Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Independence and its Sanction

INDEPENDENCE is not a gift which one can receive from another, it is a prize that has to be won. In the words of the poet Bhasa, used in respect of empire, we can say also of liberty:

Talloke na tu yacyate na tu punardinaya diyate

it is not a thing to be got for the mere asking, nor is it a thing to be made over to a weakling.

The lead Sri Aurobindo gave in this connection has not, sad to say, sufficiently attracted the attention of our people. Indeed what he suggested was exactly, (under the circumstances, the best way to acquire the necessary fitness, organised strength, capacity, the might and consequently the right just the sanction, in other words, that can uphold a demand. We are always ignoring the broad fact that we have not the wherewithal to fight the British, even if it is found necessary to do so for our purpose. A revolution, meaning a chaos and confusion, is not the best means to drive out the "die-hard Imperialism" as we choose to call it. Nor can cunning or expediency or legal jugglery be of any avail, nor work that is perfunctory, desultory, scampy. The force that can compel a change in the British has got to be of a different character: neither emotional excitement nor anger nor spite nor a philo­sophical or moral vindication of our cause can be an adequate lever. We declare it is a war: well then, we will have to arm ourselves as in war. That is to say, we must command a strength that is calm, collected, poised, organised – objectively acquired and marshalled, not simply subjectively thought out or taken for granted. That alone can be the imperative sanction to all our claims and demands, our wishes and aspirations.

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Precisely, the present war brings to our door the opportunity most suited to the acquisition and development of this power and strength. The very things the Indian temperament once had in abundance but now lacks most and has to recover­ – discipline, organization, impersonality and objectivity in work, hard and patient labour, skill of execution in minute details – qualities by virtue of which power is not only acquired, but maintained and fostered – are now made more easily available. These qualities cannot be mastered and developed with such facility and swiftness as under the pressure of the demands of a war. This does not mean that we have got to be militarists. But the world is such that if we wish to live and prosper we must know how to make use of the materials and conditions that are given to us. Many good things are im­bedded among bad ones, and wisdom and commonsense do not advise us to throw out the baby with the bath-water. That is another matter, however.

If we had joined hands with the British in the war-work on their own terms – to try to compel them to our terms is to put the cart before the horse – we would have seen that as we proceeded with the work, more and more of it came auto­matically under our charge, however small or slight it might have looked in the beginning. In the end or very soon we would have found that our possession of the field was an accom­plished fact, there could be no question of denying or refusing, the fact had to be accepted – admitted and ratified. It is the well-known policy of the camel which Aesop described in one of his Fables. We have to establish the inexorable logic of events which definitively solves the riddle, cuts the Gordian knot as it were. A theoretical, that is to say, a moral and legal pact or understanding is but a dam of sands.

Power is best gained and increased in this way, viz., through work, through practical application of it, in its painstaking execution – no matter with what insignificant fund we start with. Let all power come into my hands, let me be legally and verbally recognised as free and invested with plenary power, then alone I can exercise my power, otherwise not – ­this is the cry of romantic idealism, of sentimental hunger: it has all the impatience and incompetence of visionaries – ­illumines – It is not the clear and solid wisdom of experience.

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We naturally consider the British as our enemy and in order to combat and compel them we have been trying to bring together all the differing elements in our midst. Close up the ranks to fight a common enemy-that is our grand strategy. It is an effort that has not succeeded till now and is not likely to succeed soon. We should have looked a little farther ahead: with a longer view we would have spotted the greater enemy, a vastly greater immediate danger. Against that common enemy a larger and effective unification would have been quite feasible and even easy. Indeed, if we had taken the other way round, had first united with the British against the greater common enemy, our union with ourselves – our own peoples and parties – would have been automatically accomplished.

That is how we read the situation. When it looked as though there was no way left at our disposal to compose the acute and bitter differences among the multifarious Indian collectivities and also between the Indians and the British or foreigners, precisely at that critical hour appeared the war bringing a unique opportunity, a call and a message, as it were. There is certainly clash in Nature, but always there is an effort also in her to turn that clash into concord. India had too long been the field par excellenceof discord and it was time that a movement for real harmony should come. Yes, we say, the war was providential to us, a God-send, offering the chance of centuries. But blinded and perverted our human intelligence refused to take it at its worth.

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