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The True Meaning of the Risley Circular
WE HAVE
seen that the effect of Lala Lajpat Rai's deportation is solely to bring the
struggle between the bureaucracy and the people to a head and the leaders as
well as the rank and file into the range of fire. We have also come to the
conclusion that the disturbances in Mymensingh create no new problem but rather
compel us to face as urgencies certain primary necessities we have too much
neglected, -- the necessity of no longer relying blindly on the purely hypnotic
and illusory protection of the Pax Britannica which may at any moment fail us or
be suspended; the necessity of an universal training in the practice of self-defence
and a better orgnisation for mutual assistance; the necessity of recognising and
practically grappling with the Mahomedan difficulty. But neither of these
occurrences has really made impossible, or even altered the conditions of, our
programme of defensive resistance.
The third fresh departure of the Government of India is the Risley
Circular. This circular is only a more comprehensive and carefully studied
edition of the Carlyle Circular. It brings therefore no unfamiliar element into
the problem; but there is this very important difference, that while the Carlyle
Circular was a local experiment hastily adopted to meet an urgent difficulty and
dropped as soon as it was found difficult to work, the Risley Circular is a
deliberate policy adopted by the Supreme Government, with full knowledge of the
circumstances and of its possible effects, in the hope of striking at the very
root of the Swadeshi movement. Everyone will remember the convulsion created by
the Carlyle Circular. Its natural effect would have been to bring about an
universal students strike, and for a few days it seemed as if such a strike
would actually take place. Unfortunately the movement immediately affected
certain vested interests and the representatives of those interests happened
also to be
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the
political leaders to whom the country and the students especially were
accustomed to look for guidance. The leading spirits among the young men in
Calcutta were still immature and wanting in grit and tenacity; the influence on
their minds of their old leaders was very powerful; the new men were
comparatively unknown and influenced the course of events rather by the concrete
directness of their views, the ardour of their feelings and the fiery energy of
their speech and activity than by the weight of their personalities. The older
leaders were, therefore, able by a strenuous and united effort of their
authority to turn back the impetuous tide and dissipate the enormous
motive-power which had been generated. They were too selfish to sacrifice their
immediate interests, too blind and wanting in foresight to understand that the
immediate loss and difficulty would be repaid tenfold by the inevitable effects
of the movement. An universal educational strike at that moment, before the
Government had become accustomed to the situation, would infallibly have
unnerved the hand of power and brought about an almost immediate reconsideration
of the partition. Whatever Government may say or do, it cannot afford to lose
control of the education of the country; it cannot afford to hand over this
immense mass of material, the India of the future, into the hands of the
political leaders without the subtle control and check which membership of a
Government University exercises, without the opportunity of unstringing the
nerves of character and soul which the present system of education provides. The
Government must keep its hold on the mind of the young or lose India. The
magnitude of their blunder was dimly perceived afterwards by some of the leaders
and one or two admitted it in private. We only recall that disastrous episode in
order to lay stress on the fact that if again repeated the blunder will be worse
than a blunder, it will be an offense against our posterity and a betrayal of
the nation's future.
What is the position now? The Risley Circular is a desperate attempt of
the bureaucracy not only to recover and confirm its hold on the student
population and through them on the future, but to make that hold far more
stringent, rigid, ineffugable than it ever was in the past. They do not care
very much if certain academical ideas of liberalism or nationalism are imparted
to
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the
young by their teachers, but they desire to stop the active habit of patriotism
in the young; for they know well that a mere intellectual habit untranslated
into action is of no value in after life. The Japanese when they teach Bushido
to their boys do not rest content with lectures or a moral catechism; they make
them practise Bushido and govern every thought and action of their life by the
Bushido ideal. This is the only way of inculcating a quality into a nation, by
instilling it practically into the minds of its youth at school and college
until it becomes an ingrained, inherent, inherited national quality. This is
what we have to do with the modern ideal of patriotism in India. We have to fill
the minds of our boys from childhood with the idea of the country, and present
them with that idea at every turn and make their whole young life a lesson in
the practice of the virtues which afterwards go to make the patriot and the
citizen. If we do not attempt this, we may as well give up our desire to create
an Indian nation altogether; for without such a discipline nationalism,
patriotism, regeneration are mere words and ideas which can never become a part
of the very soul of the nation and never therefore a great realised fact. Mere academical teaching of patriotism is of no avail. The professor may lecture
every day on Mazzini and Garibaldi and Washington and the student may write
themes about Japan and Italy and America without bringing
us any nearer to our supreme need,
—
the
entry of the habit of patriotism into our
very bone and blood. The Roman Satirist tells us that in the worst times of
imperial despotism in Rome the favourite theme of teachers and boys in the
schools was liberty and tyrannicide;
—
but neither liberty nor tyrannicide was
practised by the boys when they became men; rather they grew up into submissive
slaves of the single world-despot. It is for this reason that the men of the new
party have welcomed the active association of our students with political
meetings, with the propagation and actual practice of Swadeshi, with the
volunteer movement in its various forms,
— not, as has
been malevolently suggested, out of a
turbulent desire to make use of unripe young minds to create anarchy and
disorder, but because they see in this political activity in the young the
promise of a new generation of Indians who will take patriotism earnestly as a
thing to live and
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die
for, not as the pastime of leisure hours. Nobody who believes that such
patriotism is the first need of this country can consistently oppose the
participation of students in politics. When Indian nationality is a thing
realised and the present unnatural conditions have been remedied, then indeed
this active participation may be brought under restriction and regulation; for
then the inherited habit of patriotism, the atmosphere of a free country and the
practice and teaching of the Bushido virtues within the limits of home and
school life will be sufficient. But before them to submit to restrictions is to
commit national suicide.
If our educated men do not understand this
— as, indeed,
with our want of direct political experience it is difficult for them to
understand it, — our English rulers at least have grasped the situation. Study
their circular and you will see what it means. School students are not even to
attend political meetings nor school teachers to teach them patriotism. Why?
Because at that age the mind is soft and impressionable and what is seen and
heard, sinks deep and tends to crystallise not merely into fixed ideas, but into
character. A teacher may by his personal influence and teachings so
surround the minds of his students with the idea of the country, of work for the
country, of living and dying for the country that this will become the dominant
idea of their minds and, if associated with any kind of patriotic discipline or
teaching in action, the dominant note in their character. The attendance of
schoolboys as volunteers at political meetings, their work in the reception and
service of men honoured by the country for patriotic service, their active
participation in semi-political, semi-religious Utsavas are all part of such a
patriotic discipline. It is this against which the efforts of the bureaucracy
are being directed, by the Risley Circular, by the prohibition of the Shivaji
Utsava outside the Deccan, by the attack on our Melas and other public occasions
where such training is possible. For the same reason the active participation
of College students in political meetings is forbidden. At the age of College
students ideas may be modified, the intellect may be powerfully influenced by
what they hear and see, but character can only be influenced and modified by
action. And it is of character in action that the bureaucracy is afraid,
not so much of mere ideas, mere speeches, mere
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writings.
Let the College students attend political meetings and Utsavas — that by
itself will not hurt the bureaucracy; but let them not organise or take part in
them, for that means the character affected, the habit of political action
formed, the first elementary beginnings of service to the country commenced.
Picketing and active participation in Swadeshi work is of course still more
objectionable from the bureaucratic standpoint. For the same reason, again,
College Professors are forbidden to influence their students or lead them to
political meetings: for that brings in the powerful impetus of leading and
example and threatens the bureaucracy with the beginnings of organisation.
The
Risley Circular, with its sanctimonious professions of anxiety for the best
interests of students and guardians, is in reality a powerful attack on the
growing spirit of Nationalism at its most vital point. As such we must
understand it and as such resist it.
Bande
Mataram,
May 28, 1907
We
are glad to notice a ring of boldness and sincerity in all the writings of the Indu
Prakash relating to the deportation of Lajpat Rai. We hope this tone will be
an enduring change for the better. Mr. Gokhale's resort to the Anglo-Indian
Press in preference to the Indian, on which its observations are very pertinent,
is an example of the very common, almost inevitable effect of petitionary
politics on patriotism. That a prominent leader of the Congress Party should
show such an unreasonable partiality for the Anglo-Indian Press, whose recent
campaign of misrepresentation and vituperation has been unpardonable in the eyes
of every self-respecting Indian, is surprising at the first glance. But, in
reality, it is the natural demoralizing effect of the association cum opposition
politics. The very basis of constitutional agitation is reliance on the
foreigner and the habit of appealing to him, which is the reverse side of a
distrust and certain contempt for their own people. That this feeling should be,
however unconsciously, betrayed by a man of Mr. Gokhale's position and
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character,
is deplorable but inevitable. It is the logical outcome of that moderation and
spirit of dependence which our contemporary has been so long preaching without
perceiving, apparently, where its own dogmas led.
Bande Mataram,
May 29, 1907
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