Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 11th September 1909 — No.12
Facts and Opinions
Public Disorder and Unfitness
A favourite device of the opponents of progress is to point to the frequent ebullitions of tumult and excitement which have recently found their way into our political life and argue from them to our unfitness.
In the mouths of our own countrymen the use of this argument arises partly from political prejudice but still more from inexperience of political life and the unexamined acceptance of 
Anglo-Indian sophistries.
But in the mouths of Englishmen this kind of language cannot be free from the charge of hypocrisy.
They know well of the much worse things that are done in political life in the West and accepted as an inevitable feature of party excitement.
The rough horseplay of public meetings which is a familiar feature of excited times in England, would not be tolerated by the more self-disciplined Indian people.
As for really serious disturbance the worst things of that kind which have happened in India occurred at Surat when Sj. Surendranath Banerji was refused a hearing and on the next day when Mr. Tilak was threatened on the platform by the sticks and chairs of Surat loyalists and the Mahratta delegates charged and after a free fight cleared the platform.
The refusal to hear a speaker by dint of continuous clamour, hisses and outcries is of such frequent occurrence in England that it would indeed be a strange argument which would infer from such occurrences the unfitness of the English race for self-government.
We may instance the University meeting at which Mr. Balfour was once refused a hearing and at the end of an inaudible speech two undergraduates dressed as girls danced up to the platform and gracefully offered the Conservative statesman a garland of shoes which was smilingly accepted.
As for the storming of platforms and turning out of the speakers and organisers, that also is a recognised and not altogether infrequent possibility of political life in England.
A case remarkable for its sequel happened at Edinburgh when a faith-healer attempted to speak against Medicine and the undergraduates forced their way in, attacked and wounded the police, smashed all the chairs, hurled a ruined piano from the platform and hooted the discreetly absent orator in his hotel and challenged him to come out with his speech.
On complaint the Chancellor of the University declared his approval of this riot and in a court of law the students were acquitted on the plea of justification.
It may well be said that such a view of what is permissible in political life ought not to be introduced into India, but it is the worst hypocrisy for the citizens of a country where such things not only happen but are tolerated and sometimes approved by public opinion, to turn up the whites of 
their eyes at Indian disorderliness and argue from it to the unfitness of the race for democratic politics.
And it must be remembered that worse things happen on the Continent, free fights occurring even in august legislatures, yet it has not been made an argument for the English people going over to the Continent to govern the unfit and inferior European races.