India and the Mongolian

                        WHEN Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal in his speech at the Federation Ground was speaking of the possibility of China and Japan overthrowing European civilisation, how many of the audience understood or appreciated the great issues of which he spoke? We have lost the faculty of great ideas, of large outlooks, of that instinct which divines the great motions of the world. This huge country, this mighty continent, once full of the clash of tremendous forces, stirring with high exploits and gigantic ambitions, loud with the voices of the outside world, has become a petty parish; the palace of the Aryan Emperors is now the hut of a crouching slave, small in his ideas, mean in his aspirations, his head sunk, his eyes downcast, so that he cannot see the heavens above him or the magnificent earth around. If one speaks to him of his mighty possibilities of great deeds that he yet shall do, or seeks to remind him that he is the descendant of kings, he takes the speaker for a madman talking vain things and a derisive smile of pity is his only reply. We hold it to be the greatest injury of all that England has done us, that she has thus degraded our soul and dwarfed our imagination. It is only by the grace of God that a reawakening has come, that we are once more becoming conscious of our divine inheritance and the grandiose possibilities of our future.

            Of all the minds that have stirred to the breath of God among us, refreshed themselves from the fountain of strength and inspiration and risen to their full height and stature Srijut Bepin Chandra's is the most penetrating, the most alive to the thoughts that are filling the modern world, the first to divine the future and prophesy the movements of God in the nation. While others were the slaves of Western ideals, his mind first caught the meaning of the sudden arising of India, first proclaimed the spiritual character of the movement, first discovered that it was not only the body but the soul of India that was awaking from the sleep of the ages. On Saturday when he spoke

Page-813

of India as the saviour of Europe, he again gave expression to a prophetic thought, again looked with more than human insight into the future. The truth was not one which his hearers could grasp; many must have gone away scoffing, few could have appreciated the luminous penetration of insight which lay behind the thought of the speaker. The awakening of Asia is the fact of the twentieth century, and in that awakening the lead has been given to the Mongolian races of the. Far East. In the genius, the patriotic spirit, the quick imitative faculty of Japan, -- in the grand deliberation, the patient thoroughness, the irresistible organisation of China, Providence found the necessary material force which would meet the European with his own weapons and outdo him in that science, strength and ability which are his peculiar pride. The political instinct of the European races has enabled them to understand the purpose of the Almighty in the awakening of the Mongol. A terror is in their hearts, a palsy has come upon their strength, and with blanched lips they watch every movement of the two Eastern giants, each wondering when his turn will come to feel the sword of the Mikado or what will happen when China, the Titan of the world, shall have completed her quiet, steady, imperturbable preparation. The vision of a China organised, equipped, full of the clang of war and the tramp of armed men, preparing to surge forth westwards is the nightmare of their dreams. And another terror of economic invasion, of the Mongol swamping Europe with cheap labour and stifling the industries of Europe adds a fresh poignancy to the apprehensions which convulse the West. Hence the panic in America, in Australia, in Africa, the savage haste to expel the Asiatic at any cost before the military strength of China is sufficiently developed to demand entrance for her subjects with the sword emphasising her demand. This is the Yellow Peril, and every European knows in his heart of hearts that it is only a question of time necessary for his vision to translate itself into the waking world. But one thing the European has not yet perceived and that is that the Mongolian is no wild adventurer to go filibustering to Australia or bombard with his siege-guns San Francisco or New York before Asia is free. The first blow given by the Mongolian fell upon Russia because she stood across

Page-814

the Asiatic continent barring the westward surge of his destiny. The second blow will fall on England because she holds India.

            The position of India makes her the key of Asia. She divides the Pagan Far East from the Mahomedan West, and is their meeting-place. From her alone can proceed a force of union, a starting-point of comprehension, a reconciliation of Mahomedanism and Paganism. Her freedom is necessary to the unity of Asia. Geographically, she occupies an impregnable position of strength commanding the East of Asia as well as the West, from which as from a secure fortress she can strike the nations of the Persian or the Chinese world. Such a position held by an European Power means a perpetual menace to the safety of Asia. It will therefore be the first great enterprise of a Chino-Japanese alliance to eject the English from India, and hold her in the interests of Asiatic freedom and Asiatic unity. This necessity of India's position is one which neither the English nor the Mongolian can escape. No treaties, no attempts to reconcile conflicting interests will stand against the secret and inexorable necessity which forces nations to follow not the dictates of prudence or diplomacy, but the fiat of their environment. When the inevitable happens and the Chinese armies knock at the Himalayan gates of India and Japanese fleets appear before Bombay harbour, by what strength will England oppose this gigantic combination? Her armies which took two years to overcome the opposition of forty thousand untrained farmers in the Transvaal? Her fleets which have never fought a battle with a trained foe since Trafalgar? They will be broken to pieces by the science and skill of the Mongolian. And the key of Asia will pass into Mongolian hands and the strength of India, the Sikh and the Rajput and the Maratha, the force of Mahomedan valour and the rising energy of new nations in Bengal and Madras will all be at the service and under the guidance of the Mongolian who will not fail to use them as England has failed, letting them run to waste, but will hammer them into a sword of strength for the fulfilment of his mission, the extrusion of the European from Asia, Africa, Australia, the smiting down of European pride, the humiliation of Western statecraft, power and civilisation and its subordination to the lead of the dominant Asiatic.

Page-815

            The doom is drawing very near and the awakening of Bengal has come just in time to give India a chance of recovering her freedom of action. If she strains every nerve to use the chance, if she is able to develop her self-consciousness, her unity, her warlike instincts, her industrial independence, she will be in a position to assert her own will, to offer herself as an ally and not an instrument, it may be even, as Bepin Babu suggested, to mediate between the civilisation of Europe and Asia, both of them so necessary to human development. Two great obstacles stand in her way. The blindness of the bureaucracy which is straining every nerve to crush the Indian renascence in the vain hope that it can continue to rule, is the least of the two. Far more formidable is the greater though more excusable blindness of the people themselves who still persist in connecting their future with the rule of England. Our Moderate politicians refuse to allow their minds to shake off the delusion that the British rule is a dispensation of Providence and meant to endure. All their thoughts of the future assume that the present is perpetual, that what is, will be. As one long in darkness cannot see the light when it enters suddenly his prison, so our people even when the dawn has come, cannot believe that it is really daybreak. They persist in assuming that the night will continue and are content with merely turning a little in bed instead of rising and swiftly accoutring themselves for the work of the day. The warning which Srijut Bepin Chandra addressed to the British people, is also a warning to the people of India. British rule can only continue in India, if India is willing that it should continue and strong enough to defend it against all comers. If a rejuvenated India decides to be free, it depends on the present action of the bureaucracy whether free India will be a friend of England and a mediator between Europe and the triumphant Mongol or an ally of the latter in the approaching Armageddon. Even if the movement in India is crushed, it will not be England that will reap the fruit of her crime in strangling an infant Nationality. She will before long be swept out of India by the Mongolian broom and the latent forces which she refused to utilise will be used against her by a bolder and more skilful statesmanship. The people of India too will have to reap the fruits of their present Karma. On

Page-816

them far more than on the bureaucracy it depends whether they will meet the coming Mongolian as a destined slave and instrument, an ally or an equal whose voice shall override all others in determining the fate of the world.

Religion and the Bureaucracy

The measure of the panic into which the new movement has thrown the bureaucracy can be taken from its interference with the religious life of the people. Time was when the rulers shrank from any interference with religion lest it should arouse what they were pleased to call the fanaticism of the people. But one ghost drives out another, and the old fear of fanaticism has given place to the greater fear of the new Nationalism, just as the fear of the Mahomedans has given place to the more tangible terror of the resurgent Hindu community. The expulsion of a religious preacher from Travancore is significant of the direction in which the fears of the bureaucracy are tending. That this act of tyranny was not the work of the Maharaja goes without saying, since no Hindu prince would dream of interfering with the religion of his subjects. The dictation of the Resident is the only explanation of this political act. Whatever activity may help the growth of national spirit or foster self-respect in the people, is now suspect to the rulers and will be stopped wherever possible, impeded where direct prohibition cannot be exercised. The famine relief work of Lala Lajpat Rai is being interfered with as seditious, and the religious preaching of the Madras Brahman has been vetoed because it calls on the people to revive the spiritual glories of ancient India. The struggle will soon overpass the political limits; for the next stage in Swadeshi will be a return of the nation to its old spirituality and active habit of philanthropy with the revival of the nation as its motive. When the bureaucracy interferes with this development as it will be driven to interfere by the instinct of self-preservation, as it has already begun to interfere, the true struggle will begin, the Avatar will be ready to manifest himself and the end will come.

Page-817

The Milk of Putana

A spirit of conciliation is evident in some of the recent acts of the bureaucracy, such as the separation of Judicial and Executive of which Sir Harvey Adamson has given the details in his speech in Council. The policy of Sir Sydenham Clarke in Bombay is of the same type, and from the Mofussil we hear of politician Magistrates who are busy re-establishing the use of foreign articles by skilful exhibitions of sympathy attended with intimidating of Swadeshists carried out through the instrumentality of Indian subordinates on whom the whole blame is thrown. This is the milk of Putana by which Kamsa hoped to poison the infant Krishna. The modern Kamsa comes of a shopkeeping breed and is careful only to let the infant have as much of the milk and no more as will do his business for him. The separation of Judicial and Executive functions, the pet scheme of the old mendicancy, will be carried out only in a district or two of Eastern Bengal as an experiment. The policy of Sir Sydenham Clarke has confined itself to sweet words and abstention from repression, and the milk of Mr. Morley’s sympathy is limited to so much as can be bottled for use in a Council of Notables. So too the politician Magistrates take care to do nothing except occasionally rescind oppressive orders which they have already issued in the names of their Indian subordinates. Their policy is to throttle Swadeshi with one hand while stroking the District paternally on the head with the other. What shall we do with this milk of Putana? Sri Krishna drained the breasts of Putana and killed her, and if the bureaucracy begins giving real concessions, that will be its fate. But this watered milk of Morleyan sympathy is a different matter. To drink it is to weaken ourselves and help the adversary.

Bande Mataram, April 1, 1908

Oligarchy Rampant

The Indu Prakash, commenting on the Poona District Conference, again raises the note of dissension. It draws attention to

Page-818

the conflicting nature of the reports telegraphed respectively to the Hindu from Nationalist sources and to the Tribune from a Moderate correspondent. The Poona Conference had passed a resolution in favour of an united Congress, and the telegram in the Hindu represents this as a fiat to the Congress leaders, the telegram to the Tribune as a pious wish meant only to operate if the leaders chose to agree. The Indu resents the speech of the President and the Nationalist interpretation of the resolution as a threat to the leaders menacing them with the intervention of the nation if they refuse to compose their quarrels. Whatever may have been the circumstances under which the resolution was passed, the speech of the President was unmistakable; it asserted the sovereignty of the nation, the purely delegatory character of the power of the leaders and the right of the former to dictate to the latter. The Bombay organ of Moderatism resents the claim of the nation to dictate to the leaders; it holds that it is the leaders who ought to dictate to the nation. In our articles on the Congress Constitution we described the present constitution of the Congress as an oligarchy and we hear that some of our Moderate readers resented this description. We ask them whether this attitude of the Indu is not the very spirit of oligarchy? Can any more narrow and exclusive claim be set up for a small circle of men than this that the nation shall have no right to dictate to them their course in a crisis when the whole future of the country depends on their action? The Indu says that an united Congress shall only be held if the leaders were willing to hold it. Again pure oligarchy! It does not matter what the nation thinks, but because Mr. Gokhale and Mr. Tilak cannot get on together, or because Sir Pherozshah Mehta or Dr. Rash Behari Ghose are of a different opinion from Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal, the nation has to see the Congress broken asunder for ever. And such considerations are to rule the destiny of a great people!

Bande Mataram, April 2, 1908

Page-819

Home