An
Open Letter to My Countrymen
Page 2
Our
ideal is that of Swaraj or absolute autonomy free from foreign control.
We claim the right of every nation to live its own life by its own energies
according to its own nature and ideals. We reject the claim of aliens
to force upon us a civilisation inferior to our own or to keep us out
of our inheritance on the untenable ground of a superior fitness. While
admitting the strains and defects which long subjection has induced
upon our native capacity and energy, we are conscious of that capacity
and energy reviving in us. We point to the unexampled national vigour
which has preserved the people of this country through centuries of
calamity and defeat, to the great actions of our forefathers continued
even to the other day, to the many men of intellect and character such
as no other nation in a subject condition has been able to produce,
and we say that a people capable of such unheard-of vitality is not
one which can be put down as a nation of children and incapables. We
are in no way inferior to our forefathers. We have brains, we have courage,
we have an infinite and various national capacities. All we need is
a field and an opportunity. That field and opportunity can only be provided
by a national government, a free society and a great Indian culture.
So long as these are not conceded to us, we can have no other use for
our brains, courage and capacity than to struggle unceasingly to achieve
them.
Our
ideal of Swaraj involves no hatred of any other nation nor of the administration
which is now established by law in this country. We find a bureaucratic
administration, we wish to make it democratic; we find an alien government,
we wish to make it indigenous; we find a foreign control, we wish to
render it Indian. They lie who say that this aspiration necessitates
hatred and violence. Our ideal of patriotism proceeds on the basis of
love and brotherhood and it looks beyond the unity of the nation and
envisages the ultimate unity of mankind. But it is a unity of brothers,
equals and free men that we seek, not the unity of master and serf,
of devourer and devoured. We demand the realisation of our corporate
existence as a distinct race and nation because that is the only way
in which the ultimate brotherhood of humanity can be achieved, not by
blotting out individual peoples and effacing outward distinctions, but
by removing the internal obstacles to unity, the causes of hatred, malice
and misunderstanding. A struggle for our rights does not involve hatred
of those who mistakenly deny them. It only involves a determination
to suffer and strive, to speak the truth boldly and without respect
of persons, to use every lawful means of pressure and every source of
moral strength in order to establish ourselves and dis-establish that
which denies the law of progress.
Our
methods are those of self-help and passive resistance. To unite and
organise ourselves in order to show our efficiency by the way in which
we can develop our industries, settle our individual disputes, keep
order and peace on public occasions, attend to questions of sanitation,
help the sick and suffering, relieve the famine-stricken, work out our
intellectual, technical and physical education, evolve a Government
of our own for our own internal affairs so far as that could be done
without disobeying the law or questioning the legal authority of the
bureaucratic administration, this was the policy publicly and frankly
adopted by the Nationalistic party. In Bengal we had advanced so far
as to afford distinct proof of our capacity in almost all these respects
and the evolution of a strong, united and well-organised Bengal had
become a near and certain prospect. The internal troubles which came
to a head at Surat and the repressive policy initiated immediately afterwards,
culminating in the destruction of our organisations and the effective
intimidation of Swadeshi workers and sympathisers by official underlings,
have both been serious checks to our progress and seem for the moment
to have postponed the realisation of our hopes to a distant future.
The check is temporary. Courage and sane statesmanship in our leaders
is all that is wanted to restore the courage and the confidence of the
people and evolve new methods of organisation which will not come into
conflict even with the repressive laws.
The
policy of passive resistance was evolved partly as the necessary complement
of self-help, partly as means of putting pressure on the Government.
The essence of this policy is the refusal of co-operation so long as
we are not admitted to a substantial share and an effective control
in legislation, finance and administration. Just as “No representation,
no taxation” was the watchword of American constitutional agitation
in the eighteen century, so “No control, no co-operation”
should be the watchword of our lawful agitation – for constitution
we have none – in the twentieth. We sum up this refusal of co-operation
in the convenient word “Boycott”, refusal of co-operation
in the industrial exploitation of our country, in education, in government,
in judicial administration, in the details of official intercourse.
Necessarily, we have not made that refusal of co-operation complete
and uncompromising, but we hold it as a method to be enlarged and pushed
farther according as the necessity for moral pressure becomes greater
and more urgent. This is one aspect of the policy. Another is the necessity
of boycott to help our own nascent energies in the field of self-help.
Boycott of foreign goods is a necessary condition for the encouragement
of Swadeshi industries, boycott of Government schools is a necessary
condition for the growth of national education, boycott of British courts
is a necessary condition for the spread of arbitration. The only question
is the extent and conditions of the boycott and that must be determined
by the circumstances of the particular problem in each case. The general
spirit of passive resistance has first to be raised, afterwards it can
be organised, regulated and, where necessary, limited.
July,
1909,Calcutta
- AUROBINDO GHOSE
