aristocracy obsolete and impracticable, and of the middle class, that, however successful and confident, it is in fact
\ndoomed; its empire is passing away from it: but with the whole trend of humanity shaping towards democracy and socialism,
\non the calibre and civilisation of the lower class depends the future of the entire race. And we have seen what sort of lower
\nclass England, with all her splendid success, has been able to evolve\u2014 in calibre debased, in civilisation nil. And after seeing
\nwhat England has produced by her empiricism, her culture of a raw energy, her exaltation of a political method not founded on
\nreason, we must see what France has produced by her steady, logical pursuit of a fine social ideal: it is the Paris
\n\t<\/span>
\nouvrier<\/span> <\/span> <\/i>
\n\twith
\nhis firmness of grasp on affairs, his sanity, his height of mind, his clear, direct ways of life and thought,\u2014 it is the French peasant
\n   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\twith his ready tact, his power of quiet and sensible conversation,
\nlocated in an enjoyable corner of life, small it may be, but with plenty of room for wholesome work and plenty of room for
\nrefreshing gaiety. There we have the strong side of France, a lucid social atmosphere, a firm executive rationally directed to
\ninsure a clearly conceived purpose, a high level of character and refinement pervading all classes and a scheme of society
\nbestowing a fair chance of happiness on the low as well as the high. But if France is strong in the sphere of England’s weakness,
\nshe is no less weak in the sphere of England’s strength. Along with and militating against her social happiness, we have to
\nreckon constant political disorder and instability, an alarming defect of expansive vigour, and entire failure in the handling
\nof general politics. France, unable to conceive and work out a proper political machinery, has been reduced to copy with slight
\nvariations the English model and import a set of machinery well suited to the old English temper, but now unsuited even to the
\nEnglish and still more to the vehement French character. Passionate, sensitive, loquacious, fond of dispute and apt to be blown
\naway by gusts of feeling, the Gaul is wholly unfit for that heavy decorum, that orderly process of debate, that power of combining anomalies, which still exist to a great extent in England, but which even there must eventually grow impossible. Hence
\nthe vehement French nation after a brief experience of each alien manufacture has grown intensely impatient and shipped it
\nback without superfluous ceremony to its original home. Here is the latent root of that disheartening failure which has attended
\nFrance in all her brief and feverish attempts to discover a stable basis of political advance,\u2014 of that intense consequent disgust,
\nthat scornful aversion to politics which has led thinking France to rate it as an indecent harlequin-show in which no serious man
\nwill care to meddle. But if this were all, a superficial observer might balance a defect and merit on one side by an answering
\nmerit and defect on the other, and conclude that the account was clear; but social status is not the only department of success
\nin which England compares unfavourably with France. There is her fatal incoherency, her want of political cohesion, her want of
\n   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n\tsocial cohesion. A Breton, a Basque, a Provencal, though no less
\n\u00b8 alien in blood to the mass of the French people than the Irish, the
\nWelsh, the Scotch to the mass of the English people, would repel with alarm and abhorrence the mere thought of impairing the
\nfine solidarity, the homogeneity of sentiment, which the possession of an agreeable social life has developed in France. And we
\ncannot sufficiently admire the supreme virtue of that fine social development and large diffusion of general happiness, which has
\nconserved for France in the midst of fearful political calamities her splendid cohesiveness as a nation and as a community. In
\nEngland on the other hand we see the sorry spectacle of a great empire lying at the mercy of disintegrating influences, because
\nthe component races have neither been properly merged in the whole nor persuaded by the offer of a high level of happiness
\nto value the benefits of solidarity. And if France by her injudicious choice of mechanism, her political incapacity, her refusal
\nto put her best blood into politics, has involved herself in fearful political calamities, no less has England by her exclusive
\npursuit of machinery, her social incompetence, her prejudice against a rational equality, her excessive individualism, entered
\non an era of fearful social calamities. It is a suggestive fact that the alienation of sympathy, the strong antipathetic feelings of
\nLabour towards Capital, are nowhere so marked, the quarrel between them is nowhere so violent, sustained and ferocious
\nas in the two countries which are proudest of their institutions and have most systematically neglected their social development\u2014 England and America. It is not therefore unreasonable to conclude\u2014 and had I space and leisure, I should be tempted to
\nshow that every circumstance tends to fortify the conclusion and convert it into a certainty\u2014 that this social neglect is the prime
\ncause of the fearful array of social calamities, whose first impact has already burst on those proud and successful countries. But
\nenough has been said, and to discuss the matter exhaustively would unduly defer the point of more direct importance for
\nourselves;\u2014 I mean the ominous connection which these truths have with the actual conditions of politics and society in India.
\n  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
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\n

\n\t
\n\tNew Lamps for Old
\n \u00ad VII <\/a><\/font><\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tI am not ignorant that to practical men all I have written will
\nprove beyond measure unpalatable. Strongly inimical as they are to thought in politics, they will detect in it an offensive
\nredolence of dilettantism, perhaps scout it as a foolish waste of power, or if a good thing at all a good thing for a treatise on
\ngeneral politics, a good thing out of place. To what end these remote instances, what pertinence in these political metaphysics?
\nI venture however to suggest that it is just this gleaning from general politics, this survey and digestion of human experience
\nin the mass that we at the present moment most imperatively want. No one will deny,\u2014 no one at least in that considerable
\nclass to whose address my present remarks are directed,\u2014 that for us, and even for those of us who have a strong affection
\nfor oriental things and believe that there is in them a great deal that is beautiful, a great deal that is serviceable, a great
\ndeal that is worth keeping, the most important objective is and must inevitably be the admission into India of Occidental ideas,
\nmethods and culture: even if we are ambitious to conserve what is sound and beneficial in our indigenous civilization, we can
\nonly do so by assisting very largely the influx of Occidentalism. But at the same time we have a perfect right to insist, and every sagacious man will take pains to insist, that the process of introduction shall not be as hitherto rash and ignorant, that it
\nshall be judicious, discriminating. We are to have what the West can give us, because what the West can give us is just the thing
\nand the only thing that will rescue us from our present appalling condition of intellectual and moral decay, but we are not to take
\nit haphazard and in a lump; rather we shall find it expedient to select the very best that is thought and known in Europe, and to
\nimport even that with the changes and reservations which our diverse conditions may be found to dictate. Otherwise instead
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\n\tof a simply ameliorating influence, we shall have chaos annexed
\nto chaos, the vices and calamities of the West superimposed on the vices and calamities of the East.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tNo one has such advantages, no one is so powerful to discourage, minimise and even to prevent the intrusion of what
\nis mischievous, to encourage, promote and even to ensure the admission of what is salutary, than an educated and vigorous
\nnational assembly standing for the best thought and the best energy in the country, and standing for it not in a formal parliamentary way, but by the spontaneous impulse and election of the people. Patrons of the Congress are never tired of giving us
\nto understand that their much lauded idol does stand for all that is best in the country and that it stands for them precisely in the
\nway I have described. If that is so, it is not a little remarkable that far from regulating judiciously the importation of Occidental wares we have actually been at pains to import an inferior in preference to a superior quality, and in a condition not the
\nmost apt but the most inapt for consumption in India. Yet that this has been so far the net result of our political commerce
\nwith the West, will be very apparent to anyone who chooses to think. National character being like human nature, maimed
\nand imperfect, it was not surprising, not unnatural that a nation should commit one or other of various errors. We need not
\nmarvel if England, overconfident in her material success and the practical value of her institutions has concerned herself too
\nlittle with social development and set small store by the discreet management of her masses: nor must we hold French judgment
\ncheap because in the pursuit of social felicity and the pride of her magnificent cohesion France has failed in her choice of apparatus and courted political insecurity and disaster. But there are limits even to human fallibility and to combine two errors
\nso distinct would be, one imagines, a miracle of incompetence. Facts however are always giving the lie to our imaginations; and
\nit is a fact that we by a combination of errors so eccentric as almost to savour of felicity, are achieving this prodigious
\ntour<\/i>
\nde force<\/i>. Servile in imitation with a peculiar Indian servility we have swallowed down in a lump our English diet and especially
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\n\tthat singular paradox about the unique value of machinery:
\nbut we have not the stuff in us to originate a really effective instrument for ourselves. Hence the Congress, a very reputable
\nbody, I hasten to admit, teeming with grave citizens and really quite flush of lawyers, but for all that meagre in the scope of
\nits utility and wholly unequal to the functions it ought to exercise. There we have laid the foundations, as the French laid the
\nfoundations, of political incompetence, political failure; and of a more fatal incompetence, a more disastrous failure, because the
\nFrench have at least originality, thought, resourcefulness, while we are vainglorious, shallow, mentally impotent: and as if this
\nerror were not enough for us, we have permitted ourselves to lose all sense of proportion, and to evolve an inordinate
\n\tself-content, an exaggerated idea of our culture, our capacity, our importance. Hence we choose to rate our own political increase
\nhigher than social perfection or the advancement, intellectual and economical, of that vast unhappy proletariate about which
\neverybody talks and nobody cares. We blandly assent when Mr. Pherozshah in the generous heat of his temperate and carefully
\nrestricted patriotism, assures us after his genial manner that the awakening of the masses from their ignorance and misery
\nis entirely unimportant and any expenditure of energy in that direction entirely premature. There we have laid the foundation, as England laid the foundation, of social collapse, of social calamities. We have sown the wind and we must not complain
\nif we reap the whirlwind. Under such circumstances it cannot be superfluous or a waste of power to review in the light of
\nthe critical reason that part of human experience most nearly connected by its nature with our own immediate difficulties.
\nIt is rather our main business and the best occupation not of dilettantes but of minds gifted with insight, seriousness, original
\npower. So much indeed is it our main business that according as it is executed or neglected, we must pronounce a verdict of
\nadequacy or inadequacy on our recent political thought: and we have seen that it is hopelessly inadequate, that all our efforts
\nrepose on a body organically infirm to the verge of impotence and are in their scheme as in their practice selfishly frigid to
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\n\tsocial development and the awakening of the masses.
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\n\tHere then we have got a little nearer to just and adequate comprehension. At any rate I hope to have enforced on my
\nreaders the precise and intrinsic meaning of that count in my indictment which censures the Congress as a body not popular
\nand not honestly desirous of a popular character\u2014 in fact as a middle-class organ selfish and disingenuous in its public action and hollow in its professions of a large and disinterested patriotism. I hope to have convinced them that this is a solid
\ncharge and a charge entirely damaging to their character for wisdom and public spirit. Above all I hope to have persuaded
\nMr. Pherozshah Mehta, or at least the eidolon of that great man, the shadow of him which walks through these pages,
\nthat our national effort must contract a social and popular tendency before it can hope to be great or fruitful. But then Mr.
\nPherozshah is a lawyer: he has, enormously developed in him, that forensic instinct which prompts men to fight out a cause
\nwhich they know to be unsound, to fight it out to the last gasp, not because it is just or noble but because it is theirs; and in the
\nspirit of that forensic tradition he may conceivably undertake to answer me somewhat as follows. “Material success and a great
\nrepresentative assembly are boons of so immense a magnitude, so stupendous an importance that even if we purchase them at
\nthe cost of a more acute disintegration, a more appalling social decadence, the rate will not be any too exorbitant. Let us exactly
\nimitate English success by an exact imitation of English models and then there will be plenty of time to deal with these questions
\nwhich you invest with fictitious importance.” Monstrous as the theorem is, profound as is the mental darkness which pervades
\nit, it summarises not unfairly the defence put forward by the promoters and well-wishers of the Congress.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tOn us as the self-elected envoys of a new evangel there rests a heavy responsibility, assumed by our own will, but which once
\nassumed we can no longer repudiate or discard; a responsibility which promises us immortal credit, if performed with sincerity and wisdom, but saddled with ignominy to ourselves and disaster to our country, if we discharge it in another spirit and
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\n\tanother manner. To meet that responsibility we have no height,
\nno sincerity of character, no depth of emotion, no charity, no seriousness of intellect. Yet it is only a sentimentalist, we are
\ntold, who will bid us raise, purify and transform ourselves so that we may be in some measure worthy of the high and solemn
\nduties we have bound ourselves to perform! The proletariate among us is sunk in ignorance and overwhelmed with distress.
\nBut with that distressed and ignorant proletariate,\u2014 now that the middle class is proved deficient in sincerity, power and judgment,\u2014 with that proletariate resides, whether we like it or not, our sole assurance of hope, our sole chance in the future.
\nYet he is set down as a vain theorist and a dreamy trifler who would raise it from its ignorance and distress. The one thing
\nneedful we are to suppose, the one thing worthy of a great and statesmanlike soul is to enlarge the Legislative Councils, until
\nthey are big enough to hold Mr. Pherozshah M. Mehta, and other geniuses of an immoderate bulk. To play with baubles
\nis our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with
\nour Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions,\u2014 while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging
\nchaos of the primitive man over which our civilized societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely
\nand ominously agitated. Already a red danger-signal has shot up from Prabhas-Patan, and sped across the country, speaking with
\na rude eloquence of strange things beneath the fair surface of our renascent, enlightened India: yet no sooner was the signal seen
\nthan it was forgotten. Perhaps the religious complexion of these occurrences has lulled our fears; but when turbulence has once
\nbecome habitual in a people, it is only folly that will reckon on its preserving the original complexion. A few more taxes, a few
\nmore rash interferences of Government, a few more stages of starvation, and the turbulence that is now religious will become
\nsocial. I am speaking to that class which Mr. Manmohan Ghose has called the thinking portion of the Indian community: well,
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\n\t
\n51<\/i> let these thinking gentlemen carry their thoughtful intellects a
\nhundred years back. Let them recollect what causes led from the religious madness of St. Bartholomew to the social madness of
\nthe Reign of Terror. Let them enumerate if their memory serves them, the salient features and symptoms which the wise man
\ndetected many years before the event to be the sure precursors of some terrible catastrophe; and let them discover, if they can,
\nany of those symptoms which is absent from the phenomena of our disease. With us it rests\u2014 if indeed it is not too late\u2014 with our sincerity, our foresight, our promptness of thought and action, that the hideous parallel shall not be followed up by a
\nsequel as awful, as bloody and more purely disastrous. Theorist, and trifler though I may be called, I again assert as our first and
\nholiest duty, the elevation and enlightenment of the proletariate: I again call on those nobler spirits among us who are working
\nerroneously, it may be, but with incipient or growing sincerity and nobleness of mind, to divert their strenuous effort from the
\npromotion of narrow class-interests, from silly squabbles about offices and salaried positions, from a philanthropy laudable in
\nitself and worthy of rational pursuit, but meagre in the range of its benevolence and ineffectual towards promoting the nearest
\ninterests of the nation, into that vaster channel through which alone the healing waters may be conducted to the lips of their
\nailing and tortured country.   <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\tNew Lamps for Old
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\n\tPoverty of organic conception and unintelligence of the deeper
\nfacts of our environment are the inherent vices I have hitherto imputed to the Congress and the burgess-body of which it is
\nthe political nucleus. But I have not done enough when I have done that. Perversion or error in the philosophy of our aim
\ndoes indeed point to a serious defect of the political reason, but it is not incompatible with a nearer apprehension and happier
\nmanagement of surface facts; and if we had been so far apprehensive and dexterous, that would have been an output of native
\ndirectness and force on which we might reasonably felicitate ourselves. For directness and force are an inalienable ancestral
\ninheritance handed down by vigorous forefathers, and where they are, the political reason which comes of liberal culture and
\nancient experience, may be waited for with a certain patient hopefulness. But it is to be feared that our performance up to
\ndate does not give room for so comforting an assurance. Is it not rather the fact that our whole range of thought and action
\nhas been pervaded by a stamp of unreality and helplessness, a straining after achievement for which we have not the proper
\nstamina and an entire misconception of facts as well as of natural laws? To be convinced of this we have only to interrogate recent
\nevents, not confiding in their outward face as the shallow and self-contented do, but getting to the heart of them, making sure
\nof their hidden secret, their deeper reality. Indeed it will not hurt any of us to put out of sight for a moment those vain and fantastic chimeras about Simon de Montfort and the gradual evolution of an Indian Parliament, with which certain politicians are fond
\nof amusing us, and look things straight in the face. We must resolutely hold fast to the primary fact that right and effective
\naction can only ensue upon a right understanding of ourselves in relation to our environment. For by reflection or instinct to
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\n\tget a clear insight into our position and by dexterity to make
\nthe most of it, that is the whole secret of politics, and that is just what we have failed to do. Let us see whether we cannot get
\nsome adequate sense of what our position really is: after that we shall be more in the way to hit closely the exact point at which
\nwe have failed.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tWhatever theatrical attitude it may suit our vanity to adopt,
\nwe are not, as we pretend to be, the embodiment of the country’s power, intelligence and worth: neither are we disinterested
\npatriots striving in all purity and unselfishness towards an issue irreproachable before God. These are absurd pretensions which
\nonly detract from the moral height of our nature and can serve no great or serious end. We may gain a poor and evanescent
\nadvantage by this sort of hypocrisy, but we lose in candour and clearness of intellect, we lose in sincerity which is another name
\nfor strength. If we would only indulge less our bias towards moral ostentation and care more to train ourselves in a healthy
\nrobustness and simple candour, it would really advantage us not only in character, but in power; and it would have this good
\neffect, that we should no longer throw dust into our own eyes; we should be better fitted to see ourselves as a critic of human
\nsociety would see us, better able to get that clear insight into our own position, which is one condition of genuine success. No, we
\nare not and cannot be a body of disinterested patriots. Life being, as science tells us, an affirmation of one’s self, any aggregate mass
\nof humanity must inevitably strive to emerge and affirm its own essence, must by the law of its own nature aspire towards life, aspire towards expansion, aspire towards the perfecting of its potential strength in the free air of political recognition and the full
\nlight of political predominance. That is just what has been happening in India. In us the Indian burgess or middle-class emerges
\nfrom obscurity, perhaps from nothingness, and strives between a strong and unfeeling bureaucracy and an inert and imbecile
\nproletariate to possess itself of rank, consideration and power. Against that striving it is futile to protest; one might as well
\nquarrel with the law of gravitation; but though our striving must be inherently selfish, we can at least make some small effort to
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\n\tkeep it as little selfish as possible, to make it, as far as may be, run
\nin harness with the grand central interests of the nation at large. So much at least those of us who have a broad human affection
\nfor our country as distinct from ourselves, have a right to expect. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThus emergent, thus ambitious, it was our business by whatever circumstances we were environed, to seize hold of those circumstances and make ourselves masters of them. The initial
\ndifficulties were great. A young and just emergent body without experience of government, without experience even of resistance
\nto government, consequently without inherited tact, needs a teacher or a Messiah to initiate it in the art of politics. In England the burgess was taught almost insensibly by the nobility; in France he found a Messiah in the great Napoleon. We had
\nno Napoleon, but we had a nobility. Europeans, when the spirit moves them to brag of their superiority over us Asiatics, are in
\nthe habit of saying that the West is progressive, the East stationary. That is a little too comprehensive. England and France
\nare no doubt eminently progressive, but there are other countries of Europe which have not been equally forward. America
\nis a democratic country which has not progressed: Russia is a despotic country which has not progressed: in Italy, Spain,
\nGermany even progress has been factitious and slow. Nevertheless, though the vulgar wording of the boast may be loose and
\ncareless, yet it does express a very real superiority. The nations of the West are not all progressive, true; but they are all in that
\nstate which is the first condition of progress, a state, I mean, of fluidity, but of fluidity within limits, fluidity on a stable and
\nnormal basis. If no spirit of thought or emotion moves on the face of the waters, they become as foul and stagnant as in the
\nmost conservative parts of Asia, but a very slight wind will set them flowing. In most Asiatic countries,\u2014 I do not speak of
\nIndia\u2014 one might almost imagine a hurricane blowing without any perceptible effect. Accordingly in Europe the transition
\nof power from the noble to the burgess has been natural and inevitable. In India, just as naturally and inevitably, the administration remained with the noble. The old Hindu mechanism of society and government certainly did prescribe limits, certainly
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\n\thad a basis that was stable and normal; but it was too rigid,
\ntoo stationary: it bound down the burgess and held him in his place by an iron weight of custom and religious ordinance. The
\nregime that overthrew and succeeded it, the Mussulman regime, was mediaeval in character, fluid certainly, indeed in a perpetual
\nstate of flux, but never able to shake off the curse of instability, never in a position to prescribe limits, never stable, never
\nnormal. In such a society the qualities which make for survival, are valour, dexterity, initiative, swiftness, a robust immorality,
\nqualities native to an aristocracy and to nations moulded by an aristocracy, native also to certain races, but even in those
\nnations, even in those races, alien to the ordinary spirit of the burgess. His ponderous movements, his fumbling, his cold timidity, his decent scrupulousness have been fatal to his pretensions, at times inimical to his existence. Accordingly in India he has
\nbeen submerged, scarcely existent. Great affairs and the high qualities they nourish have rested in the hand of the noble.
\nWe had then our nobility, our class trained and experienced in government and affairs: but to them unhappily we could
\nnot possibly look for guidance or even for co-operation. At the period of our emergence they were lethargic, effete, moribund,
\npartially sunk in themselves; and even if any of the old energy had survived their fall, the world in which they moved was
\ntoo new and strange, the transition to it had been too sudden and confounding to admit of their assimilating themselves so
\nas to move with ease and success under novel conditions. The old nobility was quite as helpless from decay and dotage, as
\nwe from youthful inexperience. It was foreign energy that had pushed aside the old outworn machinery, it was an alien government that had by policy and self-will hurried us into a new and quite unfamiliar world. Would that government, politic and
\n\tself-willed as it was, help us to an activity that might, nay, that must turn eventually to their personal detriment? Certainly they had
\nthe power but quite as certainly they had not the will. No doubt Anglo-Indians have very little right to speak of us as bitterly as
\nthey are in the habit of doing. By setting themselves to compel our social elements into a state of fluidity, and for that purpose
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\n\tnot only putting in motion organic forces but bringing direct
\npressure to bear, by strictly enforcing system and order so as to lay down fixed limits and a normal basis, within which the
\nfluid elements might settle into new forms, they in fact made themselves responsible for us and lost the right to blame anyone
\nbut themselves for what might ensue. They are in the unlucky position of responsibility for a state of things which they abhor
\nand certainly had no intention of bringing about. The force which they had in mind to construct was a body of grave, loyal
\nand conservative citizens, educated but without ideas, a body created by and having a stake in the present order, and therefore
\nattached to its continuance, a power in the land certainly, but a power for order, for permanence, not a power for disturbance
\nand unrest. In such an enterprise they were bound to fail and they failed egregiously. Sir Edwin Arnold when he found out
\nthat it was a grievous mistake to occidentalize us, forgot, no doubt, for the moment his role as the preacher and poetaster
\nof self-abnegation, and spoke as an ordinary mundane being, the prophet of a worldly and selfish class: but if we accept his
\nwords in that sense, there can be no doubt that he was perfectly right. Anglo-Indians had never seriously brought themselves to
\nbelieve that we are in blood and disposition a genuine Aryan community. They chose to regard our history as a jungle of
\nmeaningless facts, and could not understand that we were not malleable dead matter, but men with Occidental impulses in
\nour blood, not virgin material to be wrought into any shape they preferred, but animate beings with a principle of life in
\nus and certain, if subjected to the same causes, placed in the same light and air as European communities, to exhibit effects
\nprecisely similar and shape ourselves rather than be shaped. They proposed to construct a tank for their own service and comfort;
\nthey did not know that they were breaking up the fountains of the great deep. There, stated shortly, is the whole sense of
\ntheir policy and conduct. The habit, set in vogue by rhetoricians of Macaulay’s type, of making large professions of benevolence
\ninvested with an air of high grandiosity, has become so much a second nature with them, that I will not ask if they are sincere
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\n\twhen they make them: but it is a rhetorical habit and nothing
\nmore. We who are not interested in keeping up the fiction, may just as well pierce through it to the fact. If they had seen things
\nas they really are, they would have been wisely inactive: but they wanted a submissive and attached population, and they thought
\nthey had hit on the best way of getting what they wanted. In this confidence, if there was a great deal of delusion, there was
\nalso something of truth. But we must not be surprised or indignant if the Anglo-Indians, when they saw their confidence so
\nrudely dashed and themselves confronted, not with submission and attachment but with a body eager, pushing, recriminative,
\npushing for recognition, pushing for power, covetous above all of that authority which they had come to regard as their private and peculiar possession,\u2014 there is no cause for surprise or resentment, if they cared little for the grain of success in
\ntheir bushelful of failure, and regarded us with those feelings of alarm, distrust and hatred which Frankenstein experienced when
\nhaving hoped to make a man, he saw a monster. Their conduct was too natural to be censured. I do not say that magnanimity
\nwould not have been better, more dignified, more politic. But who expects magnanimity from bureaucracy? The old nobility
\nthen were almost extinct and had moreover no power to help us: the bureaucracy had not the will. Yet it was from their ranks
\nthat the Messiah came.  
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\n\tThe Civilian Order, which accounts itself, and no doubt justly,
\nthe informing spirit of Anglo-India, is credited in this country with quite an extraordinary degree of ability and merit, so much
\nso that many believe it to have come down to us direct from heaven. And it is perhaps on this basis that in their dealings with
\nIndians,\u2014 whom being moulded of a clay entirely terrestrial, one naturally supposes to be an inferior order of creatures,\u2014 they permit themselves a very liberal tinge of presumption and arrogance. Without disputing their celestial origin, one may perhaps be suffered to hint that eyes unaffected by the Indian sun, will be hard put to it to discover the pervading soul of magnificence and princeliness in the moral and intellectual style of these demigods. The fact is indeed all the other way. The general run
\nof the Service suffers by being recruited through the medium of Competitive Examination: its tone is a little vulgar, its character
\na little raw, its achievement a little second-rate. Harsh critics have indeed said more than this; nay, has not one of themselves,
\nhas not Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a blameless Anglo-Indian, spoken, and spoken with distressing emphasis to the same effect? They
\nhave said that it moves in an atmosphere of unspeakable boorishness and mediocrity. That is certainly strong language and I
\nwould not for a moment be thought to endorse it; but there is, as I say, just a small sediment of truth at the bottom which may tend
\nto excuse, if not to justify, this harsh and unfriendly criticism. And when one knows the stuff of which the Service is made,
\none ceases to wonder at it. A shallow schoolboy stepping from a cramming establishment to the command of high and difficult
\naffairs, can hardly be expected to give us anything magnificent or princely. Still less can it be expected when the sons of small
\ntradesmen are suddenly promoted from the counter to govern great provinces. Not that I have any fastidious prejudice against
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\n\tsmall tradesmen. I simply mean that the best education men of
\nthat class can get in England, does not adequately qualify a raw youth to rule over millions of his fellow-beings. Bad in training,
\nvoid of culture, in instruction poor, it is in plain truth a sort of education that leaves him with all his original imperfections
\non his head, unmannerly, uncultivated, unintelligent. But in the Civil Service, with all its vices and shortcomings, one does find,
\nas perhaps one does not find elsewhere, rare and exalted souls detached from the failings of their order, who exhibit the qualities of the race in a very striking way; not geniuses certainly, but swift and robust personalities, rhetorically powerful, direct,
\nforcible, endowed to a surprising extent with the energy and self-confidence which are the heirlooms of their nation; men in
\nshort who give us England\u2014 and by England I mean the whole Anglo-Celtic race\u2014 on her really high and admirable side. Many
\nof these are Irish or Caledonian; others are English gentlemen of good blood and position, trained at the great public schools,
\nwho still preserve that fine flavour of character, scholarship and power, which was once a common possession in England,
\nbut threatens under the present dispensation to become sparse or extinct. Others again are veterans of the old Anglo-Indian
\nschool, moulded in the larger traditions and sounder discipline of a strong and successful art who still keep some vestiges of the
\ngrand old Company days, still have something of a great and noble spirit, something of an adequate sense how high are the affairs they have to deal with and how serious the position they are privileged to hold. It was one of these, one endowed with all their
\ngood gifts, it was Mr. Allan Hume, a man acute and vigorous, happy in action and in speech persuasive, an ideal leader, who
\nprompted, it may be by his own humane and lofty feelings, it may be by a more earthly desire of present and historic fame, took us
\nby the hand and guided us with astonishing skill on our arduous venture towards
\n\tpre-eminence and power. Mr. Hume, I have said,
\nhad all the qualities that go to make a fine leader in action. If only he had added to these the crowning gifts, reflectiveness,
\nideas, a comprehensive largeness of vision! Governing force, that splendid distinction inherited by England from her old Norman
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\n\tbarons, governing force and the noble gifts that go along with
\nit, are great things in their way, but they are not the whole of politics. Ideas, reflection, the political reason count for quite as
\nmuch, are quite as essential. But on these, though individual Englishmen, men like Bolingbroke, Arnold, Burke, have had
\nthem pre-eminently, the race has always kept a very inadequate hold: and Mr. Hume is distinguished from his countrymen, not
\nby the description of his merits, but by their degree. His original conception, I cannot help thinking, was narrow and impolitic.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tHe must have known, none better, what immense calamities may often be ripening under a petty and serene outside. He must
\nhave been aware, none better, when the fierce pain of hunger and oppression cuts to the bone what awful elemental passions
\nmay start to life in the mildest, the most docile proletariates. Yet he chose practically to ignore his knowledge; he conceived it as
\nhis business to remove a merely political inequality, and strove to uplift the burgess into a merely isolated predominance. That
\nthe burgess should strive towards predominance, nay, that for a brief while he should have it, is only just, only natural: the
\nmischief of it was that in Mr. Hume’s formation the proletariate remained for any practical purpose a piece off the board. Yet
\nthe proletariate is, as I have striven to show, the real key of the situation. Torpid he is and immobile; he is nothing of an
\nactual force, but he is a very great potential force, and whoever succeeds in understanding and eliciting his strength, becomes
\nby the very fact master of the future. Our situation is indeed complex and difficult beyond any that has ever been imagined
\nby the human intellect; but if there is one thing clear in it, it is that the right and fruitful policy for the burgess, the only policy
\nthat has any chance of eventual success, is to base his cause upon an adroit management of the proletariate. He must awaken and
\norganize the entire power of the country and thus multiply infinitely his volume and significance, the better to attain a
\nsupremacy as much social as political. Thus and thus only will he attain to his legitimate station, not an egoist class living for
\nitself and in itself, but the crown of the nation and its head.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tBut Mr. Hume saw things in a different light, and let me
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\n\tconfess out of hand, that once he had got a clear conception
\nof his business, he proceeded in it with astonishing rapidity, sureness and tact. The clear-cut ease and strong simplicity of
\nhis movements were almost Roman; no crude tentatives, no infelicitous bungling, but always a happy trick of hitting the
\nright nail on the head and that at the first blow. Roman too was his principle of advancing to a great object by solid and
\nconsecutive gradations. To begin by accustoming the burgess as well as his adversaries to his own corporate reality, to proceed by
\na definitive statement of his case to the Vice-regal Government, and for a final throw to make a vehement and powerful appeal
\nto the English Parliament, an appeal that should be financed by the entire resources of middle-class India and carried through its
\nstages with an iron heart and an obdurate resolution, expending moreover infinite energy,\u2014 so and so only could the dubious
\nroad Mr. Hume was treading, lead to anything but bathos and anticlimax. Nothing could be happier than the way in which
\nthe initial steps were made out. To be particularly obstreperous about his merits and his wrongs is certainly the likeliest way for
\na man to get a solid idea of his own importance and make an unpleasant impression on his ill-wishers. And for that purpose,
\nfor a blowing of trumpets in concert, for a self-assertion persistent, bold and clamorous, the Congress, however incapable
\nin other directions may be pronounced perfectly competent; nay, it was the ideal thing. The second step was more difficult.
\nHe had to frame somehow a wording of our case at once bold and cautious, so as to hit Anglo-India in its weak place, yet
\nproperly sauced so as not to offend the palate, grown fastidious and epicurean, of the British House of Commons. Delicate as
\nwas the task he managed it with indubitable adroitness and a certain success. We may perhaps get at the inner sense of what
\nhappened, if we imagine Mr. Hume giving this sort of ultimatum to the Government. “The Indian burgess for whose education
\nyou have provided but whose patrimony you sequestrated and are woefully mismanaging, having now come to years of
\ndiscretion, demands an account of your stewardship and the future management of his own estate. To compromise, if you
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\n\tare so good as to meet us half-way, we are not unready, but on
\nany other hypothesis our appeal lies at once to the tribunal of the British Parliament. You will observe our process is perfectly constitutional.” The sting of the scorpion lay as usual in its tail. Mr. Hume knew well the magic power of that word over Englishmen.
\nWith a German garrison it would have been naught; they would quickly have silenced with bayonets and prohibitive decrees any
\ninsolence of that sort. With French republicans it would have been naught; they would either have powerfully put it aside or
\nfrankly acceded to it. But the English are a nation of political jurists, and any claim franked by the epithet “constitutional”
\nthey are bound by the very law of their being to respect or at any rate appear to respect. The common run of Anglo-Indians,
\nblinded as selfishness always does blind people, might in their tremulous rage and panic vomit charges of sedition and shout
\nfor open war; but a Government of political jurists pledged to an occidentalizing policy could not do so without making nonsense
\nof its past. Moreover a Government vice-regal in constitution cannot easily forget that it may have to run the gauntlet of
\nadverse comment from authorities at home. But if they could not put us down with the strong hand or meet our delegates with
\na non possumus<\/i>, they were not therefore going to concede to us any solid fraction of our demands. It is the ineradicable vice of
\nthe English nature that it can never be clear or direct. It recoils from simplicity as from a snake. It must shuffle, it must turn in on
\nitself, it must preserve cherished fictions intact. And supposing unpleasant results to be threatened, it escapes from them through
\na labyrinth of unworthy and transparent subterfuges. Our rulers are unfortunately average Englishmen, Englishmen, that is to
\nsay, who are not in the habit of rising superior to themselves; and if they were uncandid, if they were tortuously hostile we
\nmay be indignant, but we cannot be surprised. Mr. Hume at any rate saw quite clearly that nothing was to be expected, perhaps
\nhe had never seriously expected anything, from that quarter. He had already instituted with really admirable promptitude, the
\nprimary stages of his appeal to the British Parliament.  
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\n\tPage \u2013 62<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Lamps for Old \u00ad I   If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into a ditch? So or nearly so…<\/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-2765","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\/2765","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=2765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}