{"id":295,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=295"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:09","slug":"013-its-obligations-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\/013-its-obligations-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-013_Its Obligations.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nF<\/span><\/font>IVE<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nIts
\nObligations<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n                       
\n<\/span>I<\/font>N
\nTHE<\/span><\/font><\/b>
\nearly days of the new movement it was declared, in a very catching phrase, by a
\npolitician who has now turned his back on the doctrine which made him famous,
\nthat a subject nation has no politics. And it was commonly said that we as a
\nsubject nation should altogether ignore the Government and turn our attention to
\nemancipation by self-help and self-development. This was the self-development
\nprinciple carried to its extreme conclusions, and it is not surprising that
\nphrases so trenchant and absolute should have given rise to some
\nmisunderstanding. It was even charged against us by Sir Pherozshah Mehta and
\nother robust exponents of the opposition-cum-cooperation theory that we were
\nadvocating non-resistance and submission to political wrong and injustice! Much
\nwater has flowed under the bridges since then, and now we are being charged, in
\ndeputations to the Viceroy and elsewhere, with the opposite offence of inflaming
\nand fomenting disturbance and rebellion. Yet our policy remains essentially the
\nsame, \u2014 not to ignore such a patent and very troublesome fact as the alien
\nbureaucracy, for that was never our policy, \u2014 but to have nothing to do with
\nit, in the way either of assistance or acquiescence. Far from preaching
\nnon-resistance, it has now become abundantly clear that our determination not to
\nsubmit to political wrong and injustice was far deeper and sterner than that of
\nour critics. The method of opposition differed, of course. The Moderate method
\nof resistance was verbal only \u2014 prayer, petition and protest; the method we
\nproposed was practical, \u2014 boycott. But, as we have pointed out, our new
\nmethod, though more concrete, was in itself quite as legal and peaceful as the
\nold. It is no offence by law to abstain from Government schools or Government
\ncourts of justice or the help and protection of the fatherly executive or the
\nuse of<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-107<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

British
\ngoods; nor is it illegal to persuade others to join in our abstention.<\/font><\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>At the same time this legality is neither in itself an essential
\ncondition of passive resistance generally, nor can we count upon its continuance
\nas an actual condition of passive resistance as it is to be understood and
\npractised in <\/p>\n

India. The passive resister in other countries has
\nalways been prepared to break an unjust and oppressive law whenever necessary
\nand to take the legal consequences, as the non-Conformists in England did when
\nthey refused to
\npay the education rate, or as Hampden did when he refused to pay ship-money.
\nEven under present conditions in <\/span><\/p>\n

India<\/span><\/p>\n

there is at least one
\ndirection in which, it appears, many of us are already breaking what
\nAnglo-Indian courts have determined to be the law. The law relating to sedition
\nand the law relating to the offence of causing racial enmity are so admirably
\nvague in their terms that there is nothing which can escape from their capacious
\nembrace. It appears from the Punjabee <\/i>case that it is a crime under
\nbureaucratic rule to say that Europeans hold Indian life cheaply, although this
\nis a fact which case after case has proved, and although British justice has
\nconfirmed this cheap valuation of our lives by the leniency of its sentences on
\nEuropean murderers; nay, it is a crime to impute such failings to British
\njustice or to say even that departmental enquiries into "accidents" of
\nthis kind cannot be trusted, although this is a conviction in which, as everyone
\nis aware, the whole country is practically unanimous as the result of repeated
\nexperiences. All this is not crime indeed when we do it in order to draw the
\nattention of the bureaucracy in the vain hope of getting the grievance
\nredressed. But if our motive is to draw the attention of the people and
\nenlighten them on the actual and inevitable results of irresponsible rule by
\naliens and the dominance of a single community, we are criminals, we are guilty
\nof breaking the law of the alien. Yet to break the law in this respect is the
\nduty of every self-respecting publicist who is of our way of thinking. It is our
\nduty to drive home to the public mind the congenital and incurable evils of
\nthe present system of Government, so that they may insist on its being swept
\naway in order to make room for a more healthy and natural state of things. It is
\nour duty also to<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>108<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

press
\nupon the people the hopelessness of appealing to the bureaucracy to reform
\nitself and the uselessness of any partial measures. No publicist of the new
\nschool holding such views ought to mar his reputation for candour and honesty by
\nthe pretence of drawing the attention of the Government with a view to redress
\nthe grievance. If the alien laws have declared it illegal for him to do his
\nduty, unless he lowers himself by covering it with a futile and obvious lie, he
\nmust still do his duty, however illegal, in the strength of his manhood; and if
\nthe bureaucracy decide to send him to prison for the breach of law, to prison he
\nmust willingly and, if he is worth his salt, rejoicingly go. The new spirit will
\nnot suffer any individual aspiring to speak or act on behalf of the people to
\npalter with the obligation of high truthfulness and unflinching courage without
\nwhich no one has a claim to lead or instruct his fellow-countrymen.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>If this penalty of sedition is at present the chief danger which the
\nadherent or exponent of passive resistance runs under the law, yet there is no
\nsurety that it will continue to be unaccompanied by similar or more serious
\nperils. The making of the laws is at present in the hands of our political
\nadversaries and there is nothing to prevent them from using this power in any <\/span>way
\nthey like, however iniquitous or tyrannical,
\n<\/span><\/font>
\n\u2014<\/font>
\n<\/span>nothing except
\ntheir fear of public reprobation outside and national resistance within <\/span><\/p>\n

India<\/span>. At present they hope
\nby the seductive allurements of Morleyism to smother the infant strength of the
\nnational spirit in its cradle; but as that hope is dissipated and the doctrine
\nof passive resistance takes more and more concrete and organised form, the
\ntemptation to use the enormously powerful weapon which the unhampered facility
\nof legislation puts in their hands, will become irresistible. The passive
\nresister must therefore take up his creed with the certainty of having to suffer
\nfor it. If, for instance, the bureaucracy should make abstention from Government
\nschools or teaching without Government licence a penal offence, he must continue
\nto abstain or teach and take the legal consequences. Or if they forbid the
\naction of arbitration courts other than those sanctioned by Government, he must
\nyet continue to act on such courts or have recourse to them without considering
\nthe peril to which he exposes himself. And<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>109<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

so<\/span>
\nthroughout the whole range of action covered by the new politics. A law imposed
\nby a people on itself has a binding force which cannot be ignored except under
\nextreme necessity: a law imposed from outside has no such moral sanction; its
\nclaim to obedience must rest on coercive force or on its own equitable and
\nbeneficial character and not on the source from which it proceeds. If it is
\nunjust and oppressive, it may become a duty to disobey it and quietly endure the
\npunishment which the law has provided for its violation. For passive resistance
\naims at making a law unworkable by general and organised disobedience and so
\nprocuring its recall; it does not try, like aggressive resistance, to destroy
\nthe law by destroying the power which made and supports the law. It is therefore
\nthe first canon of passive resistance that to break an unjust coercive law is
\nnot only justifiable but, under given circumstances, a duty.<\/font><\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>Legislation, however, is not the only weapon in the hands of the
\nbureaucracy. They may try, without legislation, by executive action, to bring
\nopposition under the terms of the law and the lash of its penalties. This may be
\ndone either by twisting a perfectly legal act into a criminal offence or
\nmisdemeanour with the aid of the ready perjuries of the police or by executive
\norder or ukase making illegal an action which had previously been allowed. We
\nhave had plenty of experience of both these contrivances during the course of
\nthe Swadeshi movement. To persuade an intending purchaser not to buy British
\ncloth is no offence; but if, between a police employed to put down Swadeshi and
\na shopkeeper injured by it, enough evidence can be concocted to twist
\npersuasion into compulsion, the boycotter can easily be punished without having
\ncommitted any offence. Executive orders are an even more easily-handled weapon.
\nThe issuing of an ukase asks for no more trouble than the penning of a few lines
\nby a clerk and the more or less illegible signature of a. District Magistrate;
\nand hey-presto! that brief magical abracadabra of despotism has turned an
\naction, which five minutes ago was legitimate and inoffensive into a crime or misdemeanour punishable in property or person. Whether it is the simple
\nutterance of ‘Bande Mataram’ in the streets or an august assemblage of all that
\nis most distinguished, able and respected in the country, one stroke of a mere<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-110<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

District
\nMagistrate’s omnipotent pen is enough to make them illegalities and turn the
\nelect of the nation into disorderly and riotous Budmashes to be dispersed by
\npolice cudgels. To hope for any legal redress is futile; for the power of the
\nexecutive to issue ukases is perfectly vague and therefore practically
\nillimitable, and wherever there is a doubt, it can be brought within the one
\nall-sufficient formula, <\/font>
\n\u2014<\/font> "It was done by the Magistrate in exercise of the
\ndiscretion given him for preserving the peace." The formula can cover any
\nukase or any action, however arbitrary; and what British Judge can refuse his
\nsupport to a British Magistrate in that preservation of peace which is as
\nnecessary to the authority and safety of the Judge as to that of the Magistrate?
\nBut equally is it impossible for the representatives of popular aspirations to
\nsubmit to such paralysing exercise of an irresponsible and unlimited authority.
\nThis has been universally recognised in
\n Bengal. Executive authority was defied by all
\n Bengal
\n when its representatives, with Babu Surendranath
\nBanerji at their head, escorted their President through the streets of <\/p>\n

Barisal<\/p>\n

with the forbidden cry of ‘Bande Mataram’. If the
\ndispersal of
\nthe Conference was not resisted, it was not from respect for executive authority
\nbut purely for reasons of political strategy. Immediately afterwards the right
\nof public meeting was asserted in defiance of executive ukase by the Moderate
\nleaders near <\/p>\n

Barisal<\/p>\n

itself and by prominent politicians of the new
\nschool in
\n East Bengal. The second canon of the doctrine of passive
\nresistance has therefore been accepted by politicians of both schools \u2014<\/span>
\n<\/span>that to resist an unjust coercive order or
\ninterference is not only justifiable but, under given circumstances, a duty.<\/font><\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>Finally, we must be prepared for opposition not only from our natural but
\nfrom unnatural adversaries,
\n<\/span><\/font>
\n\u2014<\/font>
\n<\/span>not only from bureaucrat and Anglo-Indian,
\nbut from the more self-seeking and treacherous of our own countrymen. In a
\nrebellion such treachery is of small importance, since in the end it is the
\nsuperior fate or the superior force which triumphs; but in a campaign of passive
\nresistance the evil example, if unpunished, may be disastrous and eat fatally
\ninto the enthusiastic passion and serried unity indispensable to such a
\nmovement. It is therefore necessary to mete
\nout
\nthe heaviest penalty open to us in such cases <\/span>\u2014<\/span>
\nthe penalty<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-111<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nof social excommunication. We are not in favour of this weapon being lightly used;
\nbut its employment, where the national will in a vital matter is deliberately
\ndisregarded, becomes essential. Such disregard amounts to siding in matters of
\nlife and death against your own country and people and helping in their
\ndestruction or enslavement, \u2014 a crime which in <\/p>\n

Free States<\/p>\n

is punished with the extreme penalty due to
\ntreason. When, for instance, all
\n Bengal
\n staked its future upon the Boycott and specified
\nthree foreign articles,
\n<\/span>\u2014<\/span>
\n<\/span>salt, sugar and cloth, \u2014 as to be
\nreligiously avoided, anyone purchasing foreign salt or foreign sugar or foreign
\ncloth became guilty of treason to the nation and laid himself open to the
\npenalty of social boycott. Wherever passive resistance has been accepted, the
\nnecessity of the social boycott has been recognised as its natural concomitant.
\n"Boycott foreign goods and boycott those who use foreign goods," \u2014
\nthe advice of Mr. Subramaniya Aiyar to his countrymen in <\/p>\n

Madras,
\n<\/span>\u2014 must be <\/span>accepted
\nby all who are in earnest. For without this boycott of
\npersons the boycott of things cannot be effective; without the social boycott no
\nnational authority depending purely on moral pressure can get its decrees
\neffectively executed; and without effective boycott enforced by a strong
\nnational authority the new policy cannot succeed. But the only possible
\nalternatives to the new policy are either despotism tempered by petitions or
\naggressive resistance. We must therefore admit a third canon of the doctrine of
\npassive resistance, that social boycott is legitimate and indispensable as
\nagainst persons guilty of treason to the nation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-112<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIVE   Its Obligations                           IN THE early days of the new movement it was declared, in a very catching phrase, by a politician…<\/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-295","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\/295","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=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}