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From Phantom to Reality
THE action of the omnipotent and irresponsible executive in obstructing
District Conferences alike in the proclaimed and unproclaimed areas of Bengal
ought to carry home to every mind, however persistent in self-deception, the
absurdity of vaunting the rights and privileges of a subject people. There is a
taunt writ large over these ukases and it is this: "Fools and
self-deceivers who think that rights can be held as the gift of a superior!
Nothing is a right till it has been purchased by sacrifices as great as the
aspiration is high. You were allowed to speak and pass resolutions so long as
speeches and resolutions were all; but now that you are breaking the tacit
contract by turning your movement into a serious thing, we order you to be
silent and disperse." Māyā dies hard. Illusion is the chief obstacle
to salvation, man clings to illusions by a natural impulse; but to rid oneself
of them is the beginning of wisdom. Illusions have long stood in the way of our
political salvation and the lingering faith of our prominent men in persistent
constitutional agitation, even when the alien bureaucracy stands completely
unmasked before our eyes, is an illustration of the obstinate cherishing of
illusions. The Magistrate prohibits the holding of the District Conference at
Khulna. The High Court is moved and the illegal ukase is precipitately
withdrawn: but the withdrawal was merely a change of tactics. A bureaucracy
never lacks pretexts to harass the undesirables. The promoters of the Conference
are now on their trial for making seditious speeches in the Conference.
At Faridpur a local leader, whose faith in the ultimate good sense of the
autocratic rulers has outlived even the recent violent strain, arranged for a
District Conference on a grand scale notwithstanding the protests of a section
of the public against holding meetings with permission from the Police. As the
recent District Conferences, though compromising our self-respect to a certain
extent, have at last been justified by their results, we have
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preferred
not to press the point of honour. We have submitted to the Ordinance by not
holding meetings; Faridpur and Pabna carry their weakness a little further, that
is all. And on the whole it was well that the attempt to hold the Conference was
made. For the Faridpur leaders adopted to a certain extent the Nationalist
programme and have, as a consequence, come in conflict with the bureaucracy. The
prohibitory ukase of the Magistrate of Faridpur leaves no doubt as to the
attitude of the bureaucracy towards opposition in any form. They demand a tame
acquiescence in their arbitrary regulations and are determined to put down any
expression of adverse opinion under the pretext of preventing the spread of
disaffection and the disturbance of public tranquillity. Is further explicitness
wanted? Cultivate the art of "wooing", hold meetings to issue loyalist
manifestos or celebrate the Empire Day, but if you are audacious enough to
express your discontent, the British truncheon is ready for you. This is the
whole meaning of these ukases; this is the moral repeatedly inculcated through
the various prohibitory circulars. As the old superstitions have still their
hold on some minds, we welcome the repetition of such browbeating. But in the
meantime we must not fail to turn them to account. If we are not capable of
offering any active opposition to the encroachment on our natural rights, the
intensified sense of wrong should at least give a healthy direction to the
patriotic efforts of all. From such continued rebuffs we should draw the energy
and inspiration to work out our national well-being on independent lines. Every
fresh blow should impart a greater impetus to the Boycott, to National
Education, to the organisation of discontent, with a view to leaving the aliens
severely alone. But hitherto our Moderate friends have rather been anxious to
ram their heads more vigorously against the stone wall of bureaucracy than to
learn by their failure the necessity of taking our own road. They still persist
in trying to resurrect the dead phantom of British sympathy and good will.
Henceforth they should seek rather the resurrection of our own national strength
and greatness. When Lord Curzon aimed his first blow at self-government by
giving his seal of approval to the Calcutta Municipal Bill, the Pratibasi published
a cartoon exposing the unsubstantial nature of our
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rights
and privileges. The Calcutta Municipality was represented as a shrouded corpse
surrounded by weeping relatives to whom a padre with the physiognomy of
Sir John Woodburn soothingly remarked, "The Lord hath given, the Lord hath
taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." It drew forth from the Pioneer
the following retort: "The quaint conceit might have been rounded off
by some hope of future resurrection." This false hope which the bureaucracy
till now sedulously fostered, has been a curse to the country. Privileges
granted as favours have no true life in them; they are mere illusions and what
is the use of striving for the fitful return, of ghosts who are again bound to
disappear? Let mãyã pass out of us, let the illusions die;
let us turn with clear eyes and sane minds from these pale and alien phantoms to
the true reality of our Mother as she rises from the living death of a century,
and in her seek our only strength and our sufficient inspiration.
There
is an interesting article in the Modern Review on Swadeshi in Education,
interesting not only because of the subject and its importance, or of the
undoubted thought and ability which has been devoted to the subject, but also
and still more because of the limitations of the present education to which it
bears striking evidence. The mind trained by the present system of education,
even when it is somewhat above the average, is almost invariably deficient in
practicality and the robustness to shake off cherished superstitions and face
and recognise facts. The attempt at Swadeshi Education under the official
Universities has been made both in Calcutta and under particularly favourable
circumstances at Poona. At Poona an immense amount of self-sacrifice went to the
making of the New English School and the Ferguson College, and some of the best
intellects and noblest hearts in the Deccan devoted themselves to the work. Yet
the end was failure. The Ferguson College is in no way superior to any other
institution in the Bombay University, although also in no way inferior. Its
education is the same vicious and defective education — utterly
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unsuited
to modern needs
— academic,
scrappy, unscientific, unpractical, unideal.
It takes aid from the officials, submits to their dictation and excludes
politics at their bidding. Yet the proposal of the Modern Review writer
is merely to concentrate the best intellects of the country in the Poona
Institution in order to make it "an Indian College superior to any existing
College", and as summarily, dismisses the idea of a National University
merely on the score of expense. We fail to see how this will meet the problem or
how such an institution can really deserve the name of Swadeshi in Education.
Swadeshi in Education does not mean teaching by Indian professors only or even
management by Indians only. It means an education suited to the temperament and
needs of the people fitted to build up a nation equipped for life under modern
conditions and absolutely controlled by Indians. The proposed Model College
might avail itself of the services of Drs. Bose and Ray and Ziauddin, but they
would after all have to teach on the lines and up to the standard of the Bombay
University and submit entirely to the rules and orders of the Bombay Government,
as conveyed through an officialised Senate and Syndicate. We should still be
confined within the vicious circle of which the writer complains. We should be
no nearer "taking the higher education of this country into our own hands
and ceasing to look to Englishmen for help" than we were thirty years ago.
Independence is the first condition and any scheme which disregards it is doomed
to failure.
Bande Mataram,
July 13, 1907
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