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Swaraj and the Coming Anarchy
WHOEVER
tries to read the signs of the time, will be no little perplexed at first by
their complexity. The beginnings of a great revolution which is destined to
change the whole political, social, and economic life of a great country, are
always full of ebb and flow, perplexing by the multitude of details and their
continual interaction. The struggle going on at Tuticorin exemplifies this
remarkable diversity and intermingling of numerous tendencies each of which
would, in ordinary times, be a separate movement. Society is full of anomalies
which clash and jostle together in an inextricable chaos of progress and
reaction; economic India is in the throes of a violent transition from the old
mediaeval basis of life to the modern; politics is at a parting of the ways. All
these various and independent activities of the Indian body politic unite into a
huge and confused movement of which the main impulse is political and the others
are largely inspired, if not motived, by the passions which are at the root of
the political upheaval. Great issues of economics wear the guise of a political
conflict; immense political aspirations become mixed up with a purely industrial
struggle between indigenous labour and foreign capital. So also in society the
old reform movement which was a separate and ineffectual attempt to transform
our society according to European ideas, has given place to disquiet and
aspiration in the society itself. So long the educated men of the upper castes
debated among themselves about the better ordering of society, and outside
Bengal and the Punjab it was no better than an academic dispute on the Social
Conference platform or between the reforming and orthodox Press. Even in Bengal
and the Punjab, the movement was sectional, a revolt of a small minority of the
educated few, and did not touch the heart of the people. So far as society as a
whole was affected, it was by the new environments of the nineteenth century
bringing an irresistible pressure to bear on its outworks, and sometimes by the
force of economical necessity born of the mo-
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dern
conditions of India under British rule. The change was from outside and
therefore injurious rather than beneficial, for an organism is doomed which,
incapable of changing from within, answers only to the pressure of environment.
But this immobile state of Hindu society has now begun to pass away and we see
the beginning of a profound and incalculable life in the heart of the great
organism. Yesterday we hardly needed to reckon with the lower strata of society
in our political life; today they are beginning to live, to move, to have a dim
inarticulate hope and to grope for air and room. That is a sign of coming social
revolution in which neither the conservative forces of society nor the liberal
sympathies of the educated few will have much voice. The forces that are being unprisoned will upheave the whole of our society with a volcanic force and the
shape it will take after the eruption is over does not depend on the wishes or
the wisdom of men. These social stirrings also are mingling with the political
unrest to increase the confusion. The question of the Namasudras in Bengal has
become a political as well as a social problem and in other parts of the country
also the line between politics and social questions is threatened with
obliteration.
The future is not in our hands. When so huge a problem stares us in the
face, we become conscious of the limits of human discernment and wisdom. We at
once feel that the motions of humanity
are determined by forces and not by individuals and that
the intellect and experience of statesmen are merely instruments in the hands of
the Power which manifests itself in those great incalculable forces. In ordinary
times, we are apt to forget this and to account for all that happens as the
result of this statesman's foresight or that genius dynamic personality. But in
times like the present we find it less easy to shut our eyes to the truth. We do
not affect to believe, therefore, that we can discover any solution of these
great problems or any sure line of policy by which the tangled issues of so
immense a movement can be kept free from the possibility of inextricable anarchy
in the near future. Anarchy will come. This peaceful and inert nation is going
to be rudely awakened from a century of passivity and flung into a world-shaking
turmoil out of which it will come transformed,
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strengthened
and purified. There is a chaos which is the result of inertia and the prelude of
death, and this was the state of India during the last century. The British
peace of the last fifty years was like the quiet green grass and flowers
covering the corruption of a sepulchre. There is another chaos which is the
violent reassertion of life and it is this chaos into which India is being
hurried today. We cannot repine at the change, but are rather ready to welcome
the pangs which help the storm which purifies, the destruction which renovates.
One thing only we are sure of, and one thing we wear as a life-belt which
will buoy us up on the waves of the chaos that is coming on the land. This is
the fixed and unalterable faith in an over-ruling Purpose which is raising India
once more from the dead, the fixed and unalterable intention to fight for the
renovation of her ancient life and glory. Swaraj is the life-belt, Swaraj the
pilot, Swaraj the star of guidance. If a great social revolution is necessary,
it is because the ideal of Swaraj cannot be accomplished by a nation bound to
forms which are no longer expressive of the ancient and immutable Self of India.
She must change the rags of the past so that her beauty may be readorned. She
must alter her bodily appearance so that her soul may be newly expressed. We
need not fear that any change will turn her into a second-hand Europe. Her
individuality is too mighty for such a degradation, her soul too calm and
self-sufficient for such a surrender. If again an economical revolution is
inevitable, it is because the fine but narrow edifice of her old industrial life
will not allow of Swaraj in commerce and industry. The industrial energies of a
free and perfect national life demand a mightier scope and wider channels.
Neither need we fear that the economic revolution will land us in the same
diseased and disordered state of society as now offends the nobler feelings of
humanity in Europe. India can never so far forget the teaching which is her life
and the secret of her immortality as to become a replica of the organised
selfishness, cruelty and greed which is dignified in the West by the name of
Industry. She will create her own conditions, find out the secret of order which
Socialism in vain struggles to find and teach the peoples of the earth once more
how to harmonise the world and the spirit.
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If
we realise this truth, if we perceive in all that is happening a great and
momentous transformation necessary not only for us but for the whole world, we
shall fling ourselves without fear or misgivings into the times which are upon
us. India is the guru of the nations, the physician of the human soul in
its profounder maladies; she is destined once more to new-mould the life of the
world and restore the peace of the human spirit. But Swaraj is the necessary
condition of her work and before she can do the work, she must fulfil the
condition.
Bande Mataram,
March 5, 1908
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