{"id":298,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=298"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:10","slug":"103-how-to-meet-the-inevitable-repression-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\/103-how-to-meet-the-inevitable-repression-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-103_How to Meet the Inevitable Repression.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nHow to Meet the Inevitable Repression<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n                
\nT<\/font>HE<\/font><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>Swadeshi that you have started in
\nBengal is a move in the right direction, said some highly placed members of the
\nIndian Civil Service to an Indian on their way back to this country from
\nEngland; but they continued, we shall try to break the back of it in every
\npossible way, we shall put the staying power of the Bengalee people to the
\nseverest test, before we allow them to develop their new nationalism. Thus spoke
\nthey, and what has happened since has certainly been singularly confirmatory of
\ntheir frank avowal. The Declaration of the 7th of August, 1905, came as a
\nsurprise upon the English people; to their discerning ear trained hereditarily
\nto true and false political notes, the resolution of the people of Bengal to
\nlive of their own and not to repose any longer on an unmanly faith in England’s
\ncharity and benevolence, sounded like the very death-knell of the Anglo-Indian
\nautocracy. The consciousness of potential strength that lay at the bottom of the
\npeople’s determination to boycott English goods would, as it developed,
\ninevitably render England’s arbitrary tenure of power in India progressively
\ndifficult to maintain. The oversea overlords therefore made up their mind at the
\nvery outset to crush this ominous phenomenon in Bengal. But the Briton is by
\nnature an optimist, a born believer in his own immense power and in the
\ninsignificance of others. And thus, though visited by a secret dread of ultimate
\npossibilities, he at first nursed the fond illusion that the discontent in
\nBengal was only a mere surface-simmer, the Declaration of the 7th a mere
\npetulant outcry, that the boycott was an impossibility in Bengal because it
\nrequired for its success a higher patriotism than was to be expected of the
\nBengalee character. And many English people in England as well as in this
\ncountry kept speaking in this strain for sometime, always finishing up with the
\nconfident and pleasant prediction that the Boycott movement in Bengal was doomed
\nto a speedy and complete failure. It is this condition of the British mind that
\naccounts for the somewhat<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-578<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmental attitude of the Government during
\nthe first phase of the movement in Bengal. But as soon as the success of the
\nboycotters was patently manifest in the substantial and steady diminution of the
\nimports from England, the self-assurance of the English people and their scepticism of the Bengalee character vanished into thin air, and they definitely
\nlaunched upon their policy of "breaking the back of the movement".<\/font><\/p>\n

\n            The country must fully realise
\nthe seriousness of the struggle on which it has entered with the Bureaucracy; it
\nmust be strong enough to withstand and triumph over the most merciless act of
\nhostility from an immensely powerful opponent. To extinguish the boycott at any
\ncost is clearly now the one policy of the Anglo-Indian autocrats. The weapons in
\ntheir hands are many, some possessed of such subtle potency as easily to elude
\nthe comprehension of those who are not always on their guard. The policy of
\nbreaking up the dawning sense of Indian nationality into a congeries of
\nconflicting forces that have been initiated under the guise of reform by the
\nSecretary of State who happens, by the way, to be a commentator of the Prince of
\nMachiavelli, shows the consummate cunning of the foe with whom we have joined
\naction on behalf of our country. The treatment meted out to Liakat Hossain,
\nSaroda Charan Sen and the Printer of the Sandhya <\/i>gives us a glimpse of
\nthe relentlessness that we must be prepared as a nation to face; the protected
\nhooliganism that fell like a scourge on the city but a few days ago, is a
\nluminous indication of what is to come with increasing intensity (does it not
\nremind one of very similar happenings at Naples in the days of Austrian
\ntyranny?) The Seditious Meetings Bill that has been ushered into birth with such
\na blare of the legislative trumpet shows the boldness with which the Bureaucracy
\ncan fling defiance in the face of those who have dared to dream of Indian unity.
\nAnd behind it all can you hear the roar \u2014 like that which the Christian martyrs
\nheard when the gentler methods of persuasion had failed to shake their
\nChristianity?<\/font><\/p>\n

\n            Providence has however
\nsimplified our task. Nowhere in the world has an absolutism been so helplessly
\ndependent on the loyalty and cooperation of those over whom it is set. The day
\nthat cooperation comes to a stop the English cease to be the rulers<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-579<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof this country. And it is this that sets
\na strict limit to the extent to which the Indian Government can carryon its
\nrepressive policy. There are acts from which even the Indian police will recoil
\nwith horror; there are policies against which even the loyal Subordinate Civil
\nService will revolt; and such acts and policies therefore are beyond the range
\nof practical politics in this country \u2014 acts and policies of which we consantly
\nread in connexion with the Russian and Turkish tyrannies. No one could accuse us
\nof the intention to minimise to the country the immensity of the sacrifice it
\nmust nerve itself to face in the struggle with the powers that be; but at the
\nsame time we do not agree with those who turn away from the thought of liberty
\nbecause it must necessarily involve the country, they think, in all those
\nbloodcurdling inhumanities which they have read of, say, in the memoirs of
\nPrince Kuropatkin. The position of the Indian Government, it must be borne in
\nmind, is much less secure than that of any other Government in the world. Many
\nEnglishmen, not unpossessed of some culture and learning, were grossly
\nscandalised to see Bepin Chandra Pal going about freely after he had refused to
\ngive evidence in the case against the Bande Mataram<\/i>; <\/i>he would have been
\nhurried into Newgate the very next moment after his refusal to help the
\nprosecution, had he been in England, they said, or he would have been
\nimmediately led off to Siberia had he been guilty of a similar defiance of the
\nGovernment in Russia. The obvious answer to these plaintive hypotheses was that
\nthe Indian Government possesses none of that strength that is enjoyed by the
\nGovernment either in England or Russia. In our national preparation against
\narbitrary rule we must not be wanting in a correct appreciation of our own
\nstrength and of the points of weakness of our opponents. The problem of the
\nBureaucracy, to state it finally, is to push its policy of repression against
\nthe Indian Nationalists as far as it can without alienating the moral sympathy
\nof those on whose collaboration their tenure of power rests.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n            Our duty is thus obviously to
\ntrain up the moral consciousness of our people to that level of development at
\nwhich it will refuse as a whole to tolerate for any space of time at all the
\nrule of the few over the many. And in doing this work we must press<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-580<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nup all the avenues that lead to the common
\ngoal. The missionary work of preaching the ideal of self-rule in every part of
\nthe country, as the essential precondition of our National realisation, is of
\ncourse of superlative importance, and the bold and unflinching facing of
\npersecution in the faithful discharge of this sacred task is of equal service.
\nBut apart from this work we must also endeavour to foster the growth of those
\nconditions that favour the easy and rapid germination of the love of liberty.
\nEven a cursory glance at Indian life would convince everybody that it is only in
\nthe independent professions in our country that the ideal of Indian liberty
\nstruck its first root and is now most widely prevalent. The vast majority of our
\neducated countrymen are absorbed in Governmental or quasi-Governmental services
\nwhere the growth of the liberty ideal is naturally inhibited and where at best
\nit acquires but a stunted development, being condemned from birth to deafness
\nand dumbness. It would be difficult to think of anything more ruinously
\nunfortunate for a country than that the greater majority of its educated men
\nshould be debarred throughout the most fruitful period of their life from
\nparticipation in patriotic work, should be
\nrobbed of their only chance of livelihood if they ever happened to give
\nexplicit utterance to their love for the land that gave them birth. One can
\neasily realise how unspeakably demoralising the influences of such a service
\nmust be, and yet the overwhelming proportion of our educated countrymen are
\nconstantly subject to them. The only way to remove this gross anomaly is to
\ncreate rival sources of employment which will provide Indians an independent
\nliving. The existing professions are too few for this purpose, and are, further,
\nfilled already to choking. The only adequate means to this end is therefore the
\nindustrial development of the country which will open to our present and coming
\ngenerations a much more attractive and promising avenue of employment than the
\nservices, the strictly subordinate services, let us not forget, of the alien
\nBureaucracy. The uprise of a numerous industrial class will thus spell a great
\nand invaluable accession of strength to the political interest of the country.
\nIt is this that lends to the question of India’s industrial development its main
\nfascination and interest, and serves to remind us forcibly of the vital
\ninteraction that<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-581<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nexists between the different branches of
\nhuman activity. The stir and activity in the various industries of the country
\nthat have already been caused by the Swadeshi boycott movement is full of happy
\naugury. We must strain every nerve to fill the whole country with trained
\nindustrial ability, we must send our young men in hundreds and thousands all
\nover the world to learn the scientific methods of production so that India may
\nin a very few years be covered with a network of industrial centres that will
\nsupply work to hundreds of thousands of our educated men, and rescue them from
\nthe inanition of a living death in Government service. The work already begun in
\nthis direction by the Association for the Advancement of Scientific and
\nIndustrial Training of Indians cannot be too much praised and deserves the most
\nliberal encouragement. How very many more Basantas we may very reasonably expect
\nto see rising up in an industrial India, ready to court suffering in the name of
\nthe Motherland.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n            And besides, the successful
\nworking of the handful of trades union in Bengal mostly composed as yet of
\nilliterate men, certainly give us a most promising insight into the latent
\npossibilities that lie in the direction of a general policy of passive
\nresistance that may be adopted by the country. If the people of India are one
\nday to signify their intolerance of arbitrary rule, it will very probably be, as Seely and Meredith Townsend foretell, by a general declaration of passive
\nresistance. And before we can expect our countrymen in the services seriously to
\nentertain the thought of refusing to serve the Bureaucracy, we must see that the
\ncountry has other means of obtaining their subsistence to offer them.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande Mataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i>
\n<\/font>November 2, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-582<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to Meet the Inevitable Repression                    THE Swadeshi that you have started in Bengal is a move in the right direction, said some…<\/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-298","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\/298","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=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}