An
Open Letter to My Countrymen
Page 4
Outside
the Congress the chances of united working are more complete than within
it. There are only two questions which are likely either to trouble
harmony or hamper action. The first is the question of the acceptance
or rejection of the present reforms introducing, as they do, no element
of popular control nor any fresh constitutional principle of privileged
representation for a single community. This involves the wider question
of co-operation. It is generally supposed that the Nationalist party
is committed to the persistent and uncompromising refusal of co-operation
until they get the full concession of Swaraj. Nationalist publicists
have not cared to combat this error explicitly because they were more
anxious to get their ideal accepted and the spirit of passive resistance
and complete self-help popularised than to discuss a question which
was not then a part of practical politics. But it is obvious that a
party advancing such a proposition would be a party of doctrinaires
and idealists, not of practical thinkers and workers. The Nationalist
principle is the principle of “No control, no co-operation”.
Since all control has been refused, and so long as all control is refused,
the Nationalist party preaches the refusal of co-operation as complete
as we can make it. But it is evident that if, for instance, the power
of imposing protective duties were given to a popular and elective body,
no serious political party would prefer persistence in commercial boycott
to the use of the powers conceded. Or if education were similarly made
free of official control and entrusted to a popular body, as Lord Reay
once thought of entrusting it, no sensible politician would ask the
nation to boycott that education. Or if the courts were manned by Indian
judges and made responsibly not to the Executive but to a Minister representing
the people, arbitration would immediately take its place as a supplementary
aid to the regular courts. So also the refusal to co-operate in an administration
which excludes the people from an effective voice does not involve a
refusal to co-operate in an administration of which the people are an
effective part. The refusal of autocratic gifts does not involve a refusal
to take up popular rights inalienably secured to the people. It is on
the contrary with the object of compelling the concession of the various
elements of Swaraj by peaceful moral pressure and in the absence of
such concessions developing our own institutions to the gradual extrusion
and final supplanting of bureaucratic institutions that the policy of
self-help and passive resistance was started. This acceptance of popular
rights does not imply the abandonment of the ideal of complete autonomy
or of the use of passive resistance in case of any future arbitrary
interference with the rights of the people. It implies only the use
of partial Swaraj as a step and means towards complete Swaraj. Where
the Nationalists definitely and decisively part company with an influential
section of the Moderates is in refusing to aspirations from their unalterable
ideal or delude the people into thinking that they have secured real
rights.
Another
question is that of cleaving to and enforcing the Boycott. In Bengal,
even if there are some who are timid or reactionary enough to shrink
from the word or the thing, the general feeling in its favour is emphatic
and practically unanimous. But it is time now to consider seriously
the question of regulating the Boycott. Nationalists have always demurred
to the proviso “as far as possible” in the Swadeshi resolution
on account of the large loophole its vagueness left to the hesitating
and the lukewarm, and they have preferred the form “at a sacrifice”.
But it will now be well if we face the concrete problems of the Boycott.
While we must keep it absolute wherever Swadeshi articles are procurable
as also in respect to pure luxuries with which we can dispense, we must
recognise that there are necessities of life and business for which
we still to go to foreign countries. The public ought to be guided as
to the choice of the countries which we shall favour in the purchase
of these articles, — necessarily they must be sympathetic to Indian
aspirations, — and those we shall exclude. The failure to deal
with this question is largely responsible for the laxity of our political
boycott and our consequent failure to get the Partition rescinded. There
are also other questions, such as the attempt of shopkeepers and merchants
to pass off foreign goods wholesale as Swadeshi, which must be taken
up at once if the movement is not to suffer a serious setback.
A
final difficulty remains, — by what organisation are we to carry
on the movement even when these questions are settled? The Nationalist
programme was to build up a great deliberative and executive organisation
on the basis of a reconstituted Congress, and this scheme still remains
the only feasible means of organising the country. Even if a united
Congress cannot be secured, the provinces ought to be the only possible
way of restoring the Congress, by reconstituting it from the bottom.
Even the District organisations, however, cannot work effectively without
hands, and these we had provided for in the Sabhas and Samitis of young
men which sprang up on all sides and were just succeeding in forming
an efficient network of organisation all over Bengal. These are now
being suppressed by administrative order; it becomes a question whether
we cannot replace them by a loose and elusive organisation of young
men in groups ordering each its own work by common agreement and working
hand in hand, but without a rigid or definite organisation. I throw
out the suggestion for consideration by the leaders of thought and action
in the provinces where unity seems at all feasible.
This
then is the situation as it presents itself to me. The policy I suggest
to the Nationalist party briefly be summed up as follows: -
1. Persistence
with a strict regard to law in a peaceful policy of self-help and passive
resistance.
2. The regulation of our
attitude towards the Government by the principle of “No control,
no co-operation”.
3. A rapprochement with the Moderate Party wherever possible
and the reconstitution of a united Congress.
4. The regulation of the Boycott Movement so as to make both the political
and the economic boycott effective.
5. The regulation of the Boycott Movement so as to make both the political
and the economic boycott effective.
6. A system of co-operation which will not contravene the law and will
yet enable workers to proceed with the work of self-help and national
efficiency, if not quite so effectively as before, yet with energy and
success
July,
1909,Calcutta
- AUROBINDO GHOSE
