{"id":806,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:33","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=806"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:33","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:33","slug":"06-loyalty-and-disloyalty-in-east-bengal-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/27-supplement-volume-27\/06-loyalty-and-disloyalty-in-east-bengal-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","title":{"rendered":"-06_Loyalty and Disloyalty in East Bengal.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nLoyalty and Disloyalty in East Bengal<\/b><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

   <\/span>      T<\/font><\/span><\/b>HE Englishman <\/i>
\nand those who are evidently anxious to set the machinery of relentless state
\nprosecutions against the leaders of the present national movement in this
\nprovince, need not take so much trouble to prove that there is considerable
\ndisaffection and disloyalty in East Bengal which ought at once to be put down
\nwith a strong hand. Our contemporary must be far more simple-minded than what
\none should expect him to be, judging both from his general education and
\nexperience and his position as an intelligent observer and critic of current
\naffairs, if he ever thought that there could be any real affection and loyalty
\nto an alien despotism, such as the present Government in this country
\nundoubtedly is, in the minds of the subject populations of India. Lord Curzon
\nonce declared that though differing in colour and culture, the Indians were as
\nmuch human as the Britishers, and had the same sentiments and susceptibilities
\nthat the British people had. If the Englishman <\/i>and his friends believe in
\nthis common humanity of the Indian, they have simply to place themselves
\nmentally in the position of their "native fellow-subjects", to realise the kind
\nof affection and loyalty for the present Government that can ever be felt by the
\npeople of this country. Indeed, loyalty as a feeling of personal love and regard
\nfor the Sovereign is an extinct virtue in civilisation, and if it is not found
\nin countries where the Sovereign belongs to the people, and lives and stands
\namong them as the head of their State and the fountain of all social honour, and
\nwhere the people always participate in his glory, his magnificence and his
\nwealth, – each according to his status and qualification, – how much more rare
\nmust it be in a country like India, whose Sovereign belongs to a<\/span>  <\/span>
\ndistant country and an alien race, who professes an alien religion, who is not
\nrelated to the people by any ties of tradition or past historical associations,
\nand in the glories and prerogatives of whose throne, as well as in the wealth
\nand magnificence of whose empire, these people have
\n  <\/span><\/p>\n

Bande<\/span> Mataram, August 1906<\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage-10<\/font><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nneither lot nor part. To believe the barest possibility of any true loyalty in
\nIndia is really to take the Indians to be very much less than human. But, in
\ntruth, nobody ever honestly believed in it. Loyalty has ever been a mere
\nconvenient tie in this country, convenient to the ruler because the reputation
\nfor profound loyalty of the Indian people keeps foreign enemies away; convenient
\nto the ruled because like charity it covered a multitude f political sins. But
\nin truth no one ever really believed in this much-proclaimed virtue. No
\nEnglishman ever honestly believed e the truth of it. No Indian ever cherished it
\nhonestly himself .Both the rulers and the ruled have been playing at blind-man’s
\nbluff all these years with this great civic virtue, each seeking to make some
\npolitical capital out of it.<\/p>\n

               
\n<\/span>That the British Government in India never set a two-pence value on the
\nloyalty of their Indian subject, – though they are Ways anxious to proclaim it
\nfrom the housetops, as a magnificent charm to keep away the evil eye, – is
\nproved by the entire history of their past transactions with us. The Arms Act
\nsurely Des not prove England’s faith in India’s loyalty. The French-man, the
\nGerman, the American, nay, even the Negro and the Hottentot, – indeed every
\nforeigner can possess arms and bear
\n‘them<\/span>
\nin India without a licence, the man who belongs to the country and who is most
\ninterested in its prosperity and peace, alone<\/span>
\ncannot do so. The systematic exclusion of the people of the land, however
\nqualified they may be, from all positions of exceptional trust and
\nresponsibility in what ought, by the law of rod and nature alike, to be their
\nown Government, surely does not prove that English Statesmen ever honestly
\nbelieved in the allegiance of the Indian people to their rule. The methods of
\nState- regulated education, which carefully eschew every training or text-book<\/span>
\nor instruction that is calculated to quicken any genuine love of freedom or any
\nnoble patriotism in the pupils; the extreme<\/span>
\nanxiety of the authorities to train the
\nyouths of this <\/span>country in habits
\nof <\/span>gentleness and subordination, while in their own country every form of
\nmanliness and even rowdyism, as long as it does not strike against the very soul
\nof social and civic orders, are not only tolerated but frequently encouraged by
\nthe leaders of public opinion and the custodians of public morals;<\/p>\n


\n
\nPage-11<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe denial of the commonest right of free citizenship, – the right of free
\nparticipation in public meetings, having for their object the reform of the
\nAdministration, – to the commonest of public servants; the crusade against every
\nform of patriotic efforts on the part of the people, such as are calculated to
\ninspire them with devotion to their nation, all these go distinctly to prove at
\nwhat value the much proclaimed loyalty of the people of this country is really
\nrated by their foreign masters. The fact really is that loyalty in the sense in
\nwhich the term is usually used, – either in the old sense of loving attachment
\nto the person or throne of the sovereign, or even in the new and higher sense of
\ndevotion to the State which reveals and realises the highest civic ideals and
\naspirations of the subjects, – cannot naturally exist or grow in a country that
\nis subject to the domination of another. No Englishman therefore honestly
\nbelieves in it in India, however much he may be anxious to conjure it up in
\ntimes of trouble or difficulty as a saving magic working for his safety and
\nsalvation. Loyalty, in the general acceptance of the term, has been a mere myth
\nin British India; and the Englishman need not be at so much pains to disprove
\nthe presence of a thing in East Bengal that has never as yet existed in any part
\nof the country subject to British rule. Disloyalty is want of loyalty, and there
\ncannot be anywhere an absence of a thing, –
\nas a new fact, – where that <\/span>thing
\nhas never existed before.<\/span><\/p>\n

    <\/span>         <\/span>
\nBut if <\/span>loyalty is not possib<\/span>le in India
\nin its present conditio<\/span>n of servitude, what then is the secret of that
\nunquestioning obedience to the authority of the present alien Government in the
\ncountry, which alone makes it easy and possible for them to rule so vast a
\npopulation with such slender means? The answer is plain and obvious; it is not
\naffection, neither is it disaffection, both of which are active sentiments, but
\nmere indifference, mere listlessness, the fatuous fatalism of the Hindu and the
\nMohamedan populations of India that keeps them so easily under British
\nsubjection. Not loyalty, not allegiance, but mere passive acquiescence, – that
\nis the word which sums up the real attitude of the Indian people towards their
\nforeign master and the outlandish civic order they have established in the
\ncountry. This acquiescence is due to a general belief, – now rapidly being<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-12<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nundermined and destroyed by the open excesses and repressions of recent
\nadministrations, – in the benevolence of the British despotism, itself the
\nresult of a strange hypnotic spell that British politicians and statesmen of the
\nearlier generations had cast over the people. If by loyalty is meant this
\npassive acquiescence to the existing civic order in the country, there is still
\nconsiderable loyalty in the country, though the events of the past five or six
\nyears have done much to disturb even this passive sentiment in the people.<\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>But there has always been another kind of loyalty also in is country, and
\nthat species of loyalty exists still among us, both East Bengal and West Bengal,
\nthough it has been subjected during the last eight or nine months to a strain
\nwhich would kill altogether in any other country, and most of all in that
\ncountry to which the Englishman <\/i>himself belongs, and this kind of loyalty
\nill last as long as the Government and those whose views the Englishman <\/i>
\nrepresents, do not themselves destroy it with their
\nown <\/span>
\nhand<\/span>.<\/span>
\nLoyalty in the radical sense of the term, derived from lex, <\/i>law, – and
\nmeaning obedience to law, – has always been cordial characteristic of our
\npeople; and in this sense people have always been loyal in this country. This
\nloyalty, – this extreme regard for law of the Indian population, – has been the
\nstrongest bulwark of the present foreign despotism in this country. We are still
\nloyal, as we have been in the past, in the se of law-abiding. Had we not been
\nloyal in this, the truest sense of the term, the history of British
\nAdministration in every part of India would have had to be very differently
\nwritten indeed. In fact, the Englishman <\/i>ought not to forget that it is
\nthis extreme loyalty of the people that saved the situation created in Barisal
\nand elsewhere by the lawless excesses of the executive Government<\/span>
\n<\/span>during<\/span>
\nthe last<\/span> nine or ten months. Had our people been less law-abiding than
\nthey are, the whole country would have long ago been completely given over to
\nriots and mob-rule, which would tax the entire strength and resources of the
\nGovernment to grapple with and conquer. The lawless excesses of the Executive
\nand the Police in East Bengal during the last eight or nine months, are matters
\nof common knowledge; and the Englishman <\/i>knows it full well that there is
\nno other country in the world where<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-13<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsuch wanton oppression and injustice would have been so quietly borne by the
\npeople as these have been borne in the New Province. To attribute this to the
\ncowardice of the people would be an act of fatal folly on the part of the
\nGovernment or their advisers. East Bengal, at least, has never been noted for
\nsuch cowardice. It is not fear, but self-restraint due to considerations of
\nlarger and higher interests, and the command of their leaders that kept East
\nBengal so quiet under all these enormities during the last nine or ten months.
\nBut this loyalty also seems apparently to be giving way now, for it is useless
\nto conceal the fact that a grim determination has gradually grown among the
\npeople to no longer suffer any illegal excesses, in the way they have been
\nsuffered for so long. But even in this new spirit of resistance in the people
\nthere is no lack of regard for law, for this new determination means not to
\noutrage but to protect the honour and dignity of the law itself, when both are
\nopenly outraged by those whose duty it is to protect them. If this be
\ndisloyalty, we freely admit this disloyalty exists, and is growing to great
\nproportions in every part of the country; and the threats of the Englishman <\/i>
\nor the setting of the sedition law in motion will not kill, but only increase
\nthis disloyalty the more.<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-14<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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