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Shall India Be Free ?
WE ARE arguing the impossibility of a healthy national development under foreign rule, – except by reaction against that rule. The foreign domination naturally interferes with and obstructs the functioning of the native organs of development. It is therefore in itself an unnatural and unhealthy condition, — a wound, a disease, which must result, unless arrested, in the mortification and rotting to death of the indigenous body politic. If a nation were an artificial product which could be made, then it might be possible for one nation to make another. But a nation cannot be made, – it is an organism which grows under the stress of a principle of life within. We speak indeed of nation-building and of the makers of a nation, but these are only convenient metaphors. The nation-builder, Cavour or Bismarck, is merely the incarnation of a national force which has found its hour and its opportunity, — of an inner will which has awakened under the stress of shaping circumstances. A nation is indeed the outward expression of a community of sentiment, whether it be the sentiment of a common blood or the sentiment of a common religion or the sentiment of a common interest or any or all of these sentiments combined. Once this sentiment grows strong enough to develop into a will towards unity and to conquer obstacles and make full use of favouring circumstances, the development of the nation becomes inevitable and there is no power which can ultimately triumph against it. But the process, however rapid it may be, is one of growth and not of manufacture. The first impulse of the developing nation is to provide itself with a centre, a means of self-expression and united actions, a chief organ or national nerve-centre with subsidiary organs acting under and in harmony with it, if the need of self-protection is its first overpowering need. The organisation may be military or semi-military under a single chief or a war- like ruling class; if the pressure from outside is not overpowering or the need of internal development strongly felt, it may take the
Page-309 shape of some form of partial or complete self-government. In either case the community becomes a nation or organic State.
What, then, is the place of foreign
rule in such an organic development? The invasion of the body politic by a
foreign element must result either in the merging of the alien into the indigenous nationality or in his superimposition on the latter in a precarious
position which can only be maintained by coercion or by hypnotising the
subject people into passivity. If the alien and
the native-born population are akin in blood and in religion, the fusion will be
easy. Even if they are not, yet if the former settles down in the conquered
country and makes it his motherland, community of interests will in the end
inevitably bring about union. The foreigners become sons of the country by
adoption and the sentiment of a common motherland is always a sufficient
substitute for the sentiment of a common race-origin. The difficulty of religion
may be solved by the conversion of the foreigner to the religion of the people
he has conquered, as happened with the ancient invaders of India, or by the
conversion of the conquered people to the religion of their rulers, as happened in Persia and other countries conquered by the Arabs. Even if no such
general change of creed can be effected, yet the two religions may become
habituated to each other and mutually tolerant, or the sentiment of a common
interest and a common sonhood of one motherland may overcome the consciousness
of religious differences. In all these contingencies there is a fusion, complete
or partial; and the nation, though it may be profoundly affected for good or
evil, need not be disorganised or lose the power of development. India under
Mahomedan rule, though greatly disturbed and thrown into continual ferment and
revolution, did not lose its power of organic readjustment and development.
Even the final anarchy which preceded the British domination, was not a process
of disorganisation but an acute crisis,
–
the attempt of
Nature to effect an organic readjustment in the body politic.
Page-310 presence, so long as it is neither merged in the nation nor dislodged, must make for the disorganisation and decay of the subject people. It is possible for a foreign body differing in blood, religion and interest, to amalgamate with the native organism but only on one of two conditions; either the foreign body must cut itself off from its origin and take up its home in the conquered country, — a course which is obviously impossible in the present problem, — or it must assimilate the subject State into the paramount State by the removal of all differences, inequalities, and conflicting interests. We shall point out the insuperable difficulties in the way of any such arrangement which will at once preserve British supremacy and give a free scope to Indian national development. At present there is no likelihood of the intruding force submitting easily to the immense sacrifices which such an assimilation would involve. Yet if no such assimilation takes place, the position of the British bureaucracy in India in no way differs from the position of the Turkish despotism as it existed with regard to the Christian populations of the Balkans previous to their independence or of the Austrians in Lombardy before the Italian Revolution. It is a position which endangers, demoralises and eventually weakens the ruling nation as Austria and Turkey were demoralised and weakened, and which disorganises and degrades the subject people. A very brief consideration of the effects of British rule in India will carry this truth home.
Bande
Mataram, April 30, 1907
Moonshine
for Bombay Consumption The Calcutta correspondent of the lndu Prakash seems to be an adept in fitting his news to the likings of the clientele. He has discovered that the old party and the new are united not against the Government but against the Mahomedans. All are looking to the Government with a reverent expectation of justice from that immaculate source. We do not know who this anti-Mahomedan and pro-Government Calcutta correspondent may be; but we hope the Bombay public will not be deceived by his inventions. If there is one overmastering feeling in Bengal it is indigna-
Page-311 tion with the
Government for allowing or countenancing the outrages in the Eastern
districts. Even the Loyalist organs are full of expressions of uneasiness and
perturbed wonder at the inaction of the authorities while Moderate organs like
the Bengalee and Moderate leaders like Babu Surendranath Banerji have expressed plainly an adverse view of the action and spirit of the Government.
There is no doubt considerable resentment against men like Nawab Salimullah for
fomenting the disturbances; but there is no deep-seated resentment against the
low-class Mahomedans who are merely the tools of men who themselves keep safely
under cover. The fight is not a fight between Hindus and Mahomedans but between
the bureaucrats and Swadeshists.
Page-312 believe that the present system is favourable to social reconstruction or that self-government would be fatal to it. The reverse is the case. Of course, if social reform means the destruction of everything old or Hindu because it is old or Hindu, the continuance of the present political and mental dependence on England and English ideals is much to be desired by the social reformers; for it is gradually destroying all that was good as well as much that was defective in the old society. With the programme of becoming a nation by denationalisation we have no sympathy. But if a healthy social development be aimed at, it is more likely to occur in a free India when the national needs will bring about a natural evolution. Society is not an artificial manufacture to be moulded and remodelled at will, but a growth. If it is to be healthy and strong it must have healthy surroundings and a free atmosphere. Bande Mataram, May 1, 1907
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