{"id":307,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=307"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:14","slug":"059-and-still-it-moves-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\/059-and-still-it-moves-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-059_And Still It Moves.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nAnd Still It Moves<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                       
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>W<\/font><\/b>HAT<\/b>
\nis the precise difference which the recent Government measures have made in the
\nconditions of the Swadeshi movement? The first to be considered, because the
\nmost dramatic and striking of these measures, is the deportation of Lala Lajpat
\nRai. Has this deportation brought any really new element into the problem? When
\nwe began the movement we were prepared, or at least we professed to be prepared,
\nfor the utmost use by the Government of all the weapons the existing law puts in
\nits hands. We were prepared for press-prosecutions, we were prepared to go to
\njail on false charges, we refused to be appalled by regulation lathis, broken
\nheads and Gurkha charges. Whatever use the Bengal Government might make of the
\nrepressive laws which stand on its statute books, to whatever advantage the
\nlocal magistracy might turn their powers of government by ukase, we were
\nprepared for everything, we started with the fixed determination to allow
\nnothing to daunt us. Deportation was also a pre-existing weapon of repression
\navailable to the bureaucracy under the existing laws. The difference its use has
\nmade is to bring in, in the place of provincial repression by the local
\ngovernment, imperial repression by the Government of India with the approval of
\nthe Secretary of State. It has also replaced the long and uncertain process of
\ntrial ending in a punishment of fixed duration by the swift and sudden process
\nof kidnapping and
\na punishment<\/span> <\/span>
\n\u2014<\/span>
\n<\/span>no, we
\napologise to the Friend of India, <\/span>we should
\nrather say, a leniency of uncertain, perhaps life-long duration. One other
\nelement it has introduced which patriots have had to face in all other
\ncountries, but which falls on our heads for the first time, \u2014 the punishment
\nof exile. To speak the truth, this is the one and only terror of deportation to
\nIndian patriots. The Indian mind with its passionate attachment to the very soil
\nof the mother-country, its deep reverent feeling that mother and motherland are
\nmore to be cherished than paradise<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-361<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nitself,
\nmust feel the deprivation with a force which no European race, except perhaps
\nthe passionate and emotional Italian, could understand. In jail the floor we
\ntread is at least made of Indian soil, when we exercise in the prison yard the
\nair that visits our cheeks is Indian air; the pulsation of Indian aspiration,
\nIndian emotion, Indian life, Indian joys and sorrows beats around our prison
\nwalls and floods our hearts with the magnetic pervasiveness of which the air of
\nIndia is more full than that of any other country. The bureaucracy blundered
\nupon an ingenious way of striking us in a very vulnerable point when it hurried
\nLajpat Rai away
\n<\/span>to a remote
\ncorner of the world among alien men and cut <\/span>him
\noff from all sight of Indian faces and communion with Indian hearts. But what
\nthen? It is but one suffering the more and the deeper the suffering the greater
\nthe glory, the more celestial the reward. We cannot suffer more than Poeris in
\nhis Neapolitan dungeon or Silvio Pellico in his Austrian fortress or Mazzini in
\nhis lifelong exile. It is with the life-blood of a nation’s best and the unshed
\ntears that well up from the hearts of its strong men that the tree of liberty is
\nwatered. The greater the sacrifice, the earlier is its fruit enjoyed.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>Yet it cannot be denied that the deportation came as a shock on the
\nModerates and as a surprise to the Extremists. It was a shock to the Moderates
\nbecause of the source from which it came. They had never been able to shake off
\nthe idea that in the end Mr. John Morley, if not the sympathetic Lord Minto,
\nwould come to their help. To renounce that hope would be to reject the very
\nkeystone of the Moderate policy and turn their backs for ever on the illusions
\nof thirty years. Even up to the moment almost of the deportation the Bengalee
\n<\/i>was clamouring for the recall of Mr. Hare and confidently expecting that his
\ncriminal inactivity in the East Bengal disturbances would be punished by a just
\nand benign Secretary of State. On such high expectations the deportation came as
\na blow straight in the face and struck the Moderate Party dumb and senseless for
\na moment. The heaviness of the blow it had received can be judged by the sudden
\nviolence of the Indu Prakash <\/i>which exceeded in the fierce anger of its
\nutterances any Extremist organ. There is no disguising the fact that the
\nModerate’s occupation is gone. British rule has so unmis-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>362<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntakably,
\nfinally, irrevocably declared itself as despotism naked and unashamed, a
\ndespotism moreover which is firmly resolved to remain despotic, \u2014 the fiction
\nof a constitution has been so relentlessly exposed as a sheer mockery and
\nconstitutional agitation has thereby been rendered such a patent elaborate and
\nheartless farce that, although it will continue just as the snake continues to
\nwriggle even after it has been cut into two, it has lost all life and all chance
\nof carrying weight in the country. The temper of the Madras meeting, which a
\nserious and influential paper like the Madras Standard <\/i>asserts to have
\nbeen composed mainly not of students but of adults, shows what the temper of the
\nnation is likely to be. The deportation therefore has introduced a new element
\nfor the Moderate politician. His gods have failed him; the benign hand from
\nwhich he expected favours has treated him instead to a whip of scorpions; the
\nface of flowers
\nhe worshipped has had its veil torn<\/span>
\naway <\/span>and stands
\nre<\/span>vealed as a grinning death’s head.
\nModeration lies wounded to death. It can no longer exist except as a pretence,
\nan attitude. To the Nationalist the deportation came as a surprise because of
\nthe occasion for which it was employed. We knew that the benignant bureaucracy
\nhad this weapon in their armoury, that they had used it once and might well use
\nit again; but we thought it had more respect for its prestige and more common
\nsense than to waste it on an insufficient occasion. The Natus were deported
\nbecause it was suspected that they were behind the Poona assassinations and that
\nthe assassinations themselves were part of an elaborate Maratha conspiracy. In
\nthe Punjab there was nothing but a riot; for the persistent wild rumours of the
\ndisarming of regiments and murder of Europeans have received no confirmation of
\nany kind. Deportation, as directed against the Nationalist movement, was like
\nthe magic weapon of Karna which could be used only once with effect; it should
\ntherefore have been reserved for a supreme occasion when it might have averted,
\nfor the time at least, an incipient mutiny or formidable rebellion. It was used
\ninstead in a moment of panic to meet a fancied <\/i>mutiny; it was used not
\nagainst the formidable and indispensable leader of a great approaching
\nrebellion; but against a boy-orator and a pleader of considerable influence who
\nat the worst was no<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-363<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nmore
\nthan one of the many prophets of revolution. Meant for Arjuna, it has been
\nhurled against Ghatothkach. This misuse deprives it of its utility; for as the Empire
\n<\/i>shrewdly pointed out the other day, the trick of deportation cannot be
\nsuccessfully played twice; the second time it will be a direct help to the
\nstrong revolutionary forces which are growing in the country. To the
\nNationalists therefore the menace of deportation does not bring in any new
\nelement into the situation, except in so far as it hastens their work or brings
\nthe leaders as well as the rank and file to the touchstone of peril where their
\nvalue will be tested.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>The new element of deportation, therefore, so far as it is a new element,
\nmerely facilitates the work of Nationalism. There is no reason why it should
\nmodify our action in any essential feature. We may be told of course that we
\ncannot afford to imperil the leaders on whom the progress of the movement
\ndepends. We answer that the safety of the leaders can only be assured by
\nsacrificing the vitality and force of the movement, a price too heavy to pay;
\nsecondly, where the will of a higher Power is active in a great upheaval, no
\nindividual is indispensable. The movement will not stop in the Punjab because
\nLajpat Rai is gone or Ajit Singh is hiding. Eppur si muove, <\/i>"and
\nstill it moves", to its predestined end.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande
\nMataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i> <\/font> May 23, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-364<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And Still It Moves                           WHAT is the precise difference which the recent Government measures have made in the conditions of the Swadeshi movement?…<\/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-307","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\/307","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=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}