{"id":288,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=288"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:07","slug":"051-look-on-this-picture-then-on-that-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/01-bande-mataram-volume-01\/051-look-on-this-picture-then-on-that-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-051_Look on this Picture, then on That.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nLook on this Picture, then on That<\/span><\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n
\n                                    
\nB<\/b><\/font>RITAIN<\/font><\/b>, <\/b>
\n<\/span>the
\nbenevolent, Britain, the mother of Parliaments, Britain, the champion of
\nliberty, Britain,
\nthe deliverer of the slave, —<\/span> such was the
\nsanctified and legendary
\nfigure which we have been trained to keep before our eyes from the earliest
\nyears of our childhood. Our minds imbued through and through with the colours of
\nthat legend, we cherished a faith in the justice and benevolence of Britain
\nmore profound, more implicit, more a very part of our beings than the faith of
\nthe Christian in Christ or of the Mahomedan in his Prophet. Officials might be
\noppressive, Viceroys and Lieutenant-Governors reactionary, the Secretary of
\nState obdurate, Parliament indifferent, the British public careless, but our
\nfaith was not to be shaken. If Anglo-India was unkind, we wooed the British
\npeople in India itself. If the British people failed us, we said that it was
\nbecause the Conservatives were in power. If a Liberal Secretary showed himself
\nno less obdurate, we set it down to his personal failings and confidently
\nawaited justice from a Liberal Government in which he should have no part. If
\nthe most Radical of Radical Secretaries condemned us to age-long subjection to a
\npaternal and absolute bureaucracy, we whispered to the people, ‘Wait, wait,
\nBritain, the true Britain, the generous, the benevolent, the lover, the giver of
\nfreedom, is only sleeping; she shall awake again and we shall see her angelic
\nand transfigured beauty’. Where precisely was this Britain we believed in, no
\nman could say, but we would not give up our faith. Credo quia impossible<\/i>;
\n–<\/i>–
\nI believe because it is impossible, had become our political creed. Other
\ncountries might be selfish, violent, greedy, tyrannical, unjust; in other
\ncountries politics might be a continual readjustment of conflicting interests and clashing strengths. But Britain, the Britain of
\nour dreams, was guided only by the light of truth and justice and reason; high
\nideals, noble impulses, liberal instincts, these were the sole guides of her
\npolitical actions, — by the lustre of these<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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\n

bright moral
\nfires she guided her mighty steps through an admiring and worshipping world.
\nThat was the dream; and so deeply had it lodged in our imaginations that not
\nonly the professed Loyalists, the men of moderation, but even the leading
\nNationalists, those branded as Extremists, could not altogether shake off its
\ninfluence. Only recently Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal at Rajamundry told his
\nhearers that those who thought the British Government would crush us if we
\ntried by passive resistance to make administration impossible, held too low an
\nopinion of British character and British civilisation. We fancy Srijut Bepin
\nChandra watching from the south the welter of official anarchy in East Bengal
\nand the Punjab must have modified to a certain extent his trust in the
\nbearing-power of British high-mindedness. We ourselves, though we had our own
\nviews about British character and civilisation, have allowed ourselves to
\nspeculate whether it was not just possible that the British bureaucracy might be
\nsufficiently tender of their reputation to avoid extreme, violent and
\narbitrary measures.
\n     That was the dream. The reality to which we awake is Rawalpindi and Jamalpur.
\nThe events in the Punjab are an instructive lesson in the nature of bureaucratic
\nrule. The Punjab has, since the Mutiny, been a quiet, loyal and patient
\nprovince; whatever burdens have been laid on it, its people have borne
\nwithout complaint; whatever oppression might go on, it gave rise to no such
\nclamour and agitation as the least arbitrary act would be met with in Bengal.
\nHow have the bureaucracy treated this loyal and quiet people? What fruit have
\nthey reaped from their loyalty, the men who saved the British Empire in 1857?
\nIntolerable burdens, insolent treatment, rude oppression. The Anglo-Indian cry
\nis that disloyal Bengal has infected loyal Punjab with the virus of sedition.
\nUndoubtedly, the new spirit which has gone out like a mighty fire from Bengal
\nlighting up the whole of India, has found its most favourable ground in the
\nPunjab; but a fire does not burn without fuel, and where there is the most
\nrevolutionary spirit, there, we can always be sure, has been the most
\noppression. The water tax, the land laws, the Colonisation Act legalising the
\noppressions and illegalities under which the Punjab landholders and peasantry
\nhave groaned, had generated<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n


\nthe feeling of an intolerable burden, and when a few fearless men brought to the
\npeople the message of self-help, the good tidings that in their own hands lay
\ntheir own salvation, the men of the Punjab found again their ancient spirit and
\ndetermined to stand upright in the strength of their manhood. They committed no
\nact of violence, they broke no law. They confined themselves to sending in a
\nstatement of their grievances to the Government and passively abstaining from
\nthe use of the Canal water so that the bureaucracy might not benefit by an
\niniquitous tax. The rulers of India know well that if passive resistance is
\npermitted, the artificial fabric of bureaucratic despotism will fall down like
\nthe walls of Jericho before mere sound, with the mere breath of a people’s
\nrevolution. To save the situation, they resorted to the usual device of stifling
\nthe voice of the people into silence. On a frivolous pretext they struck at the Punjabee<\/i>.
\n<\/i>The only result was that the calm resolution of the people received its
\nfirst tinge of fierce indignation. Then the bureaucracy hurriedly resolved to
\nlop off the tall heads — the policy of the tyrant Tarquin which is always the
\nresort of men without judgment or statesmanship. Lala Hansraj, one of the most
\nrevered and beloved of the Punjab leaders, a man grown gray in the quiet and
\nselfless service of his country, Ajit Singh, the nationalist orator, and other
\nmen of repute and leading were publicly threatened with prosecution and
\nimprisonment as criminals and an enquiry begun with great pomp and circumstance.
\nThen followed a phenomenon unprecedented, we think, in recent Indian history.
\nFor the first time the man in the workshop and the man in the street have risen
\nin revolt for purely political reasons in anger at an attack on purely political
\nleaders. The distinction, which Anglo-India has striven to draw between the ‘Babu
\nclass’ and the people, has in the Punjab ceased to exist. It was probably the
\npanic at this alarming phenomenon which hurried the Punjab Government into an
\nextraordinary coup d<\/i>‘\u00e9tat, <\/i>also unprecedented in recent Indian history.
\nThe result is that we have a strange companion picture to that dream of a
\nbenevolent and angelic Britain, — a city of unarmed men terrorised by the
\nmilitary, the leaders of the people hurried from their daily avocations to
\nprison, siege-guns pointed at the town, police rifles ready to fire on any group
\nof five men or more to be seen<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

\n<\/p>\n

in the streets, bail refused to respectable pleaders and barristers from sheer
\nterror of their influence. Look on this picture, then on that!
\n     And what next? It is too early to say. This much only is certain that a new
\nstage begins in the struggle between democracy and bureaucracy, a new chapter
\nopens in the history of the progress of Indian Nationalism.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande Mataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i>May 6, 1907<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Page-326<\/p>\n

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

Look on this Picture, then on That                                        BRITAIN, the benevolent, Britain, the mother of Parliaments, Britain, the champion of liberty, Britain, the deliverer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","wpcat-8-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","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=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}