An
Open Letter to My Countrymen
Page 1
The
position of a public man who does his duty in India today is too precarious
to permit of his being sure of the morrow. I have recently come out
of a year’s seclusion from work for my country on a charge which
there was not a scrap of reliable evidence to support, but my acquittal
is no security either against the trumping up of a fresh accusation
or the arbitrary law of deportation which dispenses with the inconvenient
formality of a charge and the still more inconvenient necessity of producing
evidence. Especially with the hounds of the Anglo-Indian Press barking
at our heels and continually clamouring for Government to remove every
man who dares to raise his voice to speak of patriotism and its duties,
the liberty of the person is held on a tenure which is worse than precarious.
Rumour is strong that a case for my deportation has been submitted to
the Government by the Calcutta Police and neither the tranquillity of
the country nor the scrupulous legality of our procedure is a guarantee
against the contingency of the all-powerful fiat of the Government watch-dogs
silencing scruples on the part of those who advise at Simla. Under such
circumstances I have thought it well to address this letter to my countrymen,
and especially to those who profess the principles of the Nationalist
party, on the needs of the present and the policy of the future. In
case of my deportation it may help to guide some who would be uncertain
of their course of action, and, if I do not return from it, it may stand
as my last political will and testament to my countrymen.
The
situation of the Nationalist party is difficult but not impossible.
The idea of some that the party is extinct because its leaders are sentenced
or deported, is an error which comes of looking only at the surface.
The party is there, not less powerful and pervading than before, but
in want of a policy and a leader. The first it may find, the second
only God can give it. All great movements wait for their God-sent leader,
the willing channel of his force, and only when he comes, move forward
triumphantly to their fulfilment. The men who have led hitherto have
been strong men of high gifts and commanding genius, great enough to
be the protagonists of any other movements, but even they were not sufficient
to fulfil one which is the chief current of a world-wide revolution.
Therefore the Nationalist party, the custodians of the future, must
wait for the man who is to come, calm in the midst of calamity, hopeful
under the defeat, sure of eventual emergence and triumph and always
mindful of the responsibility which they owe not only to their Indian
posterity but to the world.
Meanwhile
the difficulties of our situation ask for bold yet wary walking. The
strength of our position is moral, not material. The whole of the physical
strength in the country belongs to the established authority which our
success would, so far as its present form is concerned, abolish by transforming
it out of all possibility of recognition. It is natural that it should
use all its physical strength, so long as it can, that transformation.
The whole of the moral strength of the country is with us, justice is
with us, Nature is with us. The law of God which is higher than any
human, justify our action; youth is for us, the future is ours. On that
moral strength we must rely for our survival and eventual success. We
must not be tempted by any rash impatience into abandoning the ground
on which we are strong and venturing on the ground on which we are weak.
Our ideal is an ideal which no law can condemn: our chosen methods are
such that no modern Government can expressly declare them illegal without
forfeiting its claim to be considered a civilised administration. To
that ideal and to those methods we must firmly adhere and rely on them
alone for our eventual success. A respect for the law is a necessary
quality for endurance as a nation and it has always been a marked characteristic
of the Indian people. We must therefore scrupulously observe the law
while taking every advantage both of the protection it gives and the
latitude it still leaves for pushing forward our cause and our propaganda.
With the stray assassinations which have troubled the country we have
no concern, and, having once clearly and firmly dissociated ourselves
from them, we need notice them no farther. They are the rank and noxious
fruit of a rank and noxious policy and until the authors of that policy
turn from their errors, no human power can prevent the poison-tree from
bearing according to its kind. We who have no voice either in determining
the laws of their administration are helpless in the matter. To deportation
and proclamation, the favourite instruments of men incapable of wise
and strong rule, we can only oppose a steady and fearless adherence
to the propagandism and practice of a lawful policy and a noble ideal.
July,
1909,Calcutta
- AUROBINDO GHOSE
