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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, March 20th, 1908 }
Unity by Co-operation
Of all the little bodies which we are trying to build up for the regeneration of the country, those are the true centres of strength which come nearest to the ideal of love and justice, which bind their members together in a close and affectionate unity, which form a league of brotherhood and mutual help, which without attempting to absorb all into themselves are always ready to come to the assistance of similar societies and of everyone who is in need of help. The country is a large one, the difficulties of organization are enormous, and no single organization can hope to monopolise the work. What we need is not a single all-embracing organization, but a number of smaller ones harmoniously co-operating together, free from jealousy, willing to give the first place to the others, provided the work progresses. The various Samitis which have sprung into existence in Calcutta are all doing good work, as has been shown by the success of the Ardhodaya Yog arrangements, and they form a source of energy, little units of strength which are bound to become the basis of the future organization of the country. But these Samitis are at present disconnected and without a connecting bond. They join together when some great occasion calls for their united action, but they again fall apart as soon as the call is over, and pursue their isolated path. What is needed now is a machinery which will keep them in touch with each other without permitting any mutual interference; each unit should be independent in its work and its constitution, but the leaders should be in constant communication so that all the Samitis may be cognizant of each other’s work and ready to help whenever help is needed. Moreover when occasion calls for united action the leaders should
Page – 941 be in a position to take advantage of each other’s help without loss of time; they should feel that they can immediately lay their hands on the strength they stand in need of and apply it at the right place and moment. If this can be done, the recent success at the Ardhodaya Yog will be a starting-point for the better organization of the country and for the beginning of a series of similar successes which will gradually make the nation feel the source of strength within itself and learn to utilise it in every department of activity. We are apt to get each absorbed in his own little sphere of action, to set an exaggerated value upon it and try to carry it out by our own unaided and isolated strength, so that the work progresses slowly, is partial, limited and halting in its success and carried on under crushing difficulties which interfere with its perfection and usefulness. There are several Nationalist journals which are doing each in its own line a great work for the country, but they are working in an isolated fashion, each absorbed in its own struggle to survive, each exposed to attack from the same powerful adversary, yet careless of the other,— a condition of things which gives enormous advantages to the enemy who is already powerful enough to crush them and would have crushed them long ago if there had not been a greater Power which willed that these little flickering lights should not be extinguished. During the Nationalist Conference at Surat it was decided to set on foot a Press Conference for the better preservation of and mutual assistance and constant communication between the papers which are struggling under heart-breaking difficulties, with the constant threat of prosecution hanging over them, to keep the lamp of hope and faith burning in the temple of the Mother. No further step has been taken in this direction, at least in Bengal, and it is time that it should be taken up in earnest and a Conference of the Nationalist Press in Calcutta arranged by which that Press should become a common body associated for mutual assistance and support. A typical instance of the difficulties which result from the absence of such a Conference is the temporary disappearance of New India while Srijut Bipin Chandra Pal was in jail. That disappearance should never have been allowed; as a point of honour, if nothing else, the paper
Page – 942 should have been maintained at any cost; but there was no common body, no common action. Each organ of Nationalism was struggling with its own difficulties, absorbed in itself and oblivious of the advantages of co-operation. There are many other departments of work which are suffering from the same want of co-operation between the workers, and it is unnecessary to enumerate them. Each of them should be organised separately on the basis not of an impossible centralisation, but of harmonious co-operation. When each is united within itself, the higher unity for which we are hoping will naturally come into existence. That organization will be most vital, lasting and sound which comes as a natural growth, developing in answer to growing needs and formed by the closer union of units which have grown up independently and preserved their separate life within the general unity. Life is organic because it evolves from the separate to the united, from the individual to the group, from the cell to the organism, and what we require in India is political life, not a manufactured unity. All our previous attempts at union have been failures because we did not recognize this law of growth. __________
The Early Indian Polity
The principle of popular rule is the possession of the reins of government by the mass of the people, but by the possession is not intended necessarily the actual exercise of administration. When the people are able to approve or to disapprove of any action of the Government with the certainty that such approval or disapproval will be absolutely effective, the spirit of democracy is present even if the body is not evolved. India in her ancient polity possessed this spirit of democracy. Like all Aryan nations she started with the three great divisions of the body politic, King, Lords and Commons, which have been the sources of the various forms of government evolved by the modern nations. In the period of the Mahabharata we find that the King is merely the head of the race, possessed of executive power but with no right
Page – 943 to legislate and even in the exercise of his executive functions unable to transgress by a hair’s breadth the laws which are the sum of the customs of the race. Even within this limited scope he cannot act in any important matter without consulting the chief men of the race who are usually the elders and warriors; often he is a cipher, a dignified President, an ornamental feature of the polity which is in the hands of the nobles. His position is that of first among equals, not that of an absolute prince or supreme ruler. We find this conception of kingship continued till the present day in the Rajput States; at Udaipur, for instance, no alienation of land can take place without the signature of all the nobles; although the Maharaja is the head of the State, the sacred descendant of the Sun, his power is a delegated authority. The rule of the King is hereditary, but only so long as he is approved of by the people. A tyrannical king can be resisted, an unfit heir can be put aside on the representation of the Commons. This idea of kingship is the old Aryan idea, it is limited monarchy and not the type of despotism which is called by the Western writers Oriental, though it existed for centuries in Europe and has never been universal in Asia. The Council of Chiefs is a feature of Indian polity universal in the time of the Mahabharata. That great poem is full of accounts of the meetings of these Councils and some of the most memorable striking events of the story are there transacted. The Udyoga Parva especially gives detailed accounts of the transactions of these Council meetings with the speeches of the princely orators. The King sits as President, hears both sides and seems to decide partly on his own responsibility, partly according to the general sense of the assembly. The opinion of the Council was not decided by votes, an invention of the Greeks, but as in the older Aryan systems, was taken individually from each Councillor. The King was the final arbiter and responsible for the decision, except in nations like the Yadavas where he seems to have been little more than an ornamental head of an aristocratic polity. Finally, the Commons in the Mahabharata are not represented by any assembly, because the times are evidently a period
Page – 944 of war and revolution in which the military caste had gained an abnormal preponderance. The opinion of the people expresses itself in public demonstrations of spontaneous character, but does not seem to have weighed with the proud and self-confident nobles who ruled them. This feature of the Mahabharata is obviously peculiar to the times, for we find that the Buddhist records preserve to us the true form of ancient Indian polity. The nations among whom Buddha lived were free communities in which the people assembled as in Greek and Italian States to decide their own affairs. A still more striking instance of the political existence of the Commons is to be found in the Ramayana. We are told that on the occasion of the association of Rama as Yuvaraj in the government, Dasaratha summoned a sort of States General of the Realm to which delegates of the different provinces and various orders, religious, military and popular were summoned in order to give their sanction to the act of the King. A speech from the throne is delivered in which the King states the reasons for his act, solicits the approval of his people and in case of their refusal of sanction, asks them to meet the situation by a counter-proposal of their own. The assembly then meets “separately and together”, in other words, the various Orders of the Realm consult first among themselves and then together and decide to give their sanction to the King’s proposal. The growth of large States in India was fatal to the continuance of the democratic element in the constitution. The idea of representation had not yet been developed, and without the principle of representation democracy is impossible in a large State. The Greeks were obliged to part with their cherished liberty as soon as large States began to enter into the Hellenic world; the Romans were obliged to change their august and cherished institutions for the most absolute form of monarchy as soon as they had become a great Empire; and democracy disappeared from the world until the slow development of the principle of representation enabled the spirit of democracy to find a new body in which it could be reborn. The contact with Greek and Persian absolutism seems to have developed in India
Page – 945 the idea of the divinity of Kinghood which had always been a part of the Aryan system; but while the Aryan King was divine because he was the incarnate life of the race, the new idea saw a divinity in the person of the King as an individual,— a conception which favoured the growth of absolutism. The monarchy of Chandragupta and Asoka seems to have been of the new type, copied perhaps from the Hellenistic empires, in which the nobles and the commons have disappeared and a single individual rules with absolute power through the instrumentality of officials. The Hindu King, however, never became a despot like the Caesars, he never grasped the power of legislation but remained the executor of laws over which he had no control nor could he ignore the opinion of the people. When most absolute, he has existed only to secure the order and welfare of society, and has never enjoyed immunity from resistance or the right to disregard the representations of his subjects. The pure absolutist type of monarchy entered India with the Mahomedans who had taken it from Europe and Persia and it has never been accepted in its purity by the Hindu temperament.
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