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Bande Mataram { CALCUTTA, April 16th, 1907 }
The Old Year
There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock; for it is the day of the prophet, the dreamer, the fanatic and the crusader,— the time of divine revelation when Avatars are born and miracles happen. Such a period was the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth; in such a period we find ourselves at the dawn of this twentieth century, the years of whose infancy have witnessed such wonderful happenings. The result of the earlier disturbance was the birth of a new Europe and the modernisation of the Western world; we are assisting now at the birth of a new Asia and the modernisation of the East. The current started then from distant America but the centre of disturbance was Western and Central Europe. This time there have been three currents,— insurgent nationalism starting from South Africa, Asiatic revival starting from Japan, Eastern democracy starting from Russia; and the centre of disturbance covers a huge zone, all Eastern, Southern and Western Asia, Northern or Asiaticised Africa and Russia which form the semi-Asiatic element in Europe. As the pace
Page – 311 of the revolution grows swifter, each new year becomes more eventful than the last and marks a large advance to the final consummation. No year of the new century has been more full of events than 1906 07, our year 1313. If we look abroad we find the whole affected zone in agitation and new births everywhere. In the Far East the year has not been marked by astonishing events, but the total results have been immense. Within these twelve months China has been educating, training and arming herself with a speed of which the outside world has a very meagre conception. She has sent out a Commission of Observation to the West and decided to develop constitutional Government within the next ten years. She has pushed forward the work of revolutionising her system of education and bringing it into line with modern requirements. She has taken resolutely in hand the task of liberating herself from the curse of opium which has benumbed the energies of her people. She has sent her young men outside in thousands, chiefly to Japan, to be trained for the great work of development. With the help of Japanese instructors she is training herself quietly in war, and science has made an immense advance in the organisation of a disciplined army, and is now busy laying the foundations of an effective navy. In spite of the arrogant protests of British merchants, she has taken her enormous customs revenue into her own hands for national purposes. By her successful diplomacy she has deprived England of the fruits of the unscrupulous, piratical attack upon Tibet and is maintaining her hold on that outpost of the Mongolian world. Japan during this year has been vigorously pushing on her industrial expansion at home and abroad; she has practically effected the commercial conquest of Manchuria and begun in good earnest the struggle with European trade and her manufactures are invading Europe and America. Her army reorganisation has been so large and thorough as to make the island Empire invincible in her own sphere of activity. A little cloud has sprung up between herself and America, but she has conducted herself with her usual sang froid, moderation and calm firmness; and, however far the difficulty may go, we may be sure that she will
Page – 312 not come out of it either morally or materially a loser. In other parts of the Far East there have only been slight indications of coming movements. The troubles in the Philippines are over and America has restored to the inhabitants a certain measure of self-government, which, if used by the Filipinos with energy and discretion, may be turned into an instrument for the recovery of complete independence. Siam has purchased release from humiliating restrictions on her internal sovereignty at the heavy price of a large cession of territory to intruding France; but she is beginning to pay more attention to her naval and military development and it will be well if this means that she has realised the only way to preserve her independence. At present Siam is the one weak point in Mongolian Asia. Otherwise the events of this year show that by the terrible blow she struck at Russia, Japan has arrested the process of European absorption in the Far East. But the most remarkable feature of the past year is the awakening of the Mahomedan world. In Afghanistan it has seen the inception of a great scheme of National Education which may lay the basis of a State, strong in itself, organised on modern lines and equipped with scientific knowledge and training. Amir Abdur Rahman consolidated Afghanistan; it is evidently the mission of Habibullah, who seems not inferior in statesmanship to his great father, to modernise it. In Persia the year has brought about a peaceful revolution,— the granting of Parliamentary Government by an Asiatic king to his subjects under the mildest passive pressure and the return of national life to Iran. In Egypt it has confronted the usurping rule of England with a nationalist movement, not only stronger and more instructed than that of Arabi Pasha but led by the rightful sovereign of the country. The exhibition of cold-blooded British ferocity at Denshawi has defeated its object, and, instead of appalling the Egyptians into submission, made them more determined and united. It is now only a question of time for this awakening to affect the rest of Islam and check the European as effectually in Western Asia as he has been checked in the East. In this universal Asiatic movement what part has India to play? What has she done during the year 1313? In India too
Page – 313 there has been an immense advance,— an advance so great that we shall not be able to appreciate it properly until its results have worked themselves out. The year began with Barisal; it closes with Comilla. The growing intensity of the struggle in Eastern Bengal can be measured by this single transition, and its meaning is far deeper than appears on the surface. It means that the two forces which must contend for the possession of India’s future,— the British bureaucracy and the Indian people,— have at last clashed in actual conflict. Barisal meant passive, martyr-like endurance; Comilla means active, courageous resistance. The fighting is at present only on the far eastern fringe of this great country; but it must, as it grows in intensity, spread westwards. Sparks of the growing conflagration will set fire to Western Bengal, and India is now far too united for the bureaucracy to succeed long in isolating the struggle. The second feature of the year has been the rapid growth of the Nationalist party. It has in a few months absorbed Eastern Bengal, set Allahabad and the North on fire and is stirring Madras to its depths. In Bengal it has become a distinct and recognised force so powerful in its moral influence that petitioning is practically dead and the whole nation stands committed to a policy of self-development and passive resistance. The Press a few months ago was, with the exception of a few Mahratti weeklies, one journal in the Punjab and the Sandhya and New India in Calcutta, almost entirely Moderate. The increase of Nationalist journals such as the Balbharat and Andhra Keshari in Madras, the Aftab in the North and ourselves in Calcutta, the appearance of local papers filled with the new spirit, the sudden popularity of a paper like the Yugantar and the extent to which the new ideas are infecting journals not avowedly of the new school, are indices of the rapidity with which Nationalism is formulating itself and taking possession of the country. A third feature of the year has been the growth of National Education. The Bengal National College has not only become an established fact but is rapidly increasing in numbers and has begun to build the foundations of a better system of education. The schools at Rungpur and Dacca already existed at the
Page – 314 commencement of the year; but immediately after the Barisal outrage fresh schools at Mymensingh, Kishoregunj, Comilla, Chandpur and Dinajpur were established. Since then there have been further additions,— the Magura School, another in the Jessore District, another at Jalpaiguri as well as a free primary school at Bogra. We understand that there is also a probability of a National School at Chittagong and Noakhali. No mean record for a single year. As was to be expected, most of these schools have grown up in the great centre of Nationalism, East Bengal. Such is the record of Nationalist advance in India in 1313. It is a record of steady and rapid growth; and the year closes with the starting of a tremendous issue which may carry us far beyond the stage of mere beginnings and preparations. Long ago we heard it prophesied that the year 1907 would see the beginning of the actual struggle for national liberty in India. It would almost seem as if in the turmoil in Tipperah the first blow had been struck. ________
Rishi Bankim Chandra
There are many who, lamenting the by-gone glories of this great and ancient nation, speak as if the Rishis of old, the inspired creators of thought and civilisation, were a miracle of our heroic age, not to be repeated among degenerate men and in our distressful present. This is an error and thrice an error. Ours is the eternal land, the eternal people, the eternal religion, whose strength, greatness, holiness, may be over-clouded but never, even for a moment, utterly cease. The hero, the Rishi, the saint, are the natural fruits of our Indian soil; and there has been no age in which they have not been born. Among the Rishis of the later age we have at last realized that we must include the name of the man who gave us the reviving mantra which is creating a new India, the mantra Bande Mataram. The Rishi is different from the saint. His life may not have been distinguished by superior holiness nor his character by an ideal beauty. He is not great by what he was himself but by what
Page – 315 he has expressed. A great and vivifying message had to be given to a nation or to humanity; and God has chosen this mouth on which to shape the words of the message. A momentous vision has to be revealed; and it is his eyes which the Almighty first unseals. The message which he has received, the vision which has been vouchsafed to him, he declares to the world with all the strength that is in him, and in one supreme moment of inspiration expresses it in words which have merely to be uttered to stir men’s inmost natures, clarify their minds, seize their hearts and impel them to things which would have been impossible to them in their ordinary moments. Those words are the mantra which he was born to reveal and of that mantra he is the seer. What is it for which we worship the name of Bankim today? What was his message to us or what the vision which he saw and has helped us to see? He was a great poet, a master of beautiful language and a creator of fair and gracious dreamfigures in the world of imagination; but it is not as a poet, stylist or novelist that Bengal does honour to him today. It is probable that the literary critic of the future will reckon “Kopal Kundala”, “Bishabriksha” and “Krishna Kant’s Will” as his artistic masterpieces, and speak with qualified praise of “Devi Chaudhurani”, “Anandamath”, “Krishna Charit” or “Dharmatattwa”. Yet it is the Bankim of these latter works and not the Bankim of the great creative masterpieces who will rank among the Makers of Modern India. The earlier Bankim was only a poet and stylist— the later Bankim was a seer and nation-builder. But even as a poet and stylist Bankim did a work of supreme national importance not for the whole of India or only indirectly for the whole of India, but for Bengal which was destined to lead India and be in the vanguard of national development. No nation can grow without finding a fit and satisfying medium of expression for the new self into which it is developing— without a language which shall give permanent shape to its thoughts and feelings and carry every new impulse swiftly and triumphantly into the consciousness of all. It was Bankim’s first great service to India that he gave the race which stood in its vanguard such a perfect and satisfying medium. He has been
Page – 316 blamed for corrupting the purity of the Bengali tongue; but the pure Bengali of the old poets could have expressed nothing but a conservative and unprogressing Bengal. The race was expanding and changing, and it needed a means of expression capable of change and expansion. He has been blamed also for replacing the high literary Bengali of the Pundits by a mixed popular tongue which was neither the learned language nor good vernacular. But the Bengali of the Pundits would have crushed the growing richness, variety and versatility of the Bengali genius under its stiff inflexible ponderousness. We needed a tongue for other purposes than dignified treatises and erudite lucubrations. We needed a language which should combine the strength, dignity or soft beauty of Sanskrit with the verve and vigour of the vernacular, capable at one end of the utmost vernacular raciness, and at the other of the most sonorous gravity. Bankim divined our need and was inspired to meet it,— he gave us a means by which the soul of Bengal could express itself to itself. As he had divined the linguistic need of his country’s future, so he divined also its political need. He, first of our great publicists, understood the hollowness and inutility of the methods of political agitation which prevailed in his time and exposed it with merciless satire in his “Lokarahasya” and “Kamala Kanta’s Daftar”. But he was not satisfied merely with destructive criticism,— he had a positive vision of what was needed for the salvation of the country. He saw that the force from above must be met by a mightier reacting force from below,— the strength of repression by an insurgent national strength. He bade us leave the canine method of agitation for the leonine. The Mother of his vision held trenchant steel in her twice seventy million hands and not the bowl of the mendicant. It was the stern gospel of force which he preached under a veil and in images in “Anandamath” and “Devi Chaudhurani”. And he had an inspired unerring vision of the moral strength which must be at the back of the physical force. He perceived that the first element of the moral strength must be tyaga, complete self-sacrifice for the country and complete self-devotion to the work of liberation. His workers and fighters for the motherland are
Page – 317 political byragees who have no other thought than their duty to her and have put all else behind them as less dear and less precious and only to be resumed when their work for her is done. Whoever loves self or wife or child or goods more than his country is a poor and imperfect patriot; not by him shall the great work be accomplished. Again, he perceived that the second element of the moral strength needed must be self-discipline and organisation. This truth he expressed in the elaborate training of Devi Chaudhurani for her work, in the strict rules of the Association of the “Anandamath” and in the pictures of perfect organisation which those books contain. Lastly, he perceived that the third element of moral strength must be the infusion of religious feeling into patriotic work. The religion of patriotism,— this is the master idea of Bankim’s writings. It is already foreshadowed in “Devi Chaudhurani”. In “Dharmatattwa” the idea and in “Krishna Charit” the picture of a perfect and many-sided Karma Yoga is sketched, the crown of which shall be work for one’s country and one’s kind. In “Anandamath” this idea is the key-note of the whole book and receives its perfect lyrical expression in the great song which has become the national anthem of United India. This is the second great service of Bankim to his country that he pointed out to it the way of salvation and gave it the religion of patriotism. Of the new spirit which is leading the nation to resurgence and independence, he is the inspirer and political guru. The third and supreme service of Bankim to his nation was that he gave us the vision of our Mother. The new intellectual idea of the motherland is not in itself a great driving force; the mere recognition of the desirability of freedom is not an inspiring motive. There are few Indians at present, whether loyalist, moderate or nationalist in their political views, who do not recognize that the country has claims on them or that freedom in the abstract is a desirable thing. But most of us, when it is a question between the claims of the country and other claims, do not in practice prefer the service of the country; and while many may have the wish to see freedom accomplished, few have the will to accomplish it. There are other things which we hold
Page – 318 dearer and which we fear to see imperilled either in the struggle for freedom or by its accomplishment. It is not till the motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes shape as a great Divine and Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate the mind and seize the heart that these petty fears and hopes vanish in the all-absorbing passion for our mother and her service, and the patriotism that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born. To some men it is given to have that vision and reveal it to others. It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang
Page – 318 . The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can be no rest, no peace, no farther slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the sacrifice offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again be placed under the feet of the conqueror. Page – 319 |