Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 18th September 1909 — No.13
Facts and Opinions
The Two Programmes
There could hardly be a more striking contrast than the pronounced dissimilarity between the resolutions passed at the Hughly Provincial Conference under the pressure of the Moderate leaders' threat to dissociate themselves from the proceedings if the Pabna resolutions were reaffirmed and the resolutions passed at the enthusiastic and successful District Conference held last Saturday and Sunday in the Surma Valley.
They are severally the reaffirmation of two different programmes, the advanced Moderate programme of a section of opinion in West Bengal supported by Faridpur in the East and a sprinkling of individuals in some of the large towns and the Nationalist programme as advanced by East Bengal and a great section of opinion in the West.
The advanced Moderate programme contemplates Colonial self-government as a distant and ultimate goal, advocates commercial boycott of foreign goods, contemplates National education as an educational experiment supported practically by some, in theory only by others, and regards self-help as a pendant and subordinate to so-called constitutional agitation, in other words, the acceptance of everything the Government does subject to protest, criticism and, when necessary, invective.
This is the theory of co-operation plus opposition, opposition in words, co-operation in practice.
It has to be seen how far the reassertion of this policy, for some time discredited, will go in its results and what is the underlying motive of the Moderate leaders in insisting on the reassertion at this particular moment when the Partition, deportations, coercive laws are in full operation and not a single one of our grievances redressed.
The Nationalist programme asserts autonomy as the right of all nations, advocates the use of every legitimate and peaceful means towards its establishment whether swift or gradual, and especially favours the use of self-help to train and 
organise the nation for self-government and of passive resistance to confirm and defend the measures of self-help and to bring pressure on the bureaucracy to yield a substantial measure of self-government.
The defect of the Nationalist Party is not in energy or organisation, for it has a superior capacity in these respects to its opponents, but in means and the present weight of its personalities.
It is only by effective, persistent and organised work with what means it has at its disposal that the party can make up for this inferiority.
That organisation must now be taken definitely in hand.
It is doubtful whether the frail hope of an1 United Congress will ever take shape as a materialised fact, and even if it does, it is likely to be under such circumstances that the Nationalists would be ill-advised to put their main energy into Congress work until they have so all-pervading and solid a strength in the country as to make it possible for them to assert themselves without any peril to the united progress of the nation.
They must vindicate the superiority of their programme by its effectual execution and result, leaving the Moderates for the present to the raptures of their rapprochement with the bureaucracy.