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Asiatic Democracy
ASIA is not Europe and never will be Europe. The political ideals of the West are not the mainspring of the political movements in the East, and those who do not realise this great truth, are mistaken; for they suppose that the history of Europe is a sure and certain guide to India in her political development. A great deal of the political history of Europe will be repeated in Asia, no doubt; Democracy has travelled from the East to the West in the shape of Christianity, and after a long struggle with the feudal instincts of the Germanic races has returned to Asia transformed and in a new body. But when Asia takes back democracy into herself she will first transmute it in her own temperament and make it once more Asiatic. Christianity was an assertion of human equality in the spirit, a great assertion of the unity of the divine spirit in man, which did not seek to overthrow the established systems of government and society but to inform them with the spirit of human brotherhood and unity. It was greatly hampered in this work by the fact that the European races were in a state of transition from the old Aryan civilisation of Greece and Rome to one less advanced and enlightened. The German nations were wedded to a military civilisation which was wholly inconsistent with the ideals of Christianity, and the new religion in their hands became a thing quite unrecognisable to the Asiatic mind which had engendered it. When Mahomedanism appeared, Christianity vanished out of Asia, because it had lost its meaning. Mahomed tried to re-establish the Asiatic gospel of human equality in the spirit. All men are equal in Islam, — whatever their social position or political power, — nor is any man debarred from the full development of his manhood by his birth or low original station in life. All men are brothers in Islam and the bond of religious unity overrides all other divisions and differences. But Islam also was limited and imperfect, because it confined the ideal of brotherhood and equality to the limits of a single creed, and was
Page-757 further deflected from its true path by the rude and undeveloped races which it drew into its embrace. Another revelation of the old truth is needed. India from ancient times had received the gospel of Vedanta which sought to establish the divine unity of man in spirit; but in order to secure an ordered society in which she could develop her spiritual insight and perfect her civilisation, she had invented the system of caste which by corruptions and departures from caste ideals came to be an obstacle to the fulfilment in society of the Vedantic ideal. From the time of Buddha to that of the saints of Maharashtra every great religious awakening has sought to restore the ancient meaning of Hinduism and reduce caste to its original subordinate importance as a social convenience, to exorcise the spirit of caste-pride and restore that of brotherhood and the eternal principles of love and justice in society. But the feudal spirit had taken possession of India: and the feudal spirit is wedded to inequality and the pride of caste. When the feudal system was broken in Europe by the rise of the middle class, the ideals of Christianity began to emerge once more to light, but by this time the Christian Church had itself become feudalised, and the curious spectacle presents itself of Christian ideals struggling to establish themselves by the destruction of the very institution which had been created to preserve Christianity. When the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were declared at the time of the French Revolution and mankind demanded that society should recognise them as the foundation of its structure, they were associated with a fierce revolt against the relics of feudalism and against the travesty of the Christian religion which had become an integral part of that feudalism. This was the weakness of European democracy and the source of its failure. It took as its motive the rights of man and not the dharma of humanity; it appealed to the selfishness of the lower classes against the pride of the upper; it made hatred and internecine war the permanent allies of Christian ideals and wrought an inextricable confusion which is the modern malady of Europe. It was in vain that the genius of Mazzini rediscovered the heart of Christianity and sought to remodel European ideas; the French Revolution had become the starting-point of European
Page-758 democracy and coloured the European mind. Now that democracy has returned to Asia, its cradle and home, it will be purged of its foreign elements and restored to its original purity. The movements of the nineteenth century in India were European movements, they were coloured with the hues of the West. Instead of seeking for strength in the spirit, they adopted the machinery and motives of Europe, the appeal to the rights of humanity or the equality of social status and an impossible dead level which Nature has always refused to allow. Mingled with these false gospels was a strain of hatred and bitterness, which showed itself in the condemnation of Brahminical priestcraft, the hostility to Hinduism and the ignorant breaking away from the hallowed traditions of the past. What was true and eternal in that past was likened to what was false or transitory, and the nation was in danger of losing its soul by an insensate surrender to the aberrations of European materialism. Not in this spirit was India intended to receive the mighty opportunity which the impact of Europe gave to her. When the danger was greatest, a number of great spirits were sent to stem the tide flowing in from the West and recall her to her mission; for, if she had gone astray the world would have gone astray with her. Her mission is to point back humanity to the true source of human liberty, human equality, human brotherhood. When man is free in spirit, all other freedom is at his command; for the Free is the Lord who cannot be bound. When he is liberated from delusion, he perceives the divine equality of the world which fulfils itself through love and justice, and this perception transfuses itself into the law of government and society. When he has perceived this divine equality, he is brother to the whole world, and in whatever position he is placed he serves all men as his brothers by the law of love, by the law of justice. When this perception becomes the basis of religion, of philosophy, of social speculation and political aspiration, then will liberty, equality and fraternity take their place in the structure of society and the satyayuga return. This is the Asiatic reading of democracy which India must rediscover for herself before she can give it to the world. It is the dharma of every man to be free in soul, bound to service not by compulsion but by love; to be equal in spirit, ap-
Page-759 portioned his place in society by his capacity to serve society, not by the interested selfishness of others; to be in harmonious relations with his brother men, linked to them by mutual love and service, not by shackles of servitude, or the relations of the exploiter and the exploited, the eater and the eaten. It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duties lose the artificial antagonism created by a view of the world which makes selfishness the root of action, and regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognise, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe. Through dharma the Asiatic evolution fulfils itself; this is her secret.
We have already said what we had to say on Mrs. Besant’s idea of a National University. In her speech on Education delivered at the Corinthian Theatre, she referred again to the subject of the Charter and invited the National Council of Education to get a Royal Charter to confer degrees. She gave the instance of the English Universities which have got such a Charter from the King, but "it did not follow that those Universities were under Government control, the Charter being but a guarantee for the education which the University undertook to give". It is surprising that so acute an intellect as Mrs. Besant should not perceive the fallacy of appealing to English precedents. An arrangement which works in England for the benefit of the country, may easily be worked in India to its disadvantage, for the simple reason that in India the interests of the governing bureaucracy and the people are not identical, while in England the people and the Government are one. Socialistic State control may work well in England, in India it means the control of public business in the interests of a small and alien caste. So with the proposed Charter. Mrs. Besant gives away her case when she admits that the
Page-760 Charter is a guarantee for the education given in the University. Certainly, the authority having the guarantee has the right to see that the guarantee is not abused and that the education is up to a standard consistent with the dignity of a Royal Charter. This means at least potential State control. In England the control is not exercised, because no public interest can be served by interfering with the work of the educational experts who conduct these Universities, but if the Universities were to fall very much behind in their educational standard, it is conceivable that the potential right of interference might be exercised. If the National Council of Education were to get a Royal Charter, this potential right of interference would be in the hands of the authority issuing the Charter, in other words, with the King, which means, for India, with the Secretary of State, which again means with the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy; and we know how that bureaucracy would be likely to use the power. At any moment the Council might have to face the alternative of either accepting practical control by officialdom or sacrificing the Charter; this would mean a crisis which might wreck the new education altogether. Quite apart, therefore, from the sacrifice of that principle of robust independence and faith in its own future which is its true strength, the Council would be guilty of an impolitic step, if it accepted, much more if it asked for a Charter. The latter idea is indeed inconceivable. The exclusion of the Council’s students from the learned professions means only exclusion from the Government service and the Law, and it is more wholesome for the new institution to be removed from these temptations till it is strong enough to make these professions seek for its students instead of its students seeking for them. The hankering after a Charter is born of weakness and deficient faith; it will be no gain to National Education and may easily be fatal to it.
Bande Mataram, March 16, 1908
The outbreak at Tinnevelly is significant as a warning both to the authorities and to the leaders of the popular party. For the
Page-761 bureaucracy, if they have eyes to see or ears to hear, it should be an index of the fierceness of the fire which is burning underneath a thin crust of patience and sufferance and may at any moment lead to a general conflagration. Whence does this fire come or what does it signify? It is a suddenly blazing fire of straw, say the bureaucrats, kindled by the hands of mischievous agitators; it means nothing except that the authors of the mischief must be vigorously repressed. Even if this were true, it is at least a subject which might well cause reflection in minds not blinded by selfish infatuation why it is so easily kindled, why it blazes out so fiercely and in so many places far apart from each other. Some years ago agitators might have spoken themselves hoarse and yet there would have been no such upsurging of the population of a whole city in reckless revolt against established authority. Still more significant is the defiant spirit of the people which neither the imprisonment of the leaders, nor the shots of the military could quell, but rather lashed into fiercer rage. This is no light fire of straw, but a jet of volcanic fire from the depths, and that has never in the world’s history been conquered by repression. Cover it up, trample it down, it may seem to sink for a moment, but that is only because part of the imprisoned flame has escaped; every day of repression gives it a greater volume and prepares a mightier explosion. To the popular leaders it is a warning of the necessity to put their house in order, to provide a settled leading and so much organisation as is possible so that the movement may arrive at a consciousness of ordered strength. At Tuticorin it was the inspiring voices, the cheerful and confident faces, the strong and calm example of their leaders in which the people felt their strength, and enabled them also to act with a restrained enthusiasm and a settled courage. The removal of that inspiring, yet quieting force, led inevitably to the resort to violence which has startled the whole country by its devastating fierceness, — though at the same time it was mild enough compared with what an European mob would have done at a similar pitch of excitement. Throughout the country the same fire is burning or beginning to burn and where it has gathered force, it can only be calm and restrained so long as it feels either that it is well led or that it is developing an ordered strength. Any weak-
Page-762 ness, any failure of a serious kind on the part of the leaders will be the signal for storms before which the ‘unrest’, so alarming to English politicians, will prove a mere bagatelle. It is only conscious strength, it is only organised courage that can afford to be calm and patient. This is not the time to be inventing creeds and constitutions which a year or two will tear into shreds, but to recognise facts, to put ourselves in touch with the present and make ourselves strong to control the future.
Bande Mataram, March 17, 1908
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