{"id":377,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=377"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:38","slug":"047-shall-india-br-free-n-d-and-f-r-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\/047-shall-india-br-free-n-d-and-f-r-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-047_Shall India br Free (N. D. and F. R.).htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nShall India be Free ?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font>
\n
\nNATIONAL
\nDEVELOPMENT AND FOREIGN RULE<\/b><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                            <\/font>I<\/font>N
\n<\/font><\/b><\/span>
\n
\nDEALING<\/span><\/font>
\nwith the Loyalist creed it will be convenient to examine first the general
\npostulate before we can come to those which apply particularly to the conditions
\nof India. The contention is that a healthy development is possible under foreign
\ndomination. In this view national independence is a thing of no moment or at
\nleast its importance has been grossly exaggerated. Nations can very well do
\nwithout it; provided they have a good government which keeps the people happy
\nand contented and allows them to develop their economic activities and moral
\nvirtues, they need not repine at being ruled by others. For certain nations in
\ncertain periods of their development liberty would be disastrous and subjection
\nto foreign rule is the most healthy condition. India, argue the Loyalists, is an
\nexample of such a nation in such a period. The first business of its people is
\nto develop their commerce, become educated and enlightened, re- form their
\nsociety and their manners and to grow more and more fit for self-government. In
\nproportion as they become more civilised and more fit, they will receive from
\ntheir sympathetic, just and discerning rulers an ever-increasing share in the
\nadministration of the country until with entire fitness will come entire
\npossession of the status of British citizenship. The idea is that foreign rule
\nis a Providential dispensation or a provision of Nature for training an
\nimperfectly developed people in the methods of civilisation and the arts of
\nself-government. This theory is a modern invention. Ancient and mediaeval
\nImperialism frankly acknowledged the principle of might is right; the conquering
\nnation considered that its military superiority was in itself a proof that it
\nwas meant to rule and the subject nation to obey; liberty, being denied by
\nProvidence to the latter, could not be good for it and there was no call on the
\nruler to concede it either now or hereafter. This was the spirit in which
\nEngland conquered and governed Ireland by the same methods of cynical<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-304<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntreachery and ruthless massacre which in modern times are usually considered to
\nbe the monopoly of despotisms like Turkey and Russia. But by the time that
\nEngland had fastened its hold on India, a change had come over the modern world.
\nThe Greek ideas of freedom and democracy had penetrated the European mind and
\ncreated the great impulse of democratic Nationalism which dominated Europe in
\nthe 19th century. The idea that despotism of any kind was an offence against
\nhumanity, had crystallised into an instinctive feeling, and modern morality and
\nsentiment revolted against the enslavement of nation by nation, of class by
\nclass or of man by man. Imperialism had to justify itself to this modern
\nsentiment and could only do so by pretending to be a trustee of liberty,
\ncommissioned from on high to civilise the uncivilised and train the untrained
\nuntil the time had come when the benevolent conqueror had done his work and
\ncould unselfishly retire. Such were the professions with which England justified
\nher usurpation of the heritage of the Moghul and dazzled us into acquiescence in
\nservitude by the splendour of her uprightness and generosity. Such was the
\npretence with which she veiled her annexation of Egypt. These Pharisaic pretensions were especially necessary to British Imperialism because in England the Puritanic middle class had risen to power and imparted to the English
\ntemperament a sanctimonious self- righteousness which refused to indulge in
\ninjustice and selfish spoliation except under a cloak of virtue, benevolence and
\nunselfish altruism. The genesis of the Loyalist gospel can be found in the
\nneed of British Imperialism to justify itself to the liberalised sentiment of
\nthe 19th century and to the Puritanic middle-class element in the British
\nnation.
\n        The question then arises, has this theory any firmer root? Is it anything more
\nthan a convenient theory? Has it any relations with actual facts or with human
\nexperience? To answer this question
\nit is necessary to distinguish between three kinds of<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span>
\nliberty which
\nare generally confused together. There is a national liberty of freedom from
\nforeign control; there is an internal liberty or that freedom from the despotism
\nof an individual, a class or a combination of classes to which the name of self-
\ngovernment is properly given; and there is individual liberty<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span>or<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-305<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe freedom of the individual from unnecessary and arbitrary restrictions
\nimposed on him either by the society of which he is a part or by the
\nGovernment, whether that Government be monarchical, democratic, oligarchic or
\nbureaucratic. The question at issue is, then, which, if any, of these three
\nkinds of liberty is essential to the healthy development of national life; or,
\ncan there be such development without any liberty at all?
\n        The object of national existence, of the formation of men into groups and their
\ntacit agreement to allow themselves to be ruled by an organised instrument of
\nadministration which is called the Government, is nothing else than human
\ndevelopment in the individual and in the group. The individual, standing alone,
\ncannot develop; he depends on the support and assistance of the group to which
\nhe belongs. The group itself cannot develop unless it has an organisation by
\nmeans of which it not only secures internal peace and order and protection from
\nexternal attack but also proper conditions which will give free play for the
\ndevelopment of its activities and capacities — physical, moral, intellectual.
\nThe nation or group is not like the individual who can specialise his
\ndevelopment and throw all his energies into one line. The nation must develop
\nmilitary and political greatness and activity, intellectual and aesthetic
\ngreatness and activity, commercial greatness and activity, moral sanity and
\nvigour; it cannot sacrifice any of these functions of the organism without
\nmaking itself unfit for the struggle for life and finally succumbing and
\nperishing under the pressure of more highly organised nations. The purely
\ncommercial State like Carthage is broken in the shock with a nation which has
\ndeveloped the military and political as well as the commercial energies. A
\npurely military state like Sparta cannot stand against rivals which to equal
\nmilitary efficiency unite a greater science, intellectual energy and political
\nability. A purely aesthetic and intellectual state like the Greek colonies in
\nItaly or a purely moral and spiritual community like the empire of Peru are
\nblotted out of existence in the clash with ruder but more vigorous and
\nmany-sided organisms. No government, therefore, can really be good for a nation
\nor serve the purposes of national life and development which does not give full
\nscope for the development of all the na-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-306<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n tional activities, capacities and energies. Foreign rule is unnatural and
\nfatal to a nation precisely because by its very nature it throws itself upon
\nthese activities and capacities and crushes them down in the
\ninterests of its own continued existence. Even when
\nit does not crush them down violently, it obstructs their growth passively by
\nits very presence. The subject nation becomes dependent, disorganised and
\nloses its powers by atrophy. For this reason national independence is absolutely
\nnecessary to national growth. There can be no national development without
\nnational liberty.
\n        Individual liberty is necessary to national development, because, if the individual is unduly hampered, the richness of national life
\nsuffers and is impoverished. If the individual is given free room to realise
\nhimself, to perfect, specialise and enrich his particular powers and attain
\nthe full height of his manhood, the variety and rapidity of national progress
\nis immensely increased. In so far as he is fettered and denied scope, the development of the nation is cramped and retarded. A Government which denies scope
\nand liberty to the individual, as all foreign governments must to a considerable
\nextent deny it, helps to cramp the healthy development of the nation and not to
\nforward it. The development of the individual is and must be an embarrassment
\nto the intruding power unless the numbers are so few that they can be bribed
\ninto acquiescence and support by the receipt of honours, employment or other
\npersonal advantages. For development creates ambition and nothing is more fatal
\nto the continuance of foreign rule than the growth of ambitions in the subject
\nrace which it cannot satisfy. The action of Lord Curzon in introducing the
\nUniversities Act was for the British domination in India an act of inevitable
\nnecessity, which had to be done some time or other. Its only defect from the
\nImperialist point of view was that it came too late.
\n        Just as individual liberty is necessary for the richness and <\/p>\n

variety of national development, so self-government is necessary for its
\ncompleteness and the full deployment of national strength. If certain classes
\nare dominant and others depressed, the result is that the potential strength of
\nthe depressed classes is so much valuable force lost to the sum of national
\nstrength. The dominant<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-307<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nclasses may undoubtedly show a splendid development and may make the nation
\ngreat and famous in history; but when all is said the strength of the nation is
\nthen only the sum of the strength of a few privileged classes. The great
\nweakness of India in the past has been the political depression and nullity of
\nthe mass of the population. It was not from the people of India that India was
\nwon by Moghul or Briton, but from a small privileged class. On the other hand,
\nthe strength and success of the Marathas and Sikhs in the 18th century was due
\nto the policy of Shivaji and Guru Govinda which called the whole nation into the
\nfighting line. They failed only because the Marathas could not preserve the
\ncohesion which Shivaji gave to their national strength or the Sikhs the
\ndiscipline which Guru Govinda gave to the Khalsa. Is it credible that a foreign
\nrule would either knowingly foster or allow the growth of that universal
\npolitical consciousness in the subject nation which self-government implies? It
\nis obvious that foreign rule can only endure so long as political consciousness
\ncan be either stifled by violence or hypnotised into inactivity. The moment the
\nnation becomes politically self-conscious, the doom of the alien predominance is
\nsealed. The bureaucracy which rules us, is not only foreign in origin but
\nexternal to us, — it holds and draws nourishing sustenance for itself from the
\nsubject organism by means of tentacles and feelers thrust out from its body
\nthousands of miles away. Its type in natural history is not the parasite, but
\nthe octopus. Self-government would mean the removal of the tentacles and the
\ncessation both of the grip and the sustenance. Foreign rule is naturally opposed
\nto the development of the subject nation as a separate organism, to the growth
\nof its capacity for and practice in self-government, to the development of
\ncapacity and ambition of its individuals. To think that a foreign rule would
\ndeliberately train us for independence or allow us to train ourselves is to
\nsuppose a miracle in nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBande Mataram<\/i>, April 29, 1907<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-308<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shall India be Free ? NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND FOREIGN RULE                               IN DEALING with the Loyalist creed it will be convenient to examine first the…<\/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-377","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\/377","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=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}