{"id":338,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=338"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:24","slug":"104-difficulties-at-nagpur-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\/104-difficulties-at-nagpur-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-104_Difficulties at Nagpur.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nDifficulties at Nagpur<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                
\n<\/font> T<\/font>HE<\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span>difficulties experienced at Nagpur
\nin bringing about the compromise which at one time seemed on the point of being
\neffected, do not strike a mind outside the whirlpool of local excitement and
\ncontroversy as either obvious or insurmountable; yet it is evident that so much
\nimportance is being attached to them as to seriously imperil the chance of a
\nCongress session being held at all this year. It is imperative that some
\ndecision should be arrived at in the course of the next few days either one way
\nor the other. Both sides lay the blame of the failure to arrive at an agreement
\non its opponents. The Nationalists say that the Moderate Party will not accept
\nany reasonable terms and the Moderates charge the Nationalists with backing out
\nof the compromise on the question of the money subscribed to the Rashtriya
\nMandali. It appears that the Nationalists are willing to co-operate if Srijut
\nSurendranath Banerji be nominated as President in lieu of Mr. Tilak. The reasons
\nfor this proposal and its rejection are not far to seek. Sj. Surendranath is
\nrecognised all over India as the acknowledged leader of one of the two great
\nparties in Bengal, a man with a great name and a great following in the country
\nand, what is more important from the Nationalist standpoint, one who, whatever
\nvagaries his ideas or policy may lead him into, is believed to be a
\nthoroughgoing Boycotter and Swadeshist and in no sense a Government man. Dr.
\nRash Behari Ghose, on the other hand, is a dark horse in politics. All that the
\nrest of<\/p>\n

India knows of him is that he is a
\ndistinguished jurist, the Chairman of last year’s Reception Committee and \u2014 a
\nLegislative Councillor. None of these titles to distinction is sufficient to
\njustify his being suddenly put forward as President of the National Congress;
\nfor the time has passed away, not to return, when appointment to the Legislative
\nCouncils, provincial or imperial, was sufficient to raise a successful man of
\nintellectual distinction or social influence, not before politically notable, to
\nthe position of a leader or at least a sort of Congress grandee entitled to the<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-583<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nrespect of the common herd. A seat on the
\nLegislative Council is nowadays an obstacle and not a help to leadership, a
\ncause of distrust and not of trust: the man to whom the bureaucracy lends ear is
\nnot one whom the people can trust and follow, and one who consents to sit in a
\nCouncil where he is not listened to and can command no influence, has not the
\nself-respect and backbone which are necessary to a popular leader \u2014 in days of
\nstress and struggle. To us Nationalists a seat on the Council is not merely an
\nobstacle but an absolute bar to popular leadership, for it means that the man
\nhas one foot in the enemy’s camp and one in the people’s. It is easy to
\nunderstand therefore why the Nagpur Nationalists are opposed to the idea of Dr. Ghose’s Presidentship, specially as his political views are not understood nor
\nhas he, like Mr. Gokhale, a record of past services and self-sacrifice to set
\nagainst the disqualification of a seat on the Legislative Council. Nor is it
\ndifficult to understand why the Moderates of Nagpur have shied at the idea of
\nSrijut Surendranath’s Presidentship. The Moderatism of Western India is much
\nmore Loyalist than Moderate, unlike that of Bengal, where except in the case of
\na small minority Moderatism wears loyalty more or less loosely as a sort of
\ncloak or garment of respectability than as an essential part of its politics.
\nThis tendency is exaggerated in places like the<\/p>\n

Central Provinces where before the
\nNationalist upheaval the pulse of political life beat dull and slow. For a
\nModerate of the Nagpur Rai Bahadur type to be asked to take Surendranath as a
\nsubstitute for Tilak, is as if they were asked to exchange Satan for Beelzebub;
\nboth are to them, as to the Englishman<\/i>, <\/i>devils of Extremism, one only
\nless objectionable than the other.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n            But the rights of this
\nquestion are so simple that there is no excuse for allowing the Congress to
\nbreak up over it. If the Moderates want Dr. Rash Behari Ghose or any other
\nLoyalist or Legislative Councillor as President, they must be satisfied with
\ntheir three-fourths majority on the Reception Committee and pay the bulk of the
\nexpenses of the session. If they desire a larger co-operation on the part of the
\nNationalists, they should meet them halfway by accepting the nomination of
\nSurendranath or any other President acceptable to both parties as a com-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-584<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\tpromise. And if they will take neither
\ncourse, they should leave it to the Nationalists to arrange for the holding of
\nthe Congress with Mr. Tilak as President. But for them to insist on the
\nRashtriya Mandal funds, raised on the clear understanding that they should only
\nbe devoted to Congress purposes if Mr. Tilak were nominated President, being
\ngiven into their hands to hold a Congress with a Loyalist President in the chair
\nis a preposterously childish and unreasoning obstinacy. We cannot understand how
\nthe Rashtriya Mandali could take this step even if they wished, since it would
\nbe a distinct contravention of the condition on which the money was given and a
\nmisuse of public money. Yet it is because the Rashtriya Mandali will not comply
\nwith this unreasonable demand that the Moderates of Nagpur seem to have given
\nthe coup de gr\u00e2ce <\/i>to the<\/p>\n

Nagpur session. The plea of the fear of
\nschoolboy rowdyism is plainly disingenuous, for these gentlemen were willing to
\nface that terrible danger provided the Nationalists paid in their funds to the
\nReception Committee and accepted their nominee as President; these therefore are
\nthe real points on which the Moderate Party is unwilling to compromise and the
\nplea of rowdyism is only a convenient if undignified excuse to cover an
\nuntenable position. For our part, we do not think the question of the
\nPresidentship need be made a cause of final cleavage. Dr. Rash Behari Ghose is
\npledged, like most public men in
\nBengal, to Swadeshi and Boycott and this is still the
\nmost important issue before the Congress. If therefore the Loyalists can still
\nbe got to listen to reason in the matter of the Rashtriya Mandal funds, we think
\nthe Nationalists might give way on this point to avoid a national scandal. If,
\non the other hand, the Rai Sahebs and Rai Bahadurs are obdurate, it is time for
\nNationalists all over the country to consult together as to the course they will
\nfollow in the two possible contingencies of no session being held or of the
\nModerate Party deciding to hold the Congress in another province. The situation
\nin the country is a critical one and it is our action with regard both to the
\nbureaucracy and the Congress at this juncture that will chiefly determine the
\ncourse of the future.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande Mataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i>
\n<\/font>
\nNovember 4, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-585<\/font><\/p>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Difficulties at Nagpur                    THE difficulties experienced at Nagpur in bringing about the compromise which at one time seemed on the point of being…<\/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-338","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\/338","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=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}