{"id":2907,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2907"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:44:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:30","slug":"63-bande-mataram-26-4-07-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\/63-bande-mataram-26-4-07-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-63_Bande Mataram 26-4-07.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n\t
\n\t{
\n\tCALCUTTA, April 26th, 1907 }
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n
\nGraduated Boycott
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe opponents of the new spirit have discovered that boycott is an illusion. An entire and sweeping boycott, they say, is a
\nmoral and physical impossibility; and their infallible economic authority, Mr. Gokhale, has found out that a graduated boycott
\nis an economic impossibility. They point to the failure of the thorough-going boycott in Bengal as a proof of the first assertion; the second, they think, requires no proof, for how can what Mr. Gokhale has said be wrong? This assertion of the impossibility of a graduated boycott is an answer to the reasoning by which Mr. Tilak has supported the movement in Maharashtra.
\nIn the first days of the movement Mr. Tilak published a series of vigorous and thoughtful articles in the
\nKesari <\/i>on boycott
\nas a political Yoga. He advocated the entire exclusion of British goods, the preference of Swadeshi goods at a sacrifice when they
\nwere attainable, and, when unattainable, the preference of any foreign goods not produced in the British Empire. To the argument that this programme was not immediately practicable in its completeness, he replied that as in Yoga, so in the boycott, “even
\na little of this dharma <\/i>saves us from a mighty peril”. The mighty peril is the entire starvation of the country by foreign exploiters
\nand its complete and hopeless dependence on aliens for almost all articles of common use. Even a slight immediate diminution
\nof this dependence would be a great national gain and could by degrees be extended until the full boycott policy became an
\naccomplished fact. Mr. Tilak, with his shrewd practical insight, was able to see clearly that immediate and complete success of
\na thorough-going boycott was not possible in India but that a gradually efficacious boycott would naturally result from a
\n   
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\n <\/p>\n

\n\t
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\n

\n\tthorough-going boycott campaign. What Mr. Tilak foresaw, is
\nprecisely what is happening. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe entire exclusion of British-made goods is the political
\naspect of the Boycott with which we do not deal in this article. Is it a fact that as an economic weapon a graduated boycott
\nis impossible? Boycott may be graduated in several ways. First, by the gradual growth of the idea of excluding foreign goods
\na steadily increasing check may be put on the import of particular foreign articles and a corresponding impulse given to the
\nuse of the same articles produced in India. A Government by imposing a gradually increasing duty on an import in successive
\ntariffs, may kill it by degrees instead of immediately imposing a prohibitive rate; the growth of the boycott sentiment may
\nautomatically exercise the same kind of increasing check. The growth of the sentiment will help on the production of the indigenous article and the increased production of the indigenous article will help on the growth of the sentiment. Thus mutually
\nstimulated, Swadeshi and boycott will advance with equal and ever more rapid steps, until the shrinkage of the foreign import
\nreaches the point where it is no longer profitable to import it. The process can only be checked by insufficiency of capital
\nin the country available or willing to invest itself in Swadeshi manufacture. But the growth of the boycott sentiment will of
\nitself encourage and is encouraging capital to invest in this direction; for so much boycott means so much
\nsure market <\/i>for
\nthe Swadeshi article and therefore an increase of capital willing to invest in Swadeshi manufacture. The increased production of
\nthe Swadeshi article in its turn means more money in the hands of the mercantile class and of investors in Swadeshi Companies
\nand therefore more capital available <\/i>for investment in Swadeshi manufacture. We fail to see how in this sense an automatically
\ngraduated boycott is impossible; on the contrary, it seems to us economically inevitable, provided only the boycott sentiment is
\nincreasingly embraced by the people.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tBoycott may be graduated in another way. When the boycott was declared in Bengal, it was declared specially against cloth, sugar and salt and only generally against other articles.
\n   
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\n

\n\tIt is therefore the imports of English piece-goods, Liverpool salt
\nand, though only to a slight extent, of foreign sugar into Bengal which have suffered. When this specific boycott has been proved
\neffective, it may be extended to other articles. Thus the boycott may be graduated not only in its incidence on particular articles,
\nbut in its extent and range. The graduation of a specific boycott may be partly artificial and partly automatic. It is artificial when
\nthe leaders of the people preach an economic jehad <\/i>against particular foreign goods and the people accept their decision. But
\nthis artificial boycott can only succeed when there is already an incipient industry in the corresponding Swadeshi article or
\nsome existing means of supply however partial, which may be stimulated or extended by the boycott. Liverpool salt has been
\naffected because `Karkach’ is available; British piece-goods have been affected because there was already a mill industry and a
\nhandloom industry which have been enormously stimulated by the boycott, as is shown by the wholesale return of the weaver
\nclass to their trade in Bengal and by the increase in the number of weaving mills and the splendid dividends which the existing
\nconcerns are paying. On the other hand the campaign against foreign sugar has not been successful because the proper substitute is not available. Yarns have not been affected because the spinning industry in India is a negligible quantity while the
\ndemand for yarn has enormously increased. In time a jehad<\/i> against foreign yarn will become feasible. But the specific boycott
\nmay also be automatic when the general sentiment of boycott attacks a particular article for which a substitute exists in the
\ncountry. To take a small instance, the market for steel trunks sent ready-manufactured from England is decreasing to such an
\nextent that failures of dealers in steel trunks are beginning to be recorded. Here again, we fail to see the impossibility of a
\ngraduated boycott. It is quite true that in the very beginning the increase of the stimulated Swadeshi article may not be sufficient
\nto blot out entirely the increase in the import, and the superficial and hasty may proclaim the failure of the boycott. But by
\nthe growth of the boycott the increase of the Swadeshi article must progressively swell and the increase of the import must
\n   
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\n

\n\tprogressively shrink until it is turned into an actual decrease.
\nThe fact that the success of the boycott is progressive and not miraculous, need not frighten or disappoint any sensible and
\ndetermined boycotter. It is true also that the growth of Swadeshi may actually stimulate for a time the import of particular foreign articles, such as machinery or yarns; but the stimulation is temporary and, as soon as part of our growing capital is free
\nand willing to invest in new fields, the graduated boycott will naturally extend itself in these directions sooner than in others.
\nThe theory therefore that a graduated boycott is impossible, seems to us to have no foundation either of facts or of reasoning.
\nWhatever the fate of its use as a political weapon, its success as an economical weapon depends solely on the zeal with which
\nit is preached and the readiness with which it is received by the people.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tInstinctive Loyalty <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Indian Mirror <\/i>reflects nothing but its own self when it says:\u2014 “Nobody in the country, howsoever absorbed in the dreams of an Indian autonomy, wishes to see the British connection
\nsevered and the country left to her fate. This instinctive clinging to some sort of relation with England, in other words, this
\nloyalty to the Crown of England, affords the best ground for optimism about a material improvement in the attitude of the
\nIndian peoples towards their British rulers.” There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the
\nMirror<\/i>‘s
\nphilosophy. That a country cannot prosper in the true sense of the term unless it be left to its own fate is a truism with all
\n\tright-thinking men. The publicists of the Indian Mirror <\/i>type have a comfortable gospel of their own revealed to them by a study of
\ntheir own needs rather than those of the country. No political thinker has as yet sought to controvert the truth that liberty is
\nthe essential condition of all-round progress in a nation. Prison life after some time comes to be liked as a matter of habit,\u2014 the jailor comes to be respected out of fear of the rod. But to   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tdescribe such diseased and abnormal sentiments as normal and
\ninstinctive is to mistake a slave for a man. It is highly prejudicial to our returning sense of self-respect that papers like the
\nIndian<\/i>
\nMirror <\/i>should still be able to preach the gospel of servility.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tNationalism, Not Extremism
\n<\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tIt is a curious fact that even after so many months of sustained propaganda and the most clear and definite statements of the
\nnew politics, there should still be so much confusion as to the attitude of the Nationalist party and the elementary issues they
\nhave raised. This confusion is to some extent due to wilful distortion and deliberate evasion of the true issues. The
\n\tultra-loyalist publicists especially, Indian or Anglo-Indian, are obliged to ignore the true position of the party, misnamed Extremists,
\nbecause they are unable to meet its trenchant and irresistible logic and commonsense. But with the great majority of Indian
\npoliticians the misapprehension is genuine. The political teaching of the new school is so novel and disturbing to their settled
\npolitical ideas,\u2014 or rather the conventional, abstract, second-hand formulas which take the place of ideas\u2014 that they cannot
\neven grasp its true nature and turn from it with repugnance before they have given themselves time to understand it. The
\nmost obstinate of these misapprehensions is the idea that the new politics is a counsel of despair, a mad revolutionary fury
\ninduced by Curzonian reaction. We can afford to pass over this misapprehension with contempt, when it is put forward by foolish, prejudiced or conceited critics who are merely trying to bring odium on the movement or to express their enlightened superiority over younger politicians. But when a fair and scrupulous opponent honestly trying to understand the Nationalist position
\nfalls into the same error, we are bound to meet it and once more clear our position beyond misapprehension or doubt.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tSome friends of ours have thought that we were unnecessarily harsh and even unjust in our criticism of Dr. Rash Behari
\nGhose’s speech in the Supreme Legislative Council. They urge   
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tthat Dr. Ghose at least presented the Extremist position with
\ngreat energy, clearness, courage, and did it with the greater effect as one who himself stood outside our party. We have every
\nrespect for Dr. Rash Behari Ghose personally; he is perhaps the foremost jurist in India, a scholar and master of the English
\ntongue, a mine of literature in possession of a style of his own, too rich and scholarly to be turned to such everyday uses as a
\nLegislative Council speech. But eminence in law and literature do not necessarily bring with them a grasp of politics. Dr. Ghose has
\nonly recently turned his attention to this field and has not been long enough in touch with the actualities of politics to get a real
\ngrasp of them. It is therefore natural that he should be misled by names instead of penetrating beyond names to the true aspects of
\ncurrent politics. The ordinary nicknames of Moderate and Extremist do not properly describe the parties which they are used
\nto label; and they are largely responsible for much confusion of ideas as to the real differences between the two schools. Dr.
\nGhose evidently labours, like many others, under the obsession of the word Extremist. He imagines that the essential difference
\nbetween the parties is a difference in attitude and in the intensity of feeling. The Extremists, in his view, are men embittered by
\noppression which makes even wise men mad; full of passionate repining at their “more than Egyptian bondage”, exasperated
\nby bureaucratic reaction, despairing of redress at the hands of the British Government or the British nation, they are advocating an extreme attitude and extreme methods in a spirit of desperate impatience. The Extremist propaganda is, therefore,
\na protest against misgovernment and a movement of despair driving towards revolt. We are unable to accept this statement
\nof the Nationalist position. On the contrary it so successfully represents the new politics to be what they are not, that we
\nchoose it as a starting-point for our explanation of what they are. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe new movement is not primarily a protest against bad
\nGovernment,\u2014 it is a protest against the continuance of British control; whether that control is used well or ill, justly or unjustly,
\nis a minor and unessential consideration. It is not born of a disappointed expectation of admission to British citizenship,  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\tit is born of a conviction that the time has come when India can,
\nshould and will become a great, free and united nation. It is not a negative current of destruction, but a positive, constructive
\nimpulse towards the making of modern India. It is not a cry of revolt and despair, but a gospel of national faith and hope. Its
\ntrue description is not Extremism, but Democratic Nationalism.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tThese are the real issues. There are at present not two parties in India, but three,\u2014 the Loyalists, the Moderates and the Nationalists. The Loyalists would be satisfied with good government by British rulers and a limited share in the administration; the Moderates desire self-government within the British Empire,
\nbut are willing to wait for it indefinitely; the Nationalists would be satisfied with nothing less than independence whether within
\nthe Empire, if that be possible, or outside it; they believe that the nation cannot and ought not to wait but must bestir itself immediately, if it is not to perish as a nation. The Loyalists believe that Indians have not the capacities and qualities necessary for
\nfreedom and even if they succeed in developing the necessary fitness, they would do better for themselves and mankind by
\nremaining as a province of the British Empire; any attempt at freedom will, they think, be a revolt against Providence and can
\nbring nothing but disaster on the country. The Loyalist view is that India cannot, should not and will not be a free, great
\nand united nation. The Moderates believe the nation to be too weak and disunited to aim at freedom; they would welcome
\nindependence if it came, but they are not convinced that we have or shall have in the measurable future the means or strength to
\nwin it or keep it if won. They therefore put forward Colonial Self-Government as their aim and are unwilling to attempt any
\nmethods which presuppose strength and cohesion in the nation. The Moderate view is that India may eventually be united,
\n\tself-governing within limits and prosperous, but not free and great. The Nationalists hold that Indians are as capable of freedom
\nas any subject nation can be and their defects are the result of servitude and can only be removed by the struggle for freedom;
\nthat they have the strength, and, if they get the will, can create the means to win independence. They hold that the choice is
\n    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
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\n

\n\tnot between autonomy and provincial Home Rule or between
\nfreedom and dependence, but between freedom and national decay and death. They hold, finally, that the past history of
\nour country and the present circumstances are of such a kind that the great unifying tendencies hitherto baffled by insuperable
\nobstacles have at last found the right conditions for success. They believe that the fated hour for Indian unification and freedom
\nhas arrived. In brief they are convinced that India should strive to be free, that she can be free and that she will, by the impulse
\nof her past and present, be inevitably driven to the attempt and the attainment of national self-realisation. The Nationalist creed
\nis a gospel of faith and hope.    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 356<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 26th, 1907 }   Graduated Boycott   The opponents of the new spirit have discovered that boycott is an illusion….<\/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-2907","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\/2907","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=2907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}