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The 7th of August
THE
approaching celebration of the 7th of August has a double importance this year,
for it has not only its general and permanent importance as the commemoration of
our declaration of independence, but an occasional though none the less urgent
importance as an opportunity of reaffirming our separate national existence
against the arbitrary and futile attempt of the bureaucracy to reaffirm and
perpetuate a vanishing despotism. The 7th of August will be recognised in the
future as a far more important date to the building up of the nation than the
16th October. On the 16th October the threatened unity of Bengal was asserted
against the disingenuous and dangerous attack engineered by Lord Curzon; and
since it is on the solidarity of its regional and race units that the greater
Pan-Indian unity can alone be firmly founded, the 16th October must always be a
holy day in the Indian Calendar. But on the 7th of August Bengal discovered for
India the idea of Indian independence as a living reality and not a distant
Utopia, on the 7th of August she consecrated herself to the realisation of that
supreme ideal by the declaration of the Boycott. The time has not come yet when
the full meaning of that declaration can be understood; even the whole of Bengal
has not yet understood, much less the whole of India. But the light is coming;
partly by the efforts of the preachers of the light, still more by the efforts
of the enemies of the light, it is coming: and in the dim wide glimmer of the
mighty dawn we can see the vast slow surge of Indian life quickening under the
breath of a stupendous wind, we can discern the angry fringes of the tide
casting themselves far beyond the old low level, we can almost hear the roar of
the surf hurling itself on the flimsy barriers it had once accepted as an iron
and eternal boundary. The waters are at last alive with the breath of God, the
flood which is to overwhelm the world has begun.
The 7th of August was India's Independence Day. A big
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word,
it may be said, far too grandiose for the little that was accomplished.
To those who judge only by the gross material event it may seem so, but to those
who look beneath and watch the course of events as they shape themselves in the
soul of a nation, the phrase will not seem one whit too excessive. It is the
soul within us that decides, that makes our history, that determines Fate, and
the material nature, material events only shape themselves under the limitations
of Space and Time to give an outward body and realisation to the decisions of
the soul. The day of a nation's independence is not the day when the
administrative changes are made which complete the outward realisation of its
independence but the day when it realises in its soul that it is free and must
be free. For it is the self-sufficing separateness of a nation that is its
independence, and when that separateness is realised and recorded as a
determined thing in ourselves, the outward realisation is only a question of
time. The seventh of August was the birthday of Indian Nationalism, and Indian
Nationalism, as we pointed out the other day, means two things, the
self-consecration to the gospel of national freedom and the practice of
independence. Boycott is the practice of independence. When therefore we
declared the Boycott on the seventh of August, it was no mere economical revolt
we were instituting, but the practice of national independence; for the attempt
to be separate and self-sufficient economically must bring with it the
attempt to be free in every other function of a nation's life; for these
functions are all mutually interdependent. August 7th is therefore the day when
Indian Nationalism was born, when India discovered to her soul her own freedom,
when we set our feet irrevocably on the only path to unity, the only path to
self-realisation. On that day the foundation-stone of the new Indian nationality
was laid.
Let us then celebrate the day in a spirit and after a fashion suitable to
its great and glorious meaning. Let it be a reconsecration of the whole of
Bengal to the new spirit and the new life, a purification of heart and mind to
make it the undivided possession and the consecrated temple and habitation of
the Mother. And, secondly, let it be a calm, brave and masculine reaffirmation
of our independent existence. The bureaucracy has flung itself
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with
savage fury on the new activities of our national life; it has attempted to
trample on and break to pieces under its armed heel our economical boycott; it
has made the service of the motherland penal in her young men; it has visited
with the prison and deportation the preaching of Nationalism by the elder men.
The 7th of August must be an emphatic answer to these persecutions and
prohibitions. The Boycott must be reaffirmed and this time in its purity and
simplicity as the national policy to which all are committed. The Risley
Circular must be definitely and unmistakably challenged and negatived in action.
Let there be a procession of students led by those venerable leaders of Bengal
who are also professors of the Government University. And let us see afterwards
what the bureaucracy can do and what it dare do to the men who refuse to give up
their lifelong and sacred occupation at an alien bidding and to the youths who
refuse to abstain from initiation in the same sacred service out of sordid hopes
and fears.
But most of all the day should be a day of rejoicing and a day of
consecration. The whole Indian part of the town should be illumined in honour of
the divine birth which saw the light two years ago. And along with the outer
illumination it should be a day of the illumination of hearts. It is the
sacrament of our religion that can alone give the perfect and effective blessing
to our movement, and the celebration of this great day will not be complete
until every Indian makes it a sacred observance, worshipping God in his own way,
the Hindu in his temple, the Brahmo in his Mandir, the Mahomedan in his mosque,
to consecrate himself anew on that day to the service of that single and
omnipresent Deity through the task He has set to the whole nation, the
upbuilding of Indian nationality by self-sacrifice for the Motherland.
The
"Indian Patriot" on Ourselves
We
gave in full yesterday the article of the Indian Patriot in which our
contemporary criticised the action of the Bengal Government in searching the Bande
Mataram office as a preliminary, it
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is
presumed, to a prosecution under the sedition clause. We thank our contemporary
for his sympathy, but we are bound to say that he does not seem to have entirely
grasped the political gospel preached by Bande Mataram. The Patriot seems
to be under the impression that it is a gospel of violent despair. Because
England has refused to hear our prayers and melt at our tears, therefore we
advocate an appeal to force. But this is not and has never been our attitude.
Those who are at present responsible for the policy of this paper were never
believers in the old gospel of mendicancy and at no time in their lives were
associated with Congress politics, they publicly opposed the Congress propaganda
as futile and doomed to failure at a time when the country at large was full of
a touching but ignorant faith in prayers and resolutions and British justice.
Despair and disappointment therefore could not possibly be the root of their
policy. It is rather a settled, reasoned and calm conviction we have always
held, but for which the country was not ripe until it had gone through a
wholesome experience of disillusionment. Neither is our teaching a mere gospel
of brute force. We preach on the contrary a great idea in the strength of which
we are confident of victory. All that we contend is that we must reach the
realisation of that idea in the same way as other nations by utter
self-devotion, by self-immolation, by bitter struggle and terrible sacrifices,
and that we cannot hope and ought not to wish to have liberty given to us at
less than its eternal and inevitable price.
Bande Mataram,
August 6, 1907
To
Organise
Srijut
Surendranath Banerji in his remarkable speech in College Square, the other day,
observed that what the country now needed was not oratory but statesmanship, for
the only effective answer to bureaucratic repression is the organisation of the
whole strength of the country to carry out its natural ideal in spite of all
repression. We think the veteran leader has gauged the situation very
accurately, but we confess we do not see at present
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where
the statesmanship is to come from which is to carry out the difficult, arduous
and delicate task before us. What we have done hitherto we have done without
leadership, almost without clear purpose, under an inspiring and impelling force
which we must necessarily think divine. Where that force has visibly guided us,
we have done astonishing things: but at the same time there has been much
confusion, one-sidedness and incoherence in our work. And now that a powerful
and organised Government has set itself in grim earnest to destroy our movement
it is imperative that we too should organise and make our whole potential
strength effective for self-defence. The divine guidance will only be continued
to us if we show ourselves in our strength and wisdom worthy of it. But it
cannot be denied that the first effect of the repression has been to disorganise
our work. Since it began, there has been no concerted and coherent action, every
man has done what seemed good in his own eyes or else remained inactive. The
result has been much weakness, supineness and ineffectiveness. Barisal fights
for its own hand to maintain the boycott. The Yugantar attacked carries
on a heroic struggle with the bureaucracy with what stray assistance, individual
generosity or patriotism may offer it. But organised resistance, organised
persistence even there is none.
This unsatisfactory condition of things is traceable to one main cause.
All Bengal is heartily agreed in Swadeshi and professedly all are agreed on the
necessity of industrial Boycott. But a majority of the older leaders, trained in
another school of politics cannot adapt themselves to the new state of things,
they cannot even throw themselves heartily into the only measures which can make
the individual boycott crushingly effective, and they are out of sympathy with
the wider developments of boycott which are becoming indispensable if we are to
meet the bureaucratic attack with full success. They object personally to the
new men and decline to work in co-operation with them. The new men, on the other
hand, who have immensely increased their following and influence in the country
are not in possession of the machinery of Congress and Conference, are, in fact,
zealously excluded from it by the present possessors and have but small
following among the richer men who might provide the sinews
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of
war. They are moreover prevented, by a natural unwillingness to hopelessly
divide the nation, from organising a machinery of their own. Yet to talk of
organising the nation while excluding the new men is absurd. If the older party
have the greater solidity and resources, the younger men have the lion's share
of the energy and driving force, they divide the great middle class and are no
longer there in a hopeless minority, but are gathering adherents all over the
country (even in Madras they commanded one third of the votes at the last
Conference) and they exercise an overwhelming empire over the minds of the
rising generation. To organise the nation means to make all its elements of
strength efficient for a single clear and well-understood work under the
leadership of a recognised central force. To exclude such important forces as
these we have described, simply means to leave the nation unorganised.
The country is in need of a statesman, yes; but what kind of statesman?
He must be a man thoroughly steeped in the gospel of Nationalism, with a clear
and fearless recognition of the goal to which we are moving, with a dauntless
courage to aim consciously, steadily, indomitably towards it, with a consummate
skill to mask his movements and aims when necessary and to move boldly and
openly when necessary and, last but not least, with an overmastering magnetic
power and tact to lead and use and combine men of all kinds and opinions. Such a
leader might organise the nation to some purpose, but those who shrink from
following where their hearts and intellects lead them or who form party feelings
or personal dislike or jealously try to exclude
powerful forces from the common national work cannot claim the name of
statesman. It is an encouraging sign of the times that Surendranath is coming
more and more into sympathy with thoroughgoing Nationalism but will he have the
courage and magnanimity to hold out his hand to the new men and if he does will
he be able to retain the loyalty of his principal followers? If not, he will
never be able to carry out the task he has declared to be the one and supreme
need of the nation.
Bande Mataram,
August 8, 1907
Page-498
We
extract in another column the opinions and interpretations of the London Times
anent the Bande Mataram. It is gratifying to find the Thunderer so
deeply impressed with the ability with which this journal is written and edited,
even though the object of this generous appreciation be to point us out as the
tallest oak of all on which the lightning may most fitly descend. But we feel
bound to correct certain misapprehensions into which the Times has too
readily fallen. It suits the Times to pretend that the Nationalist
movement in India is a pure outcome of racial hatred and that the creation and
fomentation of that hatred is the sole method of Indian agitators and the one
object of their speeches and writings. But Nationalism is no more a mere
ebullition of race hatred in India than it was in Italy in the last century. Our
motives and our objects are at least as lofty and noble as those of Mazzini or
of that Garibaldi whose centenary the Times was hymning with such fervour
a few days ago. The restoration of our country to her separate existence as a
nation among the nations, her exaltation to a greatness, splendour, strength,
magnificence equalling and surpassing her ancient glories is the goal of our endeavours: and we have undertaken this arduous task in which we as individuals
risk everything, ease, wealth, liberty, life itself it may be, not out of hatred
and hostility to other nations but in the firm conviction that we are working as
much in the interests of all humanity including England herself as in those of
our own posterity and nation. That the struggle to realise our ideal must bring
with it temporary strife, misunderstanding, hostility, disturbance, — that in
short, it is bound to be a struggle and not the billing and cooing of political
doves, we have never attempted to deny. We believe that the rule of three
hundred millions of Indians by an alien bureaucracy not responsible to the
nation is a system unnatural, intrinsically bad and inevitably oppressive, and
we do not pretend that we can convince our people of its undesirability without
irritating the bureaucracy on one side and generating a strong dislike of the
existing system on the other. But our object is constructive and not
destructive,
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to
build up our own nation and not to destroy another. If England chooses to feel
aggrieved by our nation-building, and obstruct it by unjust, violent or despotic
means, it is she who is the aggressor and guilty of exciting hatred and
ill-feeling. Her action may be natural, may be inevitable, but the
responsibility rests on her, not on Indian Nationalism.
Pal
on the Brain
We
have commented on one misconception of the Times about ourselves which it
perhaps could not help, so necessary was the error to justify its own position,
but it has perpetrated another which
seems wilful, —
unless it is the result of monomania. The Thunderer
seems to have Srijut Bepin Chandra on the brain; it sees him gigantically
reflected in every manifestation of Nationalism and is rapidly constructing him
into a sinister Antichrist of British rule. So it insists on identifying him
with the Bande Mataram and will take no denial. Somebody has been
pointing out to it that Bepin Babu severed his connection with the paper nine
months ago, and this is how the Times disposes of the attempt to
dissipate its cherished delusions: "Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal has nominally
ceased to edit the paper, but there can be no question that he is the dominating
force behind its policy and comments, which are stated with a literary ability
rare in the Anglo-native Press." The Times is evidently not going to
be deceived. The literary ability with which the Bande Mataram states its
views is rare in the "Anglo-native" Press but it is known that Bepin
Pal has a rare literary ability, therefore it is unquestionably Bepin Pal and no
other, who really edits and writes in the Bande Mataram. There seems to
be a flaw somewhere in the Thunderer's logic, and we do not think the Bengal
Government in its recent affectionate enquiries has come to the same conclusion.
Bepin Babu has his own sufficient portion of anti-bureaucratic original sin
without being burdened with ours. The Times should realise that almost
the whole literary ability of Young Bengal is behind the movement of which we
are the daily expres-
Page-500
sion, so that the ability and literary excellence
of our paper is not to be wondered at.
Bande Mataram, August, 12,1907
To
Organise Boycott
That
Boycott is the central question of Indian politics
is now a generally recognised fact, recognised openly or tacitly by its
supporters and its opponents alike. The Anglo-Indian papers are busy trying to
make out that it is a chimera, and a failure; the executive are straining every
nerve to crush it by magisterial interference, by police Zulum, by prosecution
of newspapers and all the familiar machinery of repressive despotism; the
friends of the alien among ourselves are reiterating that the movement is a
foolish affair and that no nation ever was made by Boycott. If Boycott had
really been an impossibility or a failure, it is obvious that all this elaborate
machinery would not have been brought into play to crush it. On the contrary it
has become a very substantial reality, a very palpable success, and now stands
out, as we have said, the central and all-important question of Indian politics.
Those who say that no nation was ever made by boycott, do not know what they are
talking about, do not understand what boycott is, do not know the teachings of
history. Boycott is much more than a mere economical device, it is a rediscovery
of national self-respect, a declaration of national separateness; it is the
first practical assertion of independence and has therefore in most of the
national uprisings of modern times been the forerunner of the struggle for
independence. The American struggle with England began in an enthusiastic and
determined boycott of British goods enforced by much the same methods as the
Indian boycott but with a much more stringent and effective organisation. The
Italian uprising of 1848 was heralded by the boycott of Austrian cigarettes and
the tobacco riots of Milan. The boycott was the indispensable weapon of the
Parnell movement in Ireland, and boycott and Swadeshi are the leading cries of
Sinn Fein. The first practical effect of the resurgence of
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China was the Boycott of American goods as an assertion
of China's long down-trodden self-respect against the brutal and insolent
dealings of the Americans towards Chinese immigrants. In India also Boycott
began as an assertion of national self-respect, and continued as a declared and
practical enforcement of national separateness, liberty, independence and
self-dependence. "We will no longer tamely bear injury and insult, we will no
longer traffic and huckster with others for broken fragments of rights and
privileges; we are free, we are separate, we are sufficient to ourselves for our
own salvation," that was what boycott meant and what its enemies have understood
it to mean: its economical aspect is only an aspect.
The economical boycott has been on the Whole an immense success, — not
indeed in every respect, for the crusade against foreign sugar has not
diminished the import, though it may have checked to some extent the natural
increase of the import, and the Tarpur sugar factory is, we understand in danger
of failing because people will not buy the dearer Swadeshi sugar, — an example
of the futility of "honest" Swadeshi unsupported by a self-sacrificing boycott:
but enormous reductions have been made in the import not only of cotton goods
but of all kinds of wearing apparel, and salt has been appreciably affected. But
now the whole weight of bureaucratic power is being brought to bear in order to
shatter the boycott, and if we intend to save it we must oppose the organised
force of the bureaucracy by the organised will of the people. What the
unorganised will of the people could do, it has done; it has indeed effected
miracles. But no statesman will rely on the perpetual continuation of a miracle,
he will seek to counteract weaknesses, to take full advantage of every element
of strength and to bring into action new elements of strength; he will in short
utilise every available means towards the one great national end. Srijut
Surendranath has said well that we must answer the campaign of repression by
organising the country. And the readiest way to organise the country is to
organise boycott.
The chief weakness of the movement has been the want of co-ordinated
action. We have left everything to personal and local enthusiasm. The
consequence is that while in East Bengal
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the Boycott is a fact, in
West Bengal it is an idea. There is some Swadeshi in West Bengal, there is no
Boycott. Moreover Bengal has not brought its united influence to bear upon the
other provinces in order to make the Boycott universal. The whole force of this
vast country is a force which no Government could permanently resist. But this
force has not been brought to bear on the struggle, Bengal and Punjab have been
left to fight out their battles unaided, without the active sympathy of the rest
of India. This must be altered, the rest of India must be converted and we must
not rest till we have secured a mandate from the Congress for an universal
boycott of British goods. Meanwhile we must bring West Bengal into a line with
East Bengal, and for that purpose we must have a stringent and effective
organisation. We need not go far for the system which will be most effective. We
have only to apply or adapt to the circumstances of the country the methods used
by the American boycotters against England. How this can be done we propose to
discuss in another article.
The Bloomfield Murder
The Bengalee seems to be much surprised and
rather hurt at the unkind conduct of the Statesman in adversely
criticising Justices Mitter and Fletcher for their judgment in the Bloomfield
Murder Case. Our contemporary's invincible faith in the Statesman is
really pathetic. One would have thought that the attitude of the Chowringhee
paper with regard to Lala Lajpat Rai and its support of the policy of repression
would have opened the eyes of the blindest. What does the Bengalee
expect? The Statesman is a Liberal Imperialist organ wedded to the
eternal continuance of the British control and all that it implies, but willing
to concede unsubstantial privileges and a carefully modified liberty because
that will make the task of the British ruler easier. It cannot be expected to
sympathise with Swadeshi and Nationalism. No patriotic Englishman, Sir Roper
Lethbridge has said, can support Swadeshi: no patriotic Indian can help
supporting Swadeshi. The opposition of interests is complete and irrecon-
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cilable. When therefore the Bengalee and other
Moderates took up Swadeshi, they forfeited all claim to the support of the
Statesman. No patriotic Englishman again can support anything which can
possibly injure the prestige, supremacy and exceptional position of the white
community in India; no patriotic Indian but must desire to see that prestige
lowered and that supremacy and exceptional position replaced by the equality of
all communities before the law, as well as socially and politically. Cases like
this Bloomfield murder raise, therefore, a crucial point. When the whole basis
of a political system is the despotic rule of a small alien handful over the
immense indigenous numbers, it is an essential condition of its continuance that
the persons of the foreigners should be held sacred, that those who lay hands on
them, no matter under what provocation, should be overtaken by the most terrible
retribution the other conditions of the rule may permit. While therefore there
may be two opinions among Anglo-Indians as to the advisability of allowing
European murderers of Indians to go free, there can be no two opinions on the
necessity of avenging every loss of a European life by the execution of as many
Indians as the police can lay their hands upon. No matter whether the revenge be
unjust or inhuman, no matter whether it be even monstrous. The principle it is
sought to uphold is itself unjust and monstrous, and squeamishness about means
is out of place. Terrorism is indispensable, whether it be the naked, illegal
and unashamed terrorism of Denshawi or terrorism in the fair disguise of legal
forms and manipulating for its own purposes the Criminal Procedure Code and the
Evidence Act. It is not the fault of the Anglo-Indians but of their position,
and it is that position which must be altered if such massacres as that which
the calm judicial temper of Justices Mitter and Fletcher prevented in the
Bloomfield Case, are to be rendered an impossibility.
Bande Mataram, August
14, 1907
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