Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

41

The Strategist

A Voice called.

The voice of the Lord of Tempest.

Millions started up from their sleep. A new dawn greeted their eyes. A glorious dawn, breaking the gloom of centuries, bathed their Mother in a golden-rose light.

The loud trumpet of thunder was the music of Rudra. Its blare infused strength into their souls. "I am the Spirit of freedom and pride," pealed the Voice.

"The pride in our past, the pain in our present, the passion for the future are the trunk and branches of our Indian life," wrote Sri Aurobindo expounding the concept of Nationalism. "... Nationalism is not a mere political programme ; nationalism is a religion that has come from God; it is a creed which you will have to live." His invitation did not go unanswered.

Asserted Moni Bagchi, "It was he and he alone who gave a new orientation, a new dimension to our concept of nationalism." I dare say that the Nationalist movement aimed at restoring the spiritual greatness of the nation. A spiritual

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nationalism? Sri Aurobindo puts it more cogently. "The emergence of Bengal as a sub-nation in India was throughout a strongly subjective movement," he said, describing the discovery of the Nation-Soul which had become the demand of the Time-Spirit. "The movement of 1905 in Bengal pursued a quite new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being...."

The soul that was India told her children to dare. For true spirituality means courage, means strength. "Don't linger on the shore with fearful eyes. Dive into the roaring ocean. Dare the vast battering billows. Dare and know what rapture lives in danger. Conquer the adverse fate. Be men...." The youth responded to the Call. Oh, it was heaven to be young I

Young though he was — in his early thirties — Sri Aurobindo was already an accomplished statesman and strategist. "Sri Aurobindo was not only a profound political theorist," affirms Moni Bagchi, "but a shrewd political tactician also, a combination only too rare in history."

We shall see how he brought into full play these rare qualities.

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"Were you 'modest' in your early life?" asked Nirod.

"I can't say that I was more modest within than others." Sri Aurobindo said candidly. "When I differed in anything, I used to say very few words and remain stiff, simply saying, 'I don't agree.'

"Once Surendranath Banerji wanted to annex the Extremist Party and invited us to the U. P. Moderate Conference to fight against Sir Pherozeshah Mehta. But there was a clause that no association that was not of two or three years' standing could send delegates to the Conference. Ours was a new party. So we could not go. But Banerji said, 'We will elect you as delegates.' J. L. Banerji and others agreed to it, but I just said, 'No.' I spoke at most twenty or thirty words and the whole thing failed. How can you call a man modest," demanded Sri Aurobindo, "when he stands against his own party?"

Surendranath Banerji, a Moderate leader, was called the 'uncrowned king of Bengal' at one time, so popular was he. But his popularity rapidly waned with the rise of the Nationalists. He was unequal to the new surging currents which were fast shifting the political seat from Council halls and Conferences to the masses.

"Tilak used to do the same thing," Sri Aurobindo said. "He used to hear all the speeches and resolutions of the delegates but at the end pass his own resolutions. They said, 'What a democratic leader he is! He listens to and considers all our opinions and resolutions.'"

After a moment's pause, Sri Aurobindo continued. "Then at the Hooghly Provincial Conference we met again to

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consider the Morley-Minto reforms." The Morley-Minto reforms provided separate electorates for Indian Muslims, and after the partition of Bengal, were the British rulers' next step to divide Hindus and Muslims. "The Moderates urged in favour of accepting the reforms. We were against. We were in the majority in the Subjects Commitee, while in the Conference they were so." In the Subjects Commitee Sri Aurobindo was able to defeat the Moderates' resolution welcoming the Reforms and pass his own resolution stigmatizing them as utterly inadequate and unreal and rejecting them. "Surendranath Banerji was very angry with us and threatened that he and his party would break away from the Conference if their resolution was not accepted. I didn't want them to break away at that time, for our party was still weak. So I said to him, 'We will agree to your proposal on condition I am allowed to speak in the Conference.' In the Conference there was a great row and confusion." The Moderates were caught trying to play underhand tricks and were hooted down. "In the midst of it Ashwini Dutt began jumping and saying, 'This is life, this is life!' Banerji tried hard to control the people and failed and became furious. Then I stood up and told them to be silent and to walk out silently. I said that whatever agreement we came to, we would inform them. Everybody became silent at once and walked out. This made Banerji still more furious. He said, 'While we old leaders can't control them, this young man of hardly thirty commands them by just lifting a finger!'" This incident caused much amazement and discomfiture in the minds of Moderate leaders. They did not pause to reflect and find out why it was so. Sri Aurobindo explained.

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"He could not understand the power of a man standing for some principles and the people following the leader in obedience to those principles.

"It was at that time that people began to get the sense of discipline and order and of obeying the leader from within. They were violent but at the command of the leader they obeyed."

Sri Aurobindo then gave his own impression of Suren-dranath's character. "Banerji had personal magnetism, was sweet-spoken and could get round anybody. He also tried to get round me by flattering, patting and caressing. His idea was to use the Extremists as the sword and use the Moderates for the public face. In private he would go up to revolution. He wanted a Provincial Board of Control of Revolution. Barin once took a bomb to him. The name of Surendranath Banerji was found in the [Alipore] Bomb Case. But as soon as Norton pronounced the name there was a 'Hush, hush' and he shut up."

With his customary modesty —notwithstanding his disclaimer —Sri Aurobindo did not breathe a word about his own part in the drama that preceded the Hooghly Provincial Conference in September 1909. But Professor Jyotish Ghose recorded it in 1929.

"Alone and single-handed, Sri Aurobindo was called upon to break the clique of the moderate caucus who had combined to prevent even Sri Aurobindo being returned as a delegate and were using unfair means to chuck out men of pronounced nationalistic views from the list of the delegates...." This took place after the Alipore Bomb Case was over, and the other

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Nationalist leaders, like Tilak, were exiled and languishing in prison in Mandalay or elsewhere. "Nothing daunted, Sri Aurobindo begun his vigorous campaign to defeat the moderates hollow and capture the entire machinery ..., chucked out the age-limit of twenty-one for delegates from the delegation certificate issued by the Reception Committee, printed the certificates for his own party from his own press ... advised his Nationalist followers at Hooghly to organise a students' volunteer corps in open protest against the rules of the Reception Committee who had refused to enlist students even as volunteers on the ground that it was not permissible by the Risley Circular to allow students to serve as volunteers. He also revised the Draft Resolutions of the Reception Committee, printed his own counter resolutions against each of them and circulated it to the Nationalists through the columns of the Karmayogin. Thus organised, he went to attend the conference."

The Risley Circular was a more comprehensive and carefully studied edition of the Carlyle Circular. It was "a desperate attempt of the bureaucracy not only to recover and confirm its hold on the student population and through them on the future, but to make that hold far more stringent, rigid, ineffugable than it ever was in the past." The Government could not afford to lose control of the education of the country, it had to keep its hold on the mind of the young—the India of the future. It certainly did not want to lose India I

Professor Jyotishchandra noticed particularly a certain characteristic trait in Sri Aurobindo, while referring to "certain illegal and unconstitutional barriers which he knocked down

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and removed without much fuss." And "everyone instinctively felt, not excluding his opponents, that he was doing just the right thing." Besides, "through the intervention of Sri Aurobindo as the peace-maker, order and tranquillity prevailed." Yet the Moderates had always accused him of being at the root of all disorder and violence!

After saying that all the delegates and volunteers were "magnetised by his very presence," the Professor concludes: "To those, who had anything to do with the conference, it was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that a great spiritual force was working there and everyone felt assured that all opposition, in the face of that great force, was bound to break down."

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