The Role of South India in the Freedom Movement

The Lessons of the Freedom Movement

This book has presented some of the salient and important contributions of South India to the Freedom Movement. It does not claim to be a comprehensive and detailed narration of the events and personalities involved in the Freedom Movement; yet it gives an overall picture of the role of the South. However, it must always be remembered that this kind of regional approach - though very useful in its own way - must always be seen within the larger national framework, for no event or personal contribution can be seen in isolation. They all form part of the larger panorama. And that is because man is not an isolated being separate from each other and shut in tight compartments. There has been and will always be a constant exchange and interchange of ideas and forces and this is true right from the beginning of human history. This is beautifully illustrated in the following extract from Sri Aurobindo:

'Mankind as a whole has at present no consciously organised common life; it has only an inchoate organization determined much more by circumstances than by human intelligence and will. And yet the idea and the fact of our common human existence, nature, destiny has always exercised its strong influence on human thought and action. One of the chief preoccupations of ethics and religion has been the obligations of man to mankind. The pressure of the large movements and fluctuations of the race has always affected the destinies of its separate communities, and there has been a constant return-pressure of separate communities social, cultural, political, religious to expand and include, if it might be, the totality of the race.' 1

Thus there has been a constant flow of ideas and influences between North and South India and naturally the events and personalities have reflected this interchange.

It is from this point of view that we have to understand this presentation. Consequently, in the national context, the Freedom Movement has to be seen always from the national perspective overcoming all narrow and limited interpretations and viewpoints.

The Aim of the Freedom Movement

The chief aim of the Freedom Movement - first semi-consciously, then consciously - was to create first an awareness of the deeper cultural and spiritual psyche that held India together and then to convert this psychological unity into a political movement aimed at creating a unified nation state. For at the beginning of the nineteenth century, India seemed to be at the point of disintegration. Many historians and observers believed that India was then at the point of dissolution. The society was steeped in superstition, manacled by primitive customs, and it seemed that the sense of community had all but vanished. The country was facing a crisis of immense proportions. It was necessary for the very survival of India to bring back the sense of identity and sense of oneness. The question was: Where was this sense of identity? This identity lay in its cultural and spiritual culture.

For, it was this cultural and spiritual sense, present from the very earliest times of Indian history that made India a distinct and unique nation. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

'For in India, the spiritual and cultural unity was made complete at a very early time and it became the very basis of life of all this great surge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas. The peoples of ancient India were not so much distinct nations sharply divided from each other by a separate political and economic life; rather, they were sub-peoples of a great spiritual and cultural nation itself firmly separated physically, from other countries by the seas and the mountains and from other nations by its strong sense of difference, its peculiar common religion and culture.

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The whole basis of the Indian mind is its spiritual and inward turn; its propensity has always been to seek the things of the spirit and the inner being first and foremost and to look at all else as secondary, dependent, to be handled and determined in the light of the higher knowledge; the outer world was seen as an expression, a preliminary field or aid to the deeper spiritual aim. In other words, this approach led to a tendency to create whatever it had to create first on the inner plane and afterwards in its other and outer aspects.'2

The first task was therefore to rediscover this spiritual identity.

The second task was to convert this fundamental spiritual and cultural unity into a political unity. For without a strong political unity, neither would it be possible to defend ourselves from aggression nor to organise effectively our external political and economic life. But the task was beset with problems; the problems were enormous and seemed to defy solution despite many heroic attempts in the past. Thus once more in the words of Sri Aurobindo:

'The whole past of India for the last two thousand years and more has been the attempt, unavailing in spite of many approximations to success, to overcome the centrifugal tendency of an extraordinary number and variety of disparate elements, the family, the commune, the clan, the caste, the small regional state or people, the large linguistic unit, the religious community, the nation within the nation. We may perhaps say that here Nature tried an experiment of unparalleled complexity and potential richness, accumulating all possible difficulties in order to arrive at the most opulent result. But in the end the problem proved insoluble or, at least, was not solved and Nature had to resort to her usual deus ex machina denouement, the instrumentality of a foreign rule.'3

The foreign rule that proved to be the instrument triggering the final attempt at political unity was the British rule in India. As already explained in the book, the British exploitation first provoked minor revolts all over the country, then the Sepoy Mutiny and finally the formation of the Indian National Congress. The Congress Party took this to the logical conclusion by getting independence and forming the Indian State in 1947. Unfortunately, in this process, the country got its freedom but not unity. Undoubtedly, a sufficient fighting unity was brought about to win freedom, but the freedom obtained did not carry with it a complete union of the country. On the contrary, India was deliberately split on the basis of the two-nation theory into Pakistan and Hindustan with the deadly consequences which we are now facing.

We have seen in this book that this partition could probably have been avoided had we accepted the Cripps Proposal.

In this context, quoting an extract from a message given by Sri Aurobindo on the very day that India got her independence:

India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom. At one time it almost seemed as if she might relapse into the chaos of separate States which preceded the British conquest. Fortunately there has now developed a strong possibility that this disastrous relapse will be avoided. The wisely drastic policy of the Constituent Assembly makes it possible that the problem of the depressed classes will be solved without schism or fissure. But the old communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country must go,—it is to be hoped by a slackening of tension, by a progressive understanding of the need of peace and concord, by the constant necessity of common and concerted action, even of an instrument of union for that purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever form—the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by

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whatever means, the division must and will go. For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and even frustrated. But that must not be.4

The task is now to create the conditions for this union. It has to be proved by all the means at our disposal that it is not by cutting a country into small bits that we can bring about its unity and greatness; it is not by opposing interests against each other that we can win for it prosperity; it is not by setting one dogma against another that we can serve the spirit of Truth. In spite of all, India has a single soul and while we have to wait till we can speak of an India one and indivisible, our cry must be:

LET THE SOUL OF INDIA LIVE FOR EVER!

Summary of the Freedom Movement

We shall take up now a brief resume of the political movements in India in the last century and a half.

The first phase of the Indian political revival started with the formation of the Indian National Congress. This phase was dominated by the Moderate philosophy of the Congress. The essentials of the movement may be summed up thus:

• An implicit faith in the British sense of justice and fairplay

The determination to work within the framework of the constitution as laid down by the British

No clear-cut goal for political freedom; only some reforms and a greater participation in the government

The method adopted to fulfil these demands were: pray, petition and protest; even for its shamefully modest demands, flattery to gain the goodwill of the British

In the second phase, led by Sri Aurobindo, Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal, the Movement took a new orientation. The Swadeshi Movement as it was called attempted to base its political creation on the Indian spirit and not upon imitative European lines. This movement pursued a new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. This was echoed in South India by Subramaniam Bharati and other leaders of the time.

No doubt it failed, due to the strength of a hostile pressure and the weakness still left by a past decadence. Although its incipient creations were broken or left languishing and deprived of their original significance, yet they remained as a finger post on the roads. But at the same time, it must be noted that this movement stands out as one of the most important events in Indian political history. For the growth and development of Nationalism, during that brief period of three years through the instrumentality of Sri Aurobindo's Bandemataram and Subramaniam Bharati, is a political phenomenon unparalleled by any similar movement in the world.

Let us now see what the contributions of this movement were.

Firstly, it was fundamentally a Nationalist Movement which succeeded in creating a powerful sentiment among the masses; it awoke the sense and spirit of Indian-ness that was at once a reawakening of the ancient Shakti of India and a new pulsation to recover the Spirit and give to it new and creative instruments of thought and energy.

Secondly, the subsequent movement of the Congress from 1920 onwards was guided and inspired by the principal ideas and programmes of the Nationalist Movement; unfortunately, the movement deviated in its spirit and force from the sublime and daring vision of the early Nationalists like Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and others.

The third phase began with the advent of Gandhi. It seemed at one point of time that there would be a continuation and development of the movement started in the second phase. Gandhi with his

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enormous popularity and hold on the Indian masses seemed poised to continue the spiritual turn given in the previous stage. But that was not to be. There was a distinct shift from the Indian spiritual turn to a moral and in some ways a foreign turn; however well-garbed it was in the Indian attire. Gandhi gave a completely different interpretation of the Indian spirit and it is this vision that stills holds sway among a very large section of the Indian intelligentsia and political elite. This deviation was the cause of much of the confusion and tardiness of the movement of non-cooperation, Satyagraha and non-violent struggle. It was this approach - an excessive stress on the moral aspect of non-violence - that ultimately led to the rejection of the Cripps Proposal. It is in this context that we have to give due recognition to the praiseworthy role of Rajagopalchari for his courageous stand against the Congress Party and Gandhi.

Ultimately, India muddled through an uncertain terrain of thought and action as also much suffering and violence and attained freedom that left India divided amid communal tensions which are crippling India even today after fifty years of Independence. The solution to this state of affairs is to bring back the spirit of the Swadeshi Movement. The attempt to revive the deeper and genuine Indian spirit is bound to be renewed as soon as a wider gate is opened under more favourable conditions. Untill that attempt comes a serious danger besets the soul of India.

What are the steps to be taken to fulfil this task? The first step is to recreate the spirit of the Freedom Movement leading to the rebirth of the soul of India. But if there is to be a rebirth of the soul of India, it must insist much more finally and integrally than it has as yet done on its spiritual turn, on the greater and greater action of the spiritual motive in every sphere of our living.

India has the key to the knowledge and conscious application of the ideal; what was dark to her before in its application, she can now, with a new light, illumine; what was wrong and wry in her old methods she can now rectify; the fences which she created to protect the outer growth of the spiritual ideal and which afterwards became barriers to its expansion and farther application, she can now break down and give her spirit a freer field and an ampler flight: she can, if she will, give a new and decisive turn to the problems over which all mankind is labouring and stumbling, for the clue to their solutions is there in her ancient knowledge. Whether she will rise or not to the height of her opportunity in the renaissance which is coming upon her, is the question of her destiny.

In other words, the government must openly declare that the spiritual motive is to be the leading power behind all our actions.

The Future

Let us now look at the future and see how India can fulfil her true destiny.

For India to be secure and progress according to her natural Swadharma three steps have to be taken.

• The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work

The flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge

An original dealing with modern problems in the light of the Indian spirit and the endeavour to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society

Her success on these three lines will be the measure of her help to the future of humanity.

In order to recover the old Indian spiritual knowledge India has to insist much more finally and integrally than she has as yet done on her spiritual turn, on the increasingly greater action of the spiritual motive in every sphere of our living.

A passage from Sri Aurobindo sums up the whole position:

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'India can best develop herself and serve humanity by being herself and following the law of her nature. This does not mean, as some narrowly and blindly suppose, the rejection of every thing new that comes to us in the stream of time or happens to have been first developed or powerfully expressed by the West. Such an attitude would be intellectually absurd, physically impossible and above all unspiritual; true spirituality rejects no new light or added means or materials of our human self-development. It means simply to keep our centre, our essential way of being, our inborn nature and assimilate to it all we receive and evolve out of it all we do and create. Religion has been a central preoccupation of the Indian mind; some have told us that too much religion ruined India, precisely because we made the whole of life religion or religion the whole of life, we have failed in life and gone under. I will not answer, adopting the language used by the poet in a slightly different connection that our fall does not matter and that the dust in which India lies is sacred. The fall, the failure does matter, and to lie in the dust is no sound position for man or nation. But the reason assigned is not the true one. If the majority of Indians had indeed made the whole of their lives religion in the true sense of the word, we would not be where we are now; it was because their public life became most irreligious, egoistic, self-seeking, materialistic that they fell. It is possible that on one side we deviated too much into an excessive religiosity, that is to say, an excessive externalism of ceremony, rule, routine, mechanical worship, and on the other into a too world-shunning asceticism which drew away the best minds who were thus lost to society instead of standing like the ancient Rishis as its spiritual support and its illuminating life-givers. But the root of the matter was the dwindling of the spiritual impulse in its generality and broadness, the decline of intellectual activity and freedom, the waning of great ideals, the loss of the gust of life.'

'Nor does spirituality mean the moulding of the whole type of the national being to suit the limited dogmas, forms, tenets of a particular religion, as was often enough attempted by the old societies, an idea which still persists in many minds by the power of old mental habits and associations; clearly such an attempt would be impossible, even if it were desirable in a country full of the most diverse religious opinions and harbouring too three distinct general forms as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, to say nothing of the numerous special forms to which each has given birth. Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion and in the larger ideas that are now coming on us, even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or brand of the one universal religion; by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greatest self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values.'5

One of the most serious problems facing India today is the Hindu-Muslimissue. There are two conceivable solutions; the rise of a greater spiritual principle and formulation, which would reconcile the two and a political patriotism surmounting the religious struggle and uniting the two communities. During the freedom struggle an attempt was made to create this political patriotism and it was partially successful but in the end religious intolerance and mistrust took over and the result was the partition of the country.

It is now time to attempt the solution of the problem on both these lines. The institution of SAARC is itself a first step and opportunity in this direction and this forum can be used to create patriotism on both political and economic lines.

In order to establish spirituality as the chief motive force, we have to go beyond religion. The solution lies in the following words of The Mother:

'The conflict of religions arises because each one claims the exclusive truth and demands a complete adherence to it by the method of dogma, ritual, ceremony and prescribed acts. The solution would be, first to recognize that the real truth of religion is in the spiritual experiences of which it is an outer formulation. To transcend therefore the outer form, and insist on the spiritual experience and in addition to recognize that there can be infinite and valid varieties of spiritual

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experiences is the important step in the solution. It is not by insisting on religion that India and the world can be reconstructed. The new world will transcend religions and will insist on the purity of spiritual experience.

Instead of taking religions in their outward forms, which are precisely dogmas and intellectual conceptions, if we take them in their spirit, in the principle they represent there is no difficulty in unifying them. They are simply different aspects of human progress, which complete each other perfectly well and should be united with many others yet to form a more total and more complete progress, a more integral approach to the Divine.

India's attempt in her religion was to some extent directed to this inner perception; it is at present lost but we must now place forward this perception clearly and radically, not revive religion or religious spirit, but present the ideal of spiritual perfection which consists of an integral realization of the spirit and its full manifestation in physical life.' 6

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