{"id":293,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=293"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","slug":"097-the-chowringhee-pecksniff-and-ourselves-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\/097-the-chowringhee-pecksniff-and-ourselves-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-097_The Chowringhee Pecksniff and Ourselves.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nThe Chowringhee Pecksniff and Ourselves<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n               
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>THE<\/b>
\ncollapse of the Bande Mataram <\/i>Prosecution and acquittal of Srijut
\nAurobindo Ghose, which have been welcomed with relief and joy by our countrymen
\nall over <\/p>\n

India, are naturally gall and wormwood to the opponents of Indian Nationalism; but to
\nnone has the fiasco caused bitterer disappointment than to the Friend of India
\nin Chowringhee. Sharing the common but mistaken impression that our paper
\ndepends on the writings of one man for its continued existence, the Statesman
\n<\/i>had evidently hoped that with the incarceration of Srijut Aurobindo Ghose
\nthe one paper in Bengal which it fears and which has ruthlessly exposed the
\nfalsehood and duplicity of its sanctimonious Liberalism, would be removed out of
\nits path. It cannot conceal its chagrin and mortification at the disappointment
\nof its cherished hopes, and as a pis aller <\/i>it tries to discredit the Bande
\nMataram <\/i>and informs our subscribers that they ought not to support us any
\nlonger because it has been proved that we are either guilty of having put
\nforward a false defence or of the unpardonable immorality of having an
\neditorial staff instead of a single Editor. The tone and method of this attack
\nare worthy of this unctuous and mealy-mouthed Pecksniff of Anglo-Indian
\njournalism. It unscrupulously supports its malicious insinuations by calling the
\nwitnesses summoned by the prosecution "defence witnesses" as if the
\naccused had put men into the witness-box to tell a false story: and it shelters
\nitself from the charge of libel by the use of \u2018ifs’ and \u2018ors’. Yet it has
\nthe impudence to claim a superior sense of honour for English pamphleteers and
\neditors! "The great English political writers," it says, "have
\nnever been afraid to own their handiwork and we cannot recall a single instance
\nin which an English pamphleteer or editor has endeavoured to evade the law by
\nraising technical difficulties as to his share of responsibility." There
\nare three separate insinuations in this<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-547<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncarefully
\nwritten sentence; first, it is hinted that Srijut Aurobindo Ghose was the real
\nwriter of the correspondence, "Politics for Indians", but falsely
\ndenied his handiwork; secondly, that he was the responsible Editor of the paper
\nand his denial of responsibility was \u201ctechnical\u201d and untrue; thirdly, that
\nany writer for the paper was morally bound to accept responsibility for anything
\nthat might appear in the paper as a part of the political propaganda in which he
\nwas engaged and Aurobindo Ghose, knowing himself to be so bound, evaded his
\nresponsibility out of fear. Certainly the writer of this article need not disown
\nhis handiwork or evade his responsibility, for he has brought the art of safe
\nslander to its utmost possible perfection.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>We have no hesitation in saying that if we had invented a system of
\ndivided responsibility with the object of baffling a possible bureaucratic
\nprosecution, we should have been entirely within our rights. In <\/p>\n

England<\/p>\n

a publicist or propagandist has always had the advantage of being tried by a
\njury of his own peers and in all but rare cases enjoyed every reasonable chance
\nof a fair trial, but the reverse is the case in countries circumstanced as <\/p>\n

India<\/p>\n

is circumstanced today. Where the whole armoury of an absolute power is arrayed
\nagainst him, the Judge a servant of his prosecutor, the law an instrument
\nspecially designed for his suppression, the wealth and power of a despotic
\nexecutive and the activity of a not over-scrupulous police his pursuers, and his
\nonly supporters are his own patriotism and the sympathy of his people, the
\nNationalist is entitled to use any means for his own self-defence which will not
\nbe inconsistent with his mission nor injure his claim to national sympathy and
\nsupport. He owes no moral obligation of quixotic candour to antagonists who
\nthemselves recognise no moral obligation in their struggle with him. Whatever he
\nowes is to his people and the mission he has to discharge. If he will serve his
\ncountry best by leaping into the fire, that is his duty; if self-defence is more
\nto the interests of the country and the cause, no other consideration ought to
\nweigh with him. The primary object of the Nationalist organs must be to keep up
\ntheir propaganda until it is rendered physically impossible by the growing
\nseverity of bureaucratic enactments. Bhupendranath and Basanta deliberately ex-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-548<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nposed
\nthemselves to the worst effects of bureaucratic wrath in order to give an
\nexample to the country of heroic self-sacrifice and a living demonstration of
\nthe spirit of Swarajism; but they did it in the full confidence that the Yugantar
\n<\/i>would continue undaunted and unchanged in the course it conceived to be its
\nduty to the nation. Had they exposed themselves with the knowledge that their
\ndisappearance would have meant the death of the paper, their action would have
\nbeen heroic but foolish, an outburst of patriotic sentiment but not an act of
\npatriotic wisdom. To allow the voice of Nationalism to be silenced would be to
\nplay into the hands of the adversary to whom we owe no duty. The gospel of
\nNationalism has to be preached with unflinching candour, but Nationalist organs
\nwill be perfectly within their rights if they prctect their writers so long as
\nit is humanly possible to protect them and so prolong their own career of
\npropagandist usefulness.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>No such arrangement was made in the case of the Bande
\nMataram<\/i>. <\/i>Had
\nwe intended to protect ourselves, we would have done it by the simple and
\nconvenient Japanese device of a jail editor. The device imputed to us would be
\nneither illegal nor immoral, but it would be cumbrous and unsafe. It is
\nperfectly true that it throws great difficulties in the way of the prosecution,
\nbut it is equally obvious that it leaves the bureaucracy free to single out
\nanyone they choose for harassment, and does not protect him at all, since the
\npolice have only to be clever enough in their choice of witnesses and the
\narrangement of the evidence, and the accused, whether really responsible or not,
\nis doomed. Everybody can feel that if Anukul Mukherjee had had more backbone and
\nlied more cleverly in the cross-examination, Srijut Aurobindo Ghose would now be
\na convict in the Central Jail. Had we thought of putting forward a false defence,
\nwe could have done it very effectively by producing an Editor on the spot. There
\nwere at least three men on the staff who were anxious to immolate themselves in
\nthis manner, and it was only prevented by the refusal of the accused to accept
\nany such sacrifice and by the singular conduct of the prosecution in calling the
\nofficers of the Company as their witnesses. The moment Srijut Sailendranath
\nGhose entered the witness box, there was no course left open to<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-549<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe
\ndefence but to take their stand on the facts as elicited by the prosecution. For
\na member of the staff to come forward and by a splendid falsehood take upon
\nhimself the responsibility of the matter complained of, if not of the whole
\neditorial function, would have been morally permissible; but it was obviously
\nimpossible for the Secretary of the Company to perjure himself by fixing a
\nnon-existent responsibility on any particular individual. The one defect in the
\nconduct of the defence was that the circumstances which brought about the state
\nof things described by the Secretary, were not elicited in cross-examination.
\nWhen we come to deal with the facts of the case in detail, we shall mend that
\ndeficiency and our readers will see that the evolution of that arrangement was
\nnatural and even inevitable.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>In the diatribe of the Chowringhee Pecksniff against us there is one bit
\nof Pecksniffian logic which we fail to appreciate. He seems to think that a
\npaper cannot be respectable unless it has a single autocratic Editor and that
\nthe readers of a paper not so blessed must be disreputable. Why, pray? We had
\nalways thought that what one man could do in the way of management could be done
\nas well by a board or committee of men acting in unison and with one clearly
\nunderstood policy; we used even to think that such conjoint management was in
\npolitics the characteristic of democratic times. But Chowringhee liberalism
\nevidently thinks no arrangement respectable which does not involve absolute
\ncontrol by a single master-mind. It argues that the Bande Mataram <\/i>policy
\nbeing the joint product of several minds must be the result of distracted
\ncounsels, since only an autocrat can think clearly. After that we can hardly be
\nsurprised at the affection of the Friend of India for absolutism and absolutist
\nmethods or the support it has given to the new Grand Mogul who now governs <\/p>\n

India<\/p>\n

on mediaeval principles from Westminster.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nBande Mataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i> <\/font>
\nSeptember 26, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-550<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chowringhee Pecksniff and Ourselves                   THE collapse of the Bande Mataram Prosecution and acquittal of Srijut Aurobindo Ghose, which have been welcomed with…<\/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-293","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\/293","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=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}