Sri Aurobindo. The New Nationalism // Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings

Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Early Political Writings. 1890 — May 1908

Hindusthan Standard. August 14, 1938

The nicknames of party warfare have often passed into the accepted terminology used by serious politicians and perpetuated by history, and it is possible that the same immortality may await the designations of Moderates² and Extremists³ by which the two parties now contending for the mind of the nation are commonly known. The forward party is the party of Nationalism;⁴ but what is Nationalism? For there is a great deal in a name in spite of Shakespeare. The⁵ word has only recently begun to figure as an ordinary term of our politics and it has been brought into vogue by the new, forward or extreme party, which, casting about for a convenient description of themselves, selected the new name⁶ as the only one covering in a word their temper and gospel⁷ as attached to a political party or school of thought⁸. A name serves not only to show⁹ the temper and point of view of the giver, but it helps greatly to colour contemporary ideas about the party it seeks to exalt or disparage. The advanced men whom Anglo-Indian and Moderate unite in branding as Extremists have always repudiated the misleading designators¹⁰. At first they preferred to call themselves the New School; they now claim the style of Nationalists, a claim which has been angrily objected to on the ground that the rest of the Congress Party are as good Nationalists as the forward party.

The new Nationalism, I said in a former article in this Review, is a negation of the old bourgeois ideals of the nineteenth century. It is an attempt to relegate the dominant bourgeois to¹² his old obscurity, to transform the bourgeois into the Samurai and through him to extend the workings of the Samurai spirit to the whole nation, or to put it more broadly, it is an attempt to create a nation¹³ in India by reviving the¹⁴ spirit and action of the ancient¹⁵ Indian character, the strong, great and lofty spirit of old Aryavarta and setting it on fire, and¹⁶ mould the methods and materials of modernity for the freedom, greatness and well-being of an¹⁷ historic and immortal people. This is not, I am well aware, a description under which the ordinary Congress politician will recognise¹⁸ what he knows of desperate Extremism¹⁹, but it will be well understood by those who are constant readers of the Nationalist journals in Bengal, whether the Bande Mataram or New India or vernacular journals like the Yugantar, the Nabasakti, or the Sandhya. Whatever their differences of temper or tone, however²⁰ the methods they recommend may differ in detail, they are united by a common faith and a common spirit, a common faith in the Nationalism²¹ which existed²² in India before it became definite and articulate in Bengal. But it is Bengal that gave it a philosophy, a faith, a method and a battle-cry. India, not an²³ Anglicised and transmogrified nation unrecognisable²⁴ as India²⁵, but an²⁶ India of the immortal²⁷ past, India of the clouded but fateful present, India mighty²⁸, crowned with the²⁹ imperial diadem of the future, a common spirit of enthusiasm, hope, desire³⁰ to demand³¹ all things so that our vision of her future may be fulfilled greatly and soon: this is the heart of Nationalism. The ordinary Congress politician's ideas of Nationalism are associated with wasted³² discussions in committee and Congress, altercations at public meetings, unsparing criticism³³ of successful and eminent respectabilities, sedition trials, National volunteers, East Bengal disturbances, Rawalpindi riots. To him the Nationalist is nothing more than an Extremist, a violent, unreasonable, uncomfortable being whom some malign power has raised up to disturb with his Swaraj and boycott, his lawlessness and his lathis³⁴ the respectable class³⁵ and the safety³⁶ of Congress politics. He finds him increasing in numbers and influence with an alarming rapidity which it is convenient to deny but impossible to ignore³⁷; he has no clear idea of the aim and the drift³⁸ of Extremism, but he³⁹ imagines it to be its⁴⁰ object to drive out the English and make India free by boycott and lathis⁴¹, and having thus erected a scarecrow to chuck stones at, he thinks himself entitled to dismiss the New Party from⁴² his mind as a crowd of enthusiasts⁴³ who talk nonsense and advocate impossibilities.

Nationalism cannot be so easily dismissed; a force which has shaken the whole of India, trampled the traditions of a century into a refuse of irrecoverable fragments and set the mightiest of modern empires groping in a panic for weapons strong enough to meet a new and surprising danger, must have some secret of strength and therefore of truth in it which is worth knowing. To get at the heart of Nationalism we must first clear away some of the conceptions⁴⁴ with which its realities have been clouded. We must know what Nationalism is not, before we ask what it is.

Extremism in the sense of unreasoning violence of spirit and the preference of desperate methods, because they are desperate, is not the heart of Nationalism. The Nationalist does not⁴⁵ advocate lawlessness⁴⁶ for its own sake; on the contrary, he has deeper⁴⁷ respect for the essence of the law⁴⁸ than anyone else, because the building up of a nation is his objective and he knows well that without a profound reverence for law a national⁴⁹ life cannot persist and attain a sound and healthy development. But he qualifies his respect for legality by the proviso that the law he is called upon to obey is the law of the nation, an outgrowth of the⁵⁰ organic existence and part of its Government⁵¹. A law imposed from outside can command only the obedience⁵² of those whose chief demand from life is the safety to⁵³ their persons and property, or the timid obedience of those who understand the danger of breaking the law. The claim made by it is an utilitarian, not a moral claim. Farther, the Nationalist never loses sight of the truth that law was made for man and not man for law⁵⁴. Its chief function and reason for existence is to safeguard and foster the growth and happy flowering into strength and health of National life. And a law which does not subserve this end or which opposes and contradicts the same⁵⁵, however rigidly it may enforce peace, or order⁵⁶ and security, forfeits its claim to respect and obedience. Nationalism refuses to accept law as a fetish or peace and security as an aim in themselves; the only idol of its worship is Nationality and the only aim it in itself recognises⁵⁷ is the freedom, power, and well-being of the Nation. It will not prefer violent or strenuous methods simply because they are violent or strenuous, but neither will it cling to mild and peaceful methods simply because they are mild and peaceful. It asks of a method whether it is effective for its purpose, whether it is worthy of a great people struggling to be, whether it is educative of national strength and activity; and these things ascertained, it asks nothing farther. The Nationalist⁵⁸ does not love anarchy and suffering for their own sake, but⁵⁹ if anarchy and suffering are the necessary passage to the great consummation he seeks, he is ready to bear them himself, to expose others to them till the end is reached. They⁶⁰ will embrace suffering of their children, and embrace suffering as⁶¹ a lover and clasp the hand of anarchy like that of a trusted friend. It is not the temper of the Nationalist⁶² to take the inevitable grudgingly or to serve or struggle with a half heart⁶³. If that is Extremism and fanaticism, he is an Extremist and a fanatic; but not for their own sake, not out of a disordered love for anarchy and turmoil, not in madness and desperation but out of a reasoned conviction and courageous acceptance of the natural love by⁶⁴ which a man who aspires to reach a difficult height must climb⁶⁵ up the steep rocks and risk life and limb in arduous places, that have⁶⁶ decreed that men who desire to live as free men in a free country must not refuse to be ready to pay toll for freedom with their own blood, the blood⁶⁷ of their children, and still more, the nation which seeks to grow out of subjection into liberty must consent first to manure the soil with the tears of its women and the bodies of its sons. The Nationalist knows what he asks from fate and he knows the price that fate asks from him in return. Knowing it he is ready to drag the⁶⁸ nation with him into the valley of the shadow of death, dark with night and mist and storm, sown thick and crude with perils of strange monsters and perils of morass and fire and flood, holding all danger and misery as nothing because beyond the valleys are the mountains of Beulah, where the nation shall enjoy eternal life. He is ready to lead the chosen people into the desert of⁶⁹ long wanderings though he knows that often in the bitterness of its sufferings it will murmur and rebel against his leadership and raise its hand to stone him to death as the author of its misery, for he knows that beyond is the promised land flowing with milk and honey which, the divine voice has told him, those⁷⁰ who are faithful will reach and possess. If he embraces anarchy, it is as the way to good government. If he does not shrink from disorder and violent struggle it is because without that disorder there can be no security and without that struggle no peace, except the security of decay and the peace of death. If he has sometimes to disregard the law of man, it is to obey the dictates of his conscience and the law of God.

Late 1907 – early 1908

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 Editorial title. Late 1907 or early 1908. The present text follows the manuscript exactly. Sri Aurobindo first wrote, on separate pages, two incomplete paragraphs, each with a heading meant to be the title of the piece. Then, on a third page, he began again, this time without any heading. As neither of the existing headings was selected as the final title, the editors have placed a general editorial title above them both. The “former article, in this Review” referred to in the first complete paragraph is undoubtedly “The Bourgeois and the Samurai”. The text of “The New Nationalism” was put in as evidence by the prosecution in the Alipore Bomb Trial. In the beginning of 1909 this piece and “The Morality of Boycott” were reproduced from the court transcripts by Swaraj, a fortnightly review published from London by Bipin Chandra Pal. The London text was later reproduced in the Hindusthan Standard of August 14, 1938 and elsewhere.