{"id":330,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=330"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:21","slug":"010-its-object-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\/010-its-object-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-010_Its Object.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nTWO<\/p>\n

 <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\nIts Object<\/b><\/font>   <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n                <\/font><\/span>    <\/span><\/font>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>O<\/font><\/span><\/b>RGANISED<\/b>
\nresistance to an existing form of government may be undertaken either for the
\nvindication of national liberty, or in order to substitute one form of
\ngovernment for another, or to remove particular objectionable features in the
\n<\/span>existing system
\nwithout any entire or radical alteration of the <\/span>whole,
\nor simply for the redress of particular grievances. Our political agitation in
\nthe nineteenth century was entirely confined to the smaller and narrower
\nobjects. To replace an oppressive land revenue system by the security of a
\nPermanent Settlement, to mitigate executive tyranny by the separation of
\njudicial from executive functions, to diminish the drain on the country
\nnaturally resulting from foreign rule by more liberal employment of Indians in
\nthe services \u2014 to these half-way houses our wise men and political seers
\ndirected our steps,
\n<\/span>\u2014<\/span>
\n<\/span>with this limited ideal they confined the
\nrising hopes and imaginations of a mighty people re-awakening after a great
\ndownfall. Their political inexperience prevented them from realising that these
\nmeasures on which we have misspent half a century of unavailing effort, were not
\nonly paltry and partial in their scope but in their nature ineffective. A
\nPermanent Settlement can always be evaded by a spendthrift Government bent on
\nincreasing its resources and unchecked by any system of popular control; there
\nis no limit to the possible number of cesses and local taxes by which the
\nSettlement could be practically violated without any direct infringement of its
\nprovisions. The mere deprivation of judicial functions will not disarm executive
\ntyranny so long as both executive and judiciary are mainly white and subservient
\nto a central authority irresponsible, alien and bureaucratic; for the central
\nauthority can always tighten its grip on the judiciary of which it is the
\ncontroller and paymaster and habituate it to a consistent support of executive
\naction. Nor will Simultaneous Examinations and the liberal<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-90<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nappointment
\nof Indians mend the matter; for an Englishman serves the Government as a member
\nof the same ruling race and can afford to be occasionally independent; but the
\nIndian civilian is a serf masquerading as a heaven-born and can only deserve
\nfavour and promotion by his zeal in fastening the yoke heavier upon his
\nfellow-countrymen. As a rule the foreign Government can rely on the
\n"native" civilian to be more zealously oppressive than even the
\naverage Anglo-Indian official. Neither would the panacea of Simultaneous
\nExaminations really put an end to the burden of the drain. The Congress
\ninsistence on the Home Charges for a long time obscured the real accusation
\nagainst British rule; for it substituted a particular grievance for a radical
\nand congenital evil implied in the very existence of British control. The huge
\nprice India has to pay England for the inestimable privilege of being ruled by
\nEnglishmen is a small thing compared with the murderous drain by which we
\npurchase the more exquisite privilege of being exploited by British capital. The
\ndiminution of Home Charges will not prevent the gradual death by bleeding of
\nwhich exploitation is the true and abiding cause. Thus, even for the partial
\nobjects they were intended to secure, the measures for which we petitioned and
\nclamoured in the last century were hopelessly ineffective. So was it with all
\nthe Congress nostrums; they were palliatives which could not even be counted upon
\nto palliate; the radical evil, uncured, would only be driven from one seat in
\nthe body politic to take refuge in others where it would soon declare its
\npresence by equally troublesome symptoms. The only true cure for a bad and
\noppressive financial system is to give the control over taxation to the people
\nwhose money pays for the needs of Government. The only effective way of putting
\nan end to executive tyranny is to make the people and not an irresponsible
\nGovernment the controller and paymaster of both executive and judiciary. The
\nonly possible method of stopping the drain is to establish a popular government
\nwhich may be relied on to foster and protect Indian commerce and Indian industry
\nconducted by Indian capital and employing Indian labour. This is the object
\nwhich the new politics, the politics of the twentieth century, places before the
\npeople of India in their resistance to the present system of Government, \u2014 not<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-91<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntinkerings
\nand palliatives but the substitution for the autocratic bureaucracy, which at
\npresent misgoverns us, of a free constitutional and democratic system of
\nGovernment and the entire removal of foreign control in order to make way for
\nperfect <\/font> <\/span>national liberty.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nThe redress of
\nparticular grievances and the reformation of particular objectionable features
\nin a system of Government are sufficient objects for organised resistance only
\nwhen the Government is indigenous and all classes have a recognised place in the
\npolitical scheme of the State. They are not and cannot be a sufficient object in
\ncountries like Russia and India where the laws are made and administered by a
\nhandful of men, and a vast <\/span>population,
\neducated and uneducated alike, have no political
\n<\/font>
\nright
\nor duty except the duty of obedience and the right to assist in confirming their
\nown servitude. They are still less a sufficient object when the despotic
\noligarchy is alien by race and has not even a permanent home in the country, for
\nin that case the Government cannot be relied on to look after the general
\ninterest of the country, as in nations ruled by indigenous despotism; on the
\ncontrary, they are bound to place the interests of their own country and their
\nown race first and foremost. Organised resistance in subject nations which mean
\nto live and not to die, can have no less an object than an entire and radical
\nchange of the system of Government; only by becoming responsible to the people
\nand drawn from the people can the Government be turned into a protector instead
\nof an oppressor. But if the subject nation desires not a provincial existence
\nand a maimed development but the full, vigorous and noble realisation of its
\nnational existence, even a change in the system of Government will not be
\nenough; it must aim not only at a national Government responsible to the people
\nbut a free national Government unhampered even in the least degree by foreign
\ncontrol.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>It is not surprising that our politicians of the nineteenth century could
\nnot realise these elementary truths of modern politics. They had no national
\nexperience behind them of politics under modern conditions; they had no teachers
\nexcept English books and English liberal "sympathisers" and
\n"friends of India". Schooled by British patrons, trained to the fixed
\nidea of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>92<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nEnglish
\nsuperiority and Indian inferiority, their imaginations could not embrace the
\nidea of national liberty, and perhaps they did not even desire it at heart,
\npreferring the comfortable ease which at that time still seemed possible in a
\nservitude under British protection, to the struggles and sacrifices of a hard
\nand difficult independence. Taught to take their political lessons solely from
\nthe example of England and ignoring or not valuing the historical experience of
\nthe rest of the world, they could not even conceive of a truly popular and
\ndemocratic Government in India except as the slow result of the development of
\ncenturies, progress broadening down from precedent to precedent. They could not
\nthen understand that the experience of an independent nation is not valid to
\nguide a subject nation, unless and until the subject nation throws off the yoke
\nand itself becomes independent. They could not realise that the slow, painful
\nand ultra-cautious development, necessary in mediaeval and semi- mediaeval
\nconditions when no experience of a stable popular Government had been gained,
\nneed not be repeated in the days of the steamship, railway and telegraph, when
\nstable democratic systems are part of the world’s secured and permanent
\nheritage. The instructive spectacle of Asiatic nations demanding and receiving
\nconstitutional and parliamentary government as the price of a few years’
\nstruggle and civil turmoil, had not then been offered to the world. But even if
\nthe idea of such happenings had occurred to the more sanguine spirits, they
\nwould have been prevented from putting it into words by their inability to
\ndiscover any means towards its fulfilment. Their whole political outlook was
\nbounded by the lessons of English history, and in English
\nhistory
\nthey found only two methods of politics,<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u2014<\/span>
\n<\/span>the slow method of agitation and the swift
\ndecisive method of open struggle and revolt. Unaccustomed to independent
\npolitical thinking, they did not notice the significant fact that the method of
\nagitation only became effective in England when the people had already gained a
\npowerful voice in the Government. In order to secure that voice they had been
\ncompelled to resort no less than three several times to the method of open
\nstruggle and revolt. Blind to the significance of this fact, our nineteenth
\ncentury politicians clung to the method of agitation, obstinately hoping<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-93<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nagainst
\nall experience and reason that it would somehow serve their purpose. From any
\nidea of open struggle with the bureaucracy they shrank with terror and a sense
\nof paralysis. Dominated by the idea of the overwhelming might of Britain and the
\nabject weakness of India, their want of courage and faith in the nation, their
\nrooted distrust of the national character, disbelief in Indian patriotism and
\nblindness to the possibility of true political strength and virtue in the
\npeople, precluded them from discovering the rough and narrow way to salvation.
\nHerein lies <\/span>the
\nsuperiority of the new school that they have an indomitable courage and faith in
\nthe nation and the people. By the strength of that courage and faith they have
\nnot only been able to enforce on the mind of the country a higher ideal but
\nperceive an effective means to the realisation of that ideal. By the strength of
\nthat courage and faith they have made such immense strides in the course of a
\nfew months. By the strength of that courage and faith they will dominate the
\nfuture.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>The new methods were first tried in the great Swadeshi outburst of the
\nlast two years,
\n<\/span>\u2014<\/span>
\n<\/span>blindly, crudely, without leading and
\norganisation, but still with amazing results. The moving cause was a particular
\ngrievance, the Partition of Bengal; and to the removal of the particular
\ngrievance, pettiest and narrowest of
\nall political objects, our old leaders strove hard to confine the use of this
\nnew and mighty weapon. But the popular instinct was true to itself and would
\nhave none of it. At a bound we passed therefore from mere particular grievances,
\nhowever serious and intolerable, to the use of passive resistance as a means of
\ncure for the basest and evilest feature of the present system,
\n<\/span>\u2014<\/span>
\nthe <\/span>bleeding to death of a country by
\nforeign exploitation. And from that stage we are steadily advancing, under the
\nguidance of such able political thinking as modern India has not before seen and
\nwith the rising tide of popular opinion at our back, to the one true object of
\nall resistance, passive or active, aggressive or defensive, \u2014 the creation of
\na free popular Government and the vindication of Indian liberty.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>94<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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