{"id":335,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=335"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:23","slug":"081-english-obduracy-and-its-reason-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\/081-english-obduracy-and-its-reason-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-081_English Obduracy and Its Reason.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nEnglish Obduracy and its Reason<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n<\/b>                       
\n<\/span><\/font>W<\/font><\/span><\/b>E<\/b>
\nseriously invite our Moderate friends to ask themselves for a reason as to why
\nEnglishmen should invariably meet all their demands for political reforms with
\nthe one unalterable answer that they are not fit to receive them. Why should
\nJohn Morley whose writings and sayings are so instinct with an ardent love of
\nliberty, so lightly flout their prayer for some concessions of a democratic
\nnature? He not only denies the Indians the least measure of liberty, but shuts
\nthe door of any possible hope abruptly in their face by telling them that as
\nlong as his imagination can travel into futurity so long must India remain under
\npersonal rule. In his last Budget speech also he took the opportunity to
\nreiterate his faith in the efficacy of personal rule for India and even went a
\nstep further and indulged in the paternal prophecy that if the English left
\nIndia today, she would plunge back into rapine, bloodshed and chaos within a
\nweek. Naturally a Secretary of State who entertains such a low opinion of the
\nIndian character would consider it the maximum of human folly to give Indians
\nany control over the government of their country. And the opinion of Mr. Morley
\nonly too truly represents that of the general body of the Europeans who have
\never come into contact with India or thought about the problem she presents
\nbefore humanity. The question is why should they all have arrived at this poor
\nestimate of the Indian’s political capability? The answer, however, is not far
\nto seek; we have only ourselves to thank for this cosmopolitan contempt into
\nwhich we have brought our country. The European remains today essentially as he
\nwas in the time of Aristotle, "a political animal". His nature has
\nretained throughout history its ingrained and inalienable political bent; polity
\nhas played the greatest part in the moulding of his life and destiny; the ideas
\nthat have irresistibly moved him to heroic strivings, passionate hopes or
\ndeath-defying sufferings have been mainly those of independence, freedom,
\nliberty; the<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-470<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ngreatest
\nnames in his history are those of political heroes or governors; the one call
\nthat has ever sung truly in his ears and commanded his unquestioning obedience
\nis the call to the service of his country; the courting of death for the
\nfulfilment or the upholding of the above ideas has been as natural to him as
\nbreathing; the history of his country is the history of the increasing
\nconsummation of those ideas, in which faith and intellect have filled a
\nsubsidiary place. Such is the European by constitution. To him India is an
\ninsoluble riddle. How a country of three hundred million men can consent to be
\ngoverned by a handful of foreigners he simply cannot understand. He thinks of
\nthe Indian as the member of a sub-human race, outside the pale of his
\nprivileges, his code of morality, his civilisation. And that new-fangled
\nspecimen of the Indian race, the educated Indian, only intensifies his contempt.
\nThat a man who has been nurtured in the literature of England, and has read the
\nhistory of Europe, can still have failed to be touched by the European ideal, to
\nbe visited by an insatiable longing for liberty, and can continue, on the other
\nhand, in a life of contented acquiescence in foreign rule, and feel happy and
\nproud merely to serve under it and ensure its continuation, strikes the native
\nof Europe as a most monstrous mockery, as some unimaginable and unaccountable
\nperversion of human nature. He gradually gets to believe that whatever may be
\nthe excellence of his domestic life or the greatness of his philosophy, the
\nIndian is by birth fit only to be a slave, and education succeeds in perfecting
\nhim only in the art of slavery. And as slavery means to the European the
\npermanent extinction of all the nobler possibilities that lie before man,
\nservile India ceases altogether to engage his least consideration or enlist his
\nsympathy; let her alone with her slave’s philosophy and art, thinks he, she can
\nbe of no service to the future of the human race.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>And the politics and politicians of India heighten further his
\nconvictions about the lowering nature and effect of slavery, and the
\nimpossibility of India ever lifting herself to the level of civilised humanity.
\nHer politics are the slave’s politics whose method is prayer and petition and
\nwhose resentment or disapproval can find expression only in weeping and sobbing.
\nAnd rebuff<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-471<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nmerely
\nurges the Indian politician to greater efforts of supplication and to higher
\nfeats of wailing. And by such persistent mendicancy alone he aspires to win his
\ncountry’s liberty \u2014 liberty to which Europe has wilfully waded her way through
\na welter of blood after her struggles of centuries. No, cries the irritated
\nEuropean, India can never be fit to govern herself. This is the secret of John
\nMorley’s point-blank refusal to satisfy Moderate aspirations; he has thrown to
\nthem a plaything or two, for they deserve nothing better. And because Mr. Morley
\nloves and prizes liberty more highly than the average man, therefore has he been
\nthe more intolerant of the Moderate’s pretensions, the more merciless in felling
\nto the ground all his cherished delusions based on his inverted conception of
\nliberty. The Partition of Bengal Mr. Morley admits to be a wrong, but he will
\nnot undo it because it is a settled fact; in other words, in dealing with
\ndependent India he refuses to observe the rules of political morality which he
\nhas himself so clearly enunciated; in enunciating them, he would say, he had in
\ncontemplation only the rights and obligations that arise between one free people
\nand another, and not the relationship between a ruling race and their abjectly
\nservile subjects. All his other pronouncements point to the same moral. And have
\nwe not heard of the common English labourer who on being harangued eloquently by
\na Moderate Missionary about Indian grievances asked him bluntly if he was really
\nrelating the true state of affairs, and on being answered in the affirmative
\ntold the Missionary without much ceremony that a people who could submit to such
\nwrongs and could think of nothing better than the sending of representatives to
\nEngland to plead for their removal, fully deserved to be ruled by an arbitrary
\ndespotism? Unknowingly perhaps he was summarising the verdict of the civilised
\nworld on Indian politics. The money-making middle class in England say the same
\nthing, and further strengthen their argument with the interesting inquiry,
\n"What is to become of our boys if we leave the management of India in your
\nhands?" The man from the Continent or America asks plainly, "How can
\nthe whole three hundred million of you be kept under by 70,000 tommies?"<\/font><\/p>\n

\n        Ought
\nnot all this to give our Moderate friends furiously<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-472<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nto
\nthink? We can appreciate the humanity of their desire to emancipate the country
\nwithout dragging her through the red horror of a revolution. But let them
\nreconsider how best to achieve this end. Surely their failure to obtain anything
\nworth having after thirty years of patient supplication culminating, in the
\nsupreme tragedy of the refusal of John Morley, the one man of whom they had
\nexpected more than of any other \u2014 even to listen to their prayers with any
\nseriousness, ought to impel them to some introspective inquiry regarding the
\nsoundness of their political faith. We also invite their thoughts to the
\nchanging attitude of England and of the whole world towards India since the
\ndeclaration of the Boycott and the rise of the New Party. We conjure the
\nModerate to spend his best and sincerest thoughts on these two most vital
\ntopics; and once he has begun to think<\/i>, we know the days of his creed are
\nnumbered, and there can be but one party in India, the Nationalists.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande Mataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i> <\/font> July 11, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-473<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English Obduracy and its Reason                             WE seriously invite our Moderate friends to ask themselves for a reason as to why Englishmen should…<\/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-335","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\/335","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=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}