{"id":424,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=424"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:56","slug":"074-mr-a-chowdhurys-policy-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\/074-mr-a-chowdhurys-policy-vol-01-bande-mataram-volume-01","title":{"rendered":"-074_Mr. A. Chowdhury’s Policy.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nMr. A. Chowdhury’s Policy<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                       
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>M<\/font><\/span>R.<\/b> Ashutosh Chowdhury has used the opportunity given to him by his selection for
\nthe chair of the Pabna Conference to make a personal pronouncement of policy.
\nThis is the second time that Mr. Chowdhury has had an opportunity of this kind,
\nthe first being the Provincial conference at Burdwan. On that occasion he made a
\npronouncement which indicated a new departure in politics and created some
\nflutter in the Congress dovecote. It would not be accurate to say that the
\nBurdwan pronunciamento influenced the course of affairs; the propounder of the
\nnew policy, if such it could be called, had not sufficient weight of personality
\nto become the leader of a New Party, nor was his policy either definite enough
\nor sound enough to attract a following. But it had a certain importance. It was
\nthe immature self-expression of ideas and forces which had been gathering head
\nin the country and groping about for means of entry into the ordinary channels
\nof political action and expression. It was rather the prophecy of a new turn in
\nIndian politics than itself a policy already understood and matured. The prophet
\nhimself was perhaps the one who least understood his own prophecy. The confusion
\nof his ideas was shown soon afterwards by his identifying himself with the old
\ncurrent of Congress politics and thus turning his back on the two main positions
\nin his Burdwan speech, the repudiation of mendicant politics and the dictum that
\na subject nation has no politics. He left it to others to develop the political
\nideas he had dimly and imperfectly outlined and give them a definite shape
\nembodied in a clear political programme. Still more forcibly is this lack of
\ncomprehension evidenced by Mr. Chowdhury’s attempt to revert, with
\nmodifications, to his Burdwan ideas even after the momentous changes of the last
\nthree years. He has once more reverted to his dictum that a subject nation has
\nno politics; he once more proposes that we should give up our political
\nagitation; once more he puts forward self-help as a<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/h4>\n

\nPage-437<\/span><\/h4>\n
\n

\nsubstitute.
\nWhen he spoke at Burdwan, industrial expansion was the idea of the day and Mr.
\nChowdhury offered it to us as a substitute for political mendicancy. Today
\nSwadeshi, Boycott and National Education are the ideas of the day and Mr.
\nChowdhury offers them as a substitute for the struggle for Swaraj.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>We do not wish to overrate the importance of Mr. Chowdhury’s
\npronouncements. Mr. Chowdhury is not a political leader with a distinct
\nfollowing in the country who are likely to carry out his ideas. He is a sort of
\nRosebery of Bengal politics, a brilliant, cultured amateur who catches up
\ncertain thoughts or tendencies that are in the air and gives them a more or less
\nstriking expression, but he has not the qualities of a politician \u2014 robustness,
\nbackbone, the ability to will a certain course of action and the courage to
\ncarry it out. He has intellectual sensitiveness, but not intellectual
\nconsistency. Suave, affable, pliable, essentially an amiable and cultured
\ngentleman, he is unfit for the rough and tumble of political life, especially in
\na revolutionary period; no man who shrinks from struggle or is appalled by the
\nthought of aggression can hope to seize and lead the wild forces that are rising
\nto the surface in twentieth-century India. But this very knack of catching up
\nhowever partially the moods of the moment gives a certain interest to Mr.
\nChowdhury’s pronouncements
\nwhich make them worth examining.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>When Mr. Chowdhury at Burdwan pronounced
\nagainst the mendicant policy he was voicing two distinct and various currents of
\npolitical tendency. The opprobrious term of mendicancy was applied to the old
\nCongress School of politics not because remonstrance and protest are in
\nthemselves wrong and degrading, but because in the circumstances of modern India
\na policy of prayer, petition and protest without the sanction of a great
\nirresistible national force at its back was bound to pauperise the energy of the
\nnation and to accustom it to a degrading dependence. It was not only a waste of
\nenergy but a sapping of energy, and it was ruinous to manhood and self-respect.
\nBut the recognition of this fact only led to another problem. If we did not sue
\nto others for help, we must help ourselves; if we did not depend on the alien’s
\nmercies, we must depend on our own<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-438<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nstrength.
\nBut how was that strength to be educated? Again, when we had decided that a
\nsubject nation has no politics, what then? Were we to renounce the birthrights
\ninherent in our manhood and leave the field to the bureaucratic despotism or
\nwere we to resolve to cease to be a subject nation so that we might recover the
\nright and possibility of political life and activity? There were two currents of
\npolitical thought growing up in the country. One, thoughtful, philosophic,
\nidealistic, dreamed of ignoring the terrible burden that was crushing us to
\ndeath, of turning away from politics and educating our strength in the village
\nand township, developing our resources, our social, economic, religious life
\nregardless of the intrusive alien; it thought of inaugurating a new revolution
\nsuch as the world had never yet seen, a moral, peaceful revolution, actively
\ndeveloping ourselves but only passively resisting the adversary. But there was
\nanother current submerged as yet, but actively working underneath, which tended
\nin another direction, \u2014 a sprinkling of men in whom one fiery conviction
\nreplaced the cultured broodings of philosophy and one grim resolve took the
\nplace of political reasoning. The conviction was that subjection was the one
\ncurse which withered and blighted all our national activities, that so long as
\nthat curse was not removed it was a vain dream to expect our national activities
\nto develop themselves successfully and that only by struggle could our strength
\nbe educated to action and victory. The resolve was to rise and fight and fall
\nand again rise and fight and fall waging the battle for ever until this once
\ngreat and free nation should again be great and free. It was this last current
\nwhich boiled up to the surface in the first vehemence of the anti-Partition
\nagitation, flung out the challenge of boycott and plunged the Bengali nation
\ninto a struggle with the bureaucracy which must now be fought out till the end.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>All were carried away in the tide of that great upheaval; but it is
\nneedless to say that this was not what the advocates of self-help pure and
\nsimple had contemplated, Mr. Chowdhury least of all. He very early identified
\nhimself with the small knot of older leaders who from time to time struggled
\nwith the tide and tried to turn it back; but until now the tide was too strong
\nfor them. For a moment, however, the rush has been checked by<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-439<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nsuperhuman
\nefforts of repression on the part of the panic-stricken bureaucracy and it is
\nnatural that those who were not with their whole heart and conviction for the
\nstruggle for Swaraj, should begin to revert to their old ideas, to long to give
\nup the struggle, to retreat into the fancied security of their fortress of unpolitical Swadeshism and a policy of self-help which seeks to ignore the
\nunignorable. The tendency is to cry, "The old policy is a failure, the
\nBriton has revealed his true nature; the new policy is a failure, we have not
\nstrength to meet the giant power of the bureaucracy; let us have the field, let
\nus quietly pursue our own salvation in the peaceful Ashrams of Swadeshism and
\nself-help." Mr. Ashutosh Chowdhury with his keen intellectual sensitiveness
\nhas felt this tendency in the air and given it expression. It is a beautiful and
\npathetic dream. We will develop our manufacture,
\nboycott foreign goods, of course in a quite friendly<\/span>
\n<\/span>and non-political spirit, and England will
\nlook quietly on while its trade is being ruined! We will ignore the Government
\nand build up our own centres of strength in spite of it, a Government the whole
\nprinciple and condition of whose existence is that there shall be no centre of
\nstrength in the country except itself! Mr. Chowdhury’s policy would be an
\nexcellent one if he could only remove two factors from the political problem;
\nfirst, Indian Nationalism, secondly, the British Government. And how does he
\npropose to remove them? By shutting his eyes to their existence. Ignore the
\nGovernment, dissociate yourselves from the men of violence, \u2014 and the thing is
\ndone. Such is the political wisdom of Mr. Ashutosh Chowdhury.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nA
\nCurrent Dodge<\/font><\/a><\/b><\/p>\n


\n <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

\nReferring
\nto the transfer to other places of Mr. Barneville and Maulavi Faizuddin Hossein
\nwho tried cases of looting in Jamalpur and recorded as their opinions that the
\nriots were not provoked by Hindu boycotters and National volunteers, even the Hindu
\nPatriot <\/i>which has never been friendly to the Nationalist movement writes:<\/b>\u2014<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-440<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n"Transferring
\njudges and magistrates whose decisions differ from the settled policy or
\npreconceived views of the Executive officials, is a current dodge whereby the
\nends of justice are sought to be subordinated to political or other
\nconsiderations. And this is but another very forcible illustration of the evils
\nof the combination of Judicial and Executive functions, and it also explains the
\nreason why there is so much opposition to the separation of the duties. All the
\nsame, however, we may frankly observe here that any attempt to destroy the
\nintegrity of the law courts will deepen the anxiety which is being manifested on
\nall sides. It is the proverbial impartiality of British justice which is prized
\nmore than anything else."<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n           
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>But this current dodge is played not by the local executive officials but
\nby the higher bureaucracy and need not be an argument in favour of the
\nseparation of Judicial and Executive functions. Our contemporary’s attempt to
\nsmother facts in a profusion of side-issues cannot deceive those who can read
\nbetween the lines. We must congratulate him all the same on his sudden flash of
\nintelligent outspokenness. But our contemporary need not feel anxious about
\n"the proverbial impartiality of British justice". The proverb is badly
\nin need of a change. And as we said yesterday when referring to many cherished
\nshibboleths of the people departing into the limbo of forgotten follies, the
\ngreatest fall has been the fall of the belief in the imperturbable impartiality
\nof British justice. The transfer of Mr. Barneville and the Maulavi is only
\nanother count in the indictment.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nBande
\nMataram<\/i>,
\n<\/i> <\/font>June 22, 1907<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-441<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr. A. Chowdhury’s Policy                           MR. Ashutosh Chowdhury has used the opportunity given to him by his selection for the chair of the Pabna…<\/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-424","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\/424","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=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}