|
NEW LAMPS
FOR OLD
The facts about the articles in the Indu Prakash were these. They were
begun at the instance of K. G. Deshpande, Aurobindo's Cambridge friend who was
editor of the paper, but the first two articles made a sensation and frightened
Ranade and other Congress leaders. Ranade warned the proprietor of the paper
that, if this went on, he would surely be prosecuted for sedition. Accordingly
the original plan of the series had to be dropped at the proprietor's instance.
Deshpande requested Sri Aurobindo to continue in a modified tone and he
reluctantly consented, but felt no farther interest and the articles were
published at long intervals and finally dropped of themselves altogether.
*
The title refers to Congress politics. It is not used in the sense of the
Aladdin story, but was intended to imply the offering of new lights to replace
the old and faint reformist lights of the Congress.
From notes and letters of Sri Aurobindo
Page-3
New Lamps for Old - 1
IF THE blind lead the blind, shall they not
both fall into a ditch? So or nearly so runs an apothegm of the Galilean
prophet, whose name has run over the four quarters of the globe. Of all those
pithy comments on human life, which more than anything else made his teaching
effective, this is perhaps the one which goes home deepest and admits of the
most frequent use. But very few Indians will be found to admit -- certainly I
myself two years ago would not have admitted, -- that it can truthfully be applied
to the National Congress. Yet that it can be so applied, -- nay, that no
judicious mind can honestly pronounce any other verdict on its action, - is the
first thing I must prove, if these articles are to have any raison d’être.
I am quite aware that in doing this my motive and my prudence may be called into
question. I am not ignorant that I am about to censure a body which to many of
my countrymen seems the mightiest outcome of our new national life; to some a
precious urn in which are guarded our brightest and noblest hopes; to others a
guiding star which shall lead us through the encircling gloom to a far distant
paradise: and if I were not fully confident that this fixed idea of ours is a
snare and a delusion, likely to have the most pernicious effects, I should simply
have suppressed my own doubts and remained silent. As it is, I am fully
confident, and even hope to bring over one or two of my countrymen to my own way
of thinking, or, if that be not possible, at any rate to induce them to think a
little more deeply than they have done.
I know also that I shall stir the
bile of those good people who are so enamoured of the British Constitution, that
they cannot like anyone who is not a partisan. "What!" they will say,
"you pretend to be a patriot yourself, and you set yourself with a light
heart to attack a body of patriots, which has no reason at all for existing
except patriotism, - nay, which is the efflorescence, the crown, the summit and
coping-stone of patriotism? How
Page-5
wickedly inconsistent all this is! If you
are really a friend to New India, why do you go about to break up our splendid
unanimity? The Congress has not yet existed for two lustres; and in that brief
space of time has achieved miracles. And even if it has faults, as every
institution however excellent it may be, must have its faults, have you any
plausible reason for telling our weakness in the streets of Gath, and so taking
our enemies into the secret?" Now, if I were a strong and self-reliant man,
I should of course go in the way I had chosen without paying much attention to
these murmurers, but being, as I am, exceedingly nervous and afraid of offending
any one, I wish to stand well, even with those who admire the British
Constitution. I shall therefore find it necessary to explain at some length the
attitude which I should like all thinking men to adopt towards the Congress.
And first, let me say that I am not
much moved by one argument which may possibly be urged against me. The Congress,
it will be said, has achieved miracles, and in common gratitude we ought not to
express [towards] it any sort of harsh or malevolent criticism. Let us grant for
the moment that the Congress has achieved miracles for us. Certainly, if it has
done that, we ought to hold it for ever in our grateful memory; but if our
gratitude goes beyond this, it at once incurs the charge of fatuity. This is
the difference between a man and an institution; a great man who has done great
things for his country, demands from us our reverence, and however he may fall
short in his after-life, a great and high-hearted nation -- and no nation was
ever justly called great that was not high-hearted -- will not lay rude hands on
him to dethrone him from his place in their hearts. But an institution is a very
different thing. It was made for the use and not at all for the worship of man,
and it can only lay claim to respect so long as its beneficent action remains
not a memory of the past, but a thing of the present. We cannot afford to raise
any institution to the rank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the
slaves of our own machinery. However I will at once admit that if an institution
has really done miracles for us -- and miracles which are not mere conjuring
tricks, but of a deep and solemn import to the nation, -- and if it is still
doing and likely yet to do miracles for us, then without doubt it may lay claim
to
Page-6
a certain immunity from criticism. But I
am not disposed to admit that all this is true of the Congress.
It is within the recollection of most of us to how giddy an eminence this body
was raised, on how prodigious a wave of enthusiasm, against how immense a weight
of resisting winds. So sudden was it all that it must have been difficult, I may
almost say impossible, even for a strong man to keep his head and not follow
with the shouting crowd. How shall we find words vivid enough to describe the
fervour of those morning hopes, the April splendour of that wonderful
enthusiasm? The Congress was to us all that is to man most dear, most high and
most sacred; a well of living water in deserts more than Saharan, a proud banner
in the battle of Liberty, and a holy temple of concord where the races met and
mingled. It was certainly the nucleus or thrice-distilled essence of the novel
modes of thought among us; and if we took it for more than it really was, -- if we
took it for our pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night; if we
worshipped it as the morning-star of our liberty; if we thought of old myths, of
the trumpets that shook down Jericho or the brazen serpent that healed the
plague, and nourished fond and secret hopes that the Congress would prove all
this and more than this; -- surely our infatuation is to be passed by gently as
inevitable in that environment rather than censured as unnatural or presuming.
If then anyone tells me that the
Congress was itself a miracle, if in nothing else, at any rate in the enthusiasm
of which it was the centre, I do not know that l shall take the trouble to
disagree with him; but if he goes on and tells me that the Congress has achieved
miracles, I shall certainly take leave to deny the truth of his statement. It
appears to me that the most signal successes of this body were not miracles at
all, but simply the natural outcome of its constitution and policy. I suppose
that in the sphere of active politics its greatest success is to be found in the
enlargement of the Legislative Councils. Well, that was perhaps a miracle in its
way. In England a very common trick is to put one ring under a hat and
produce in another part of the room what appears to be the same ring and is
really one exactly like it -- except perhaps for the superscription. Just such
a miracle is this which the Congress has so triumphantly
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achieved. Another conjuring trick, and
perhaps a cleverer one, was the snatch vote about Simultaneous Examinations,
which owed its success to the sentimentalism of a few members of Parliament, the
self-seeking of others and the carelessness of the rest. But these, however
much we may praise them for cleverness, are, as I hope to show later on, of no
really deep and solemn import to the nation, but simply conjuring tricks and
nothing more. Over the rest of our political action the only epitaph we can
write is "Failure". Even in the first flush of enthusiasm the more
deep-thinking among us were perhaps a little troubled by certain small things
about the Congress, which did not seem altogether right. The bare-faced
hypocrisy of our enthusiasm for the Queen-Empress, -- an old lady so called by
way of courtesy, but about whom few Indians can really know or care anything --
could serve no purpose but to expose us to the derision of our ill-wishers.
There was too a little too much talk about the blessings of British rule, and
the inscrutable Providence which has laid us in the maternal, or more properly
the step-maternal bosom of just and benevolent England. Yet more appalling was
the general timidity of the Congress, its glossing over of hard names, its
disinclination to tell the direct truth, its fear of too deeply displeasing our
masters. But in our then state of mind we were disposed to pass over all this
as amiable weaknesses which would wear off with time. Two still grosser errors
were pardoned as natural and almost inadvertent mistakes. It was true that we
went out of our way to flatter Mr. Gladstone, a statesman who is not only quite
unprincipled and in no way to be relied upon, but whose intervention in an
Indian debate has always been of the worst omen to our cause. But then, we
argued, people who had not been to England could not be expected to discern the
character of this astute and plausible man. We did more than flatter Mr. Gladstone;
we actually condescended to flatter "General" Booth, a vulgar
imposter, a convicted charlatan, who has enriched himself by trading on the
sentimental emotions of the English middle class. But here too, we thought, the
Congress has perhaps made the common mistake of confounding wealth with merit,
and has really taken the "General" for quite a respectable person. In
the first flush of enthusiasm, I say, such ex-
Page-8
cuses and such toleration were possible and even natural,
but in the moment of disillusionment it will not do for us to flatter ourselves
in this way any longer. Those amiable weaknesses we were then disposed to pass
over very lightly, have not at all worn off with time, but have rather grown
into an ingrained habit; and the tendency to grosser errors has grown not only
into a habit, but into a policy. In its broader aspects the failure of the
Congress is still clearer. The walls of the Anglo-Indian Jericho stand yet
without a breach, and the dark spectre of Penury draws her robe over the land in
greater volume and with an ampler sweep.
Indu Prakash, August 7, 1893
Page-9
New Lamps
for Old-2
BUT after all my present business is not with
negative criticism. I want rather to ascertain what the Congress has really
done, and whether it is so much as to condemn all patriots to an Eleusinian
silence about its faults. My own genuine opinion was expressed, perhaps with too
much exuberance of diction, -- but then the ghost of ancient enthusiasm was
nudging my elbow -- when I described the Congress as a well of living water, a
standard in the battle, and a holy temple of concord. It is a well of living
water in the sense that we drink from it assurance of a living political energy
in the country, and without that assurance perhaps the most advanced among us
might not have been so advanced: for it is only one or two strong and individual
minds, who can flourish without a sympathetic environment. I am therefore
justified in describing the Congress as a well of living water; but I have also
described it as the standard under which we have fought; and by that I mean a
living emblem of our cause the tired and war-worn soldier in the mellay can look
up to and draw from it from time to time fresh funds of hope and vigour: such,
and such only, is the purpose of a banner. One does not like to say that what
must surely be apparent even to a rude intelligence, has been beyond the reach
of intellects trained at our Universities and in the liberal professions. Yet it
is a fact that we have entirely ignored what a casual inspection ought at once
to have told us, that the Congress is altogether too unwieldy a body for any
sort of executive work, and must solely be regarded as a convenient alembic, in
which the formulae of our aspirations may be refined into clear and accurate
expression. Not content with using a banner as a banner, we have actually caught
up the staff of it with a view of breaking our enemy's heads. So blind a misuse
must take away at least a third part of its virtue
from the Congress, and if we are at all to recover the loss, we must recognise
the limits of its utility as well as emend the device upon it.
The
Congress has been, then, a well of living water and a
Page-10
standard in the battle of liberty; but besides these it
has been something, which is very much better than either of them, good as they
too undoubtedly are; it has been to our divergent races and creeds a temple, or
perhaps I should be more correct in saying a school of concord. In other words
the necessities of the political movement initiated by the Congress have brought
into one place and for a common purpose all sorts and conditions of men, and so
by smoothing away the harsher discrepancies between them has created a certain
modicum of sympathy between classes that were more or less at variance. Here,
and not in its political action, must we look for any direct and really
important achievement; and even here the actual advance has as a rule been
absurdly exaggerated. Popular orators like Mr. Pherozshah Mehta, who carry the
methods of the bar into politics, are very fond of telling people that the
Congress has habituated us to act together. Well, that is not quite correct;
there is not the slightest evidence to show that we have at all learned to act
together; the one lesson we have learned is to talk together, and that is a
rather different thing. Here then we have in my opinion the sum of all these
capacities, in which the Congress has to any appreciable extent promoted the
really high and intimate interests of the country. Can it then be said that on
these lines the Congress has had such entirely beneficial effects as to put the
gag on all harsher criticism? I do not think that it can be properly so said. I
admit that the Congress has promoted a certain modicum of concord among us; but
I am not prepared to admit that on this line of action its outcome has been at
all complete and satisfying. Not only has the concord it tends to create been
very partial, but the sort of people who have been included in its beneficent
action, do not extend beyond certain fixed and narrow limits. The great mass of
the people have not been appreciably touched by that healing principle, which to
do the Congress justice, has very widely permeated the middle class. All this
would still leave us without sufficient grounds to censure the Congress at all
severely, if only it were clear that its present line of action was tending to
increase the force and scope of its beneficence; but in fact the very contrary
appears. We need no soothsayer to augur that, unless its entire policy be remodelled, its power
Page-11
for good, even in the narrow circle of
its present influence, will prove to have been already exploited. One sphere
still remains to it; it is still our only grand assurance of a living political
energy in the country: but even this well of living water must in the end be
poisoned or dried up, if the inner political energy, of which it is the outward
assurance remains as poor and bounded as we now find it to be. If then it is
true that the action of the Congress has only been of really high import on one
or two lines, that even on those lines the actual result has been petty and
imperfect, and that in all its other aspects we can pronounce no verdict on it
but failure, then it is quite clear that we shall get no good by big talk about
the splendid unanimity at the back of the Congress. A splendid unanimity in
failure may be a very magnificent thing in its way, but in our present
exigencies it is an unanimity really not worth having. But perhaps the Congress
enthusiast will take refuge in stinging reproaches about my readiness to publish
our weakness to the enemy. Well, even if he does, I can assure him, that however
stinging his reproaches may be, I shall not feel at all stung by them. I leave
that for those honest people who imagine that when they have got the Civil
Service and other lucrative posts for themselves, the Indian question will be
satisfactorily settled. Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves,
but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy,
our purblind sentimentalism. I really cannot see why we should rage so furiously
against the Anglo-Indians and call them by all manner of opprobrious epithets. I
grant that they are rude and arrogant, that they govern badly, that they are
devoid of any great or generous emotion, that their conduct is that of a small
coterie of masters surrounded by a nation of Helots. But to say all this is
simply to say that they are very commonplace men put into a quite unique
position. Certainly it would be very grand and noble, if they were to smother
all thought of their own peculiar interests, and aim henceforth, not at their
own promotion, not at their own enrichment, but at the sole good of the Indian
people. But such conduct is what we have no right to expect save from men of the
most exalted and chivalrous character; and the sort of people England sends out
to us are not as a rule exalted and chivalrous, but are usually the very
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reverse of that. They are really very ordinary men,
-- and
not only ordinary men, but ordinary Englishmen -- types of the middle class or
Philistines, in the graphic English phrase, with the narrow hearts and
commercial habit of mind peculiar to that sort of people. It is something very
like folly to quarrel with them for not transgressing the law of their own
nature. If we were not so dazzled by the artificial glare of English prestige,
we should at once acknowledge that these men are really not worth being angry
with: and if it is idle to be angry with them, it is still more unprofitable to
rate their opinion of us at more than a straw's value. Our appeal, the appeal of
every high-souled and self-respecting nation, ought not to be to the opinion of
the Anglo-Indians, no, nor yet to the British sense of justice, but to our own
reviving sense of manhood, to our own sincere fellow-feeling -- so far as it can
be called sincere -- with the silent and suffering people of India. I am sure
that eventually the nobler part of us will prevail, -- that when we no longer
obey the dictates of a veiled self-interest, but return to the profession of a
large and genuine patriotism, when we cease to hanker after the soiled crumbs
which England may cast to us from her table then it will be to that sense of
manhood, to that sincere fellow-feeling that we shall finally and forcibly
appeal. All this, it will be said, may be very true or very plausible, but it is
after all made up of unsupported assertions. I quite admit that it is more or
less so, nor did I at all intend that it should be otherwise; the proof and
support of those assertions is a matter for patient development and wholly
beside my present purpose. I have been thus elaborate with one sole end in view.
I wish even the blindest enthusiast to recognise that I have not ventured to
speak without carefully weighing those important considerations that might have
induced me to remain silent. I trust that after this laboured preface even those
most hostile to my views will not accuse me of having undertaken anything
lightly or rashly. In my own opinion I should not have been to blame even if I
had spoken without this painful hesitation. If the Congress cannot really face
the light of a free and serious criticism, then the sooner it hides its face the
better. For nine years it has been exempt from the ordeal; we have been content
to worship it with that implicit
Page-13
trust which all religions demand, but which sooner or
later leads them to disaster and defeat. Certainly we had this excuse that the
stress of battle is not the time when a soldier can stop to criticise his
weapon: he has simply to turn it to the best use of which it is capable. So long
as India rang with turbulent voices of complaint and agitation, so long as the
air was filled with the turmoil of an angry controversy between governors and
governed, so long we could have little leisure or quiet thought and reflection.
But now all is different; the necessity for conflict is no longer so urgent and
has even given place to a noticeable languor and passivity, varied only by
perfunctory public meetings. Now therefore, while the great agitation that once
filled this vast peninsula with rumours of change, is content to occupy an
obscure corner of English politics it will be well for all of us who are capable
of reflection, to sit down for a moment and think. The hour seems to have come
when the Congress must encounter that searching criticism which sooner or later
arrives to all mortal things; and if it is so, to keep our eyes shut will be
worse than idle. The only good we shall get by it is to point with a fresh
example the aphorism with which I set out. "If the blind lead the
blind, shall they not both fall into a ditch?"
Indu Prakash, August 21, 1893
Page-14
New Lamps
for Old - 3
"Thou art weighed in the balance
and found wanting:"
"The little that is done seems
nothing when we look forward and see how much we have yet to do."
Thus far I have been making a circuit, in my disinclination to collide too
abruptly with the prepossessions of my countrymen and now that I am compelled to
handle my subject more intimately and with a firmer grasp, nothing but my
deliberate conviction that it is quite imperative for someone to speak out, has
at all persuaded me to continue. I have at the very outset to make distinct the
grounds on which I charge the Congress with inadequacy. In the process I find
myself bound to say many things that cannot fail to draw obloquy upon me: I
shall be compelled to outrage many susceptibilities; compelled to advance many
unacceptable ideas; compelled, -- worst of all, -- to stroke the wrong way many
powerful persons, who are wont to be pampered with unstinted flattery and
worship. But at all risks the thing must be done, and since it is on me that the
choice has fallen, I can only proceed in the best fashion at my command and with
what boldness I may. I say, of the Congress, then, this, -- that its aims are
mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is
not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has
chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the
right sort of men to be leaders; -- in brief, that we are at present the blind
led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.
To begin with, I should a little
while ago have had no hesitation in saying that the National Congress was not
really national and had not in any way attempted to become national. But
that was before I became a student of Mr. Pherozshah Mehta's speeches. Now to
deal with this vexed subject, one must tread on very burning ground, and I shall
make no apology for treading with great care and circumspection. The subject is
Page-15
wrapped in so thick a dust of
controversy, and legal wits have been so busy drawing subtle distinctions about
it, that a word which was once perfectly straightforward and simple, has become
almost as difficult as the Law itself. It is therefore incumbent on me to
explain what I wish to imply, when I say that the Congress is not really
national. Now I do not at all mean to re-echo the Anglo-Indian catchword about
the Hindus and Mahomedans. Like most catchwords it is without much force, and has
been still further stripped of meaning by the policy of the Congress. The Mahomedans have been as largely represented on that body as any reasonable
community could desire, and their susceptibilities, far from being denied
respect, have always been most assiduously soothed and flattered. It is entirely
futile then to take up the Anglo-Indian refrain; but this at least I should have
imagined, that in an era when democracy and similar big words slide so glibly
from our tongues, a body like the Congress, which represents not the mass of the
population, but a single and very limited class, could not honestly be called
national. It is perfectly true that the House of Commons represents not the
English nation, but simply the English aristocracy and middle class and yet is
none the less national. But the House of Commons is a body legally constituted
and empowered to speak and act for the nation, while the Congress is
self-created: and it is not justifiable for a self-created body representing
only a single and limited class to call itself national. It would be just as
absurd if the Liberal Party, because it allows within its limits all sorts and
conditions of men, were to hold annual meetings and call itself the English
National Congress. When therefore I said that the Congress was not really
national, I simply meant that it did not represent the mass of the population.
But Mr. Pherozshah Mehta will have
nothing to do with this sense of the word. In his very remarkable and instructive
Presidential address at Calcutta, he argued that the Congress could justly
arrogate this epithet without having any direct support from the proletariate;
and he went on to explain his argument with the profound subtlety expected from
an experienced advocate. "It is because the masses are still unable to
articulate definite political demands that the functions and duty devolve
Page-16
upon their educated and enlightened
compatriots to feel, to understand and to interpret their grievances and
requirements, and to suggest and indicate how these can best be redressed and
met."
This formidable sentence is, by the
way, typical of Mr. Mehta’s style and reveals the secret of his oratory, which
like all great inventions is exceedingly simple: it is merely to say the same
thing twice over in different words. But its more noteworthy feature is the idea
implied that because the Congress professes to discharge this duty, it may
justly call itself national. Nor is this all; Calcutta comes to the help of Bombay
in the person of Mr. Manmohan Ghose, who repeats and elucidates Mr. Mehta’s
idea. The Congress, he says, asserting the rights of that body to speak
for the masses, represents the thinking portion of the Indian people,
whose duty it is to guide the ignorant, and this in his opinion sufficiently
justifies the Congress in calling itself national. To differ from a successful
barrister and citizen, a man held in high honour by every graduate in India, and
above all a future member of the Viceroy's Council, would never have been
a very easy task for a timid man like myself. But when he is reinforced by so
respectable and weighty a citizen as Mr. Manmohan Ghose, I really cannot
find the courage to persevere. I shall therefore amend the obnoxious phrase
and declare that the National Congress may be as national as you please, but it
is not a popular body and has not in any way attempted to become a popular body.
But at this point some one a little
less learned than Mr. Pherozshah Mehta may interfere and ask how it can be true
that the Congress is not a popular body. I can only point his attention to a
previous statement of mine that the Congress represents not the mass of
the population, but a single and limited class. No doubt the Congress tried
very hard in the beginning to believe that it really represented the mass of the
population, but if it has not already abandoned, it ought now at least to
abandon the pretension as quite untenable. And indeed when Mr. Pherozshah Mehta and
Mr. Manmohan Ghose have admitted this patent fact -- not as delegates only, but
as officials of the Congress -- and have even gone so far as to explain
the fact away,
Page-17
it is hardly requisite for me to combat
the fallacy. But perhaps the enquirer, not yet satisfied, may go on to ask what is
that single and limited class which I imagine the Congress to represent. Here it
may be of help to us to refer again to the speeches of the Congress leaders and
more especially to the talented men from whom I have already quoted. In his able
official address Mr. Manmohan Ghose asks himself this very question and answers
that the Congress represents the thinking portion of the Indian people.
"The delegates present here today," he goes on, "are the chosen
representatives of that section of the Indian people who have learnt to think,
and whose number is daily increasing with marvellous rapidity." Perhaps Mr.
Ghose is a little too facile in his use of the word "thinking". So
much at the mercy of their instincts and prejudices are the generality of
mankind, that we hazard a very high estimate when we call even one man out of
ten thousand a thinking man. But evidently by the thinking portion Mr. Ghose
would like to indicate the class to which he himself belongs; I mean those of us
who have got some little idea of the machinery of Eng1ish politics and are eager
to import it into India along with cheap Liverpool cloths, shoddy Brummagem
wares, and other useful and necessary things which have killed the fine and
genuine textures. If this is a true interpretation he is perfectly correct in
what he says. For it is really from this class that the Congress movement draws
its origin, its support and its most enthusiastic votaries. And if I were asked
to describe their class by a single name, I should not hesitate to call it our
new middle class. For here too English goods have driven out native goods: our
society has lost its old landmarks and is being demarcated on the English model.
But of all the brand new articles we have imported, inconceivably the most
important is that large class of people -- journalists, barristers, doctors,
officials, graduates and traders -- who have grown up and are increasing with
prurient rapidity under the aegis of the British rule: and this class I call the
middle class: for, when we are so proud of our imported English goods, it would
be absurd, when we want labels for them, not to import their English names as
well. Besides this name which I have chosen is really a more accurate
description than phrases like "thinking men" or "the educated
class"
Page-18
which are merely expressions of our own
boundless vanity and self-conceit. However largely we may choose to indulge in
vague rhetoric about the all-pervading influence of the Congress, no one can
honestly doubt that here is the constituency from which it is really empowered.
There is indeed a small contingent of aristocrats and a smaller contingent of
the more well-to-do ryots: but these are only two flying-wheels in the great
middle-class machine. The fetish-worshipper may declare as loudly as he pleases
that it represents all sorts and conditions of people, just as the Anglo-Indians
used to insist that it represented no one but the Bengali Babu. Facts have been
too strong for the Anglo-Indian and they will be too strong in the end for the
fetish-worshipper. Partisans. on either side can in no way alter the clear and
immutable truth -- these words were put on paper long before the recent
disturbances in Bombay and certainly without any suspicion that the prophecy I
then hazarded would be fortified by so apt and striking a comment. Facts are
already beginning to speak in a very clear and unambiguous voice. How long will
the Congress sit like careless Belshazzar, at the feast of mutual admiration?
Already the decree has gone out against it; already even the eyes that are dim
can discern, -- for has it not been written in blood? -- the first pregnant phrase
of the handwriting upon the wall. "God has numbered the kingdom and
finished it." Surely after so rough a lesson, we shall not wait to unseal
our eyes and unstop our ears, until the unseen finger moves on and writes the
second and sterner sentence: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found
wanting." Or must we sit idle with folded hands and only bestir ourselves
when the short hour of grace is past and the kingdom given to another more
worthy than we?
lndu Prakash, August 28,1893
Page-19
New
Lamps for Old - 4
I
REPEAT then with renewed confidence, but still
with a strong desire to conciliate Mr. Pherozshah Mehta, that the Congress
fails, because it has never been, and has made no honest endeavour to be, a
popular body empowered by the fiat of the Indian people in its entirety. But for
all that I have not managed to bring my view into coincidence with Mr.
Mehta’s. It is true he is not invincibly reluctant to concede the limits,
which hedge in the Congress action and restrict its output of energy; but he is
quite averse to the dictum that by not transgressing the middle-class pale the
Congress has condemned itself, as a saving power, to insignificance and ultimate
sterility. The bounded scope of its potency and the subdued tone which it
affects, are, he opines, precisely what our actual emergencies of the moment
imperatively demand; wider activity and a more intense emphasis would be in his
view highly unadvisable and even injurious and besides it does not at all
signify whether we are fortified by popular sympathy or are not; for is not Mr. Pherozshah Mehta there with all the enlightenment of India at his back to plead
temperately -- temperately, mind you; we are nothing if not temperate -- for just
and remedial legislation on behalf of a patient and suffering people? In plain
words a line of argument is adopted amounting to this: -- "The Congress
movement is nothing if not a grand suit-at-law, best described as the case of
India vs. Anglo-India, in which the ultimate tribunal is the British sense of
justice, and Pherozshah Mehta, Mr. Umesh Chandra Bonerji and the other eminent
leaders of the bar are counsel for the complainant. Well, then, when so many
experienced advocates have bound themselves to find pleas for him, would it not
be highly rash and inopportune for the client to insist on conducting his own
complaint?" Now it is abundantly clear that, judged as it stands, this line
of argument, though adroit beyond cavil and instinct with legal ingenuity, will
nevertheless not answer. I am not going to
Page-20
deny that Mr. Pherozshah
Mehta and the enlightenment of India, such as it is, are pleading, undoubtedly
with temperance and perhaps with sincerity, for something or other, which
for want of a more exact description, we may call remedial legislation. But so
far there has been nothing at all to prevent me from denying that the analogy of
the law-court holds; this sort of vicarious effort may be highly advantageous in
judicial matters, but it is not, I would submit, at all adequate to express the
reviving energies of a great people. The argument, I say, is not complete in
itself, or to use a vernacular phrase, it will not walk; it badly wants a crutch
to lean upon. Mr. Mehta is clever enough to see that and his legal acumen has
taken him exactly to the very store where or not at all he must discover an
efficient crutch. So he goes straight to history, correctly surmising that the
experience of European races is all that we, a people new to modern problems,
can find to warn or counsel us, and he tells us that this sort of vicarious
effort has invariably been the original step towards progress: or, to put it in
his own rhetorical way, "History teaches us that such has been the law of
widening progress in all ages and all countries, notably in England
itself." Here then is the argument complete, crutch and all; and so adroit
is it that in Congress propaganda it has become a phrase of common parlance, and
is now in fact the stereotyped line of defence. Certainly, if he is accurate in
his historical data, Mr. Mehta has amply proved his case; but in spite of all
his adroitness, I suspect that his trend towards double-shotted phrases has led
him into a serious difficulty. "In all ages and all countries" is a
very big expression, and Mr. Mehta will be exceedingly lucky if it will stand a
close scrutiny. But Mr. Manmohan Ghose at least is a sober speaker; and if we
have deserted his smooth but perhaps rather tedious manner for a more brilliant
style of oratory, now at any rate, when the specious orator fails us, we may
well return to the rational disputant. But we shall be agreeably disappointed to
find that this vivid statement about the teaching of history is Mr. Ghose’s
own legitimate offspring and not the coinage of Mr. Mehta's heated fancy:
indeed, the latter has done nothing but convey it bodily into his own address.
"History teaches us," says Mr. Ghose, "that in all ages and all
countries it is the
Page-21
thinking classes who have led the
unthinking, and in the present state of our society we are bound not only to
think for ourselves, but also to think for those who are still too ignorant to
exercise that important function." When we find the intellectual princes of
the nation light-heartedly propagating such gross inaccuracies, we are really
tempted to inquire if high education is after all of any use. History teaches
us! Why, these gentlemen can never have studied any history at all except that
of England. Would they be ignorant otherwise that mainly to that country, if
not to that country alone, their statement applies, but that about most ages and
most countries it is hopelessly inaccurate? Absurd as the statement is, its
career has been neither limited nor obscure. Shot in the first instance from Mr.
Ghose's regulation smooth-bore, it then served as a bullet in Mr. Pherozshah
Mehta’s patent new double-barrelled rifle, and has ultimately turned out the stock
ammunition of the Congress against that particular line upon which I have
initially ventured. Here then the argument has culminated in a most important
issue; for supposing this line of defence to be adequate, the gravest indictment
I have to urge against the Congress goes at once to the ground. It will
therefore be advisable to scrutinise Mr. Ghose's light-hearted statement; and if
the policy he advocates is actually stamped with the genuine consensus of all
peoples in all ages, then we shall very readily admit that there is no reason
why the masses should not be left in their political apathy. But if it is quite
otherwise and we cannot discover more than one precedent of importance, then Mr.
Ghose and the Congress chairman will not make us dance to their music, charm
they never so wisely, and we shall be slow to admit even the one precedent we
have got without a very narrow scrutiny. If then we are bent upon adopting
England as our exemplar, we shall certainly imitate the progress of the glacier
rather than the progress of the torrent. From Runnymede to the Hull riots is a
far cry; yet these seven centuries have done less to change partially the
political and social exterior of England, than five short years to change
entirely the political and social exterior of her immediate neighbour. But if
Mr. Ghose's dogmatic utterance
Page-22
is true of England, I imagine it does not apply with
equal force to other climes and other eras. For example, is it at all true of
France? Rather we know that the first step of that fortunate country towards
progress was not through any decent and orderly expansion, but through a
purification by blood and fire. It was not a con- vocation of respectable citizens,
but the vast and ignorant proletariate, that emerged from a prolonged and almost
coeval apathy and blotted out in five terrible years the accumulated oppression
of thirteen centuries. And if the example of France is not sufficient to deprive
Mr. Ghose's statement of force, let us divert our eyes to Ireland where the
ancient and world-wide quarrel between Celt and Teuton is still pending. Is it
at all true that the initiators of Irish resistance to England were a body of
successful lawyers, remarkable only for a power of shallow rhetoric, and deputed
by the sort of men that are turned out at Trinity College, Dublin? At any rate
that is not what History tells us. We do not read that the Irish leaders annually
assembled to declaim glib orations, eulogistic of British rule and timidly
suggestive of certain flaws in its unparalleled excellence, nor did they suggest
as a panacea for Irish miseries, that they should be given more posts and an
ampler career in the British service. I rather fancy Turlough O’Neill and his
compeers were a different sort of men from that. But then it is hardly fair
perhaps to cite as an example a disreputable people never prolific of graduates
and hence incapable of properly appreciating the extraordinary blessings which
British rule gives out so liberally wherever it goes. Certainly men who
preferred action to long speeches and appealed, by the only method available in
that strenuous epoch, not to the British sense of justice but to their own sense
of manhood, are not at all the sort of people we have either the will or the
power to imitate. Well then, let us return to our own orderly and eloquent era.
But here too, just as the main strength of that ancient strenuous protest
resided in the Irish populace led by the princes of their class, so the
principal force of the modern subtler protest resides in the Irish peasantry led
by the recognised chiefs of an united people. I might go on and cull instances
from Italy and America, but to elaborate the matter
Page-23
further would be to insult the
understanding of my readers. It will be sufficient to remind them that the two
grand instances of ancient history point to an exactly similar conclusion. In
Athens and in Rome the first political quarrel is a distinct issue between the man of
the people and a limited, perhaps an alien, aristocracy. The force behind Cleisthenes and the constituency that empowered Tiberius Gracchus were not a
narrow middle class, but the people with its ancient wrongs and centuries of
patient endurance.
If then, as we are compelled to
infer, Mr. Mehta's statement is entirely inaccurate of remoter ages and in
modern times accurate of one country alone, we shall conclude that whatever
other proof he may find for his lame argument, that crutch at least is too large
and must go [to] the ground. But Mr. Mehta, too acute ,and experienced a pleader
to be disheartened by any initial failure, will no doubt pick up his crutch again
and whittle it down to the appropriate size. It may be quite correct, he will
perhaps tell me, that his statement applies with appreciable force to England
and to England alone, but when all is said, it does not eventually matter. In
allowing that his statement does generally apply to England, I have admitted
everything he seriously wants me to admit, for England is after all that country
which has best prospered in its aspirations after progress, and must therefore
be the grand political examplar of every nation animated by a like spirit, and
it must be peculiarly and beyond dispute such for India in her present critical
stage of renascence. I am quite aware that in the eyes of that growing
community which Mr. Ghose is pleased to call the thinking class, these plausible
assertions are only the elementary axioms of political science. But however
confidently such statements are put before me, I am not at all sure that they
are entirely correct. I have not quite made up my mind that England is indeed
that country which has best prospered in its aspirations after progress and I am
as yet unconvinced that it will eventually turn out at all a desirable examplar
for every nation aspiring to progress, or even for its peculiar pupil, renascent
India. I shall therefore feel more disposed to probe the matter to the bottom
than to acknowledge a very disputable thesis as in any way self-evident. To this
end it is requisite closely
Page-24
to inquire what has actually been the main outcome of English
political effort, and whether it is of a nature to justify any implicit reliance
on English methods or exact imitation of English models.
lndu Prakash, September 18, 1893
Page-25
New Lamps for Old - 5
WE HAVE then to appreciate the actual
conditions of English progress, in their sound no less than their unsound
aspects: and it will be to our convenience to have ready some rough formulae by
which we may handle the subject in an intelligible way. To this problem Mr. Surendranath Banerji, a man who with all his striking merits, has never evinced
any power of calm and serious thought, proffers a very grandiloquent and
heart-stirring solution. "We rely," he has said, "on the
liberty-loving instincts of the greatest representative assembly in the world,
the palladium of English Liberty, the sanctuary of the free and brave, the
British House of Commons" and at this inspiriting discharge of oratory
there was, we are told, nor do we wonder at it -- a responding volley of loud and
protracted applause. Now when Mr. Banerji chooses to lash himself into an
oratorical frenzy and stir us with his sounding rhetoric, it is really
impracticable for anything human to stand up and oppose him: and though I may
hereafter tone down his oriental colouring to something nearer the hue of truth,
yet it does not at present serve my purpose to take up arms against a sea of
eloquence. I would rather admit at once the grain of sound fact at the core of
all this than strip off the costly integuments with which Mr. Banerji's
elaborate Fancy chooses to invest it. But when Mr. Banerji's words no
longer reverberate in your ears, you may have leisure to listen to a quieter,
more serious voice, now unhappily hushed in the grave, -- the voice of Matthew
Arnold, himself an Englishman and genuine lover of his country, but for all that
a man who thought deeply and spoke sanely. And where according to this sane and
powerful intellect shall we come across the really noteworthy outcome of English
effort? We shall best see it, he tells us, not in any palladium or sanctuary,
not in the greatest representative assembly in the world, but in an aristocracy materialised, a middle class vulgarised and a lower class bruta-
Page-26
lised: and no clear-sighted student of
England will be insensible to the just felicity with which he has hit off the
social tendencies prevailing in that country. Here then we have ready rough
formulae by which we may, at the lowest, baldly outline the duplicate aspect of modern
England: for now that we have admitted Mr. Banerji’s phrase as symbolic of the
healthy outcome creditable to English effort, we can hardly be shy of admitting
Matthew Arnold's phrase as symbolic of the morbid outcome discreditable to it.
But it is still open to us to evince a reasonable doubt whether there is any way
of reconciling two items so mutually destructive: for it does seem paradoxical
to rate the produces of institutions so highly lauded and so universally copied
at a low grade in the social ladder. But this apparent paradox may easily be a
vital truth; and in establishing that, as I hope to establish it, I shall have
incidentally to moot another and wider theorem. I would urge that our entire
political philosophy is rooted in shallow earth, so much so indeed that without
repudiation or radical change we cannot arrive at an attitude of mind healthily
conducive to just and clear thinking. I am conscious that the argument has
hitherto been rather intangible and moved too largely among wide abstract
principles. Such a method is by its nature less keenly attractive to the general
readers than a close and lively handling of current politics, but it is required
for an adequate development of my case, and I must entreat indulgence a step or
two further, before I lay any grasp on the hard concrete details of our actual
political effort.
Now the high value at which Mr. Mehta
appraises history as our sole available record of human experience in the mass
will clearly be endorsed by every thoughtful and judicious mind. But to sustain
it at that high level of utility, we must not indulge in hasty deductions based
on a very partial scrutiny, but must group correctly and digest in a candid
spirit such data as we can bring within our compass. If we observe this precept,
we shall not easily coincide with his opinion that European progress has been of
a single texture. We shall rather be convinced that there run through it two
principles of motion distinct in nature and adverse in event, the trend of whose
divergence may be roundly expressed as advance in one direction through
political methods
Page-27
and. in another direction through social
methods. But as the use of these time-worn epithets might well promote
misconception and drag us into side-issues, I will attempt a more delicate
handling and solicit that close attention without which so remote and elusive a
subject cannot come home to the mind with proper force and clearness.
In bringing abstractions home to the human intelligence, it is perhaps best to
dispel by means of near and concrete specimens that sense of remoteness which we
shrink from in what is at all intangible. Hence I shall attempt to differentiate
by living instances the two principles which I suggest as the main motors of
progress. The broadcast of national thought in England prevalent from very early
times, may not inappropriately stand for the sort of progress that runs after a
political prize. The striking fact of English history -- the fact that dwarfs all
others -- is, without doubt, the regular development from certain primordial
seeds and the continuous branching out, foliation and efflorescence of the
institution which Mr. Banerji has justly termed the greatest representative
assembly in the world. This is highly typical of the English school of thought
and the exaggerated emphasis it lays on the mould and working of institutions.
However supreme in the domain of practical life, however gifted with commercial
vigour and expansive energy, the English mind with its short range of vision,
its too little of delicacy and exactness, its inability to go beyond what it
actually sees, is wholly unfit for any nice appraisal of cause and effect. It is
without vision, logic, the spirit of curiosity, and hence it has not any habit
of entertaining clear and high ideals, any audacity of experiment, any power of
finding just methods nicely adopted to produce the exact effect intended: -- it
is without speculative temerity and the scientific spirit, and hence it cannot
project great political theories nor argue justly from effect to cause. All
these incapacities have forced the English mind into a certain mould of thought
and expression. Limited to the visible and material, they have put their whole
force into mechanical invention; void of curiosity, they have hazarded just so
much experiment and no more, as was necessary to suit existing institutions to
their immediate wants; inexact, they have never cared in these alterations to
get at more
Page-28
than an approximation to the exact effect
intended; illogical and without subtlety, they have trusted implicitly to the
political machines for whose invention they have a peculiar genius, and never
cared to utilise mightier forces and a subtler method. Nor is this all: in their
defect of speculative imagination, they are unable to get beyond what they
themselves have experienced, what they themselves have effected. Hence, being
unscientific and apt to impute every power to machinery, they compare certain
sets of machines, and postulating certain effects from them, argue that as this
of their own invention has been attended by results of the highest value, it is
therefore of an unique excellence and conserves in any and every climate its
efficiency and durability. And they do not simply flaunt this opinion in the
face of reason, but, by their stupendous material success and vast expansion,
they have managed to convince a world apt to be impressed by externals, that it
is correct, and even obviously correct. Yet it is quite clear that this opinion,
carefully analysed, reduces itself to a logical absurdity. By its rigid
emphasising of a single element it slurs over others of equal or superior
importance: it takes no account of a high or low quality in the raw material, of
variant circumstances, of incompatibilities arising from national temperament,
and other forces which no philosophical observer will omit from his
calculations. In fact it reduces itself to the statement, that, given good
machinery, then no matter what quality of materials is passed through it, the
eventual fabric will be infallibly of the most superior sort. If the Indian
intellect had been nourished on any but English food, I should be content with
stating the idea in this its simplest form, and spare myself a laborious
exegesis; but I do not forget that I am addressing minds formed by purely
English influences and therefore capable of admitting the rooted English
prejudice that what is logically absurd, may be practically true. At present
however I will simply state the motive principle of progress exemplified by
England as a careful requisition and high appraisal of sound machinery in
preference to a scientific social development.
But if we carry our glance across the
English Channel, we shall witness a very different and more animating spectacle.
Gifted with a lighter, subtler and clearer mind than their insular
Page-29
neighbours, the French people have moved
irresistibly towards a social and not a political development. It is true that
French orators and statesmen, incapacitated by their national character from
originating fit political ideals, have adopted a set of institutions curiously
blended from English and American manufactures; but the best blood, the highest
thought, the real grandeur of the nation does not reside in the Senate or in the
Chamber of Deputies; it resides in the artistic and municipal forces of Parisian
life, in the firm settled executive, in the great vehement heart of the French
populace -- and that has ever beaten most highly in unison with the grand ideas
of Equality and Fraternity, since they were first enounced on the banner of the
great and terrible Republic. Hence though by the indiscreet choice of a machine,
they have been compelled to copy the working of English machinery and
concede an undue importance to politics, yet the ideals which have genuinely
influenced the spirit which has most deeply permeated their national life are
widely different from that alien spirit, from those borrowed ideals. I have said
that the French mind is clearer, subtler, lighter than the English. In that
clarity they have discerned that without high qualities in the raw material
excellence of machinery will not suffice to create a sound and durable national
character, -- that it may indeed develop a strong, energetic and capable temper,
but that the fabric will not combine fineness with strength, will not resist
permanently the wear and tear of time and the rending force of social problems:
-- through that subtlety they divined that not by the mechanic working of
institutions, but by the delicate and almost unseen moulding of a fine, lucid
and invigorating atmosphere, could a robust and highly-wrought social temper be
developed: -- and through that lightness they chose not the fierce, sharp air of
English individualism, but the bright influence of art and letters, of
happiness, a wide and liberal culture, and the firm consequent cohesion of their
racial and social elements. To put all this briefly, the second school of
thought I would indicate to my readers, is the preference of a fine development
of social character and a wide diffusion of happiness to the mechanic
development of a sound political machinery. Here then as indicated by these
grand examples we have our two principal motors of
Page-30
progress; a careful requisition for the
sake of evolving an energetic national character and high level of capacity, of
a sound political machinery; and the ardent, yet rational pursuit, for its own
sake, of a sound and highly-wrought social temper.
It may be worth while here to develop
a point I have broadly suggested, that with these distinct lines of feeling
accord distinct types of racial character. The social ideal is naturally limited
to peoples distinguished by a rare social gift and an unbounded receptivity for
novel ideas along with a large amount of practical capacity. The ancient
Athenian, pre-eminent for lightness of temper and lucidity of thought, was
content with the simplest and most nakedly logical machinery, and principally
sought to base political life on equality, a wide diffusion of culture, and a
large and just social principle. Moreover, as the subtlest and hence the most
efficient way of conserving the high calibre of his national character, he chose
the infusion of light, gaiety and happiness into the common life of the people.
Clear in thought and felicitous in action, he pursued an ideal strictly
consonant with his natural temper and rigidly exclusive of the anomalous: and so
highly did he attain, that the quick, shifting, eager Athenian 1ife, with its
movement and colour, its happy buoyancy, its rapid genius, or as the Attic poet
beautifully phrases it, walking delicately through a fine and lucid air, has
become the admiration and envy of posterior ages. The modern Frenchman closely
allied by his clear habit of mind to the old Athenian, himself lucid in thought,
light in temper and not without a supreme felicity of method in practical
things, evinces much the same sentiments, pursues much the same ideals. He too
has a happily-adjusted executive machinery, elaborated indeed to fit the needs of
a modern community, but pervaded by a thoroughly clear and logical spirit. He
also has a passionate craving for equality and a large and just social
principle, and prefers to conserve the high calibre of his national character by
the infusion of light, gaiety and happiness into the common life of the people.
And he too has so far compassed his ideal that a consensus of competent
observers have pronounced France certainly the happiest, and, taken in
the mass, the most civilised of modern countries. But to the Englishman or
American, intellect, lucidity, happiness are not of primary importance:
Page-31
they strike him in the light of luxuries
rather than necessities. It is the useful citizen, the adroit man of business,
the laborious worker, whom he commends with the warmest emphasis and copies with
the most respectful emulation. Such a cast of mind being entirely incompatible
with social success, he directs his whole active powers into the grosser sphere
of commerce and politics, where practical energy, unpurified by thought, may
struggle forward to some vulgar and limited goal. To. put it in a concrete form,
Paris may be said to revolve around the Theatre, the Municipal Council and the
French Academy, London looks rather to the House of Commons and New York to the
Stock Exchange. I trust that I have now clearly elucidated the exact and
intimate nature of those two distinct principles on which progress may be said
to move. It now remains to gauge the practical effect of either policy as
history indicates them to us. We in India, or at any rate those races among us
which are in the van of every forward movement, are far more nearly allied to
the French and Athenian than to the Anglo-Saxon, but owing to the accident of
British domination, our intellects have been carefully nurtured on a purely
English diet. Hence we do not care to purchase an outfit of political ideas
properly adjusted to our natural temper and urgent requirements, but must eke
out our scanty wardrobe with the cast-off rags and thread-bare leavings of our
English Masters and this incongruous apparel we display with a pompous
self-approval which no unfriendly murmurs, no unkind allusions are allowed to
trouble. Absurd as all this is, its visible outcome is clearly a grave
misfortune. Prompted by our English instruction we have deputed to a mere
machine so arduous a business as the remoulding of our entire destinies, needing
as it does patient and delicate manual adjustment and a constant supervising
vigilance - and this to a machine not efficient and carefully pieced together
but clumsy and made on a rude and cheap model. So long as this temper prevails,
we shall never realise how utterly it is beyond the power of even an excellent
machine to renovate an effete and impoverished national character and how
palpably requisite to commence from within and not depend on any exterior
agency. Such a retrospect as I propose will therefore be of
Page-32
peculiar value, if it at all induces us to acknowledge
that it is a vital error, simply because we have invented a clumsy machine, to
rest on our oars and imagine that expenditure of energy in other directions is
at present superfluous.
lndu
Prakash, October 30, 1893
Page-33
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