A Great
Mind, a Great Wi11*
A GREAT mind, a great
will, a great and preeminent leader of men has passed away from the field of
his achievement and labour. To the mind of his country Lokamanya
Tilak was much more, for he had become to it a
considerable part of itself, the embodiment of its past efforts and the head of
its present struggle for a free and greater life. His achievement and
personality have put him amidst the first rank of historic and significant
figures. He was one who built much rapidly out of little beginnings, a creator
of great things out of an unworked material. The
creations he left behind him were a new and strong and self-reliant national
spirit, the reawakened political mind and life of a people, a will to freedom
and action, a great national purpose. He brought to his work extraordinary
qualities, a calm, silent, unflinching courage, an unwavering purpose, a
flexible mind, a forward-casting vision of possibilities, an eye for the
occasion, a sense of actuality, a fine capacity of democratic leadership, a
diplomacy that never lost sight of its aim and pressed towards it even in the
most pliant turns of its movement, and guiding all, a single-minded patriotism
that cared for power and influence only as a means of service to the Motherland
and a lever for the work of her liberation. He sacrificed much for her and
suffered for her repeatedly and made no ostentation of his suffering and
sacrifices. His life was a constant offering at her altar and his death has
come in the midst of an unceasing service and labour.
The passing of this
great personality creates a large and immediate void that will be felt acutely
for a time, but it is the virtue of his own work that this vacancy must very
soon be filled by new men and new forces. The spirit he created in the country is
of that sincere, real and fruitful kind that cannot consent to
* This article which first
appeared in The Independent on August 5, 1920, was sent by Sri Aurobindo in the
form of a telegram at the request of that journal's editor Bipin
Chandra Pal on the occasion of Lokamanya Tilak's death on August 1 of that year.
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cease
or to fail, but must always throw up minds and capacities that will embody its
purpose. It will raise up others of his mould, if not of his stature, to meet
its needs, its demands, its call for ability and courage. He himself has only
passed behind the veil, for death and not life is the illusion. The strong
spirit that dwelt within him ranges now freed from our human and physical
limitations, and can still shed upon us, on those now at work, and those who
are coming, a more subtle, ample and irresistible influence; and even if this
were not so, an effective part of him is still with us. His will is left behind
in many to make more powerful and free from hesitations the national will he
did so much to create, the growing will whose strength and single wholeness are
the chief conditions of the success of the national effort. His courage is left
behind in numbers to fuse itself into and uplift and fortify the courage of his
people; his sacrifice and strength in suffering are left with us to enlarge
themselves, more even than in his life-time, and to heighten the fine and
steeled temper our people need for the difficult share that still lies before
their en- deavour. These things are his legacy to his
country, and it is in proportion as each man rises to the height of what they
signify that his life will be justified and assured of its recompense.
Methods and
policies may change but the spirit of what Lokamanya Tilak was and did remains and will continue to be needed, a
constant power in others for the achievement of his own life's grand and single
purpose. A great worker and creator is not to be judged only by the work he
himself did, but also by the greater work he made possible. The achievement of
the departed leader has brought the Nation to a certain point. Its power to go
forward from and beyond that point, to face new circumstances, to rise to the
more strenuous and momentous demand of its future will be the greatest and
surest sign of the soundness of his labour. That test is being applied to the
National Movement at the very moment of his
departure.
The death of Lokamanya
Tilak comes upon us at a time when the country is passing through most troubled and poignant hours. It occurs at a
critical period, it coincides even with a crucial moment when questions are
being put to the nation by the Master of Destiny, on the answer to which
depends the whole
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spirit,
virtue and meaning of its future. In each event that confronts us there is a divine
significance, and the passing away at such a time of such a man, on whose
thought and decision thousands hung, should make more profoundly felt by the
people, by every man in the Nation, the great, the almost religious responsibility that lies upon him personally.
At this juncture it is
not for me to prejudge the issue; each must meet it according to his light and
conscience. This at least can be demanded of every man who would be worthy of
India and of her great departed son that he shall put away from him in the
decision of the things to be done in the future all weakness of will, all
defect of courage, all unwillingness for sacrifice. Let each strive to see with
that selfless impersonality, taught by one of our greatest scriptures, which
can alone enable us to identify" ourselves both with the Divine Will and
with the Son of out Mother. Two things India demands, a farther future, the
freedom of soul, life and action needed for the work she has to do for mankind;
and the understanding by her children of that work and of her own true spirit
that the future India may be indeed India. The first seems still the main sense
and need of the present moment, but the second is also involved in them - a yet
greater issue. On the spirit of our decisions now and in the next few years depends the truth, vitality and greatness of our future
national existence. It is the beginning of a great Self-Determination not only
in the external but in the spiritual. These two thoughts should govern our
action. Only so can the work done by Lokamanya Tilak find its true continuation and issue.
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