Sri Aurobindo

Karmayogin

Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910

Karmayogin: A Weekly Review

Saturday 18^th September 1909 — No.13

Facts and Opinions

Shall We Accept the Partition?

This may sound a startling proposition to a nation which is perpetually reaffirming its decision never to accept the settled fact. But it rises definitely upon the question of accepting the reforms. We cannot conceal from ourselves the staringly patent fact that if we accept the reforms, we accept the Partition. The new changes are partly meant to confirm the division which every English statesman declares it to be essential to British prestige to perpetuate, and if the older leaders of West Bengal accept the reforms and stand for Sir Edward Baker's Council or allow their followers to stand for it, the sooner the partition resolution is deleted from the proceedings of Provincial and District conferences and the celebration of the 16th October discontinued, the better for our national honesty and sincerity. If the West Bengal leaders, who under the pressure of public opinion gave up their seats on the old Council and the idea of becoming Honourables in future, join the reformed Council in Calcutta, there is nothing to prevent the East Bengal leaders from joining Sir Lancelot Hare's Council in the capital of the New Province. If that happens, where will the Anti-Partition agitation be and where the solemn vow of unity? To solemnly meet once a year and declare that we will never, never accept what we have accepted, would be a farce too hypocritical for the conscience of the most cynical or the intelligence of the most deluded to tolerate. Any revival of the fiction that it is East Bengal which has been partitioned from West Bengal and therefore there is no obligation on the West Bengal leaders to boycott the Councils while the East Bengal leaders are so bound, will not be suffered. But the Moderates have definitely and rigidly excluded political boycott from their programme; yet what is the abstention from the Councils but a political boycott? If they carry this exclusion to its logical result and accept the reformed Councils, that is the end of the Anti-Partition agitation. Lord Morley's policy will be entirely successful and Mr. Gokhale may still more loudly acclaim him as the saviour of India from a state of anarchy and chaos.

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in  30  volumes.- Volume 2.- Karmayogin: Political Writings and Speeches (1909 — 1910).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972.- 441 p.