{"id":2881,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2881"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:44:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:21","slug":"230-bande-mataram-30-4-08-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\/230-bande-mataram-30-4-08-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-230_Bande Mataram 30-4-08.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 30th, 1908 } <\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nLeaders and a Conscience
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nWe find it difficult not to sympathise with one passage at least on Mr. Khare’s letter to the Dhulia Reception Committee. “Moreover,” he says, “I don’t know who the leaders are. I for instance cannot specify any such, nor can I give my conscience into the
\nkeeping of anyone.” We cannot follow Mr. Khare in his ultra-judicial ignorance of the personality of the party leaders, and it
\nis certainly hard on Sir Pherozshah and Mr. Gokhale that a new recruit should so bluntly express his inability to specify them
\nas leaders. But the concluding sentiment is unexceptionable and we think the Dhulia Reception Committee made a mistake in
\ncalling on the leaders to unite instead of referring, as the Pabna Conference did, to a definite authority. The time has gone by
\nwhen a few leaders could play a quiet game among themselves with the destinies of the country. Mr. Khare was once taken for
\na Nationalist of a sort, and we are glad that he preserves in his new camp so much at least of Nationalist robustness as to keep
\npossession of his own conscience. We Nationalists too, like Mr. Khare, decline to give our conscience into the keeping of anyone,
\nbe it a leader, or a knot of leaders, or the whole Congress itself in session assembled. For this precise reason we refuse to sign
\nor verbally swear to any creed imposed on us from outside. An Ostrich in Colootola
\nSrijut Surendranath’s organ is very anxious for union, we wish it were equally
\npassionate for truth. The country has begun to speak out about the Convention
\nand at Dhulia and Chittagong  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\n references have been made to the Convention and opinions expressed for an united Congress on the old lines which are of the utmost significance. The
\nBengalee <\/i>seems to have received
\nprecisely the same telegram as we have received from Dhulia and it marks it as sent by its own correspondent. Yet the merciless
\nmanner in which it has dealt with the telegram of its own correspondent is amusing and instructive. The speech of the Dhulia
\nPresident breaks off abruptly in our contemporary’s telegram with a blessing on the National Schools and all the rest of the
\nweighty and trenchant remarks about the Convention and the Continuation Committee are boycotted. But is anything gained
\nby burking facts or burying one’s head in the sand in this ostrich fashion? It is an old Moderate habit but one which does not
\nimprove with age.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nBy the Way <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nColootola Conjures <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThere are some who believe that passion and conviction are the
\nsign of want of culture. If the language of poetry is used by a political writer, it shows lack of balance. The use of imagination, the presence of inspiration, the full expression of feeling are violent and indecorous. Whatever the depth of emotion felt,
\nwhatever the inspiring character of the vision seen, the emotion must be banished, the inspiration killed, otherwise wisdom
\ntakes flight. If our politics had been left to these gentlemen, it would have remained the decorous pastime of lawyers and sober
\neducationists, a sort of half-forensic, half-academic debate with the bureaucracy on the merits of its rule. Sobriety, moderation,
\nwisdom would have been satisfied and the nation killed by a surfeit of gentlemanly decorum. Unluckily for the
\nBengalee <\/i>and
\nits ilk, the days of “modest and sober and mostly unreadable prose”, of Colootola “common sense”, of the “healthy mind”
\nwhich was too healthy to think and too sound to be sincere,   
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1079<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tare gone. The great passions which move mankind, the rude
\nforces which shake the world, the majestic visions which bring life to dead nations have once more become part of our national
\nexistence, and in vain Colootola waves its conjuring rod of bad logic, inconsistent sentiment and sober imbecility to quell the
\nphantasms. They are not to be quelled. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tCommon Sense and Revolutions
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bengalee <\/i>is scornful of our prophetic visions. The man of common sense who cannot see what lies before his nose, naturally considers the man who can see a prophet or a visionary. Before the French Revolution many travellers visited France, but
\nonly one or two were able to see that there existed in the quiet of that country all the conditions that have in history preceded
\ngreat revolutions. The men who perceived it were not prophets but merely observers, gifted with sympathy and insight. They
\nwere, in fact, men of uncommon <\/i>sense. The Bengalee <\/i>and its like are unable to conceive that anything great can happen in India.
\nFormerly it believed that we should go on for several centuries prosing about our political grievances in an ineffective debating
\nsociety called the National Congress. Even now it believes that the country will remain obedient to the call of what it terms
\nsobriety, and that fate will wait upon the prudence and fears of a few respectable and wealthy gentlemen in Calcutta and
\nBombay. Its idea of our future is that we should become a big outlying parish of England, and of the means, that we should
\npeddle for ever with the details of a bureaucratic administration.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPace and Solidarity
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\tIt is impossible for such minds,\u2014 if minds they can be called,\u2014 to perceive that what is happening is the first stage of a revolution
\nor that the condition of keeping the wilder forces of revolution in harness was the solidarity of the movement. Once that solidarity
\nhas been broken, it is the wildest and most rapid forces which will set the pace; there will be no mean resultant of all the forces
\n   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tproducing a swift and yet ordered advance. The solidarity of
\nthe movement depends on the existence of an united Congress in which the Moderates and Nationalists should form the brake
\nand the motive energy respectively. But the united Congress has been suffocated with a creed at Allahabad, and with it the solidarity of the movement and the check on the fiercer forces which have recently given evidences of their existence, will disappear.
\nThat means if not “the approaching end of the world”, at least the end of that state of the Indian world in which Surendranaths
\ncan perorate, Mehtas brew mischief and Colootola daily enjoy its robust digestion of its own sober and modest prose.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t*
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bengalee <\/i>pretends that the Congress, even after Allahabad,
\nis only collapsed and not dead. Its recipe for reviving the patient is that Dr. Ghose should resummon the adjourned Congress.
\nGreat Rash Behari has only to send forth his almighty voice, accompanied by a telling literary joke and an appropriate quotation, has only to say with his inimitable gesture and facial expression, “Let there be an united Congress”, and, behold,
\nan united Congress! And Mr. Khare’s resolution calling a new Congress does not preclude, it seems, Dr. Ghose from resummoning the adjourned Congress! This is the finished product of Colootola’s common sense and the healthy mind that flourishes
\nonly at Barrackpur.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t*
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe Voice of Colootola has been lashed into a rage by our article on the Wheat and the Chaff. Unable to wound itself, it engages a
\ncorrespondent to do the work for it. The exposure of Moderate policy which that article made has irritated this gentleman into
\nan outburst of spleen too bitter to be contained, and he foams at the mouth in his fury. “Why should the Nationalists arrogate
\nthe right to instruct their elders? What have they done? Who are they? We are the leaders of the people and they are only
\nself-styled leaders. What right have they to be an independent   
\n\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1081<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tparty? They are cowards who dare not act except behind the
\nveil of the Moderates, and are angry because that veil is being withdrawn. Their leaders are ungrateful scoundrels to abuse the
\nparty of the barristers who saved them from jail.” So the friend of Colootola.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t*
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\tA good deal of this epic rage would have been saved if the
\nirate correspondent had taken the trouble to understand the article before writing about it. What we have written about
\nthe Moderates, we have written, and we do not withdraw one syllable of it. Their action at Allahabad was a betrayal of the
\ncountry dictated by fear and self-interest. Among those who took part in it, there are prominent men who no more believe in
\nColonial self-government for India than they believe in the man in the moon. The part they played is especially reprehensible.
\nOthers are anxious to put themselves right with the bureaucratic government and hardly take the trouble to conceal their motives.
\nThe few who were sincere both in their profession of the creed and in their belief that it is necessary for the country, are too
\ninsignificant to be reckoned.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t*
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat the Bengalee<\/i>‘s friend in need has not understood is the latter part of the article in which we pointed out that the amateur
\nkind of Nationalism which has hitherto been the order of the day will no longer serve. The real workers are yet to come.
\nThis part of the homily in which, by the way, the reference to the barristers occurred was addressed to our own party and if
\nanyone has any right to take umbrage at it, it is the Nationalists, barristers or others, and not pseudo-Nationalists like our
\nColootola critic. The steel for the Mother’s sword of which we spoke is not the present Nationalist party as he imagines, but the
\nrising generation of young men. They are the wheat which will remain. Of the present Nationalist party much will be winnowed
\naway in the fiercer tests that are coming and rejected as chaff,   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tPage \u2013
\n\t1082<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tonly a small residue remaining. We do not know whether it was
\nwant of patience or want of English which prevented our critic from seeing the drift of the article\u2014 probably a combination
\nof these lamentable wants\u2014 but if he will take the trouble to reread it with the help of a tutor, he may even yet understand.
\nWe did not condemn pleading in Swadeshi cases or taking shares in Swadeshi concerns any more than we condemned subscribing
\nto National School funds. We said that these were safe and petty forms of patriotism and those who could not go beyond them
\nwere not the stuff of which the future will be built. And that is, after all, only a truism. Our whole lives are what is demanded
\nof us and not a bit of our leisure or a mite from our purse.    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1083<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 30th, 1908 }   Leaders and a Conscience   We find it difficult not to sympathise with one passage at…<\/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-2881","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\/2881","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=2881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}