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Youth and the Bureaucracy
SIR EDWARD Baker is usually a polite and careful man and a diplomatic official. It is not his fault if the policy he is called upon to carry through is one void of statesmanship and contradictory of all the experience of history. Neither is it his fault if he lacks the necessary weight in the counsels of the Government to make his own ideas prevail. He carries out an odious task with as much courtesy and discretion as the nature of the task will permit and, if we have had to criticise severely the amazing indiscretion foreign to his usual habits which he was guilty of on a recent occasion, it was with a recognition of the fact that he must have forgotten himself and spoken on the spur of the moment. But as the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy is now constituted, Sir Edward’s personal superiority to his two predecessors is of no earthly use to us. We acknowledge the politeness and self-restraint of the wording in his recent advertisement to the educational authorities and the public at large of the inadvisability of allowing students to mix in the approaching Boycott celebration. But his reserve of language cannot succeed in blinding the public, still less the parties addressed, to the real nature of this promulgation. To parties circumstanced like the authorities of the Bengal Colleges official or private it is one of those hints which do not differ from orders. The whole Calcutta University has been placed under the heel of the Executive authority and no amount of writhing or wry faces will save Principals and Professors from the humiliating necessities proper to this servile and degraded position. They have sold themselves for lucre and they must eat the bitter bread of their self-chosen servitude. If they are asked to do the spy’s office or to be the instruments for imposing on young men of education and respectability restrictions unexampled outside Russia, it is not theirs to reject the demand instantly
Page-166 as freemen would indignantly reject such degrading proposals. They must remember that the affiliation of their colleges and the grants which alone can enable them to satisfy the arduous conditions of affiliation depend on the fiat of those who make the demand. These things are in the bond. For the rest, the unwisdom of the wise men and the imprudence of the prudent who stopped the students’ strike is becoming more and more apparent. Prudence and wisdom for the proprietors of private schools, for the country it was the worst imprudence and un-wisdom. It has turned the training ground of our youth into a means of restraining the progress of our people and denying them that liberty which the other nations of the world enjoy. A university in which the representatives of academic culture are only allowed to keep their position on condition of forfeiting their self-respect and the pen of the pedagogue supplements the baton of the policeman, is no longer worth keeping. But there are other considerations affecting a wider circle than the educational world, which arise immediately out of this notice. Ever since the beginning of this movement the opponents of progress have with an admirable instinct hit upon the misleading and intimidation of the youth of this country as the best means of thwarting the movement. Their direct at-tempts having failed, they are now trying to keep down the rising spirit of young India by objurgations addressed to the guardians and by playing on their selfishness and fears. Once the National Education movement was thwarted of its natural course and triumphant success by the leaders, it was easy for the bureaucrats to enforce this policy by gathering up all the authority of the Universities into their hands and using it as a political lever. The loss of education and a career, –this was the menace which they held over the guardians and young men of the country and by the continual flourishing of this weapon they have succeeded in putting back for a while the hour of our national fulfilment. The unwholesome and dangerous effects of denying the aspirations of youth a peaceful outlet, as dangerous to the government as they are unwholesome
Page-167 to the country, the arbiters of official policy in spite of their experience are too blind to realise. Bad leadership, bad because marred by selfishness and timidity, has aided the political experience and insight of the English rulers in inflicting upon the cause a check which still works to hamper us in our progress. We do not propose to waste space by answering the sophistries which our opponents advance to cover their interested suggestions. It is enough to say in answer that in all civilised countries young men are freely permitted to take part in politics and their want of interest in the chief national activity would be considered a mark of degeneration. It is not the arguments of adversaries but their own personal and class interests which actuate those among us who at the bidding of Anglo-Indians official or unofficial deter our young men from attending public meetings or mixing in the national movement. To these also we can say nothing. Men who can prefer the selfish gratification of their transitory individual needs and interests to the good of the nation are not needed in the new age that is coming. They are there only to exhaust a degraded and back-ward type which the world and the nation are intended soon to outgrow. If some of them still pose as men of weight and leading, it is only for a moment. They will vanish and the whole earth heave a sigh of relief that that type at least is gone forever. But to the young men of Bengal we have a word to say. The future belongs to the young. It is a young and new world which is now under process of development and it is the young who must create it. But it is also a world of truth, courage, justice, lofty aspiration and straightforward fulfilment which we seek to create. For the coward, for the self-seeker, for the talker who goes forward at the beginning and afterwards leaves his fellows in the lurch there is no place in the future of this movement. A brave, frank, clean-hearted, courageous and aspiring youth is the only foundation on which the future nation can be built. This seventh of August in this year 1909 is not an ordinary occasion. It is a test, a winnowing-fan, a separator of the wheat and the chaff. Because it is so, Sir Edward Baker
Page-168 has been inspired by an overruling Providence to publish his notification and the authorities of colleges to act according to their kind. The question is put not to these but to the young men who are asked under pain of academical penalties to abstain from an activity which is both their right and their duty. Let them remember that they disobey no law of the land and no provision of morality if they attend the celebration of the new nation’s birthday. They will only disobey what professes to be an exercise of school discipline, but is nothing of the kind. It does not fall within the province of a schoolmaster to dictate what shall be the political opinions or activities of his pupils, nor are College professors concerned with what their students may do outside the precincts of College and hostel in the hours of their lawful liberty, so long as there is no infringement of law or morality. The attempt is a usurpation of the rightful authority of guardians or, in the case of those who have come of age, of their right to govern their own personal action. There only remains the question of self-interest. That is a point we leave to their hearts and consciences, whether they shall prefer their own interests or their country’s. But if once they decide for the nobler part, let them stand by the choice they have made. God does not want falterers and flinchers for his work, nor does he want unstable enthusiasts who cannot maintain the energy of their first movements. Secondly, let them not only stand by their choice but stand by their comrades. Unless they develop the corporate spirit and the sense of honour which refuses to save oneself by the sacrifice of one’s comrades in action when that sacrifice can be averted by standing together, they will not be fit for the work they will have to do when they are a little older. Whatever they do let them do as a body, whatever they suffer let them suffer as a body, leaving out the coward and the falterer but, once they are compact, never losing or allowing anything to break that compactness. If they can act in this spirit, heeding no unpatriotic counsels from whatever source they come, then let them follow their duty and their conscience, but let them do nothing in a light even if fervent enthusiasm, moving forward without due consideration
Page-169 and then showing a weakness unworthy of the nation to which they belong and the work to which they have been called.
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OTHER WRITINGS BY SRI AUROBINDO IN THIS ISSUE
Kalidasa’s Seasons II: The Substance of the Poem The Katha Upanishad I.3 Anandamath: Prologue |