{"id":394,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=394"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:44","slug":"111-more-about-unity-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\/111-more-about-unity-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-111_More about Unity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nMore about Unity<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/font><\/b>                       
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>T<\/font><\/span>HE<\/font><\/b> <\/span>Bengalee <\/i>has again returned
\nto the charge about unity. The line of argument adopted by our contemporary savours strongly of the peculiar style of political thinking which underlay all
\nour movements in the last century. The old school of politics was chiefly
\nremarkable for a blithe indifference to facts and an extraordinary
\npredilection for vague abstractions which could not possibly apply to the
\nconditions with which our political action had to deal. The nineteenth century
\nIndian politician never cared to study history, but used a ready-made and
\nhigh-sounding philosophy of politics based chiefly on the circumstances and
\nconditions of modern English politics which had no validity at all for India.
\nThe result of this divorce from real life was a tendency to use words without
\ncaring to consider their real practical meaning. We find the Bengalee <\/i>in
\nits article learnedly repeating these old mistakes. It builds wordy arguments
\nfrom the terms of modern Science without grasping the true facts and hard
\nrealities of life without a knowledge of which the terms cannot be correctly
\napplied. It argues from evolution that progress is an ever-increasing unity of
\never-developing parts, that therefore progress is nothing but unity, ergo unity
\nis not a means but an end, not an important or necessary help to arriving at
\nprogress, freedom and greatness but itself at once progress, freedom and
\ngreatness. This is merely playing with words. The question is, what is this
\nunity which the Bengalee <\/i>makes so much of and which it asks us to prefer
\nto our principles and in its name to join in action which we believe to be
\nharmful to the country? If our contemporary means political unity, the formation
\nof all the communities and races in the country into a single political organism
\nwith a common centre of life, that is certainly, as we have already admitted, a
\nnecessary condition of independence and greatness; but it is a thing of the
\nfuture which is impossible so long as the centre of life in the country is alien
\nand external, and all we can do towards it is to unite people<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-621<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of
\nall communities and races in one common struggle to replace the alien and
\nexternal centre of political life by an indigenous and internal centre in the
\nnational organism itself. Very good, but the question still remains, by what
\nmethod can that result be attained? We believe the methods proposed by the
\nLoyalists to be futile and injurious, we understand their aim to be not the
\nindependence of the national organism, but an impossible scheme of two centres
\nof political life controlling the country at the same time of which the alien
\nshall be the supreme and yet the indigenous shall be free! What the Bengalee <\/i>asks
\nof us is to disregard this vital difference of opinion and aim and be united \u2014<\/span>
\nin what? In aiming at an object which we believe to be absurd, by means which we
\nbelieve to be futile. It does not matter, says the Bengalee<\/i>, <\/i>in what we
\nare united, so long as we are united; for unity is progress, unity is freedom
\nand greatness. So that if we are united in petitioning we are by the very fact
\nof that unity free and great! The error of the Bengalee’<\/i>s <\/i>argument is
\nthat it confuses political unity, which is a necessary condition of
\nindependence, with unity of opinion and action which is an immense help, if the
\nopinion and the action are in the right direction, but certainly not
\nindispensable. It is not true that unity, even political unity, is identical
\nwith freedom, for a nation may be united in bondage or united in submission to a
\nforeign and absolutist rule. Still less is it true that unity in following the
\nwrong road is the true means to the goal, much less the goal itself. We tried to
\nprove from history that nations had been made free not by a scrupulous pursuit
\nof unanimity or of unity in action but by faith, energy and courage in a number
\nof its more energetic sons carrying away the bulk of the nation into a strenuous
\neffort to reach a great ideal. For the sake of brevity we gave one instance
\nwhere we might have given a dozen. The Bengalee<\/i>, <\/i>however, like all
\nModerate politicians will have nothing to do with history or at least with the
\nfacts of history. History, it says in effect, is a record of human error, and
\nthe methods of which it tells us, involve great waste. So we in India are to
\ninvent something brand new, an ingenious and carefully calculated method of
\nrevolution which will bring us freedom and greatness without any waste, without
\nany risk, by a minimum expenditure of trouble, disturb-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-622<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

ance
\nand sacrifice. We fear it has left out of consideration the fact that waste also
\nis one of Nature’s methods, indeed, what we call waste is one of the most subtle
\nparts of her economy. No man or nation that refused to venture hugely like a
\ngambler for huge ends ever arrived at freedom, none who has not been prodigal of
\nhis best has ever risen to greatness, and what has been in the past will be in
\nthe future; for human nature and the laws of human action remain the same, and
\ncannot be new-shaped in Colootola. Politics is for the Kshatriya and in the
\nKshatriya spirit alone can freedom and greatness be attained, not by the spirit
\nof the Baniya trying to buy freedom in the cheapest market and beat down the
\ndemands of Fate to a miser’s niggard price. That which other nations have paid
\nfor freedom we also must pay, the path they have followed we also must follow.
\nAnd if you will not learn from history, you will have to be taught by a harsher
\nteacher the same lesson \u2014 and taught perhaps at a much more tremendous price
\nthan that which you stigmatise as waste. We Nationalists have no desire to break
\nthe Congress or to part company with our less forward countrymen, but we have
\nour path to follow and our work to do, and if you will not allow us a place in
\nthe assembly you call National, we will make one for ourselves out of it and
\naround it, until one day you will find us knocking at your doors with the nation
\nat our back and in the name of an authority even you will not dare to deny.<\/font><\/p>\n


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

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nBY
\nTHE WAY<\/font><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The
\nScots wha hae <\/i>not with Wallace bled but emigrated from the land of Bruce
\nand his spider to exploit and "administer" spider fashion the land of
\nShivaji and Pratap, met again this year for their great national feed. The menu
\nbegan with relishes and proceeded through the wedded delights of ice-pudding and
\nliqueurs to a regale of confidences and confessions by Sir Harvey Adamson which
\nwas perhaps the most enjoyable dish of the evening. The inventive Briton has
\ndiscovered the great truth that out of the fullness of the stomach the heart
\nspeaketh and the result<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-623<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

is
\nthat great British institution, the after-dinner speech. So the clans gathered
\nand Sir Harvey of the clan of the sons of Adam spoke from "beneath the
\nspreading antlers of a Monarch of the Glen", (so at least the Englishman
\n<\/i>dropping into poetry in its fervour assured us in sonorous blank verse) and
\nbehold! even as was the state of his stomach, so was the speech of Sir Harvey
\nfull-stomached and packed with choice titbits, comfortable, placid and
\nwell-pleased.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

            
\n<\/span>Of course Sir Harvey talked of the
\nunrest, but his speech was eminently restful; it had all the large benevolence,
\nsweet reasonableness and placid self-satisfaction of a man who had legislated as
\nhe had dined, wisely and well. It reeked of the olives and turtle soup and
\nbannocks o’ barley meal, it had the generous flavour of the liqueurs and the
\nchampagne. He first assured the assembled clans that the unrest was not purely a
\nseditious movement nor an anti-partition movement, \u2014 Sir Harvey has found out
\nthat, and we congratulate him on his statesman- like perspicuity. But he has
\nfound out other things too. He has not only found out what the unrest is not, he
\nhas also found out what it is. It is simply this, that the educated classes are
\nlearning to realise their own position and to aspire to "a larger
\nshare" in the government of their own country. Now at last we see this
\nluminous reading of the situation has shed a flood of light on Mr. Morley’s
\npolicy. The educated classes want their present share in the government
\nenlarged. Most natural, most laudable! A benevolent Minto, a Radical Morley are
\nnot the men to stand in the way of such admirable aspirations. The present share
\nof the people in the government of their own country is nothing; they want more
\nof it; very good, we will give them a larger share of nothing. The Legislative
\nCouncil is a nothing; go to, we will enlarge that nothing; we will add fresh
\nnothings in. the shape of an Advisory Council of not-ables to assist the
\neducated class in doing nothing; and lest the burden of such an arduous task
\nshould be too heavy for their educated shoulders, we will give them upon the
\nCouncils plenty of capable helpers some of whom<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-624<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

have
\nbeen doing nothing all their lives and ought by now to be experts. If after that
\nthe educated class does not feel satisfied in its aspirations, if it does not
\nfeel as full-fed and happy as Sir Harvey after his haggis, well, they are
\nungrateful brutes and there is an end of it.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

        Unkind people have said that the intention of the
\nGovernment was not to satisfy the aspirations of the educated class but to
\nexclude them from the Councils under the cover of a misnamed
\n"reforms". Sir Harvey is naturally shocked at so gross an imputation
\nagainst his benevolent Government. All that the Government desires is to make
\nthe representation of the lawyers and educated men a "fair"
\nrepresentation. It does not want to exclude educated men, but only to swamp them
\nwith Zemindars, Mahomedans and Europeans; and it does not want to "suppress
\nthe middle class" but only to reduce them to a nullity. And this because
\nthey will not have "what is scornfully known in the East as a vakil-ridden
\ncountry". It was evidently the generosity of the champagne that made Sir
\nHarvey expand all India into the East. We are not aware that the vakil class as
\nit exists in India is to be found anywhere except in India. It is the happy
\nresult of British rule in this favoured land that the nation now consists of a
\nhuge mass of starving peasants, a small body of dumb Government servants, and
\nsweated office clerks, a landed aristocracy habitually overawed, fleeced and for
\nthe most part well advanced on the road to ruin, a sprinkling of prosperous
\nmiddlemen, and as the only independent class, a handful of lawyers, journalists
\nand schoolmasters. That is what Sir Harvey calls a vakil-ridden country. We have
\nheard the expression Vakil-Raj, but we have not heard it used
\n"scornfully" except by Anglo-Indians. But no doubt when he talks of
\nthe East, Sir Harvey means himself and his brother Scots out to make money in
\nthe East, just as by Indian trade is always meant Anglo-Indian trade and by
\nIndian prosperity the prosperity of Anglo-India. This is a sort of official
\nslang which has become a recognised idiom of the English language.<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-625<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Anglo-India is equal to India, India is equal to the East, therefore Anglo-India is
\nthe East. The Anglo-Indian has mastered the practice of the Vedanta, for, he
\nsees himself as the whole world and the whole world in himself; why should he
\nthen make any bones about attributing his own sentiments to a whole continent?
\n           
\nThe government, we are gratified to learn, have no intention of stemming the
\nflowing tide. It wants instead to cut a new channel for the tide and divert it
\ninto a lake of not-ables, where it will cease from its flowing and be at rest.
\nAs for the old channel of Swadeshi and Swaraj, it will be carefully stopped up
\nwith a strong compositive of sedition laws, Goorkhas and regulation lathis. But
\nmeanwhile what does the tide itself think about this neat little plan? Well,
\nsays Sir Harvey, Moderate politicians are delighted, but the native press
\ndissatisfied. We had to look twice at this remarkable assertion to make sure
\nthat the champagne (or was it good old Scotch) which Sir Harvey had drunk to the
\nhealth of the unrest, had not missed its way and wandered into our eyes instead
\nof Sir Harvey’s legislative cranium. All the native papers then are Extremist
\norgans! What, all, Sir Harvey? The Bengalee <\/i>no less than the Bande
\nMataram<\/i>, <\/i>the Indu Prakash <\/i>in the same boat with the Kesari<\/i>? <\/i>All
\nExtremists, for have not all expressed dissatisfaction with reform, which would
\nhave been received two years ago with an unanimous shriek of infantine delight?
\nWho then can be Moderates? Sir Harvey was right after all. It is the virus of
\nextremism which has entered secretly into the unsophisticated Congress mind and
\ntaught it to ask for something more than its long-cherished baubles. But in that
\ncase who are the Moderate politicians who are satisfied with the new playthings?
\nWhy, of course, Mr. Malabari and the Maharaja of Burdwan and Nawab of Dacca. For
\nat this rate even Sir Pherozshah is suspected of extremism.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

          <\/span><\/span>  
\n<\/span>Sir Harvey has much to say about sedition and what he says is very
\ninteresting. He explains what sedition is and the explanation is of course
\nauthoritative, since it comes from the Law<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-626<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Member.
\nFirst, the preaching of active rebellion against the British Government. To that
\nof course there can be no objection. Whoever preaches an armed rebellion, does
\nit with the gaol and gallows before his eyes, and is not likely to complain if
\nhe is punished. Secondly, efforts to reduce the native army from its allegiance,
\nand then we get a remarkable sentence. "The Government has been publicly
\ncharged with instigation of dacoity and sacrilege," etc. As we all know, a
\ncharge was made by the whole press, Moderate, Extremist, and Loyalist, against
\nlocal officials, of having given a free hand to Mahomedan hooliganism, and the
\ncharge was never refuted and now Sir Harvey identifies the Government with these
\nofficials and lays down the law that whoever brings a charge against any
\nofficial is guilty of sedition! "I and my Father in Simla are one,"
\nthe local official may now say, "and he who blasphemeth against me
\nblasphemeth against him." Secondly the Government has been charged with
\n"propagating famine and plague". We note therefore that it is sedition
\nto say that the economic conditions created and perpetuated by the present
\nsystem of government are responsible for famine and poverty and the diseases
\nwhich thrive on poverty! Thirdly, the Government is seditiously charged with
\ndraining the resources of India for the benefit of England. So it is sedition
\ntoo to talk of the drain or refer to Lord Curzon and his luminous remarks about
\nadministration and exploitation! These are, it seems, "turgid accusations
\nwhich are made to sell and do not influence sober-minded men". So Mr. R. C.
\nDutt is not a sober minded man, nor Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, nor Mr. Gokhale, nor
\neven the knighted Bombay Lion. They are all turgid seditionists whose utterances
\nare "made to sell". One wonders who and where the devil are these
\nsober-minded men of Sir Harvey’s whom he warrants immune from turgidity, and
\nagain one has to fall back on Mr. B. M. Malabari, the Maharaja of Burdwan and
\nthe Nawab of Dacca. 0 blest and sainted trio.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

             Of
\ncourse Sir Harvey is strong on the seditious press, in other words, the organs
\nof anti-bureaucratic Nationalism. Our news-<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font><\/span>627<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

papers
\nare "of a low class", their editors have "discovered that
\nsedition is a commercial success", and so write, it is suggested, what they
\ndo not believe because it sells. Fudge, Sir Harvey! If you could be transformed
\nfrom a perorating official Scot into the manager of a Nationalist newspaper for
\nthe first year or two of its existence, you would "discover" at what
\ntremendous pecuniary and personal sacrifice these papers have been established
\nand maintained. If Sir Harvey knew anything about the conditions of life in the
\nland he is helping to misgovern, he would know that an Indian newspaper, unless
\nit is long established, and sometimes even then, can command immense influence
\nand yet be commercially no more than able to pay its way, especially when on
\nprinciple it debars itself from taking all but Swadeshi advertisements. Fudge,
\nSir Harvey! The Nationalists are not shopkeepers trading in the misery of the
\nmillions; they are men like Upadhyay and Bepin Chandra Pal and numbers more who
\nhave put from them all the ordinary chances of life to devote themselves to a
\ncause, and in the few instances in which a Nationalist journal has been run at a
\nprofit, the income has gone to Swadeshi work and the maintenance of workers and
\nnot into the pockets of the proprietors, while in almost every case men of
\neducation and ability have foregone their salary or half-starved on a pittance
\nin order to relieve the burden of the struggling journal. These are your editors
\nof low newspapers, traders in sedition, "interested agitators", men
\nwithout sense of responsibility or "matured understanding". You say
\nthe thing which is not and know it, a licensed slanderer of men a comer of whose
\nbrains has a richer content than your whole Scotch skull and whose shoes you are
\nunworthy to touch.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/span>           
\n<\/span>It is refreshing to learn that Sir Harvey thinks he has got under one
\nchief means of sedition, the platform, by his gagging ordinance turned into law.
\nHe has stiffened it he says into a tap which can be turned on wherever his
\nvigilant eye sees a travelling spark of sedition, so on that side the British
\nEmpire and the profits of the clans are safe. But against the press he has not
\nbeen<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-628<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

able
\nto find an equally effective extinguisher. The Government were apparently equal
\nto the manufacture, but they want to try those tools they have before forging
\nothers that we know not of. The British public also might turn nasty if there
\nwere too rapid a succession of such stiffenings and Morley might find the
\nfur-coat an insufficient protection against the cold biting blasts of his
\nfriends\u2019 ingratitude. So Sir Harvey means to try a few more prosecutions
\nfirst. But if Kingsford’s pills prove ineffective, well, then Sir Harvey, in
\nspite of the British public and Mr. Morley’s sufferings, will be the first to
\nrecommend the smothering of the patient who refuses to be cured. After that the
\norator passed off into complaints about his bearer and praises of whiskey and
\nsoda and other subjects too sacred to touch. And so on the note of "whiskey
\nin moderation" Sir Harvey closed his historic speech. And the British
\nEmpire knew itself safe.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande Mataram<\/i>, <\/i><\/font>December 5, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>629<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More about Unity                            THE Bengalee has again returned to the charge about unity. The line of argument adopted by our contemporary savours strongly…<\/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-394","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\/394","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=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}