{"id":2856,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2856"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:44:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:13","slug":"212-bande-mataram-3-4-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/06-07-bande-mataram\/212-bande-mataram-3-4-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-212_Bande Mataram 3-4-08.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, April 3rd, 1908 } <\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Question of the President
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe union of the two parties in the Congress is now in sight. If the Convention Committee which is about to meet at Allahabad,
\nwill be guided by the country and not by the single will of one masterful and obstinate personality, the reconciliation of the
\nparties is certain. When this desirable consummation is brought about, the next step will be the formation of a Constitution
\nunder which a harmonious working may be possible. We have already formulated what in our opinion should be the principles
\nof the Constitution; the basis should be democratic and not oligarchic, the scope of the Congress should be widened so as
\nto embrace actual work, the aim left indeterminate. It is the function of this body to gather around it the strength of the
\nnation, and no creed should be promulgated which would have the result of excluding any section of the people.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nTaking these principles as our starting-point we shall proceed to discuss the chief questions which must be settled in order
\nto ensure harmonious working between the two parties. The first issue which will present itself is the choice of a President. In his
\nspeech at the Federation Ground, Sj. Bipin Chandra Pal threw out a suggestion which he thought might obviate the difficulties
\nwhich now attend the choice of a President. The present method of election is wholly unsatisfactory. A Reception Committee
\nformed on the basis of wealth, not of democratic election is the primary authority; and the choice of the President is determined by a three-fourths majority which it is under present circumstances impossible to secure. Failing this impossibility, the
\nAll-India Congress Committee proceeds to nominate a President who may be the choice not of the country but of a party, and the
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tnomination is confirmed by the consent of the Congress which
\nthe Moderates declare to be a mere formality of election not implying any right of the delegates to withhold their consent
\nor reverse the decision of the Committee. This method of election is about the most irrational, undemocratic and perversely
\nunconstitutional which can be imagined. The whole value of a democratic constitution lies in the relation of the parts of the
\ncommonwealth to each other on the basis of a definite delegation of power by the people to its officials, magistrates or governing
\nbodies. The present system eliminates the sovereignty of the people altogether; it sets up an irresponsible body temporarily
\ncreated for a different purpose as the primary authority and creates in the All-India Committee a power of final election
\nwhich makes it independent of the people. <\/font>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tSrijut Bipin Chandra proposes to leave the election of the
\nPresident to the Reception Committee, permitting the anomaly to continue for the sake of peace; but the voice of the people is
\nnot to be entirely silent. Inoperative in the election, it finds its opportunity in the criticism of the President’s address which is
\nto be open to discussion and amendment like the King’s Speech in Parliament. This right of criticism and amendment will act
\nas a check on the party proclivities of the President and tend to bring his speech to the colourless nature of a pronouncement
\nembracing what the whole nation is agreed upon and omitting the points of difference which still divide men’s minds. It is
\npossible that an obstinate President might face the disagreeable certainty of a division on his address, in which case the check
\nwould not work; but this would be too unlikely a possibility to be a serious drawback to Sj. Bipin Chandra’s proposal. The defect
\nin it as a complete solution lies elsewhere. It provides against the misuse of the Presidential chair to deliver a party pronouncement
\nwounding to the susceptibilities of a part of the audience, but it does not provide against the misuse of the Presidential authority
\nto prevent the passing of resolutions disagreeable to the party to which the President for the year happens to belong. This can be
\ndone, however, without altering Bipin Babu’s suggestion. <\/font>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tThere are two aspects of the Presidential position. In one he
\n    <\/font>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tis the spokesman of the nation issuing a manifesto on its behalf
\nwith regard to the questions of the day. The Moderate party usually tries to belittle this aspect by the contention that the
\nPresident’s speech binds no one but himself. If that is so, then he has no right to take up a whole day of the brief time available for
\nwork with utterances and opinions which are of no conceivable importance to the country or the world at large. Either the President’s speech is a national manifesto and should be denuded of its party character, or it is a personal expression of opinion and
\nshould be either eliminated altogether or reduced to the brief proportions of an acknowledgement of the honour done to him
\nin his election, so that the Congress may at once proceed to real business. In that case the President will become a speaker of the
\nHouse and nothing more, which he is at present, but only in his second and subordinate capacity. In this secondary capacity he
\nis master of the deliberations of the Congress and can, if he so wishes, try to rule out of court or declare as lost without division
\nany proposal or amendment which is displeasing to his party. Indeed, as everybody knows, it is this which has been at the root
\nof all the bitterness that has gathered round the question and which led to the fracas at Surat. It will not therefore be enough
\nto provide against the party character of the address, it is still more necessary to provide against the party use of the President’s
\nauthority. In the House of Commons the Speaker is a non-party man whose sole business is to interpret impartially the rules of
\nthe House, and, if we are to avoid the repetition of such scenes as took place at Surat, the President of the Congress must be
\ncompelled to assume the same character. The difficulties in the way are two: first, the absence of any well-understood rules of
\nprocedure in the Congress; secondly, the absence of a strong public opinion which would unanimously resent the misuse of
\nhis authority whatever party might be benefited. If the now unwritten procedure of the Congress is reduced to writing and
\nprovision made for the right of delegates to lay their views in due form before the Congress, the first difficulty may be got rid
\nof, and a very necessary step taken in the democratisation of the Congress. But
\n\tthe interpretation of the rules is always liable to <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
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\n

\n\tmisuse, as all free countries have found, and the only safeguard
\nagainst it is a strong sense of the supreme importance of free discussion which will override party feeling and discourage the
\ntemptation to acquiesce in anything which will bring about a party victory. To develop such a feeling will take time. In the
\nmeanwhile such checks should be devised as would both deter the President from misusing his authority and foster the growth
\nof a public sentiment such as governs the proceedings of free assemblies in free countries. Mr. Tilak at the Surat Congress
\nappealed to the Congress against the decision of the Chairman of the Reception Committee disallowing his notice for the adjournment of the election of the President. This right which is inherent in every free assembly, ought to be specifically recognized. We cannot find a better means of checking any tendency to abuse authority than the knowledge that an appeal lies against
\none’s decision to the whole assembly of the delegates, nor any stronger incentive to the growth of the public sentiment we
\ndesire to create than the knowledge that the final responsibility for dishonest party tactics will rest on the whole body of the
\ndelegates. If these precautions are added to the suggestion of Srijut Bipin Chandra the difficulties at present arising out of the
\nanomalous election of the President will largely disappear. At the same time, the anomaly remains and if we overlook it for
\nthe present for the sake of peace, it should be clearly recognised that the present system can only be a temporary device pending
\nthe growth of a definite electorate in the country which can take over the function of electing the President.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tThe suggestions we put forward therefore are that the President should be elected by a bare majority of the Reception
\nCommittee or, failing a clear majority in favour of one name over all others combined, by the All-India Congress Committee; that
\nthe President take his seat the moment the Congress sits, before the Chairman of the Reception Committee begins his address
\nof welcome; that the address of the President after delivery be open to formal discussion, in other words, that the Congress be
\nasked to accept the address and that the right of amendment be permitted; that the President be governed by definite rules of
\n   
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tprocedure, and that his decision be subject to an appeal to the
\nwhole House. <\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tThe Utility of Ideals
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tWe notice that a correspondent of the Amrita Bazar Patrika<\/i>, finding himself out of his depth at the Federation Ground Meeting, rather plaintively asks Bipin Babu to come down from the heights of philosophy and talk to the people of Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education. The correspondent seems to us at fault as to the bearings of the present situation. If Bipin Chandra
\nwere an ordinary political leader and the present time an ordinary political epoch, his complaint would have been justified.
\nBut we are in the first stages of a great revolution having its root in ideas, a revolution at least as far-reaching in its consequences
\nas that which ushered in the nineteenth century, and of that revolution Bipin Chandra is a prophet. To ask such a man to confine himself to particular measures and questions of immediate political interest is as if one were to have asked Mazzini to forget
\nhis great teachings which revivified Italy, and confine himself to the questions of the day in Rome or Sardinia. Swadeshi, Boycott,
\nNational Education are merely aspects, phases, expressions of the great ideas which Bipin Chandra preaches. There is nothing
\nnew to be said about them, they have simply to be carried out. But the ideas which underlie them, the ideas of Indian resurgence, of the spiritualisation of the world through India, of the great awakening of the East and its ideals are of an infinite
\napplication like the ideas of fraternity, liberty, equality which were preached in the French Revolution until every man had
\nthem on his lips and in his heart. The prophet of the movement must repeat these ideas and popularise
\n\tthem until they are on the lips and in the heart of every man, so that they
\n\tmay act with the same dynamical force as the ideas of the eighteenth century
\n\tacted in France. To say that such teachings are too visionary for the
\n\taverage Indian mind is to forget that this is the country of Vedanta where
\n\tthe most ignorant have some idea of abstract 
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\ttruths which the European mind is too weak to cope with. If the
\nmovement is to be vitalised, it will not be by preoccupation with details but by the execution of details in the light of the living
\ntruths for which they merely seek to provide suitable conditions of fulfilment.
\n  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1001<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t
\n\tSpeech at Panti’s Math <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\tAurobindo Ghose proposed the second resolution, which was to
\nexpress sympathy for Chidambaram Pillai and other leaders of the Tinnevelly riot at Madras and thanking them for the bravery
\nthey have shown in defending the cause of Swadeshi. He hinted at the oppression of the European merchants backed by the
\nbureaucracy in putting down the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, which they could not do by any lawful means. He
\nended by saying that there is no longer time for speaking or writing for the Motherland, but now is the time when the brain
\nis to be prepared for devising plans, the body for working hard and the hand for fighting out the country’s cause.
\n\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tDelivered at Panti’s Math, Calcutta, on 3 April 1908. Noted down by a police agent<\/font><\/i>
\nand submitted as evidence in the Alipore Bomb Case (1908
\n\u00ad 09).<\/i>
\n    <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1002<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 3rd, 1908 }   The Question of the President   The union of the two parties in the Congress is…<\/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-2856","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\/2856","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=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}