BUT
after all my present business is not with negative criticism. I want
rather to ascertain what the Congress has really done, and whether it
is so much as to condemn all patriots to an Eleusinian silence about
its faults. My own genuine opinion was expressed, perhaps with too much
exuberance of diction,—but then the ghost of ancient enthusiasm
was nudging my elbow—when I described the Congress as a well of
living water, a standard in the battle, and a holy temple of concord.
It is a well of living water in the sense that we drink from it assurance
of a living political energy in the country, and without that assurance
perhaps the most advanced among us might not have been so advanced :
for it is only one or two strong and individual minds, who can flourish
without a sympathetic environment. I am therefore justified in describing
the Congress as a well of living water; but I have also described it
as the standard under which we have fought; and by that I mean a living
emblem of our cause the tired and war-worn soldier in the mellay can
look up to and draw from it from time to time fresh funds of hope and
vigour: such, and such only, is the purpose of a banner. One does not
like to say that what must surely be apparent even to a rude intelligence,
has been beyond the reach of intellects trained at our Universities
and in the liberal professions. Yet it is a fact that we have entirely
ignored what a casual inspection ought at once to have told us, that
the Congress is altogether too unwieldy a body for any sort of executive
work, and must solely be regarded as a convenient alembic, in which
the formulae of our aspirations may be refined into clear and accurate
expression. Not content with using a banner as a banner, we have actually
caught up the staff of it with a view of breaking our enemy's heads.
So blind a misuse must take away at least a third part of its virtue
from the Congress, and if we are at all to recover the loss, we must
recognise the limits of its utility as well as emend the device upon
it.
The Congress has been, then, a well of living water and a standard in
the battle of liberty; but besides these it has been something, which
is very much better than either of them, good as they too undoubtedly
are; it has been to our divergent races and creeds a temple, or perhaps
I should be more correct in saying a school of concord. In other words
the necessities of the political movement initiated by the Congress
have brought into one place and for a common purpose all sorts and conditions
of men, and so by smoothing away the harsher discrepancies between them
has created a certain modicum of sympathy between classes that were
more or less at variance. Here, and not in its political action, must
we look for any direct and really important achievement; and even here
the actual advance has as a rule been absurdly exaggerated. Popular
orators like Mr. Pherozshah Mehta, who carry the methods of the bar
into politics, are very fond of telling people that the Congress has
habituated us to act together. Well, that is not quite correct; there
is not the slightest evidence to show that we have at all learned to
act together; the one lesson we have learned is to talk together, and
that is a rather different thing. Here then we have in my opinion the
sum of all these capacities, in which the Congress has to any appreciable
extent promoted the really high and intimate interests of the country.
Can it then be said that on these lines the Congress has had such entirely
beneficial effects as to put the gag on all harsher criticism ? I do
not think that it can be properly so said. I admit that the Congress
has promoted a certain modicum of concord among us; but I am not prepared
to admit that on this line of action its outcome has been at all complete
and satisfying. Not only has the concord it tends to create been very
partial, but the sort of people who have been included in its beneficent
action, do not extend beyond certain fixed and narrow limits. The great
mass of the people have not been appreciably touched by that healing
principle, which to do the Congress justice, has very widely permeated
the middle class. All this would still leave us without sufficient grounds
to censure the Congress at all severely, if only it were clear that
its present line of action was tending to increase the force and scope
of its beneficence; but in fact the very contrary appears. We need no
soothsayer to augur that, unless its entire policy be remodelled, its
power for good, even in the narrow circle of its present influence,
will prove to have been already exploited. One sphere still remains
to it; it is still our only grand assurance of a living political energy
in the country: but even this well of living water must in the end be
poisoned or dried up, if the inner political energy, of which it is
the outward assurance remains as poor and bounded as we now find it
to be. If then it is true that the action of the Congress has only been
of really high import on one or two lines, that even on those lines
the actual result has been petty and imperfect, and that in all its
other aspects we can pronounce no verdict on it but failure, then it
is quite clear that we shall get no good by big talk about the splendid
unanimity at the back of the Congress. A splendid unanimity in failure
may be a very magnificent thing in its way, but in our present exigencies
it is an unanimity really not worth having. But perhaps the Congress
enthusiast will take refuge in stinging reproaches about my readiness
to publish our weakness to the enemy. Well, even if he does, I can assure
him, that however stinging his reproaches may be, I shall not feel at
all stung by them. I leave that for those honest people who imagine
that when they have got the Civil Service and other lucrative posts
for themselves, the Indian question will be satisfactorily settled.
Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own
crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our
purblind sentimentalism. I really cannot see why we should rage so furiously
against the Anglo-Indians and call them by all manner of opprobrious
epithets. I grant that they are rude and arrogant, that they govern
badly, that they are devoid of any great or generous emotion, that their
conduct is that of a small coterie of masters surrounded by a nation
of Helots. But to say all this is simply to say that they are very commonplace
men put into a quite unique position. Certainly it would be very grand
and noble, if they were to smother all thought of their own peculiar
interests, and aim henceforth, not at their own promotion, not at their
own enrichment, but at the sole good of the Indian people. But such
conduct is what we have no right to expect save from men of the most
exalted and chivalrous character; and the sort of people England sends
out to us are not as a rule exalted and chivalrous, but are usually
the very reverse of that. They are really very ordinary men,—and
not only ordinary men, but ordinary Englishmen—types of the middle
class or Philistines, in the graphic English phrase, with the narrow
hearts and commercial habit of mind peculiar to that sort of people.
It is something very like folly to quarrel with them for not transgressing
the law of their own nature. If we were not so dazzled by the artificial
glare of English prestige, we should at once acknowledge that these
men are really not worth being angry with: and if it is idle to be angry
with them, it is still more unprofitable to rate their opinion of us
at more than a straw's value. Our appeal, the appeal of every high-souled
and self-respecting nation, ought not to be to the opinion of the Anglo-Indians,
no, nor yet to the British sense of justice, but to our own reviving
sense of manhood, to our own sincere fellow-feeling—so far as
it can be called sincere—with the silent and suffering people
of India. I am sure that eventually the nobler part of us will prevail,—that
when we no longer obey the dictates of a veiled self-interest, but return
to the profession of a large and genuine patriotism, when we cease to
hanker after the soiled crumbs which England may cast to us from her
table then it will be to that sense of manhood, to that sincere fellow-feeling
that we shall finally and forcibly appeal. All this, it will be said,
may be very true or very plausible, but it is after all made up of unsupported
assertions. I quite admit that it is more or less so, nor did I at all
intend that it should be otherwise; the proof and support of those assertions
is a matter for patient development and wholly beside my present purpose.
I have been thus elaborate with one sole end in view. I wish even the
blindest enthusiast to recognise that I have not ventured to speak without
carefully weighing those important considerations that might have induced
me to remain silent. I trust that after this laboured preface even those
most hostile to my views will not accuse me of having undertaken anything
lightly or rashly. In my own opinion I should not have been to blame
even if I had spoken without this painful hesitation. If the Congress
cannot really face the light of a free and serious criticism, then the
sooner it hides its face the better. For nine years it has been exempt
from the ordeal; we have been content to worship it with that implicit
trust which all religions demand, but which sooner or later leads them
to disaster and defeat. Certainly we had this excuse that the stress
of battle is not the time when a soldier can stop to criticise his weapon:
he has simply to turn it to the best use of which it is capable. So
long as India rang with turbulent voices of complaint and agitation,
so long as the air was filled with the turmoil of an angry controversy
between governors and governed, so long we could have little leisure
or quiet thought and reflection. But now all is different; the necessity
for conflict is no longer so urgent and has even given place to a noticeable
languor and passivity, varied only by perfunctory public meetings. Now
therefore, while the great agitation that once filled this vast peninsula
with rumours of change, is content to occupy an obscure corner of English
politics it will be well for all of us who are capable of reflection,
to sit down for a moment and think. The hour seems to have come when
the Congress must encounter that searching criticism which sooner or
later arrives to all mortal things; and if it is so, to keep our eyes
shut will be worse than idle. The only good we shall get by it is to
point with a fresh example the aphorism with which I set out. "If
the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into a ditch?"
Indu
Prakash, August 21, 1893
- Sri Aurobindo
