"Thou
art weighed in the balance and found wanting."
"The little that is done seems nothing when we look forward and
see how much we have yet to do."
Thus far I have been making a circuit, in my disinclination to collide
too abruptly with the prepossessions of my countrymen and now that I
am compelled to handle my subject more intimately and with a firmer
grasp, nothing but my deliberate conviction that it is quite imperative
for someone to speak out, has at all persuaded me to continue. I have
at the very outset to make distinct the grounds on which I charge the
Congress with inadequacy. In the process I find myself bound to say
many things that cannot fail to draw obloquy upon me: I shall be compelled
to outrage many susceptibilities; compelled to advance many unacceptable
ideas; compelled,—worst of all,—to stroke the wrong way
many powerful persons, who are wont to be pampered with unstinted flattery
and worship. But at all risks the thing must be done, and since it is
on me that the choice has fallen, I can only proceed in the best fashion
at my command and with what boldness I may. I say, of the Congress,
then, this,—that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which
it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity
and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the
right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort
of men to be leaders;—in brief, that we are at present the blind
led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.
To begin with, I should a little while ago have had no hesitation in
saying that the National Congress was not really national and had not
in any way attempted to become national. But that was before
I became a student of Mr. Pherozshah Mehta's speeches. Now to deal with
this vexed subject, one must tread on very burning ground, and I shall
make no apology for treading with great care and circumspection. The
subject is wrapped in so thick a dust of controversy, and legal wits
have been so busy drawing subtle distinctions about it, that a word
which was once perfectly straightforward and simple, has become almost
as difficult as the Law itself. It is therefore incumbent on me to explain
what I wish to imply, when I say that the Congress is not really national.
Now I do not at all mean to reecho the Anglo-Indian catchword about
the Hindus and Maho-medans. Like most catchwords it is without much
force, and has been still further stripped of meaning by the policy
of the Congress. The Mahomedans have been as largely represented on
that body as any reasonable community could desire, and their susceptibilities,
far from being denied respect, have always been most assiduously soothed
and flattered. It is entirely futile then to take up the Anglo-Indian
refrain; but this at least I should have imagined, that in an era when
democracy and similar big words slide so glibly from our tongues, a
body like the Congress, which represents not the mass of the population,
but a single and very limited class, could not honestly be called national.
It is perfectly true that the House of Commons represents not the English
nation, but simply the English aristocracy and middle class and yet
is none the less national. But the House of Commons is a body legally
constituted and empowered to speak and act for the nation, while the
Congress is self-created: and it is not justifiable for a self-created
body representing only a single and limited class to call itself national.
It would be just as absurd if the Liberal Party, because it allows within
its limits all sorts and conditions of men, were to hold annual meetings
and call itself the English National Congress. When therefore I said
that the Congress was not really national, I simply meant that it did
not represent the mass of the population.
But Mr. Pherozshah Mehta will have nothing to do with this sense of
the word. In his very remarkable and instructive Presidential address
at Calcutta, he argued that the Congress could justly arrogate this
epithet without having any direct support from the proletariate; and
he went on to explain his argument with the profound subtlety expected
from an experienced advocate. "It is because the masses are still
unable to articulate definite political demands that the functions and
duty devolve upon their educated and enlightened compatriots to feel,
to understand and to interpret their grievances and requirements, and
to suggest and indicate how these can best be redressed and met."
This formidable sentence is, by the way, typical of Mr. Mehta's style
and reveals the secret of his oratory, which like all great inventions
is exceedingly simple: it is merely to say the same thing twice over
in different words. But its more noteworthy feature is the idea implied
that because the Congress professes to discharge this duty, it may justly
call itself national. Nor is this all; Calcutta comes to the help of
Bombay in the person of Mr. Manmohan Ghose, who repeats and elucidates
Mr. Mehta's idea. The Congress, he says, asserting the rights of that
body to speak for the masses, represents the thinking portion of the
Indian people, whose duty it is to guide the ignorant, and this in his
opinion sufficiently justifies the Congress in calling itself national.
To differ from a successful barrister and citizen, a man held in high
honour by every graduate in India, and above all a future member of
the Viceroy's Council, would never have been a very easy task for a
timid man like myself. But when he is reinforced by so respectable and
weighty a citizen as Mr. Manmohan Ghose, I really cannot find the courage
to persevere. I shall therefore amend the obnoxious phrase and declare
that the National Congress may be as national as you please, but it
is not a popular body and has not in any way attempted to become a popular
body.
But at this point some one a little less learned than Mr. Pherozshah
Mehta may interfere and ask how it can be true that the Congress is
not a popular body. I can only point his attention to a previous statement
of mine that the Congress represents not the mass of the population,
but a single and limited class. No doubt the Congress tried very hard
in the beginning to believe that it really represented the mass of the
population, but if it has not already abandoned, it ought now at least
to abandon the pretension as quite untenable. And indeed when Mr. Pherozshah
Mehta and Mr. Manmohan Ghose have admitted this patent fact—not
as delegates only, but as officials of the Congress—and have even
gone so far as to explain the fact away, it is hardly requisite for
me to combat the fallacy. But perhaps the enquirer, not yet satisfied,
may go on to ask what is that single and limited class which I imagine
the Congress to represent. Here it may be of help to us to refer again
to the speeches of the Congress leaders and more especially to the talented
men from whom I have already quoted. In his able official address Mr.
Man-mohan Ghose asks himself this very question and answers that the
Congress represents the thinking portion of the Indian people. "The
delegates present here today," he goes on, "are the chosen
representatives of that section of the Indian people who have learnt
to think, and whose number is daily increasing with marvellous rapidity."
Perhaps Mr. Ghose is a little too facile in his use of the word "thinking".
So much at the mercy of their instincts and prejudices are the generality
of mankind, that we hazard a very high estimate when we call even one
man out of ten thousand a thinking man. But evidently by the thinking
portion Mr. Ghose would like to indicate the class to which he himself
belongs; I mean those of us who have got some little idea of the machinery
of English politics and are eager to import it into India along with
cheap Liverpool cloths, shoddy Brummagem wares, and other useful and
necessary things which have killed the fine and genuine textures. If
this is a true interpretation he is perfectly correct in what he says.
For it is really from this class that the Congress movement draws its
origin, its support and its most enthusiastic votaries. And if I were
asked to describe their class by a single name, I should not hesitate
to call it our new middle class. For here too English goods have driven
out native goods: our society has lost its old landmarks and is being
demarcated on the English model. But of all the brand new articles we
have imported, inconceivably the most important is that large class
of people—journalists, barristers, doctors, officials, graduates
and traders—who have grown up and are increasing with prurient
rapidity under the aegis of the British rule: and this class I call
the middle class: for, when we are so proud of our imported English
goods, it would be absurd, when we want labels for them, not to import
their English names as well. Besides this name which I have chosen is
really a more accurate description than phrases like "thinking
men" or "the educated class" which are merely expressions
of our own boundless vanity and self-conceit. However largely we may
choose to indulge in vague rhetoric about the all-pervading influence
of the Congress, no one can honestly doubt that here is the constituency
from which it is really empowered. There is indeed a small contingent
of aristocrats and a smaller contingent of the more well-to-do ryots:
but these are only two flying-wheels in the great middle-class machine.
The fetish-worshipper may declare as loudly as he pleases that it represents
all sorts and conditions of people, just as the Anglo-Indians used to
insist that it represented no one but the Bengali Babu. Facts have been
too strong for the Anglo-Indian and they will be too strong in the end
for the fetish-worshipper. Partisans on either side can in no way alter
the clear and immutable truth — these words were put on paper
long before the recent disturbances in Bombay and certainly without
any suspicion that the prophecy I then hazarded would be fortified by
so apt and striking a comment. Facts are already beginning to speak
in a very clear and unambiguous voice. How long will the Congress sit
like careless Belshazzar, at the feast of mutual admiration? Already
the decree has gone out against it; already even the eyes that are dim
can discern,—for has it not been written in blood?—the first
pregnant phrase of the handwriting upon the wall. "God has numbered
the kingdom and finished it." Surely after so rough a lesson, we
shall not wait to unseal our eyes and unstop our ears, until the unseen
finger moves on and writes the second and sterner sentence: "Thou
art weighed in the balance and found wanting." Or must we sit idle
with folded hands and only bestir ourselves when the short hour of grace
is past and the kingdom given to another more worthy than we?
Indu
Prakash, August 28, 1893
- Sri Aurobindo
