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The
Issue
THE bureaucracy as usual has over-reached itself in instituting a case
under the sedition clause against the editor of the Yugantar. The
Punjabee prosecution did untold harm to their prestige and helped to shatter the
not over-abundant remnants of their moral ascendancy; its work was negative and
destructive. But the Yugantar prosecution has been a positive gain to the
national cause; it has begun the positive work of building up the moral
ascendancy of the people which is to replace that of the alien and nullify his
mere material superiority. This momentous result the editor of the Yugantar has
brought about by his masterly inactivity. His refusal to plead has been worth
many sensational trials. It has produced an enormous effect on the public mind
all over India, not only as an individual instance of moral courage and
readiness to suffer quietly and simply, without ostentation and
self-advertisement, as a matter of course and one's plain duty to the country,
but as the first practical application in the face of persecution of the sheer
uncompromising spirit of Swarajism. For the first time a man has been found who
can say to the power of alien Imperialism, "With all thy pomp of empire and
splendour and dominion, with all thy boast of invincibility and mastery
irresistible, with all thy wealth of men and money and guns and cannon, with all
thy strength of the law and strength of the sword, with all thy power to
confine, to torture or to slay the body, yet for me, for the spirit, the real
man in me, thou art not, thou art only a phase, a phenomenon, a passing
illusion, and the only lasting realities are my Mother and my freedom."
It is well that we should understand the real issue which is not
primarily one of law or of political forms and institutions, but a spiritual
issue on which all others depend and from which they arise. The question is not
whether one Bhupendranath Dutt published matter which he knew to be likely to
bring the Government established by law, to wit certain mediocrities in
Belvedere,
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Darjeeling,
Shillong or Simla who collectively call themselves the Government of Bengal or
of India, into contempt or hatred or to encourage a desire to resist or subvert
their lawful authority. If that were all, we might argue the question whether
what he did was wise or what he wrote was true or mistaken, legal or illegal. As
it is, these things do not matter even to the value of a broken cowrie. The real
issue for us Nationalists is something quite different and infinitely more
vital. It is this, "Is India free?" — not
even "Shall India be free?" but, is India free and am I as an Indian
free or a slave bound to the service, the behest or forced guidance of something
outside and alien to myself and mine, something which is anātman, not myself? Am I, are my people part of
humanity, the select and chosen temple of the Brahman, and entitled therefore to
grow straight in the strength of our own spirit, free and with head erect before
mankind, or are we a herd of cattle to live and work for others? Are we to live
our own life or only a life prescribed and circumscribed for us by something
outside ourselves? Are we to guide our own destinies or are we to have no
destiny at all except nullity, except death? For it is nonsense to talk of
other people guiding our destinies, that is only an euphemism for killing our
destinies
altogether; it is nonsense to talk of others giving us enlightenment, civilisation, political training, for the enlightenment that is given and not
acquired brings not light but confusion, the civilisation that is imposed from
outside kills a nation instead of invigorating it, and the training which is not
acquired by our own experience and effort incapacitates and does not make
efficient. The issue of freedom is therefore the only issue. All other issues
are merely delusion and Maya, all other talk is the talk of men that sleep or
are in intellectual and moral bondage.
We Nationalists declare that man is for ever and inalienably free and
that we too are, both individually as Indian men and collectively as an Indian
nation, for ever and inalienably free. As freemen we will speak the thing that
seems right to us without caring what others may do to our bodies to punish us
for being freemen, as freemen we will do what we think good for our country, as
freemen we will educate ourselves in our own schools, settle our differences by
our own arbitrators, sell and buy our own
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goods,
build up our own character, our own civilisation, our own national destinies.
Your schools, your administration, your Law Courts, your manufactured articles,
your Legislative Councils, your Ordinances and sedition laws are to us things
alien and unreal, and we eschew them as Maya, as anātman. If men and nations are for ever and
inalienably free, then bondage is an illusion, the rule of one nation over
another is against natural law and therefore a falsehood, and falsehood can only
endure so long as the Truth refuses to recognise itself. The princes of Bengal
at the time of Plassey did not realise that we could save ourselves. We were not
enslaved by Clive, for not even a thousand Clives could have had strength enough
to enslave us, we were enslaved by our own delusions, by the false conviction of
weakness. And the moment we get the full conviction of our strength, the
conviction that we are for ever and inalienably free, and that nobody but
ourselves can either take or keep from us that inalienable and priceless
possession, from that moment freedom is assured. So long as we go on crying
"We are unfit, we are unfit", or even doubt our fitness, so long we
shall make and keep ourselves unfit. It is only the conviction of fitness for
freedom and the practice of freedom that makes and keeps men fit for freedom. To
create that conviction, to encourage and make habitual that practice is the
whole aim of the new movement. Nationalism is the gospel of inalienable freedom.
Boycott is the practice of freedom. To break the Boycott and to stop the
preaching of Nationalism is the whole object of the bureaucracy. The Times saw
this when it singled out the writings of Bande Mataram and Yugantar, the
speeches of Bepin Chandra Pal and his like and above all, the Boycott as the
root of all evil. Behind all technicalities this is the true and only issue in
these sedition cases. The Nationalists declare that Indians are for ever and
inalienably freemen and vindicate their right to preach this gospel; Mr. Morley
and the bureaucrats tell us we are for ever and inalienably the property of
England and would pursue our preaching as a crime. Who or what shall reconcile
this fundamental and irreconcilable opposition?
Bande Mataram,
July 29, 1907
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