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The Life of Nationalism
FOR all great movements, for all ideas
that have a destiny before them, there are four seasons of life-development.
There is first a season of secret or quasi-secret growth when the world knows
nothing of this momentous birth which time has engendered, when the peoples of
the earth persist in the old order of things with the settled conviction that
that order has yet many centuries of life before it, when Krishna is growing
from infancy to youth in Gokul among the obscure and the despised and the weak
ones of the earth and Kamsa knows not his enemy and, however he may be troubled
by vague apprehensions and old prophecies and new presentiments, yet on the
whole comforts himself with the thought of his great and invincible power and
his mighty allies, and by long impunity has almost come to think himself
immortal. Then there comes the leaping of the great name to light, the sudden
coming from Gokul to Mathura, the amazement, alarm and fury of the doomed powers
and greatnesses, the delight of the oppressed who waited for a deliverer, the
guile and violence of the tyrant and his frantic attempts to reverse the decrees
of fate and slay the young deity, — as if that godhead could pass from the world
with its work undone. This is the second period of emergence, of the struggle of
the idea to live, of furious persecution, of miraculous persistence and
survival, when the old world looks with alarm and horror on this new and
portentous force, and in the midst of wild worship and enthusiasm, of fierce
hatred and frantic persecution, of bitter denunciation and angry disparagement,
assisted by its friends, still better assisted by its foes, the new idea, fed
with the blood of its children, thriving on torture, magnified by martyrdom,
aggrandised by defeat, increases and lifts its head higher and higher into the
heavens and spreads its arms wider and wider to embrace the earth until the
world is full of its indomitable presence and loud with the clamour of its
million voices and powers and dominations are crushed between its fingers, or
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hasten to make peace and compromise with
it that they may be allowed to live. That is its third period, the season of
triumph when the tyrant meets face to face the man of his own blood and sprung
from the seed of his own fostering who is to destroy him, and in the moment when
he thinks to slay his enemy feels the grasp of the avenger on his hair and the
sword of doom in his heart. Last is the season of rule and fulfilment, the life
of Krishna at Dwaraka, when the victorious idea lives out its potent and
unhindered existence, works its will with a world which has become in its
hands as clay in the hands of the potter, creates what it has to create, teaches
what it has to teach, until its own time comes and with the arrow of Age, the
hunter, in its heel, it gives up its body and returns to the great source of all
power and energy from which it came.
But in its second period, the
season of ordeal and persecution, only the children of grace for whom the gospel
is preached are able to see that vision of its glory. The world admires and
hates and doubts, but will not believe. The enemies of the idea have sworn to
give it short shrift. They promulgate an ordinance to the effect that it shall
not dare to live, and pass a law that it shall be dumb on pain of imprisonment
and death, and add a bye-law that whoever has power and authority in any part of
the land shall seek out the first-born and the young children of the idea and
put them to the sword. As in the early days of the Christian Church, so always
zealous persecutors carryon an inquisition in house and school and market to
know who favour the new doctrine; they "breathe out threatenings and slaughters
against the disciples of the Lord" and "make havoc of the Church entering into
every house and, haling men and women, commit them to prison". The instruments
of death are furbished up, the rack and thumb-screw and old engines of torture
which had been rusting in the lumber-room of the past are brought out, and the
gallows is made ready and the scaffold raised. Even of the nation to which the
gospel is preached, the rich men and the high-priests and Pundits and people of
weight and authority receive its doctrine with anger, fear and contempt; —
anger, because it threatens their position of comfortable authority amongst men;
fear, because they see it grow with an inexplicable
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portentious rapidity and know that its
advent means a time of upheaval, turmoil and bloodshed very disturbing to the
digestions, property and peace of mind of the wealthy and "enlightened few";
contempt, because its enthusiasms are unintelligible to their worldly wisdom,
its gigantic promises incredible to their cautious scepticism and its inspired
teachings an offence and a scandal to their narrow systems of expediency and
pedantic wisdom of the schools. They condemn it, therefore, as a violent and
pernicious madness, belittle it as a troublesome but insignificant sect, get
their learned men to argue it or their jesters to ridicule it out of existence,
or even accuse its apostles before the tribunal of alien rulers, Pontius Pilate,
a Felix or a Festus, as "pestilent fellows and movers of sedition throughout the
nation". But in spite of all and largely because of all the persecution,
denunciation and disparagement, the idea gathers strength and increases; there
are strange and great conversions, baptisms
of
whole multitudes and eager embracings of martyrdom, and the reasonings of
the wise and learned are no more heeded and the prisons of the ruler overflow to
no purpose and the gallows bears its ghastly burden fruitlessly and the sword of
the powerful drips blood in vain. For the idea is God's deputy, and life and
death, victory and defeat, joy and suffering have become its servants and cannot
help ministering to its divine purpose.
The idea of Indian Nationalism
is in the second season of its life history. The Moderate legend of its origin
is that it was the child of Lord Curzon begotten upon despair and brought safely
to birth by the skilful midwifery of Sir Bampfylde. Nationalism was never a
gospel of despair nor did it owe its birth to oppression. It is no true account
of it to say that because Lord Curzon favoured reaction, a section of the
Congress Party lost faith in England and turned Extremist, and it is vain
political trickery to tell the bureaucrats in their councils that it was their
frown which created Extremism and the renewal of their smiles will kill it. The
fixed illusion of these moderate gospellers is that the national life of India
is merely a fluid mirror reflecting the moods of the bureaucracy, sunny and
serene when they are in a good humour and stormy and troubled when they are out
of temper, that it can have no independent existence, no self-determined
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character of its own which the favour of
the bureaucracy cannot influence and its anger cannot disturb. But Nationalism
was not born of persecution and cannot be killed by the cessation of
persecution. Long before the advent of Curzonism and Fullerism, while the
Congress was beslavering the present absolutist bureaucracy with fulsome praise
as a good and beneficent government marred by a few serious defects, while it
was singing hymns of loyalty and descanting on the blessings of British rule,
Nationalism was already born and a slowly-growing force. It was not born and did
not grow in the Congress Pandal, nor in the Bombay Presidency Association, nor
in the councils of the wise economists and learned reformers, nor in the brains
of the Mehtas and Gokhales, nor in the tongues of the Surendranaths and
Lalmohuns, nor under the hat and coat of the denationalised ape of English
speech and manners. It was born like Krishna in the prison-house, in the hearts
of men to whom India under the good and beneficent government of absolutism
seemed an intolerable dungeon, to whom the blessings of an alien despotic rule
were hardly more acceptable than the plagues of Egypt, who regarded the comfort,
safety and ease of the Pax Britannica, — an ease and safety not earned by our
own efforts and vigilance but purchased by the slow loss of every element of
manhood and every field of independent activity among us, -- as more fatal to the
life of the people than the poosta of the Moguls, with whom a few seats
in the Council or on the Bench and right of entry into the Civil Service and a
free Press and platform could not weigh against the starvation of the
rack-rented millions, the drain of our life-blood, the atrophy of our energies
and the disintegration of our national character and ideals; who looked beyond
the temporary ease and opportunities of a few merchants, clerks and successful
professional men to the lasting pauperism and degradation of a great and ancient
people. And Nationalism grew as Krishna grew who ripened to strength and
knowledge, not in the courts of princes and the schools of the Brahmins but in
the obscure and despised homes of the poor and ignorant. In the cave of the Sannyasin, under the garb of the Fakir, in the hearts of young men and boys many
of whom could not speak a word of English but all could work and dare and
sacrifice for the
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Mother, in the life of men of education
and parts who had received the mantra and put from them the desire of
wealth and honours to teach and labour so that the good religion might spread,
there Nationalism grew slowly to its strength, unheeded and unnoticed, until in
its good time it came to Bengal, the destined place of its self-manifestation
and for three years, unheeded and unnoticed, spread over the country, gathering
in every place the few who were capable of the vision and waiting for the time
that would surely come when oppression would begin in earnest and the people
look round them for some way of deliverance.
For, that an absolute rule
will one day begin to coerce and trample on the subject population is an
inevitable law of nature which none can escape. The master with full power of
life and death over his servant can only be gracious so long as he is either
afraid of his slave or else sure that the slave will continue willing, obedient
and humble in his servitude and not transgress the limits of the freedom allowed
him by his master. But if the serf begins to assert himself, to insist on the
indulgence conceded to him as on a right, to rebel against occasional
harshnesses, to wag his tongue with too insolent a licence and disobey
imperative orders, then it is not in human nature for the master to refrain from
calling for the scourge and the fetters. And if the slave resists the
application of the scourge and the imposition of the fetters, it becomes a
matter of life and death for the master to enforce his orders and put down the
mutiny. Oppression was therefore inevitable, and oppression was necessary that
the people as a whole might be disposed to accept Nationalism, but Nationalism
was not born of oppression. The oppressions and slaughters committed by Kamsa
upon the Yadavas did not give birth to Krishna but they were needed that the
people of Mathura might look for the deliverer and accept him when he came. To
hope that conciliation will kill Nationalism is to mistake entirely the birth,
nature and workings of the new force, nor will either the debating skill of Mr.
Gokhale nor all Dr. Ghose's army of literary quotations and allusions convince
Englishmen that any such hope can be admitted for a moment. For Englishmen are
political animals with centuries of political experience in their blood, and
though they possess little logic and less wisdom, yet in
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such matters they have an instinct which
is often surer than reason or logic. They know that what is belittled as
Extremism is really Nationalism and Nationalism has never been killed by
conciliation; concessions it will only take as new weapons in its fight for
complete victory and unabridged dominion. We desire our countrymen on their side
to cultivate a corresponding instinct and cherish an invincible faith. There are
some who fear that conciliation or policy may unstring the new movement and
others who fear that persecution may crush it. Let them have a robuster faith in
the destinies of their race. As neither the milk of Putana nor the hoofs of the
demon could destroy the infant Krishna, so neither Riponism nor Poona
prosecutions could check the growth of Nationalism while yet it was an
indistinct force; and as neither Kamsa's wiles nor his visakanyās
nor his mad elephants nor his wrestlers could kill Krishna revealed in
Mathura, so neither a revival of Riponism nor the poison of discord sown by
bureaucratic allurements, nor Fullerism plus hooliganism, nor prosecution under
cover of legal statutes can slay Nationalism now that it has entered the arena.
Nationalism is an avatāra
and cannot
be slain. Nationalism is a divinely appointed sakti of the Eternal and
must do its God-given work before it returns to the bosom of the Universal
Energy from which it came.
Bande Mataram,
November 16, 1907
In Praise of Honest John
Mr. John Morley is a very great man, a
very remarkable and exceptional man. I have been reading his Arbroath speech
again and my admiration for him has risen to such a boiling point that I am at
last obliged to let it bubble over into the columns of the Bande Mataram.
Mr. Morley rises above the ordinary ruck of mortals in three very important
respects; first, he is a literary man; secondly, he is a philosopher; thirdly,
he is a politician. This would not matter much if he kept his literature,
politics and philosophy apart in fairly watertight compartments; but he
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doesn't. He has not only doubled his
parts, he has trebled them; he is not merely a literary philosopher and
philosophic littérateur, he is a literary philosopher-politician. Now this is a
superlative combination; God cannot better it and the devil does not want to.
For if an ordinary man steals, he steals and there are no more bones made about
it; he gets caught and is sent to prison, or he is not caught and goes on his
way rejoicing. In either case the matter is a simple one without any artistic
possibilities. But if a literary philosopher steals, he steals on the basis of
the great and eternal verities and in the choicest English.
*
And so all along the
line. An ordinary man may be illogical and silly and everybody realises that he
is illogical and silly; but the literary man when he goes about the same
business will be brilliantly foolish and convincingly illogical, while the
philosopher will be logically illogical and talk nonsense according to the
strictest rules of philosophical reasoning. An ordinary man may turn his back on
his principles and he will be called a turn-coat or he may break all the
commandments and he will be punished by the law and society, — unless of course
he is an American millionaire or a member of the ruling race in India; — but the
literary philosopher will reconcile his principles with his conduct by an appeal
to a fur-coat or a syllogism from a pair of jackboots; he will abrogate all
the commandments on the strength of a Solar Topee. A politician again will lie
and people will take it as a matter of course, especially if he is in office,
but a literary philosopher-politician will easily prove to you that when he is
most a liar, then he is most truthful and when he is juggling most cynically
with truth and principle, then he most deserves the name of Honest John; and he
will do it in such well-turned periods that one must indeed have a very bad ear
for the rhythm of a sentence before one can quarrel with its logic. Oh yes, a
literary philosopher-politician is the choicest work of God,
— when he is not the most effective
instrument in the hands of the Prince of Darkness. For the Prince of Darkness is
not only a gentleman as Shakespeare discovered, but a gentleman of artistic
perceptions
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who knows a fine and carefully-worked tool
when he sees it and loves to handle it with the best dexterity and grace of
which he is capable.
*
Of course it is not his
speeches alone for which I admire John Morley. I admire him for what he has done
almost as much as for the way in which he has done it. He is not so great a man
as his master Gladstone who was the biggest opportunist and most adroit
political gambler democracy has yet engendered and yet persuaded himself and the
world that he was an enthusiast and a man of high religious principle. But
Gladstone was a genius and his old henchman is only a man of talent. Still Mr.
Morley has done the best of which he is capable and that is not a poor best. He
has served the devil in the name of God with signal success on two occasions.
The first was when he championed the cause of the financiers in Egypt, the men
who gamble with the destinies of nations, who make money out of the groans of
the people and coin into gold the blood of patriots and the tears of widows and
orphans, — when abusing his influence as a journalist, he lied to the British
public about Arabi and urged on Gladstone to crush the movement of democratic
and humanitarian Nationalism in Egypt, the movement in which all that is noble,
humane and gracious in Islam sought fulfilment and a small field on earth for
the fine flowering of a new Mahomedan civilisation. The second is now when he is
trying in the sordid interests of British capital to crush the resurgent life of
India and baffle the attempt of the children of Vedanta to recover their own
country for the development of a revivified Indian civilisation. The two foulest
crimes against the future of humanity of which any statesman in recent times
could possibly have been guilty, have been engineered under the name and by the
advocacy of honest John Morley. Truly, Satan knows his own and sees to it that
they do not do their great work negligently.
*
Mr. Morley is a great bookman, a great
democrat, a great
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exponent of principles. No man better
fitted than he to prove that when the noblest human movements are being
suppressed by imprisonment and the sword, it is done in the interests of
humanity; that when a people struggling to live is trampled down by repression,
pushed back by the use of the Goorkha and the hooligan, the prison walls and the
whipping-post into the hell of misery, famine and starvation, the black pit of
insult, ignominy and bonds from which it had dared to hope for an escape, the
motive of the oppressor finds its root in a very agony of conscientiousness and
it is with a sobbing and bleeding heart that he presses his heel on the people's
throat for their own good; that the ruthless exploitation and starvation of a
country by foreign leeches is one of the best services that can be done to
mankind, the international crimes of the great captains of finance a supreme
work of civilisation and the brutal and selfish immolation of nations to Mammon
an acceptable offering on the altar of the indwelling God in humanity. But these
things have been done and said before; they are the usual blasphemous cant of
nineteenth century devil-worship formulated when Commerce began to take the
place once nominally allowed to Christ and the Ledger became Europe's Bible. Mr.
Morley does it with more authority than others, but his own particular and
original faculty lies in the direction I indicated when drawing the distinction
between the ordinary man and the extraordinary Morley. What he has done has been
after all on the initiative of others; what he has said about it is his own, and
nothing more his own than the admirably brilliant and inconsequential phrases in
which he has justified wickedness to an admiring nation.
*
Man has been defined
sometimes as a political animal and sometimes as a reasoning animal, but he has
become still more pre-eminently a literary animal. He is a political animal who
has always made a triumphant mess of politics, a reasoning animal whose
continual occupation it is to make a system out of his blunders, a literary
animal who is always the slave of a phrase and not the least so when the phrase
means nothing. The
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power of the phrase on humanity has never
been sufficiently considered. The phrase is in the nostrils of the vast unruly
mass of mankind like the ring in the nose of a camel. It can be led by the
phrase-maker wherever he wishes to lead it. And the only distinction between the
sage and the sophist is that the phrases of the sage mean something while the
phrases of the sophist only seem to mean something. Now Mr. Morley is an adept
in the making of phrases which seem to mean something.
*
Take for instance his
phrase "The anchor holds." Mr. Morley complains that he who has served
Liberalism so long and so well, is not allowed to be illiberal when he likes,
that when he amuses himself with a little reaction he is charged with deserting
his principles! "It is true, gentlemen," says Mr. Morley, "that I am doing
things which are neither liberal nor democratic; but, then, my anchor holds.
Yes, gentlemen, I dare to believe that my anchor holds." So might a clergyman
detected in immorality explain himself to his parishioners, "It is true I have
preached all my life continence and chastity, yet been found in very awkward
circumstances; but what then? My anchor holds. Yes, dear brethren in Christ, I
dare to believe that my anchor holds." So might Robespierre have justified
himself for the Reign of Terror, "It is true, Frenchmen, that I have always
condemned capital punishment as itself a crime, yet am judicially massacring my
countrymen without pause or pity; but my anchor holds. Yes, citizens, I dare to
believe that my anchor holds." So argues Mr. Morley and all England applauds in
a thousand newspapers and acquits him of political sin.
But of course Mr. Morley's
crowning mercy is the phrase about the fur-coat. It is true that the simile
about the coat is not new in the English language; for a man who abandons his
principles has always been said to turn his coat; but never has that
profitable manoeuvre been justified in so excellently literary and philosophical
a fashion before. Mr. Morley has given us the philosophy of the turn-coat.
"Principles," he has said in effect, "are not a light by which you can guide
your steps in all circum-
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stances, but a coat which is worn for
comfort and convenience. In Canada, which is cold, you have to wear a fur-coat,
there is no help for it; in Egypt, which is hot, you can change it for thin
alpaca; in India, where it is very hot indeed, you need not wear a coat at all;
the natives of the country did not before we came and we should not encourage
them to go in for such an uncomfortable luxury. It is just so with principles,
democratic and other." The reasoning is excellent and of a very wide
application. For instance, it may be wrong in England to convict a political
opponent for political reasons of an offence of which you know him to be
innocent and on evidence you know to be false, or to sentence a man to be hanged
for a murder which you are quite aware somebody else committed, or to disregard
the plainest evidence and allow a bestial ravisher to go free because he happens
to be a dog with a white skin, but it is absurd to suppose that such principles
can keep in the heat of the Indian sun. It is difficult to know what inequity
reasoning of this sort would not cover." I thoroughly believe in the Ten
Commandments," Caesar Borgia might have said in his full career of political
poisonings and strangulations, “but they may do very well in one country and age
without applying at all to another. They suited Palestine, but mediaeval Italy
is not Palestine. Principles are a matter of chronology and climate, and it
would be highly unphilosophical and unpractical of me to be guided by them as if
I were Christ or Moses. So I shall go on poisoning and strangling for the good
of myself and Italy and leave ‘impatient idealists’ to their irresponsible
chatter. Still I am a Christian and the nephew of a Pope, so my anchor holds,
yes, my anchor holds.”
*
Mr. Morley's fur-coat is one of the most
comprehensive garments ever discovered. All the tribe of high-aiming tyrants and
patriotic pirates and able political scoundrels and intelligent turn-coats that
the world has produced, he gathers together and covers up their sins and keeps
them snug and comforted against the cold blasts of censure blowing from a too
logical and narrow-minded
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world, all in the shelter of a single
fur-coat. And the British conscience too, that wondrous production of a humorous
Creator, seeking justification of the career of cynical violence its
representatives have entered on in India, rejoices in Mr. Morley's fur-coat and
snuggles with a contented chuckle into its ample folds. Am I wrong in saying
that Honest John is a wonder-worker of the mightiest and that Aaron's magic rod
was a Brummagem fraud compared with Mr. Morley's phrases? Vivat John
Morley!
Bande Mataram,
November 18, 1907
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