{"id":380,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=380"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:39","slug":"079-the-acclamation-of-the-house-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\/079-the-acclamation-of-the-house-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-079_The Acclamation of the House.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nThe Acclamation of the House<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n               
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>A<\/font><\/b><\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/b>
\nGREAT<\/b>
\ndeal is being made in the Anglo-Indian press of the unanimous appreciation with
\nwhich the House of Commons received Mr. Morley’s speech on the Budget. The
\ndiscovery that superior culture has not destroyed the primitive savage in the
\nAnglo-Saxon has been welcomed with fierce gratification. One English paper
\nwrites: \u2014 "It was a healthy sign to which the attention of native
\nsedition-mongers may be usefully directed that the House of Commons which gave
\nan appreciative reception to the speech of the Secretary of State showed
\nimpatience at the captious and mischievous vapourings of Mr. C. J.
\nO\u2019Donnell." Well, but why draw attention to it? We have been arguing the
\nsame thing from the very beginning of our propaganda. We were among the first to
\npoint out to a too credulous nation that the friends of India in Parliament
\nrepresented nobody but themselves. It was one of the principal items on the
\ndestructive side of the Nationalist programme, to prove the delusiveness of the
\nprevalent faith in the ultimate sense of justice of the British people. If the
\nHouse of Commons saves us the trouble of farther argument and itself
\nconclusively proves the soundness of our reasoning, we accept its assistance
\nwith gratitude but without surprise. We may draw the attention of our monitor in
\nreturn to an equally healthy sign in India. Nobody now, at least in Bengal,
\nventures in public to advocate an appeal to the bureaucracy or to the people in
\nEngland for the redress of our grievances. There may not be agreement as to the
\nbest means of gathering strength by self-help but the hope of gaining rights and
\nprivileges by what is known as constitutional agitation has been given up by one
\nand all. It is a faded superstition which has no longer any hold on the Indian
\nmind. To warn us that the highly illiberal speech of Mr. Morley struck a
\nresponsive chord in every bosom in the House is therefore labour wasted. As
\nnobody now looks with wistful eyes to that quarter, it is immaterial what they
\nthink or do. They may<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-462<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ngo
\ninto ecstasies over the speech of Morley, or they may gnash their teeth at the
\nvapourings of O’Donnell; we in India are no longer affected by their frown or by
\ntheir smile. The sympathy of people beyond the seas is no longer our guiding
\nstar and what happens at Westminster is no concern of ours. We have to improvise
\nour own means of meeting the Regulation lathi and other bureaucratic means of
\nrepression and we neither hope for nor desire its mitigation.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>If it were possible for anyone to re-evoke that dead phantom of a
\nphantom, British sympathy, we should not be grateful to him for constraining our
\nunbound spirit into bonds again. The legend of British sympathy misled us for a
\ncentury and now that the phantasm has of itself ceased to haunt us, let no one
\ntry to juggle and deceive us again with the Mantras of that modern black art.
\nBoth Mr. Morley’s speech and its effect on the British people are, we repeat,
\nmatters of supreme indifference to us, and the British and Anglo-Indian journals
\nwho want to frighten us into our old mendicant attitude by trumpeting the
\n"sensible and resolute speech" of Mr. Morley and the appreciation it
\nreceived in the House, merely show that they have no true conception of the
\nNationalist movement. The mind of our people has at last attained a certain
\namount of freedom. Faith in unrealities no longer clogs its progress. The Budget
\nspeech admirably exposed the true relation between England and India and
\nbetrayed the hollowness of the so-called liberal professions which have so long
\nexerted their poisonous influence on the unsophisticated Indian mind, displaced
\nas it was from its own orbit by an un- national education. Mr. Morley’s
\noutspokenness was welcome to the House? Well, it was tenfold more welcome to his
\n"enemies" in India. Mr. Lalmohan Ghose in one of his more recent
\nspeeches, has said: "Dazzled by the meretricious glitter of a tawdry
\nimperialism, conspicuous members of Parliament are now trying to sponge from
\ntheir slate the teachings of men like Gladstone and Bright." It was
\nreserved for Mr. Morley to tell all India what some of us had perceived long
\nago, that those teachings were never meant to be carried out in practice.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>Whoever is a scourge of India must naturally be a demigod to the British
\npeople. The political instinct of a free people long<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-463<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\naccustomed
\nto the international struggle for life, shrewd, commercial, practical, is not
\nlikely to be misled by humanitarian generalities as the politically
\ninexperienced middle class in India have been misled; they have always felt that
\nthe man who trod down India under a mailed heel and crushed Indian manhood and
\naspiration was serving their own interests.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>The sequel to the trial of Warren Hastings is an excellent example of
\nthis dominant instinct. Twenty-seven years after the impeachment, sixteen years
\nafter the death of Burke had left his orations as a classic to English
\nliterature, \u2014 a scene was enacted in the House of Commons similar in spirit to
\nthe unanimous acclamation of Mr. Morley’s speech. Warren Hastings \u2014 an
\nold man of eighty \u2014 appeared at the bar
\nto give evidence in connection with the renewal of the East India Charter. He
\nwas received with acclamations, a chair was ordered for him, and when he retired
\nthe members rose and uncovered. The political instinct of the people perceived
\nthat this man, ruthless and monstrous tyrant though he had been, had
\nconsolidated for them a political Empire and basis of commercial supremacy, and
\nthe means by which this great work had been accomplished, were sanctified by the
\nresult. The scourge of India, a recital of whose misdeeds had 27 years before
\nmade some of Burke’s listeners swoon with horror, was honoured as a hero and
\ngod, and biographies and histories have been written by the score to justify his
\naction and exalt him to the skies. When therefore Mr. Morley declared his
\nintention of preserving the Empire Hastings had consolidated, by any means
\nhowever unjust or tyrannical, is it any wonder that an English House of Commons
\nshould recognise in him a worthy successor of Hastings and accord to him an
\nunanimous applause?<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande
\nMataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i> <\/font>July 2, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/h2>\n

\nPage-464<\/font><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Acclamation of the House                   A GREAT deal is being made in the Anglo-Indian press of the unanimous appreciation with which the House…<\/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-380","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\/380","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=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}