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Facts and Opinions
Volume I - Nov.
13, 1909 - Number 19
House-Searches
One wonders what would happen in any
European country if the police as a recompense for their utter inefficiency and
detective incapacity were armed with the power and allowed to use it freely of
raiding the houses of respectable citizens, ransack the property of absent
occupants and leaving it unsafe and unprotected, carrying off the business
books of Presses, newspapers and other commercial concerns, the private letters
of individuals, books publicly sold and procurable in every bookshop, violating
the sanctity of correspondence between wife and husband, searching the persons
of ladies of the house even though it be by female hands and the trampling on
the sanctity of the home, the dignity of the person and the self-respect which
every race worthy of existence holds to be dearer than life itself. And all
this in spite of the fact, exemplified a hundred times over, that these
inquisitions are wholly infructuous and can
serve no purpose but harassment and exasperation. Usually the searches are
undertaken, if we do not err, on the vague information of disreputable
hirelings used as spies and informers, the statements of lying approvers eager to save their own skins by jeopardising innocent men and confessions to the police of arrested prisoners
made either for the same purpose or dictated by a morbid vanity and
light-headed braggadocio which invents facts and details in order to give
dignity to petty crime and magnitude to small and foolish undertakings. The
ludicrously irrelevant and useless nature of
the articles which are the sole reward of this odious activity are its
sufficient condemnation. Even if the widespread conspiracy dreamed of by
authorities were a fact is it conceivable that respectable men, knowing the
police to be on the alert, would risk liberty and property by storing bombs,
looted ornaments or treasonous correspondence in their houses ? We are aware
that the right of house-search is a necessary weapon in the
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hands of authority
for the suppression of crime, but it was never meant that this should be
misused in order to supply the place of detective ability in the Police. House
searches are unwarrantable unless the information on which they proceed is
precise, reliable and highly probable. Judging from results not one of these
epithets can be applied to the numerous searches which are now becoming a
standing feature of life in Bengal. And if the search of the persons of ladies
is to become another common feature of these domiciliary visits, we fear that
the patience of a people jealously sensitive on these matters will not long
endure the strain. Surely, the higher authorities ought to have sufficient good sense to draw inevitable conclusion
from experience, perceive the limitations of this weapon and, if not for the
possible evil consequence of creating still greater disaffection, yet for its
barren inutility, renounce its excessive
use.
Social
Reform and Politics
There
are two methods of progress, two impelling motives from which great changes and
far-reaching reforms can be effected. One is the struggle of selfish interests
between man and man, class and class, working out progress by ignoble strife,
the forced compromise and convenient barter of the lower kind of politics. The
other is the impulse and clash of mighty ideas, noble aspirations, great
national or humanitarian aims, the things which inspire mankind in its upward
march and create empires and nations. Both are freely used by the Master of the
world in His careful providence and various economy. Often they are intermingled.
But it cannot be doubted which is most healthful to the individual, the nation
and the race. The social result worked out by a bitter and selfish struggle
between upper class and lower class. Labour
and Capital, is one thing; the harmony created by a mighty enthusiasm, such as
led the aristocracy of Japan to lay down their exclusive privileges and,
without reserve, call upon the masses to come up and share their high culture,
their seats of might and their ennobling traditions, is quite another. Hindu
society in the mofussil is now bitterly
divided, and tends more and
more to be
convulsed, by the new aspirations of the lower castes and the inability of the
higher to decide how they will meet the demand. It is a bad sign that the
action of both sides tends more and more to be selfish and narrow, political in
the worst sense of the word. To barter help in Swadeshi or faithfulness to
Hinduism for social privileges, or to bribe the masses to Swadeshism by petty and calculated concessions
will tend neither to the genuineness of the Swadeshi sentiment, nor the
strength of the national movement, nor the dignity and purity of our religion.
It is an evil and foreign principle which has entered into our system, one of
the many evil results of our disastrous contact with European civilisation at a
time of national weakness and disintegration and our attempt to assimilate it
without first vindicating our inner liberty and establishing ourselves as free
agents. A great social revolution in this ancient society ought only to come as
the fruit of a mighty national, humanitarian and religious impulse. The fault
of the present state of things rests largely with the waning insight and
statesmanship of the Brahmins. Formerly, they would not have been wanting
either in concerted action, largeness of view or skilfulness
of device. It was not their wont to stand still in an inert and impossible
conservatism but to recognise circumstances and meet them without sacrificing
the essence of their religion or the basic principles of Hindu society.
The
Deoghar Sadhu
Recently
some of the Bengali papers have contained detailed information of the feat of a
Sadhu who buried himself for some days not, as in the well-known Punjab case,
giving up his outward consciousness and entering into the Jada Samadhi or
inert inner existence, but in full possession of his outer senses and conversing
at times from his living tomb with visitors outside. The correspondent of the Bengalee
tells us that the local people were dissatisfied with the Sadhu because the
peculiar power he evinced was unattended by any moral elevation or true ascetic
qualities. It is a general delusion that the power thus shown is a very great
and almost supernatural Siddhi and ought to
be in the possession
only of very
highly developed souls. A false Indian tradition is partly responsible for the
error; partly, it is due to the supreme ignorance of the deeper secrets of our
being which belongs to the limited and self-satisfied materialistic Science of
Europe now dominant in our midst. There is nothing wonderful in the feat of
the Deoghar Sadhu,
which was the result of the conquest of the breath, Pranayam,
achieved by certain physical and mental processes and not necessarily
dependent on moral or spiritual progress. The Kumbhak
or retention of the Prana, dispensing with
the process of inbreathing and outbreathing,
is the final achievement of the process and the Kumbhak can, when thoroughly
conquered, be continued for an indefinite period. Given the power of Kumbhak,
it is obvious that one can stay under water or earth or in a room hermetically
sealed for as long as the state continues. The power of stopping the
heartbeats, dispensing with the process of breathing, and other of the outworks
of Yogic knowledge and achievement are being
slowly established in order to break down the exclusive pride of European
Science and prepare for a new order of knowledge and a greater science to which
its dogmatic narrowness is bitterly and
scornfully opposed.
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