{"id":2917,"date":"2013-07-13T01:44:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2917"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:44:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:44:35","slug":"232-the-bourgeois-and-the-samurai-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\/232-the-bourgeois-and-the-samurai-vol-06-07-bande-mataram","title":{"rendered":"-232_The Bourgeois and the Samurai.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPart
\n\tSeven <\/font><\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tWritings from Manuscripts <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\t1907 \u00ad 1908 <\/b>
\n \t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe pieces in this part were written by Sri Aurobindo during
\nthe period of publication of the Bande Mataram <\/i>, but were not published by him in the
\nBande Mataram <\/i>or anywhere else. They
\nare reproduced here from his manuscripts. The first two pieces consist of separate passages that were never linked together to
\nmake a finished article.  
\n  <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nThe Bourgeois and the Samurai <\/font> <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nTwo oriental nations have come powerfully under the influence
\nof Western ideas and felt the impact of European civilization during the nineteenth century, India and Japan. The results have
\nbeen very different. The smaller nation has become one of the mightiest Powers in the modern world, the larger in spite of
\nfar greater potential strength, a more original culture, a more ancient and splendid past and a far higher mission in the world,
\nremains a weak, distracted, subject & famine-stricken people politically, economically, morally & intellectually dependent on
\nthe foreigner and unable to realise its great possibilities. It is commonly said that this is because Japan has assimilated Western Science and organization and even in many respects excelled its teachers; India has failed in this all-important task of assimilation. If we go a step farther back and insist on asking why this is so, we shall be told it is because Japan has “reformed” herself
\nand got rid of ideas & institutions unsuited to modern times; while India clings obstinately to so much that is outworn and
\neffete. Even if we waive aside the question whether the old Indian ideals are unfit to survive or whether all our institutions are
\nreally bad in themselves or unadaptable to modern conditions, still the explanation itself has to be explained. Why has Japan
\nso admirably transformed herself? why has the attempt at transformation in India been a failure? The solution of problems of
\nthis kind has to be sought not in abstractions, not in machinery, but in men. It is the spirit in man which moulds his fate; it is the
\nspirit of a nation which determines its history
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nDescribe the type of human character which prevails in a nation
\nduring a given period of its life under given conditions, and it is possible to predict in outline what the general history of
\n   
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1091<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe nation must be during that period. In Japan the dominant
\nJapanese type had been moulded by the shaping processes of an admirable culture and when the Western impact came, Japan remained faithful to her ancient spirit; she merely took over certain forms of European social & political organization necessary to
\ncomplete her culture under modern conditions and poured into these forms the old potent dynamic spirit of Japan, the spirit of
\nthe Samurai. It is the Samurai type which has been dominant in that country during the nineteenth century. In India the mass
\nof the nation has remained dormant; European culture has had upon it a powerful disintegrating and destructive influence, but
\nhas been powerless to reconstruct or revivify. But in the upper strata a new type has been evolved to serve the necessities and
\ninterests of the foreign rulers, a type which is not Indian, but foreign\u2014 and in almost all our social, political, educational,
\nliterary & religious activities the spirit of this new & foreign graft has predominated & determined the extent & quality of
\nour progress. This type is the bourgeois. In India, the bourgeois, in Japan, the Samurai; in this single difference is comprised
\nthe whole contrasted histories of the two nations during the nineteenth century.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nWhat is the bourgeois? For the word is unknown in India, though the thing is so prominent. The bourgeois is the average contented middle class citizen who is in all countries much the same in his fundamental character & habits of thought,
\nin spite of pronounced racial differences in temperament & self-expression. He is a man of facile sentiments and
\nskin-deep
\npersonality; generally “enlightened” but not inconveniently illuminated. In love with his life, his ease and above all things
\nhis comforts, he prescribes the secure maintenance of these precious possessions as the first indispensable condition of all
\naction in politics and society; whatever tends to disturb or destroy them, he condemns as foolish, harebrained, dangerous or
\nfanatical, according to the degree of its intensity and is ready to repress by any means in his power. In the conduct of public
\n    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
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\n

\nmovements he has an exaggerated worship for external order,
\nmoderation and decorum and hates over-earnestness and overstrenuousness. Not that he objects to plenty of mild & innocuous
\nexcitement; but it must be innocuous and calculated not to have a disturbing effect on the things he most cherishes. He has ideals
\nand likes to talk of justice, liberty, reform, enlightenment and all similar abstractions; he likes too to see them reigning and
\nprogressing around him decorously and with their proper limitations. He wishes to have them maintained, if they already exist,
\nbut in moderation and with moderation; if they do not exist, the craving for them should be, in his opinion, a lively but still
\nwell-regulated fire, not permitted to interfere with the safety, comfort and decorum of life,\u2014 the means adopted towards acquiring
\nthem should be also moderate and decorous and as far as may be safe and comfortable. An occasional sacrifice of money, leisure
\nand other precious things for their sake, he is always ready to meet; he has a keen zest for the reputation such sacrifices
\nbring him and still more for the comfortable sense of personal righteousness which they foster. The bourgeois is the man of
\ngood sense and enlightenment, the man of moderation, the man of peace and orderliness, the man in every way “respectable”,
\nwho is the mainstay of all well-ordered societies. As a private man he is respectable; that is to say, his character is generally
\ngood, and when his character is not, his reputation is; he is all decorous in his virtues, decent in the indulgence of his vices or
\nat least in their concealment, often absolutely honest, almost always as honest as an enlightened self-interest will permit. His
\npurse is well filled or at any rate not indecently empty; he is a good earner, a conscientious worker, a thoroughly safe &
\nreliable citizen.1<\/font><\/sup> But this admirable creature has his defects and limitations. For great adventures, tremendous enterprises, lofty
\nachievements, the storm and stress of mighty & eventful periods in national activity, he is unfit. These things are for the heroes, the
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1 The following sentence was written in the top margin of the manuscript. Its place of<\/i>
\ninsertion was not marked, but it presumably was meant to be inserted here<\/i>:
\n<\/font>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nOf course there are exceptions, instances of successful & respected blackguardism, but these are the small minority.
\n    <\/font>
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nmartyrs, the criminals, the enthusiasts, the degenerates, geniuses,
\nthe men of exaggerated virtue, exaggerated ability, exaggerated ideas. He enjoys the fruit of their work when it is done, but while
\nit is doing, he opposes and hinders more often than helps. For he looks on great ideals as dreams and on vehement enthusiasms
\nas harebrained folly; he distrusts everything new & disturbing, everything that has not been done before or is not sanctioned
\nby success & the accomplished fact; revolt is to him a madness & revolution a nightmare. Fiery self-annihilating enthusiasm,
\nnoble fanaticism, relentless & heroic pursuit of an object, the original brain that brings what is distant & ungrasped into
\nthe boundaries of reality, the dynamic Will and genius which makes the impossible possible; these things he understands as
\nmatters of history and honours them in the famous dead or in those who have succeeded; but in living & yet striving men
\nthey inspire him with distrust and repulsion. He will tell you that these things are not to be found in the present generation;
\nbut if confronted with the living originator, he will condemn him as a learned idiot; face to face with the living hero, he
\nwill decry him as a dangerous madman,\u2014 unless & until he sees on the head of either the crown of success & assured
\nreputation.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nHe values also the things of the mind in a leisurely comfortable way as adorning and setting off his enlightened ease and competence. A little art, a little poetry, a little religion, a little
\nscholarship, a little philosophy, all these are excellent ingredients in life, and give an air of decorous refinement to his surroundings. They must not be carried too far or interfere with the great object of life which is to earn money, clothe and feed one’s
\nfamily, educate one’s sons to the high pitch of the B.A. degree or the respectable eminence of the M.A., marry one’s daughters
\ndecently, rank high in service or the professions, stand well in the eye of general opinion and live & die decorously, creditably and
\nrespectably. Anything disturbing to these high duties, anything exaggerated, intense, unusual is not palatable to the bourgeois.
\nHe shrugs his shoulders over it and brushes it aside with the one   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\tPage \u2013 1094<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nword, “mad”, or eccentric.2<\/font><\/sup>
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n(Such is the bourgeois and it was the bourgeois of the mildest & most inefficient type who reigned in India in the nineteenth
\ncentury. It was the bourgeois which University education tended, perhaps sought to evolve; it was the bourgeois which the political
\nsocial conditions moulded and brought to the front. In India the bourgeois; in Japan the Samurai, that one enormous difference explains the difference in the histories of the two countries during the second half of the last century.)3
\n<\/font><\/sup>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt is undoubtedly this type which has dominated us in the nineteenth century. Of course the really great names, those that
\nwill live in history as creators & originators are men who went beyond this type; either they belonged to, but exceeded it or
\nthey departed from it. But the average, the determining type was the bourgeois. In Senate & Syndicate, in Legislative Council & District Board or Municipal Corporation, in Congress & Conference, in the services & professions, even in literature &
\nscholarship, even in religion he was everywhere with his well-regulated mind, his unambitious ideals, his snug little corner of
\nculture, his “education” and “enlightenment”, his comfortable patriotism, his comfortable enlightenment, his easy solution of
\nthe old problem how to serve both God & Mammon, yet offend neither, his self-satisfaction, his decorous honesty, his smug respectability. Society was made after his model, politics moulded in his image, education confined within his limits, literature &
\nreligion stamped with the seal of the bourgeois. The bourgeois as a distinct & well-evolved entity is an entirely modern product in India, he is the creation of British policy, English education, Western civilization. Ancient India, mediaeval India were not a favourable soil for his growth. The spirit of ancient India was aristocratic; its thought & life moulded
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n2 The following sentence was written in the top margin of the manuscript. Its place of<\/i>
\ninsertion was not marked<\/i>:
\n<\/font>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nSuch a type may give stability to a society; it cannot reform or revolutionize it. Such a type may make the politics of a nation safe, decorous and reputable. It cannot make
\nthat nation great or free. <\/font>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n3 Sri Aurobindo placed parenthesis marks on both sides of this paragraph after writing<\/i>
\nit. He seems to have intended to move it elsewhere. \u00ad Ed.<\/i>   
\n\t<\/font>
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\nin the cast of a high & proud nobility, an extreme & lofty
\nstrenuousness. The very best in thought, the very best in action, the very best in character, the very best in literature & art, the
\nvery best in religion and all the world well lost if only this very best might be attained, such was the spirit of ancient India. The
\nBrahmin who devoted himself to poverty & crushed down every desire in the wholehearted pursuit of knowledge & religious
\nself-discipline; the Kshatriya who, hurling his life joyously into the shock of chivalrous battle, held life, wife, children, possessions,
\nease, happiness as mere dust in the balance compared with honour & the Kshatriya dharma, the preservation of self-respect, the
\nprotection of the weak, the noble fulfilment of princely duty; the Vaishya, who toiling all his life to amass riches, poured them out
\nas soon as amassed in self-forgetting philanthropy holding himself the mere steward & not the possessor of his wealth; the Shudra who gave himself up loyally to humble service, faithfully devoting his life to his dharma, however low, in preference to
\nself-advancement & ambition; these were the social ideals of the age. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe imagination of the Indian tended as has been well said
\nto the grand & enormous in thought and morals. The great formative images of legend & literature to the likeness with
\nwhich his childhood was encouraged to develop & which his manhood most cherished were of an extreme & lofty type. He
\nsaw Harischundra give up all that life held precious & dear rather than that his lips should utter a lie or his plighted word
\nbe broken. He saw Prahlada buried under mountains, whelmed in the seas, tortured by the poison of a thousand venomous
\nserpents, yet calmly true to his faith. He saw Buddha give up his royal state, wealth, luxury, wife, child & parents so that
\nmankind might be saved. He saw Shivi hew the flesh from his own limbs to save one small dove from the pursuing falcon;
\nKarna tear his own body with a smile for the joy of making a gift; Duryodhan refuse to yield one inch of earth without noble
\nresistance & warlike struggle. He saw Sita face exile, hardship, privation & danger in the eagerness of wifely love & duty, Savitri
\nrescue by her devotion her husband back from the visible grip of death. These were the classical Indian types. These were the
\n   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

\nideals into the mould of which the minds of men & women were
\ntrained to grow. The sense-conquering thought of the philosopher, the magnificent achievements of the hero, the stupendous
\nrenunciations of the Sannyasin, [the] unbounded liberality of the man of wealth, everything was exaggeration, extreme, filled
\nwith an epic inspiration, a world-defying enthusiasm. The bourgeois though he existed in the rough of course, as in all civilized
\nsocieties he must exist, had no real chance of evolution; on such a height with so rare an atmosphere, he could not grow;
\nwhere such tempests of self-devotion blew habitually, his warm comfortable personality could not expand.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe conditions of mediaeval India suited him little better,\u2014 the continual clash of arms, the unceasing stir & splendour
\n& strenuousness of life, the fierceness of the struggle and the magnificence of the achievement, the ceaseless tearing down
\n& building up which resulted from Mahomedan irruption and the action & reaction of foreign & indigenous forces, formed
\nsurroundings too restless & too flamboyant. Life under the Moguls was splendid, rich & luxurious, but it was not safe
\n& comfortable. Magnificent possibilities were open to all men whatever their birth or station but magnificent abilities and an
\nunshaken nerve & courage were needed to grasp them or to keep what had been grasped. There was no demand for the stable &
\neasy virtues of the bourgeois. In the times of stress and anarchy which accompanied the disintegration of mediaeval India, the
\nconditions were yet more unfavourable; character and morals shared in the general disintegration, but ability & courage were
\neven more in demand than before and for the bourgeois there was no place vacant. (The men who figured in the revolutions
\nin Bengal, the Deccan, the Punjab & the North were often, like their European allies & antagonists, men of evil character,
\nself-seeking, unscrupulous & Machiavellian, but they were at least men.) It was not till mediaeval India breathed its last in the
\nconvulsions of 1857 that entirely new conditions reigned and an entirely new culture prevailed with an undisputed sway wholly
\nfavourable to the rapid development of the bourgeois type and wholly discouraging to the development of any other.
\n   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\nThis emergence and domination of the bourgeois was a
\nrapid transformation, not unparalleled in history, for something of the same kind seems to have happened in the provinces of
\nthe Roman Empire under the Caesars, but astonishing in a people whose past history & temperament had been so supremely
\nunPhilistine. That a society which had only a few decades ago prostrated itself before the naked ascetic and the penniless Brahmin, should now wear the monied man and the official as the tilak on its forehead, was indeed a marvellous revolution. But
\ngiven the new conditions, nothing else could have happened. British rule necessitated the growth of the bourgeois, British
\npolicy fostered it, and the plant grew so swiftly because a forcing-house had been created for his rapid cultivation and the soil was
\nkept suitably shallow and the air made warm and humid for his needs. It was as in the ancient world when the nations accepted
\npeace, civilisation and a common language at the cost of national decay, the death of their manhood and final extinction or
\nage-long
\nslavery. The Pax Britannica was his parent and an easy servitude nursed him into maturity.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nFor the first need of the bourgeois is a guaranteed and perfect security for his person, property and pursuits. Peace, comfort
\nand safety are the very breath of his nostrils. But he gravitates to a peace for whose preservation he is not called on to wear armour and wield the sword, a comfort he has not to purchase by the discomfort of standing sentinel over his liberties, or a safety
\nhis own alertness and courage must protect from the resurgence of old dangers. The bourgeois in arms is not the true animal;
\nthe purity of his breed is sullied by something of the virtues and defects of the soldier. He must enjoy the fruits of peace
\nand security he has not earned, without responsibility for their maintenance or fear of their loss. Such conditions he found in
\nalmost unparallelled perfection in British India. He was asked to stand as the head of a disarmed and dependent society, secured from external disturbance & tied down to a rigid internal tranquillity by the deprivation of all functions except those of
\nbreadwinner and taxpayer and to vouch himself to the world by a respectable but not remarkable education and achievement as
\n   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\nthe visible proof of England’s civilising mission in India. Such
\nconditions were to the bourgeois as the moisture & warmth of the hothouse to the orchid. He grew in them, rank & luxurious.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThen again, for his perfection and dominance, the society he lives in must honour his peculiar qualities above all others
\nand the substantial rewards and covetable distinctions of life [be] reserved for them chiefly or for them alone. The British rule
\ngave him this honour, showered on him these rewards & distinctions, and Indian society, more & more moulded by British
\nideas, followed as a society almost inevitably follows the lead of the rulers. Under the new dispensation of Providence there
\nwas no call for the high qualities of old, the Aryan or noble virtues which, whatever else failed or perished, had persisted in
\nIndian character for thousands of years, since first the chariots rolled on the
\nhither-side of the Indus. What need for the Rajpoot’s
\ncourage, the robust manhood, the noble pride of the Kshatriya, when heroic and unselfish England claimed the right of shedding
\nher blood for the safety of the land? What room for the gifts of large initiative, comprehensive foresight, wise aspiration which
\nmake the statesman, when a Bentinck or a Mayo, a Dufferin or a Curzon were ready & eager to take & keep the heavy burdens
\nof Government out of the hands of the children of the soil? The princely spirit, the eagle’s vision, the lion’s heart, these were
\nthings that might be buried away with the memories of the great Indian rulers of the past. Happy India, civilised and cared for
\nby human seraphs from over the sea, had no farther need for them. So from sheer inanition, from want of light, room and
\nair, the Kshatriya died out of the soil which had first produced him and the bourgeois took his place. But if room was none
\nfor the soldier & the statesman, little could be found for the Brahmin, the sage or the Sannyasin. British rule had no need for
\nscholars, it wanted clerks; British policy welcomed the pedant but feared, even when it honoured,
\nthe thinker, for the strong mind might pierce through shows to the truth and the
\ndeep thought teach the people to embrace great ideals and live and die for them;
\nBritish education flung contempt on the Sannyasin as an idler and charlatan, and
\npointed with admiration to the  <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t
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\n

\nstrenous seeker for worldly goods and success as the finest work
\nof the creator. So Vyasa & Valmekie were forgotten for weavers of idle tales and Smiles and Sir Arthur Helps took their place
\nas an instructor of youth, the gospel of Philistinism in its naked crudeness was beaten into the minds of our children when most
\nmalleable. Thus Ramdas was following Shivaji into the limbo of the unreturning past. And if God had not meant otherwise for
\nour nation, the Sannyasin would have become an extinct type, Yoga been classed among dead superstitions with witchcraft
\n& alchemy and Vedanta sent the way of Pythagoras & Plato. Nor was the old Vaishya type needed by the new dispensation.
\nThe Indian mechanician, engineer, architect, artist, craftsman got notice of dismissal; for to develop the industrial life of the
\ncountry was no part of England’s business in India. As she had taken the functions of government and war into her own hands,
\nso she would take that of production. Whatever India needed, beneficent England with her generous system of free trade would
\nsupply and the Indian might sit at ease under his palm tree or, gladly singing, till his fields, rejoicing that Heaven had sent him
\na ruling nation so greedy to do him good. What was wanted was not Indian artisans or Indian captains of industry, but plenty of
\nsmall shopkeepers and big middlemen to help conquer & keep India as a milch cow for British trade & British capital.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThus all the great types which are nurtured on war, politics, thought, spirituality, activity & enterprise, the outgrowths
\nof a vigorous and healthy national existence, the high fruits of humanity who are the very energy of life to a community,
\nwere discouraged and tended to disappear and in their place there was an enormous demand for the bourgeois qualities. The
\nsafe, respectable man, satisfied with ease and not ambitions of command, content with contemporary repute and not hankering after immortality, the superficial man who unable to think profoundly could yet pose among his peers as intellectual, who
\ngetting no true culture, wore a specious appearance of education, who guiltless of a single true sacrifice for his country, yet bulked
\nlarge as a patriot, found an undisputed field open to him. The rewards of life now depended on certain outward signs of merit
\n   
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\nwhich were purely conventional. An University degree, knowledge of English, possession of a post in Government service or a professional diploma, a Government title, European clothes
\nor a sleek dress and appearance, a big house full of English furniture, these were the badges by which Society recognized its
\nchosen. These signs were all purely conventional. The degree did not necessarily denote a good education nor the knowledge of
\nEnglish a wide culture or successful living into new ideas, nor the Government post administrative capacity, nor the diploma
\nspecial fitness for the profession, nor the title any merit in the holder, nor the big house or fine dress a mastery of the art of
\nsocial life, nor the English clothes, European grit, science and enterprise. They were merely counters borrowed from Europe,
\nbut universally taken, as they are not usually taken in Europe or any living nation, as a sufficient substitute for the reality. Wealth,
\nsuccess, and certain outward signs of a facile respectability had become to our new civilised & refined society the supreme tests
\nof the man.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAll these were conditions unusually favourable to a rank
\nluxuriance of the bourgeois type, which thrives upon superficiality and lives by convention. The soil was suitably shallow,
\nthe atmosphere sufficiently warm & humid. The circumstances of our national life & the unique character of our education
\nhastened & perfected the growth. Both were characterized by the false appearance of breadth covering an almost miraculous
\nsuperficiality. Our old Indian life was secluded, but lofty & intense, like a pine-tree on the mountain-tops, like a tropical
\nisland in unvisited seas; our new life parted with the loftiness & intensity when it lost the isolation, but it boasted in vain of an
\nadded breadth, for it was really more provincial & narrow than the old, which had at least given room for the development of all
\nour human faculties. The news of the world’s life poured in on us through the foreign telegrams & papers, we read English books,
\nwe talked about economics and politics, science & history, enlightenment & education, Rousseau, Mill, Bentham, Burke, and
\nused the language of a life that was not ours, in the vain belief that so we became cosmopolitans and men of enlightenment.
\n   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\nYet all the time India was as much & more outside the great
\nlife of the world than it was in the days of Mahomad Tughlak or Bahadur Shah. The number of men in educated India who
\nhad any vital conception or any real understanding & mastery of the great currents of life, thought & motive which sway the
\nvast world outside, was always wonderfully small. It could not be otherwise; for the life of that world was not our life, nor
\nwas our life any part of the world’s, any more than the days of a prisoner in a gaol or reformatory are part of the free activity of society. The thunder of great wars, the grand collision and struggle of world-moving ideas and mighty interests, the
\nswift & strong currents of scientific discovery and discussion, the intellectual change & stir, the huge & feverish pulsation of
\ncommercial competition from China to Peru, all this was to us as the scenes in the street to a man watching from his prison
\nbars. We might take a deep & excited interest, we might almost persuade ourselves by the vividness of our interest that we were
\npart of the scene, but if a voice within cried to us, “Out, out, you too into the battle & the struggle and the joy & stir of this
\ngreat world’s life,” the cold iron of the window-bars and the hard stone of the prison walls stood between. The jailer might
\nnot jingle his keys obtrusively nor the warder flourish his baton, but we knew well they were there. And we really believed in the
\nbland promise that if we conducted ourselves well, we should some day get tickets of leave. We read & thought but did not
\nlive what we read & thought. So our existence grew ever more artificial and unreal. The fighter and the thinker in us dwindled
\n& the bourgeois flourished and grew.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nContentment with an artificial existence, the habit of playing
\nwith counters as if they were true coin of life, made the old rich flood of vitality, strong character, noble aspiration, excellent
\nachievement run ever shallower & thinner in our veins. So we accepted and made the best of an ignoble ease.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nOur education too had just the same pride in a false show of breadth and the same confined and narrow scope. In our schools
\n& colleges we were set to remember many things, but learned nothing. We had no real mastery of English literature, though
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\nwe read Milton & Burke and quoted Byron & Shelley, nor of
\nhistory though we talked about Magna Charta & Runnymede, nor of philosophy though we could mispronounce the names of
\nmost of the German philosophers, nor science though we used its name daily, nor even of our own thought & civilisation though
\nits discussion filled columns of our periodicals. We knew little & knew it badly. And even we could not profit by the little we
\nknew for advance, for origination; even those who struggled to a wider knowledge proved barren soil. The springs of originality
\nwere fast growing atrophied by our unnatural existence. The great men among us who strove to originate were the spiritual
\nchildren of an older time who still drew sap from the roots of our ancient culture and had the energy of the Mogul times in their
\nblood. But their success was not commensurate with their genius & with each generation these grew rarer & rarer. The sap soon
\nbegan to run dry, the energy to dwindle away. Worse than the narrowness & inefficiency, was the unreality of our culture. Our
\nbrains were as full of liberty as our lives were empty of it. We read and talked so much of political rights that we never so much
\nas realized that we had none to call our own. The very sights & sounds, the description of which formed the staple of our daily
\nreading, were such as most of us would at no time see or hear. We learned science without observation of the objects of science,
\nwords & not the things which they symbolised, literature by rote, philosophy as
\na lesson to be got by heart, not as a guide to truth or a light shed on
\nexistence. We read of and believed in English economy, while we lived under
\nIndian conditions, and worshipped the free trade which was starving us to death
\nas a nation. We professed notions of equality, and separated ourselves from the
\npeople, of democracy, and were the servants of absolutism. We pattered off
\nspeeches & essays about social reform, yet had no idea of the nature of a
\nsociety. We looked to sources of strength and inspiration we could not reach and
\nleft those untapped which were ours by possession and inheritance. We knew so
\nlittle of life that we expected others who lived on our service to prepare our
\nfreedom, so little of history that we thought reform could precede liberty, so
\nlittle of science that we
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\nbelieved an organism could be reshaped from outside. We were
\nruled by shopkeepers and consented enthusiastically to think of them as angels. We affected virtues we were given no opportunity of assimilating and lost those our fathers had handed down to us. All this in perfect good faith, in the full belief that
\nwe were Europeanising ourselves, and moving rapidly toward political, social, economical, moral, intellectual progress. The
\nconsummation of our political progress was a Congress which yearly passed resolutions it had no power to put in practice,
\nstatesmen whose highest function was to ask questions which need not even be answered, councillors who would have been
\nsurprised if they had been consulted, politicians who did not even know that a Right never lives until it has a Might to support
\nit. Socially we have initiated a feeble attempt to revivify the very basis of our society by a few petty mechanical changes instead
\nof a spiritual renovation which could alone be equal to so high a task; economically, we attained great success in destroying our
\nindustries and enslaving ourselves to the British trader; morally, we successfully compassed the disintegration of the old moral
\nideas & habits and substituted for them a superficial respectability; intellectually, we prided ourselves [on] the tricking out of our
\nminds in a few leavings, scraps and strays of European thought at the sacrifice of an immense and eternal heritage. Never was
\nan education more remote from all that education truly denotes; instead of giving the keys to the vast mass of modern knowledge,
\nor creating rich soil for the qualities that conquer circumstance & survive, they made the mind swallow a heterogeneous jumble
\nof mainly useless information; trained a tame parrot to live in a cage & talk of the joys of the forest. British rule, Britain’s
\ncivilizing mission in India has been the record success in history in the hypnosis of a nation. It persuaded us to live in a death
\nof the will & its activities, taking a series of hallucinations for real things and creating in ourselves the condition of morbid
\nweakness the hypnotist desired, until the Master of a mightier hypnosis laid His finger on India’s eyes and cried “Awake.”
\nThen only the spell was broken, the slumbering mind realised itself and the dead soul lived again.
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\nBut the education which was poison to all true elements
\nof national strength and greatness, was meat & drink to the bourgeois. The bourgeois delights in convention, because truth
\nis too hard a taskmaster and makes too severe a demand on character, energy & intellect. He craves superficiality, a shallow
\nsoil to grow in. For to attain depth requires time & energy which would have to be unprofitably diverted from his chief business
\nof making his individual way in the world. He cannot give up his life to his country, but if she will be grateful for a few of his
\nleisure hours, he will give in those limits ungrudging service & preen himself on his public virtues. Prodigal charity would be
\nuncomfortable & unwise, but if he can earn applause by parting with a fraction of his superfluities, he is always ready for the sacrifice. Deep scholarship would unfit him for his part in life, but if figuring in learned societies or writing a few articles and essays,
\nan occasional book guiltless of uncomfortable originality, or a learned compilation prepared under his superintendence and
\nissued in his name will make him a man of letters, he will court & prize that easily-earned reputation. The effort to remould
\nsociety and rebuild the nation is too huge and perilous a task for a comfortable citizen, but he is quite prepared to condemn old
\n& inconvenient institutions & superstitions and lend his hand to a few changes which will make social life more pleasant and
\ncomfortable. Superficiality, unreality of thought & deed thus became the stamp of all our activities.
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\nThose who say that the new spirit in India which, before nascent & concealed, started to conscious life in the Swadeshi
\nagitation and has taken Swadeshi, Swaraj and Self-help as its motto, is nothing new but a natural development of the old, are
\nminds blinded by the habits of thought of the past century. The new Nationalism is the very antithesis, the complete and vehement negation of the old. The old movement sought to make a wider circle of activity, freer living-room and a more comfortable
\nand eminent position for the bourgeois, to prolong the unnatural & evil conditions of which the subject nations died under the
\ncivilizing rule of Rome and which British rule has recreated for India; the new seeks to replace the bourgeois by the Samurai
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\nand to shatter the prison house which the nineteenth century
\nmade for our mother and build anew a palace for her glory, a garden for her pleasure, a free domain for her freedom & her
\npride. The old looked only to the power & interests of the educated, enlightened middle class, and shrank from the ignorant,
\nthe uneducated, the livers in the past, the outer unilluminated barbarian, drawing aside the hem of its robes lest it should touch
\nimpurity. The new overleaps every barrier; it calls to the clerk at his counter, the trader in his shop, the peasant at his plough; it
\nsummons the Brahmin from his temple and takes the hand [of] the Chandala in his degradation; it seeks out the student in his
\nCollege, the schoolboy at his books, it touches the very child in its mother’s arms & the secluded zenana has thrilled to its voice;
\nits eye searches the jungle for the Santal and travels the hills for the wild tribes of the mountains. It cares nothing for age or sex
\nor caste or wealth or education or respectability; it mocks at the talk of a stake in the country; it spurns aside the demand for a
\nproperty qualification or a certificate of literacy. It speaks to the illiterate or the man in the street in such rude vigorous language
\nas he best understands, to youth & the enthusiast in accents of poetry, in language of fire, to the thinker in the terms of philosophy and logic, to the Hindu it repeats the name of Kali, to the Mahomedan it spurs to action for the glory of Islam. It cries to
\nall to come forth, to help in God’s work & remake a nation, each with what his creed or his culture, his strength, his manhood or
\nhis genius can give to the new nationality. The only qualification it asks for is a body made in the womb of an Indian mother, a
\nheart that can feel for India, a brain that can think and plan for her greatness, a tongue that can adore her name or hands that
\ncan fight in her quarrel. The old shunned sacrifice & suffering, the new rushes to embrace it. The old gave a wide berth to the
\njail and the rods & scourges of Power; the new walks straight to meet them. The old shuddered at the idea of revolution; the
\nnew is ready to set the whole country in turmoil for the sake of an idea. The old bent the knee to Caesar and presented him a
\nlist of grievances; the new leaves his presence or dragged back to it, stands erect and defies him in the midst of his legions.
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\nThe initial condition of recovering our liberty meant a peril
\nand a gigantic struggle from the very possibility of which we averted our eyes in a panic of bourgeois terror. It was safer &
\neasier to cheat ourselves into believing in a contradiction and living a lie. Yet nothing could be more fatal, more insidiously
\ndestructive to the roots of manhood. It is far better to fall and bleed for ever in a hopeless but unremitting struggle than to
\ndrink of that draught of death and lethe. A people true to itself, a race that hopes to live, will not comfort itself and sap its manhood by the opiate of empty formulas and specious falsehoods; it will prefer eternal suffering & disaster. For in truth, as our old
\nthinkers used always to insist, the whole universe stands; truth is the root and condition of life and to believe a lie, to live in a lie, is
\nto deliver oneself to disease and death. The belief that a subject nation can acquiesce in subjection and yet make true & vital
\nprogress, growing to strength in its chains, is a lie. The idea that mitigations of subjection constitute freedom or prepare a race
\nfor freedom or that anything but the exercise of liberty fits man for liberty, is another lie. The teaching that peace and security
\nare more important and vital to man than liberty is a third lie. Yet all these lies and many others we believed in, hugged to
\nour hearts and made the law of our thoughts throughout the nineteenth century. The result was stagnation, or a progress in
\nweakness and disintegration.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe doctrine that social & commercial progress must precede or will of themselves bring about political strength & liberty, is a fourth & very dangerous lie; for a nation is no
\naggregate of separable functions, but a harmony of functions, of which government and political arrangement is the oldest,
\nmost central and most vital and determines the others.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nOur only hope of resurgence was in some such great unsealing of the eyes to the Maya in which we existed and the discovery of some effective mantra, some strong spiritual impulse which
\nshould have the power to renovate us from within. For good or for evil the middle class now leads in India, and whatever saving
\nimpulse comes to the nation, must come from the middle class, whatever upward movement begins, it must initiate and lead.
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\nBut for that to happen the middle class must by a miracle be
\ntransfigured and lifted above itself; the natural breeding ground of the bourgeois, it must become the breeding ground of the
\nSamurai. It must cease in fact to be a middle class and turn itself into an aristocracy, an aristocracy not of birth or landed
\npossessions, not of intellect, not of wealth and commercial enterprise, but of character and action. India must recover her
\nfaculty for self-sacrifice, courage and high aspiration. Such a transformation is the work which has been set before itself by
\nthe new Nationalism; this is at the back of all its enthusiasm, audacity & turbulence and provides the explanation of all that
\nhas shocked and alarmed the wise men and the elders in the movement in Bengal. The new Nationalism is a creed, but it is
\nmore than a creed; it is a method, but more than a method. The new Nationalism is an attempt at a spiritual transformation of
\nthe nineteenth century Indian; it is a notice of dismissal or at least of suspension to the bourgeois and all his ideas and ways
\nand works, a call for men who will dare & do impossibilities, the men of extremes, the men of faith, the prophets, the martyrs,
\nthe crusaders, the [ . . . ] & rebels, the desperate venturers and reckless doers, the initiators of revolutions. It is the rebirth in
\nIndia of the Kshatriya, the Samurai.  
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Part Seven   Writings from Manuscripts   1907 \u00ad 1908   The pieces in this part were written by Sri Aurobindo during the period of…<\/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-2917","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\/2917","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=2917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}