{"id":2854,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2854"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:44:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:12","slug":"150-bande-mataram-7-10-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/06-07-bande-mataram\/150-bande-mataram-7-10-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-150_Bande Mataram 7-10-07.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, October 7th, 1907 }
\n\t<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Vanity of Reaction
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe devices of reactionary absolutism have a curious family resemblance all the world over. Reaction is never intelligent and
\nnever imaginative. Limited to the narrow horizon of its own selfish interests, committed to the preservation of the impossible
\nand the resuscitation of corrupt systems and dead forms it has neither the vision to understand and measure the forces that
\nhave been new born to replace it, nor the wisdom to treat and compromise with the strength of Demogorgon while yet unripe
\nso as to prolong its hour of rule for a little,\u2014 the only grace that Heaven allows to doomed institutions and forfeited powers. Like
\nKansa of old, it seeks to confirm its failing grip on the world by murderous guile and violence or like the Jupiter of
\nPrometheus<\/i>
\nUnbound <\/i>gropes for safety through vain diplomacies and the martyrdom of the champions of suffering humanity. Poor in
\ninvention except in the cunning variation of savage tortures or petty brutalities, it reiterates the old worn-out spells, the
\nonce-potent lies which had been powerful to prolong the death-sleep of the peoples and sees not that the mumbling of its incantations only awakes the scorn and rage of strong men indignant that such deceptive bonds should so long have availed to bind
\ntheir strength. Barren of resources it blindly persists in the old stupid violences that can hurt and enrage but cannot kill, the
\nold menaces and outbursts of barbarous rage that have lost their power to intimidate an incensed and stubborn people, and will
\nnot realize that every blow evokes a mightier reaction, that every missile of death it hurls is returning with fearful rapidity upon
\nthe thrower, that the chains with which it binds the limbs of the nation’s martyrs are so much iron which the nation will forge
\n    <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 705<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tinto weapons against its oppressors, that the blood it sheds is so
\nmuch water of life to foster the young plant of liberty, that, when sentence has been passed upon men or class or institution, every
\ndevice invented for safety becomes an instrument for destruction and the fiercer the attempts to escape, the swifter the motion
\nstraight towards doom. Through the clanking of the chains of its prisoners, through the cries of its victims, through the red
\nmist of blood and torture and suffering which it seeks to set between itself and God and blind His vengeance and baffle His
\ndecrees, still there rings the ancient sentence of Fate. “In Gokul He groweth still from day to day, Who thee shall slay.” The
\ngenius, the wisdom, the strength of the servants of Reaction turns naturally to their opposites, and posterity wonders that
\nsuch wise men should have been so blind, that such giants should have been slain by the throwing of a pebble, that so much energy
\nof strong action and cunning speech should have been of no more avail than the staggerings and babblings of a drunkard in
\nhis cups. For they have set their strength and wit against God’s will, and it is His ironic decree that their wisdom shall be baffled
\nby children and the weak hand of a woman shall be enough to shatter their might.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tMen had once deemed of England that she was not as other peoples and that the lessons of history would be reversed by
\nthe unselfish glories of her rule, and the weakness of human nature would be belied by the splendour of her generosity and
\nthe candour of her enthusiasm. For the English are a great and wonderful people. It is true that her statesmen and soldiers slew
\nand murdered and ravished in Ireland so that the Celt might remain quiet under her iron heel,\u2014 but they planned and fought
\nfor the freedom of nations subject to other domination than her own. It is true that they have taken the bread out of the Indian’s
\nmouth that her own children might be filled and seek to turn her dark-skinned subjects everywhere into helots of her commerce and trade,\u2014 but they paid down hard cash that her West Indian Negro might be free. It is true that her politicians deny
\nthe institutions of liberty to her own subjects, but she has been the examplar of a bourgeois liberty and a limited democracy
\n    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 706<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tto the whole world. Other nations turned, it was thought, but
\none side of themselves to the gaze, the side of national self-seeking and grasping land-hunger. England had two sides, and
\nthe one which dazzled men was very bright. And now all the world is watching what England will do now that the same
\nproblem is once more set for her which every nation has failed to solve, whether she will tread the same path of futile bloodshed,
\nviolence and defiance of irresistible decrees which other nations have trod before her or be wise in her generation as she was wise
\nwhen her own children rose against her in Canada, as she has once more been wise after her hour of blood-thirst and madness
\nin the Transvaal. The selfish fury of Anglo-India is answering for her, the greed of her merchants and capitalists is pushing
\nher on into the abyss. Still her rulers have qualms, hesitations, fears, still they dare not utterly set their own law and the law
\nof God at defiance. At the last moment a palsy overtakes their hands, a relenting works in their souls. After their long torture
\nthe Rawalpindi prisoners are free; Nibaran has hardly escaped from the gallows by a strange mercy of Fate; here and there
\nthe monotonous roll of repression is brightened by occasional acquittals, by stray glimpses of justice if not of forbearance.
\nBut the Anglo-Indian bureaucrats have set out on the slippery path where futile ferocity and vain blood guiltiness hurry down
\nthe car of empire to sink in the sea of shame and blood below. Seldom and by a miracle can the wheels that have once gone
\nsome way down by that slope be retarded and stopped. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat is it that you seek, rulers who are eager to confuse the
\ninterests of a handful of white administrators with the welfare of humanity, or what is it that you dream, traders who think
\nthat God made this India of ours only as a market for your merchandise? This great and ancient nation was once the fountain
\nof human light, the apex of human civilisation, the examplar of courage and humanity, the perfection of good government
\nand settled society, the mother of all religions, the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy. It has suffered much at the hands of
\ninferior civilisations and more savage peoples; it has gone down into the shadow of night and tasted often of the bitterness of
\n   
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 707<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tdeath. Its pride has been trampled into the dust and its glory
\nhas departed. Hunger and misery and despair have become the masters of this fair soil, these noble hills, these ancient rivers,
\nthese cities whose life-story goes back into prehistoric night. But do you think that therefore God has utterly abandoned us and
\ngiven us up for ever to be a mere convenience for the West, the helots of its commerce, and the feeders of its luxury and pride?
\nWe are still God’s chosen people and all our calamities have been but a discipline of suffering, because for the great mission
\nbefore us prosperity was not sufficient, adversity had also its training; to taste the glory of power and beneficence and joy
\nwas not sufficient, the knowledge of weakness and torture and humiliation was also needed; it was not enough that we should
\nbe able to fill the role of the merciful sage and the beneficent king, we had also to experience in our own persons the feelings
\nof the outcaste and the slave. But now that lesson is learned, and the time for our resurgence is come. And no power shall stay
\nthat uprising and no opposing interest shall deny us the right to live, to be ourselves, to set our seal once more upon the world.
\nEvery race and people that oppressed us even in our evening and our midnight has been broken into pieces and their glory turned
\ninto a legend of the past. Yet you venture to hope that in the hour of our morning you will be able to draw back the veil of
\nnight once more over our land as if to read you a lesson. God has lighted the fire in a quarter where you least feared it and it is
\nbeginning to eat up your commerce and threaten your ease. He has raised up the people you despised as weaklings and cowards,
\na people of clerks and babblers and slaves and set you to break their insurgent spirit and trample them into the dust if you can.
\nAnd you cannot. You have tried every means except absolute massacre and you have failed. And now what will you do? Will
\nyou learn the lesson before it is too late or will you sink your Empire in the mire of shame where other nations have gone who
\nhad not the excuse of the knowledge of liberty and the teachings of the past? For us, for you, today everything is trembling in the
\nbalance, and it is not for us who have but reacted passively to your action, it is for you to decide.
\n   
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 708<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t
\n\tThe Price of a Friend
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\tRecent events are daily putting a greater and greater strain on the sweet and cordial relation of the Friend of India with her people.
\nIt is no doubt hard to part when friends are dear, perhaps it will cost a sigh, a tear. Under the circumstances the poet’s advice
\nis to steal away and choose one’s own time. But the Friend of India is giving us warning after warning that it will cease to
\nbe our friend unless we consent to do its bidding. When the people do not much mind the sundering of this tie the Friend
\nshould be prepared for the inevitable and devise some means for avoiding the heart-wrench which the sudden severance of such
\na long-standing connection must necessarily cause. The Friend so fondly hoped that the Moderates compared with whom the
\nExtremists are “a mere drop in the ocean” would ever remain docile and teachable, sit at its feet for all time and hang on its
\nlips with the attention and reverence they show to their spiritual preceptors. But this sudden change in their attitude has come to
\nour friend as a surprise. The Moderates are now most indecently and openly hobnobbing with the Extremists. When a prominent
\nExtremist goes to jail the Moderates stand by him, nay shed tears over his unjust incarceration. When an Extremist newspaper is
\nprosecuted and the bureaucracy fails to spot the real offender on account of its having been conducted under an arrangement
\nwhich, whatever its merit, lacks the fairness and candour of delivering the management at once into the hands of the enemy
\nwhenever so required, the Moderates do not realise the enormity of the latter’s offence and what is more resent the Friend of
\nIndia’s pious demand that the conductors of the paper should have thrust their neck down the wolf’s throat. This ill-advised
\nobstinacy the friend can hardly excuse and we quite understand its righteous indignation. There is time yet for the Moderates
\nto come round, go on their knees before their justly offended friend and sign a pledge to go back to his guidance. This the
\nfriend demands and hopes that the Moderates will accede to it. The friend also reaffirms his claim to their allegiance and
\nthat is his persistent support of their “just aspirations”. It is by   
\n\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 709<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\ttheir unjust aspirations that they have forfeited the sympathy of
\nthis precious friend. There cannot be a greater iniquity than the attempt at self-realisation; justice and equity demand that one
\nnation should for ever be in the leading strings of another. Whoever wants to alter this most reasonable and fair arrangement
\nmust be shunned and expelled from the Congress and all other institutions which desire the countenance of the
\nStatesman<\/i>. The
\nfriend also contends that though the constitutional method has not hitherto paid, that does not mean that it will never pay. Even
\nif it does not pay at all, the Moderates have no business to rub shoulders with the Extremists; for in that case they stand to lose
\nthe most valuable thing they possess, the friendship of the Friend of India.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tA New Literary Departure <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tWe have received from the publisher Srijut Abinash Chandra
\nBhattacharya, a small volume in Bengali, entitled Bartaman<\/i> Rananiti
\n<\/i>or “The Modern Science of War”. The book is a small
\nmanual which seeks to describe for the benefit of those who, like the people of Bengal under the beneficent Pax Britannica,
\nare entirely unacquainted with the subject, the nature and use of modern weapons, the meaning of military terms, the uses
\nand distribution of the various limbs of a modern army, the broad principles of strategy and tactics, and the nature and
\nprinciples of guerilla warfare. These are freely illustrated by detailed references to the latest modern wars, the Boer and the
\nRusso-Japanese, in the first of which many new developments were brought to light or tested and in the second corrected by
\nthe experience of a greater field of warfare and more normal conditions. The book is a new departure in Bengali literature
\nand one which shows the new trend of the national mind. In the old days of a narrow life and confined aspirations, we were
\nsatisfied with the production of romantic poetry and novels varied by occasional excursions into academic philosophy and
\ncriticism. Nowadays the heart of the nation is rising to higher   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 710<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tthings; history, the patriotic dramas, political writings, songs of
\nnational aspiration, draughts from the fountain of our ancient living religion and thought are almost the sole literature which
\ncommand a hearing. There are signs also that books recording the results of modern science and the organisation of modern
\nlife in war and peace will ensure a ready sale if there are writers who can give the public exactly what they want. The new-born
\nnation is eagerly seeking after its development and organization and anything which will help it and widen its sphere of useful
\nknowledge, will deserve and gain its attention. Two years ago this small volume would have fallen still-born from the Press,
\ntoday we have no doubt it will be eagerly sought after. It is perfectly true that no practical use can be made of its contents
\nat the moment; but the will and desire of thousands creates its own field and when the spirit of a nation demands any sphere
\nof activity material events are shaped by that demand in ways that at the time seem to be the wild dreams of an unbridled
\nimagination. Our business is to prepare ourselves by all kinds of knowledge and action for the life of a nation, by knowledge and
\naction when both are immediately permitted us, by knowledge alone for action which, though not permitted now, is a necessary
\npart of the future nation’s perfect development. When the earnest soul prepares itself by what Sadhana is possible to it, however
\nimperfect, God in his own good time prepares the field and the opportunity for perfect Sadhana and complete attainment.
\n   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 711<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, October 7th, 1907 }   The Vanity of Reaction   The devices of reactionary absolutism have a curious family resemblance all…<\/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-2854","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\/2854","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=2854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}