Sri Aurobindo. Mr. A. Chowdhury's Policy // Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings

Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Early Political Writings. 1890 — May 1908

Bande Mataram. June 22, 1907

Mr. A. Chowdhury's Policy

Mr. Ashutosh Chowdhury¹ has used the opportunity given to him by his selection for the chair of the Pabna Conference to make a personal pronouncement of policy. This is the second time that Mr. Chowdhury² has had an opportunity of this kind, the first being the Provincial conference at Burdwan. On that occasion he made a pronouncement which indicated a new departure in politics and created some flutter in the Congress dovecote³. It would not be accurate to say that the Burdwan pronunciamento influenced the course of affairs; the propounder of the new policy, if such it could be called, had not sufficient weight of personality to become the leader of a New Party, nor was his policy either definite enough or sound enough to attract a following. But it had a certain importance. It was the immature self-expression of ideas and forces which had been gathering head in the country and groping about for means of entry into the ordinary channels of political action and expression. It was rather the prophecy of a new turn in Indian politics than itself a policy already understood and matured. The prophet himself was perhaps the one who least understood his own prophecy. The confusion of his ideas was shown soon afterwards by his identifying himself with the old current of Congress politics and thus turning his back on the two main positions in his Burdwan speech, the repudiation of mendicant politics and the dictum that a subject nation has no politics. He left it to others to develop the political ideas he had dimly and imperfectly outlined and give them a definite shape embodied in a clear political programme. Still more forcibly is this lack of comprehension evidenced by Mr. Chowdhury’s⁴ attempt to revert, with modifications, to his Burdwan ideas even after the momentous changes of the last three years. He has once more reverted to his dictum that a subject nation has no politics; he once more proposes that we should give up our political agitation; once more he puts forward self-help as a substitute. When he spoke at Burdwan, industrial expansion was the idea of the day and Mr. Chowdhury⁵ offered it to us as a substitute for political mendicancy. Today Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education are the ideas of the day and Mr. Chowdhury⁶ offers them as a substitute for the struggle for Swaraj.

We do not wish to overrate the importance of Mr. Chowdhury’s⁷ pronouncements. Mr. Chowdhury⁸ is not a political leader with a distinct following in the country who are likely to carry out his ideas. He is a sort of Rosebery of Bengal politics, a brilliant, cultured amateur who catches up certain thoughts or tendencies that are in the air and gives them a more or less striking expression, but he has not the qualities of a politician – robustness, backbone, the ability to will a certain course of action and the courage to carry it out. He has intellectual sensitiveness, but not intellectual consistency. Suave, affable, pliable, essentially an amiable and cultured gentleman, he is unfit for the rough and tumble of political life, especially in a revolutionary period; no man who shrinks from struggle or is appalled by the thought of aggression can hope to seize and lead the wild forces that are rising to the surface in twentieth-century India. But this very knack of catching up however partially the moods of the moment gives a certain interest to Mr. Chowdhury’s⁹ pronouncements which make them worth examining.

When Mr. Chowdhury¹⁰ at Burdwan pronounced against the mendicant policy he was voicing two distinct and various currents of political tendency. The opprobrious term of mendicancy was applied to the old Congress School of politics not because remonstrance and protest are in themselves wrong and degrading, but because in the circumstances of modern India a policy of prayer, petition and protest without the sanction of a great irresistible national force at its back was bound to pauperise the energy of the nation and to accustom it to a degrading dependence. It was not only a waste of energy but a sapping of energy, and it was ruinous to manhood and self-respect. But the recognition of this fact only led to another problem. If we did not sue to others for help, we must help ourselves; if we did not depend on the alien's mercies, we must depend on our own strength. But how was that strength to be educated? Again, when we had decided that a subject nation has no politics, what then? Were we to renounce the birthrights inherent in our manhood and leave the field to the bureaucratic despotism or were we to resolve to cease to be a subject nation so that we might recover the right and possibility of political life and activity? There were two currents of political thought growing up in the country. One, thoughtful, philosophic, idealistic, dreamed of ignoring the terrible burden that was crushing us to death, of turning away from politics and educating our strength in the village and township, developing our resources, our social, economic, religious life regardless of the intrusive alien; it thought of inaugurating a new revolution such as the world had never yet seen, a moral, peaceful revolution, actively developing ourselves but only passively resisting the adversary. But there was another current submerged as yet, but actively working underneath, which tended in another direction,– a sprinkling of men in whom one fiery conviction replaced the cultured broodings of philosophy and one grim resolve took the place of political reasoning. The conviction was that subjection was the one curse which withered and blighted all our national activities, that so long as that curse was not removed it was a vain dream to expect our national activities to develop themselves successfully and that only by struggle could our strength be educated to action and victory. The resolve was to rise and fight and fall and again rise and fight and fall waging the battle for ever until this once great and free nation should again be great and free. It was this last current which boiled up to the surface in the first vehemence of the anti-Partition agitation, flung out the challenge of boycott and plunged the Bengali nation into a struggle with the bureaucracy which must now be fought out till the end.

All were carried away in the tide of that great upheaval; but it is needless to say that this was not what the advocates of self-help pure and simple had contemplated, Mr. Chowdhury¹¹ least of all. He very early identified himself with the small knot of older leaders who from time to time struggled with the tide and tried to turn it back; but until now the tide was too strong for them. For a moment, however, the rush has been checked by superhuman efforts of repression on the part of the panic-stricken bureaucracy and it is natural that those who were not with their whole heart and conviction for the struggle for Swaraj, should begin to revert to their old ideas, to long to give up the struggle, to retreat into the fancied security of their fortress of unpolitical Swadeshism and a policy of self-help which seeks to ignore the unignorable. The tendency is to cry, “The old policy is a failure, the Briton has revealed his true nature; the new policy is a failure, we have not strength to meet the giant power of the bureaucracy; let us¹² have the field, let us quietly pursue our own salvation in the peaceful Ashrams of Swadeshism and self-help.” Mr. Ashutosh Chowdhury¹³ with his keen intellectual sensitiveness has felt this tendency in the air and given it expression. It is a beautiful and pathetic dream. We will develop our manufacture, boycott foreign goods, of course in a quite friendly and non-political spirit, and England will look quietly on while its trade is being ruined! We will ignore the Government and build up our own centres of strength in spite of it, a Government the whole principle and condition of whose existence is that there shall be no centre of strength in the country except itself! Mr. Chowdhury’s¹⁴ policy would be an excellent one if he could only remove two factors from the political problem; first, Indian Nationalism, secondly, the British Government. And how does he propose to remove them? By shutting his eyes to their existence. Ignore the Government, dissociate yourselves from the men of violence,– and the thing is done. Such is the political wisdom of Mr. Ashutosh Chowdhury¹⁵.

Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volumes 6-7.- Bande Mataram: Political Writings and Speeches. 1890–1908 .- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2002.- 1182 p.

¹ 2002 ed. CWSA, vol.6-7: Chaudhuri