Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

42

Taken at the Flood

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures."

"My eyes first set themselves on Sri Aurobindo," said Suresh Chandra Deb at the beginning of his narrative, "on a November evening on the eve of the Benares Congress held during the last days of December, 1905. The place of the meeting was a room at the Field and Academy Club in the Sib Narayan Das Lane just north-east of the present Vidyasagar College on Cornwallis Street.... Leaders of thought and society had been discussing the pros and cons of the then methods of political activity that were confined to petition, prayer and protest to the alien Authority which held India under subjection.... On the November evening referred to above, there were gathered Bipin Chandra Pal, Chittaranjan Das, Surendranath Halder,

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and Sarat Chandra Sen — all familiar faces; the only exception was a retiring figure sitting quietly in a chair, whose name I later came to know as Aurobindo Ghose. The discussion that ensued referred to the resolutions of the forthcoming session of the Congress. The Boycott resolution had been passed at a meeting held at the Calcutta Town Hall on the 7^th of August, 1905.... Though the control of the Congress was in the hands of the 'Moderates' they dared not resile from the position taken up at the Calcutta meeting. Advanced opinion in Maharashtra and the Punjab, represented by Balwant Gangadhar Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai, pressed home this advantage, and the Benares Congress endorsed the resolution under pressure of that militant group of Indian politicians. All the possibilities of situation were discussed at this meeting. Sri Aurobindo remained a silent listener."

As we have before said, Sri Aurobindo had been a looker-on at the tame Ahmedabad session of the Congress in 1902, where a disgusted Tilak had taken him out of the pavilion and talked with him for an hour expressing his contempt for the Moderates' bankrupt policy of prayer and protest.

Sri Aurobindo had also attended the 1904 Bombay Congress. It was at this 20^th session of the Congress that Sir Henry Cotton in his Presidential address mooted for the first time the ideal of 'a Federation of free and separate states, the United States of India.' With the stipulation, however, that the whole country should remain a colony of the British Empire.

The Benares Congress of 1905 was attended by eminent leaders from all the provinces. Rabindranath inaugurated the

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Conference by singing the Bande Mataram song. Sister Nivedita was present. Sri Aurobindo also. In his book, The Liberator, Sisir Kumar Mitra reports the remembrances of a boy volunteer in charge of Sri Aurobindo's camp there. The boy was none other than Kalimohan Ghose, a co-worker of Rabindranath at Santiniketan when my family stayed there. Naturally enough the boy had "hoped to attend the open session along with his guest. But to his surprise, he saw that Sri Aurobindo remained where he was and the prominent leaders came to him, discussed matters, went back to the open session and acted accordingly. Kalimohan spoke from personal knowledge on the ongoing in both the places to Sri Aurobindo who, sensing the boy's desire to attend the meeting, provided him with an admission card. Kalimohan related this to the writer with tears of love and gratitude in his eyes."

After a good deal of discussion between the Moderates and the Nationalists a resolution urging boycott of British goods was moved before the Congress and ... passed.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale was the President of the 21^st Congress at Benares. He it was who said, "Only mad men outside lunatic asylums could think or talk of independence." So it is quite astonishing what a revolutionary like Sister Nivedita found in him. "One thing only about Nivedita I couldn't understand," said Sri Aurobindo reflectively. "She had an admiration for Gokhale. I don't understand how a revolutionary could admire him. On one occasion she was much exercised over a threat to his life. She came to me and said: 'Mr. Ghose, is it one of your men who is doing this?' I said: 'No.' She was much relieved

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and said: 'Then it must be a freelance.'"

Till the Benares session Sri Aurobindo had carefully evaded appearing in public at any political meeting, as he had still not decided to leave the Baroda Service. That did not prevent him from taking part in Congress politics from behind the scenes, and associating himself closely with the forward group in the Congress.

In 1906 he founded the new political party in Bengal. Then he "attended the Congress session at Calcutta at which the Extremists, though still a minority, succeeded under the leadership of Tilak in imposing part of their political programme on the Congress." Sri Aurobindo had played a major role in the formulation of its four-fold programme: Swaraj, Swadeshi, Boycott, and National Education. It was the clever maneuvering by the Nationalist Party that forced the Moderate leaders to incorporate the programme in the resolutions of 1906. The programme was adopted after a severe tussle behind the scenes. But this partial triumph of the Nationalists was due to the organization of Sri Aurobindo. Under his captaincy the forward group of young men in the Congress who had formed a new party, how decided to openly "join hands with the corresponding group in Maharashtra under the proclaimed leadership of Tilak and to join battle with the Moderate party which was done at the Calcutta session."

The Congress of 1906 is an important landmark in several ways. First of all for India's freedom struggle. For, by adopting the Swadeshi programme the Congress identified itself with it. Secondly, the main demands of the Bengal movement

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were more or less met, and it became an all-India movement. Thirdly, this was no tame affair, no mere passing of already framed resolutions, with nobody bothering to put in even an amendment; the Calcutta session of the Congress witnessed the first great public clash between the Moderates and Nationalists.

Fourthly. The 'Grand Old Man' as Dadabhai Naoroji was called —he was then eighty-two years old —was persuaded to be the President of the 22^nd Indian National Congress. The attendance at the sessions was quite impressive for those days: 1663 delegates and an audience of 20,000. A tumultuous enthusiasm greeted his words when in his Presidential address Dadabhai uttered the word 'Swaraj.' "We do not ask for any favour. We want Swaraj." He did not define the meaning he attributed to 'Swaraj.' The Moderates interpreted it as 'colonial self-government,' while the Nationalists said it meant 'Independence.'¹

Even the compromise programme, which the Moderates had agreed to—willy-nilly maybe—they found it hard to bear. It went against the grain of 'the intellectual princes of the nation.' Was it possible to stand up to the insolence and cynical contempt of the rulers ? The Moderates were extremely anxious to conciliate a Government that answered conciliation with titles or ... contempt. So they quickly set out to repudiate the resolutions adopted by the Calcutta Congress. Pherozeshah Mehta, for instance, at the Surat Provincial Conference held in April 1907,

1. The Nationalist's definition of Swaraj: " It at once embodies the ideals of independence, unity, liberty." (Bande Mataram, 19-20.8.1907) . A very good picture of the then prevailing scenario can be had from 'The man of the Past and the Man of the Future' (Bande Mataram, 26.12 .1906).

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secured the exclusion of questions of Boycott and National Education.

Were the Bengal Moderates to be left behind? Not on your life !They set the stage for the second clash between the two parties which resulted in an open rupture. The District Congress Conference at Midnapore was held from December 7 to 9,1907. Surendranath Banerji led the Moderate Party from Calcutta. Sri Aurobindo , now the recognized leader of Nationalism in Bengal, led his party at the Midnapore Conference. This was the first time that he was acting publicly as the leader.

Midnapore. The seeds sown there by Rajnarain had taken root. Midnapore was a stronghold of the Nationalists. Sri Aurobindo had gone there several times from 1902 onwards.There he had initiated Hemchandra Das Kanungo into revolutionary cult. When Hemchandra went to Paris in 1906 to learn bomb-making, Satyendranath Bose took his place. He was Rajnarain Bose's nephew and Barin's uncle. He taught History at the Midnapore Government School. It was also Sat yen who gave shelter to the orphaned Khudiram and initiated him into revolutionary activities. I

In 1906 the leader of the Nationalist party had put up

1. All the three were implicated in the Alipore Bomb Case. Khudiram (born 1889), one of the two who threw the bomb at Muzaffarpur on 30 April 1908, was hanged on 11 August 1908. So was Satyen (born 1882) on 27 November 1908, after he had helped Kanailal Dutt (born 1888) in the assassination of the approver Naren Goswami. Kauai was hanged on 10 November 1908. Hemchandra (1871-1950) was one of the deportees to Andaman. When he was in Paris, through the instrumentality of Madame Cama, he came into contact with the French Socialists and was apprenticed into their secret workings.

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at the house of Gyanendranath Bose, elder brother of Satyen. There he received a note from S. N. Banerji.

"My dear Aurobindo Babu,

"I am here. Will you kindly if convenient come over with Sham Sunder Babu and Lalit Babu. Kristo Babu is also coming here.

Yours sincerely, Surendra Nath Banerjea."

Surendranath tried his best to convince Sri Aurobindo that the Moderate policy would not only bring about the reunion of Bengal but even a great measure of self-government within a short period. His magnetism did not work. He had quite misjudged the stuff that had gone into the making of the mild-mannered young Aurobindo Babu. For all his easy-going ways, and the kindliness which endeared him to so many people, there was never any turning him from his purpose, once he had made up his mind. His purpose? The tide in the affairs of his countrymen was to be 'taken at the flood.'

The dispute between the two parties was centred round the previous year's Calcutta resolution passed by the Congress. The Moderates were going back on their acceptance of the programme. Was it not betraying the nation? How could the Nationalists let them wriggle out of that acceptance ? See whom the Moderates wanted as the President of the Conference. What does it matter if he happens to be the leader of the Midnapore bar? See him break his promise to the Reception Commitee. What does he mean by refusing to discuss Swaraj in the

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open session? Vehemently objecting to K. B. Dutt, the false-hearted President-elect, the audience heckled him and hooted him down. Peeved, the Moderates called in the police. What an entertaining spectacle that was I

Next day, 8 December, Sri Aurobindo successfully conducted the meeting convened separately by the Nationalists, and arranged to pass resolutions supporting the Nationalist programme. Which was done on the 9^th. Maulvi Abdul Huq presided. For the first time a resolution calling for Swaraj— Independence — was passed unanimously.

Actually, it was these acts of betrayal, their repudiation of the 1906 Congress resolutions, that robbed the Moderate leaders of the old reverence people had for them. "The reverence," to put it in Sri Aurobindo's words, "has been transferred from persons to the ideal of the motherland."

In a letter to his wife, dated 6 December 1907, Sri Aurobindo gave a graphic description about his situation. He wrote from Calcutta.

"Dear Mrinalini,

"Here I do not have a moment to spare. I am in charge of the writing; I am in charge of the Congress work; I have to settle the Bande Mataram affair. I am finding it difficult to cope with it all. Besides, I have my own work to do; that too cannot be neglected.

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"Will you listen to one request of mine ? This is a time of great anxiety for me. There are pulls from every side that are enough to drive one mad. If at this time you also get restless, it can only increase my worry and anxiety. But if you could write encouraging and comforting letters, that would give me great strength. I should then be able to overcome all fears and dangers with a cheerful heart. I know it is hard for you to live alone at Deoghar. But if you keep your mind firm and have faith, your sorrows will not be able to overwhelm you to such an extent. As you have married me, this kind of sorrow is inevitable for you. Occasional separations cannot be avoided, for, unlike the ordinary Bengali, I cannot make the happiness of family and relatives my primary aim in life. Under these circumstances, there is no way out for you except to consider my ideal as your ideal and find your happiness in the success of my appointed work.... If you find it absolutely impossible to stay on, I shall tell Girish Babu; your grandfather can come and stay with you while I am at the Congress.

"I am going to Midna pur today. On my return I shall make the necessary arrangements here, and then proceed to Surat. That will probably be on the 15^th or 16^th. I shall be back on the 2^nd of January.

Yours ..."

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