Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Calcutta, June 28^th, 1907

Part Four. Bande Mataram under the Editorship of of Sri Aurobindo (28 May – 22 December 1907)

The Secret Springs of Morleyism

The apostasy of John Morley has come as a surprise and a scandal to that numerous class of believers in British professions who looked upon him as an avatar of the spirit of philosophic Liberalism. To those who had studied the man at closer quarters there was no disappointment and no surprise. As the Kesari pointed out in the early days of his administration, the new Secretary of State might be a philosopher and defend human liberties in his books, but in the India Office he was bound to be a British statesman first of all and defend the continuance of British supremacy in India. But apart from this the whole temper of Mr. Morley’s mind and the cast of his opinions made it quite certain that he would never be able to sympathise with the aspirations of our people and their claims to self-government and autonomy. It is true that Mr. Morley talks about the necessity of sympathy as the mainspring of Indian administration, but what is the nature of this sympathy? What Mr. Morley calls sympathy is not really sympathy but the patronising benevolence of the master possessed of absolute powers of life and death who is generous enough to give his bondslave as much education as is good for him: in the process of that education he tries to be as indulgent as possible while reserving his right to scourge him occasionally for his own good and of course to appropriate all the profits of his labour for the master’s own purse. The object of the education given to the slave is not to fit him for freedom but to make him a more useful servant and one whose appearance and manners shall reflect credit on the master. Needless to say, this is not sympathy but a very undesirable form of arrogance and selfishness masquerading as benevolence. True sympathy means “putting oneself in another’s skin”, understanding and appreciating his view of things, his feelings, hopes and aspirations and feeling his struggles and sufferings as one’s own. This is the true liberal sentiment, the true liberal enthusiasm which men like Mr. Hyndman feel but which is extremely rare in the so-called Liberal party. Mr. Morley never had this sentiment and enthusiasm, he had only a cold philosophic conviction of the truth of the Liberal view of politics. This conviction depended on a keen intellectual appreciation of the materialistic, agnostic, scientific enlightenment of modern Europe and the governing ideas of the nineteenth century. But the very keenness of this appreciation makes it utterly impossible for Mr. Morley and men like him to understand and sympathise with Asiatics. To them Asia is a home of monstrous religions, barbarous despotisms, grotesque superstitions and a primitive morality. That this half-civilised continent contains peoples as capable of self-government as any European race is a thing which they cannot persuade themselves to believe, Japan not withstanding. Japan has shown that Asiatic civilisation is equal and in some important respects superior to European, needing only to be modernised and equipped with the mental and material processes invented by European science. She has proved that the capacity Asiatics have shown in organising society and politics under old conditions can be diverted with admirable results to the reorganisation of society and politics under modern conditions. But to minds of the Morley type Japan only presents itself as a freak or an inexplicable exception. The world of Liberalism and enlightenment to which alone liberal philosophy is applicable and in which alone liberal institutions can flourish, is the world of Europe and America which has inherited the legacy of Rome and Greece, of Christianity and rationalistic thought and science. Asia stands outside that charmed enclosure.

That this is the mental attitude of Mr. John Morley is shown by the use which he has made of a certain passage from Mill: “Government by a dominant country is as legitimate as any other if it is one which in the existing state of the civilisation of the subject people most facilitates their transition to our state of civilisation.” Now, it is obvious that the case which Mill had in mind was that of a civilisation so inferior that the people possessing it had no capacity to raise themselves or to assimilate for themselves the essentials of a new organization and must be gradually trained up by foreigners; his dictum can have no reference to a great and living civilization like the civilizations of China, Japan and India which have understood and practised organization and self-adaptation to surrounding circumstances for thousands of years and have developed a highly intellectual and ingenious people quick to understand, to imitate and to improve. Japan has reorganized herself without the blessings of foreign rule, China is doing the same, and there is no reason to suppose that there is any constitutional defect in the Indian people which would prevent them from following the example if the alien incubus were removed. In none of these cases would foreign rule facilitate the transition to a modern organization of politics and society; in India it has distinctly retarded it. But the very fact that Mr. Morley applies Mill’s dictum to India shows his inability to appreciate Asiatic civilization, character and capacity. He cannot and will not believe that Asiatics can ever be on a level with Europeans or capable of equalling and surpassing them in their own arts and sciences. His view of them is the view of Rudyard Kipling; they are the white man’s burden, the lower races, half devil and half child. This attitude of Mr. Morley’s is the ingrained, unalterable European sentiment. The rise of Japan is to the European a thing monstrous, incredible, unrealisable; he makes friends with the monster because he has seen its strength, but in his secret heart he chafes and rages against it as a thing intolerable and out of nature. He is prepared to use any and every means to crush Asiatic aspirations. Morality and humanity are meant to be employed in dealing with Asiatics just as much but no more than in dealing with the animal creation. There can be no European respect for Asiatics, no sympathy between them except the “sympathy” of the master for the slave, no peace except that which is won and maintained by the Asiatic sword. East is East and West is West and divided they shall remain; their temporary contact is decreed from time to time so that each may take from the other’s civilisation, but the interchange does not bring them nearer to each other. Those who like Mr. Krishnaswamy Aiyar think that because Europe will take much of India’s religion and philosophy, therefore she will learn to love and respect the Indian people, forget that Europe adopted a modified Judaism as her religion, yet hated, despised and horribly persecuted the Jews. European prejudice will always refuse to regard Asiatics as anything but an inferior race and European selfishness will always deny their fitness to enjoy the rights of men until the inevitable happens and Asia once more spews Europe out of her mouth.

This work was not included in SABCL, vol.1 and it was not compared with other editions.