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The Next Step

                    THE condition of the poorer classes in this country is a subject which has till now been too much neglected, but can be neglected no longer if the blessing of God is to remain with our movement. The increasing poverty of the masses has been the subject of innumerable pamphlets, speeches and newspaper articles, but we are apt to think our duty done when we have proved that the poverty problem is there; we leave the solution to the future and forget that by the time the solution comes, the masses will have sunk into a condition of decay from which it will take the nation many decades to recover. We have been accustomed to deal only with the economical side of this poverty, but there is a moral side which is even more important. The Indian peasantry have always been distinguished from the less civilised masses of Europe by their superior piety, gentleness, sobriety, purity, thrift and native intelligence. They are now being brutalised by unexampled oppression; attracted to the liquor shops which a benevolent Government liberally supplies, bestialised by the example of an increasingly immoral aristocracy and gradually driven to the same habits of looseness and brutality which disgrace the European proletariats. This degeneration is proceeding with an alarming rapidity. In some parts of the country it has gone so far that recovery seems impossible. We have heard of districts in which the peasantry are so far reduced to poverty by the exactions of Zemindars, planters and police that the sturdier classes among them are taking to highway robbery and dacoity as the only possible means of livelihood. We have heard of villages where the liquor shop and the prostitute, institutions unknown twenty-five years ago, have now the mastery of the poorest villagers. Many of the villages in West Bengal are now well supplied with these essentials of Western civilisation. The people ground down between the upper millstone of the indigo planter and the nether millstone of the

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Zemindar, are growing full of despair and look to violence as their only remedy. These conditions of the worst districts tend to become general and unless something is done to stem the tide of evil, it will sweep away the soul of India in its turbid current and leave only a shapeless monstrosity of all that is worst in human nature.

            We are convinced, of course, that India is destined to rise again, we await with confidence the coming of the Avatar of strength who will follow the Avatar of love, but in order that He may come, we must prepare the atmosphere, purify it by our own deeds of love, strength and humanitarian self-sacrifice. The educated classes are now the repositories of the hope of resurgence; it is in them that the spirit has entered, to them the masses look for guidance. Their duty is to be worthy of their mission, to bring hope, strength and light into the lives of their down-trodden countrymen. We have so far been occupied with Swadeshi as the economical means of saving the people: we must now set ourselves to the restoration of the moral tone of the nation by ourselves setting an example of mercy, justice, self-denial, helpfulness and patient work for the people. The work is one for the young. It was they who made the Swadeshi movement a success and ensured its permanence; they also must set themselves to the task which now calls us and go to the succour of their suffering countrymen, point their spirits to the help which is to come, support them in their present sufferings, relieve them so far as possible and bind the educated class and the masses together by the golden bond of love and service. This is the next step in the development of the present movement. Swadeshi is fairly begun and will now go on of its own impetus; but when the work of which we speak is taken in hand, Swadeshi will receive a fresh impetus which will make it so irresistible that all the tyranny of the officials, all the police oppression, every obstacle and hindrance which man can interpose will be swept away like so much chaff, and all Bengal become the fortress of Swadeshi, its temple and its domain. This is the work to which the finger of God has been pointing us from the beginning of the present year, by the success of the Ardhodaya Yoga organisation, by the call to the

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village which was the dominant note of the Pabna Conference, by signs and omens of many kinds which those who keep their eyes open will easily understand. We have now Samitis for spreading Swadeshi, Samitis for physical culture and self-defence, Samitis for the organisation of meetings, festivals and other great occasions. All these are good, but we want now Samitis for giving help and light to the masses. The Anusilan Samiti has given a right direction to its activities when it undertook Famine Relief, but Famine Relief is a temporary work, one which needs an immense fund to be really effective, and only a united body of the leading men of Bengal could successfully cope with it. What our Samitis can do is to take up the work which we have indicated as a permanent part of their duties, put themselves in touch with the people, lead them to hope, inspire them with the spirit of self-help, organise them and make them ready for the coming of the Avatar.

A Strange Expectation

The Indian People of Allahabad writes in a tone of mingled pathos and disgust at the supineness of the Government in allowing the Extremists to gain ground in the country by its obstinate refusal to dance to Moderate piping. It depends entirely on the Government, says our contemporary, which party is to prevail; if the Government will only take the Moderate Party as the keeper of its conscience, it will be saved from the Extremist peril. We do not know which is to be most pitied, the Moderate Party or the Government. The former is, according to its own confession, a helpless puppet depending for its very existence on the actions of an external power over which it has no influence or control, for its popularity on the favour of the bureaucracy and for its continuance on the self-sacrifice of an official class which it invites to commit suicide in order to keep an opponent in existence. Such is the grotesque position of the party which boasts for itself a monopoly of statesmanship and sober wisdom that it has to depend for its continued existence not on its statesmanship and

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wisdom, but on the will of its enemy! And as for the Government, the only choice offered to it is either to fall into the Extremist fire or singe in the Moderate frying-pan. We would remind our contemporary that the English people have sufficient political intelligence to see that once they begin giving "substantial gifts" instead of the present "toys and rattles" and "shadowy and ridiculous reforms", it is simply a question of time when they will have to part with the last vestige of their present absolute control. Whether the bureaucratic system dies a lingering death at the slow fire of Moderatism or is burned to ashes in the Nationalist conflagration, the choice is one to which the bureaucracy may be pardoned if it violently objects and even prefers to take the risk of the second alternative rather than the certainty of the first. The Nationalists do not expect substantial concessions from the bureaucracy not because they attribute to the present rulers a double dose of original sin, but because they believe them to have sufficient insight to see the danger of concessions but not the almost superhuman penetration which would show them the lofty magnanimity and real wisdom of a timely surrender.

A Prayer

Spirit of God that rulest, lord and king

Of all this universe, who from Thy throne

In heaven, besieged by prayers, lookst down on man,

Immeasurable Spirit, if any thought

Of human frailty in my mind should dwell,

While at Thy feet I lay myself, forgive.

Not for myself but for the land where Thou

Wert once a mighty warrior, lord and king,

For India, for her sons, I pray, who now

Fallen, abject, cringing to a foreign hand,

Forget Thee. Thou immeasurable Lord

Of all this universe, august, unborn,

By Thy unspeakable compassion urged

Enteredst a human body, of Thy huge

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Empire a little province camest down

From foes within and foes without to save.

Again the land is full of Thee and full

Of hope; a stir is in the air, a cry

Is in men’s hearts, the whole terrestrial globe

Thrills and vague rumours, huge presentiments

Move like the visions born of mist and dream

Across the places where Thou once wast born

Prophesying Thy advent. Wilt Thou come

Lord, in a form such as Thou worest once

When Mathura was free, when Kamsa fell,

And from Brindavan came the avenging sword

Till then concealed. So would we have Thee come.

The nations of the earth are full of sin;

Greed, lust, ambition are their gods, and keep

Revel with Science for their caterer

To give the food by which they live. All forms

Of mercy, gentleness and love are lost

While strength alone is worshipped, strength divorced

From justice, uninspired by noble aims.

The greatnesses of earth forget their source

And limit; they desire to break and build,

To fill their lust, to hold majestic rule

For ever, but forget the source of strength,

Forget the purpose for which strength is given.

Oppression fills the spaces of the world,

Hatred and pain reply with murder, One

Is needed who will break the strengths of earth

By His diviner strength; and till He comes

In vain we struggle and in vain aspire.

Come therefore, for Thou saidst that Thou wouldst come;

Whenever strong injustice lifts her head

To slay the good, — Thou saidst that Thou wouldst come

For rescue of the world. Today the globe

Waits for Thy coming, as it waited then

When Ravan was the master of the world

And Lanka, full of splendid strength and sin,

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Possessed mankind. Now many Ravans rule

And many Lankas. Therefore come; the earth

Can bear no more the burden of their pride,

Hellward she sinks. Unless Thou come, the end

Approaches. Save Thy fair creation, Lord.

Bande Mataram, March 31, 1908

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