Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

9

Some English Friends

This was not the first time that the Government was questioned by the members of the House of Commons on its India policy and, more specifically, on the ongoing events in Bengal. India did have some English friends¹ who took interest in her. A few were in the Parliament. Even at the risk of displeasing their party bosses and of their renomination in Parliament, some members took a bolder stand than the Moderates of the Indian Congress. A few names spring to mind: Sir Henry Cotton, Mr. Keir Hardie, Dr. H. V. Rutherford, Mr. Frederic Mackarness, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, all members of the House of Commons. They were ably assisted by a number of journalists, among whom was our friend Mr. H. W. Nevinson.

The Calcutta newspapers had, as we just saw, prominently published (6 April 1910) reports of the police raids at the Karma-yogin office. Amrila Bazar Patrika, for instance, had headlines such as:

¹ The reader is sure to have noticed that my criticism is entirely directed towards the Anglo-Indian government, never to Englishmen as such.

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Security under new press act

Notice on publisher of "dharma"

"Karmayogin" sedition case—trial of the printer etc. etc.

Another highlighted news item was the issuing of warrant of arrest against Sri Aurobindo.

The Indian News Agency promptly spread the news. Date-lined 5^th (April 1910), it wrote from Calcutta:

"The Chief Presidency Magistrate yesterday issued a warrant for the arrest of Arabindo Chose under section 124-A, Indian Penal Code. The warrant remains unexecuted owing to Ghose's whereabouts not being known."

The Times lost no time in reproducing these news items, along with a few more details. Londoners, when they opened their newspapers on the morning of 7^lh April, read—some with shock, some with glee:

"A warrant for the arrest of Mr. Arabindo Chose has been issued because of an article published in his newspaper, the Karmayogin, on December 25......."

Armed with the morning's Times, the Labour members of Parliament right away queried the Government. They were led by Ramsay MacDonald in the House of Commons. He asked the Under Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, whether he could confirm or deny 'the report in this morning's Times' that a warrant of arrest has been issued against Mr. Arabindo Ghose for an article that appeared in the Karmayogin of 25^th December, and whether a copy of the said article could be placed in the Library for the information of Members?

The Under Secretary could not deny having seen the

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report in the Times but pleaded ignorance as to the veracity or otherwise of the published news. Amrita Bazar splashed the news on 9 April.

"TELEGRAM

ARABINDA'S WARRANT

LORD MORLEY'S ENQUIRY

London April 7: Mr. Motagu, replying to Mr. Ramsay Mac-Donald said 'Lord Morley has seen in the Times the announcement of warrant for arrest of Arabinda Ghose and telegraphed to India for information.' "

James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), took keen interest in Indian affairs. Son of a labourer, he joined the Labour Party in 1894 and worked his way up. He was first elected to Parliament in 1906 on a Labour ticket. In January 1924 J. R. MacDonald became England's first Labour Prime Minister, but his ministry was of a very short duration. Then from 1929 to 1935 he headed another Labour government which was turned into a National Government in 1931. He was an associate of the British Labour leader, James Keir Hardie (1856-1915), also a member of the House of Commons. Keir Hardie had visited India at the height of the Nationalist Movement.

During his father's incarceration Sukumar had written to several English friends including the above two, describing the plight of his father in the Agra jail. K.K. Mitra, along with eight others, among whom were Subodh Mullick, Shyam Sundar Chakravarty, and Aswini Kumar Dutt, had been deported or held without trial for months and months, from December 1908, because "even the police" were "unable to procure evidence

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against them," to quote from the Review of Reviews of January 1909.

Attracted to India, J. Ramsay MacDonald decided to visit it and acquaint himself with the prevailing situation there. In November or December 1909 he was in Calcutta along with his wife. At Sukumar's invitation they paid him a visit. "My mother, sisters Kumudini-didi, Basanti and Sarojini-didi welcomed them and offered them sandesh, rosogolla, kochuri, singara) and other Bengali food items." When in 1911 his book, The Awakening of India¹—highly appreciated by the Nationalist Indians—was published, he offered one copy to Sukumar.

It was then, towards the end of 1909, and there at the College Square house, that Ramsay MacDonald had met Sri Aurobindo. They talked long. During their conversation MacDonald asked him, "What is your conception of the end which is being worked out by our Indian administration?" The reply granted was terse. "A free and independent India."

In his book J. R. MacDonald not only records his impression of his tour in India, but also quotes a number of extracts from the Karmayogin where Sri Aurobindo had spelled out his ideas of Indian freedom and Nationalism.

Naturally enough, he gives his impressions of the meeting with the great Nationalist.

¹Sandesh and rosogolla are sweets made from curdled milk; kochuri is a kind of pancake made of kneaded flour and pulped pulses; singara is a kind of stuffed snack shaped like a water chestnut ... all extremely tasty and all mouth-watering.

²His next, The Government of India, written after his second visit to India during 1913-14, was published eight years later.

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"But Bengal is perhaps doing better than making political parties," he wrote. "It is idealising India. It is translating nationalism into religion, into music and poetry, into painting and literature. I called on one whose name is on every lip as a wild extremist who toys with bombs and across whose path the shadow of the hangman falls. He sat under a printed text¹ 'I will go in the strength of the Lord God,' he talked of the things which troubled the soul of man, he wandered aimlessly into the dim regions of aspiration, where the mind finds a soothing resting place. He was far more of a mystic than of a politician. He saw India seated on a temple throne. But how it was to arise, what the next step was to be, what the morrow of independence was to bring, to these things he had given little thought. They were not of the nature of his genius."

There are a few disputable points in MacDonald's assessment. For instance, years earlier, Sri Aurobindo had prepared a comprehensive plan for the Gaekwad for the administration and development of the Baroda State. The report dealt with wide-ranging subjects: different aspects of agriculture, fertilizer and crop patterns; fodder and grazing of cattle; crafts including the training of workers and inducement to good ones; commerce and industry; import and export, not forgetting custom duties, taxation, and so on; and naturally, education. It was a basic plan for a good administration which could quite easily have been adapted on a vaster scale for the whole country. He was a competent policy maker with a penetrating vision.

¹ Their meeting had taken place in the office room that served as Sanjibani office. As Krishna Kumar Mitra used to work for his paper and receive people there, his wife Lilabati had hung up that motto on the wall.

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But Sri Aurobindo always made light of his own accomplishments.

No doubt Ramsay MacDonald was an astute man ... when he had to deal with ordinary men. But he was unable to shake off his European mindset to which a mystic is a mystic is a mystic. How can a 'mystic' ever be a politician? A mystic is not supposed to have much comprehension of matter, and does he not tend to be most impractical? Well, 'no' would say an Indian, if by mystic you mean spiritual. A spiritual master's consciousness is wide as the universe, so it is natural that he sees more widely than we ordinary people do.

In point of fact, Sri Aurobindo, like his predecessor Sri Krishna, was intensely spiritual and intensely material. He had a very firm grasp of the material. Remember the way he had organized the great movement for Independence. Later events too were to disprove MacDonald's view that the 'wild extremist' had not given any thought to India's 'morrow of independence.' The future British Prime Minister did not live long enough to see, but Sri Aurobindo, though 'retired' from politics for well over three decades, intervened personally during Cripps' mission in 1942 by making a public pronouncement on the subject. Oh, how he tried to stop the splintering of India when she was finally to gain her independence. All this is now history. Indian politicians were deaf to his appeals. Sri Aurobindo had sent his emissary, Duraiswamy Iyer, to Rajaji' with a message to the Congress leaders "that they should accept without hesitation or conditions the Cripps offer," recalled B. Shiva

1 C. Rajagopalachari.

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Rao in 1959. "After that rejection there was no turning back for the British for full support to the Muslim League and all its demands." Do you know that M. K. Gandhi rejected outright Sri Aurobindo's advice, saying irritably, "Why is he meddling?"

Frankly, most Indian politicians were but toys in the hands of the British; Gandhi and Nehru being chief among them. The reason is not far to seek. To quote Dilip Kumar Roy,¹ "[Indians] have been successfully westernized and completely insulated from India's ancient spiritual influences by the modern European outlook on life, as had happened with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.... Pandit Jawaharlal finds Hindu culture so foreign, even bizarre, and fails to understand the diverse ways in which its religious spirit has helped humanity."

Dilip was charitable. Because it was worse. Jawaharlal Nehru was a self proclaimed 'secularist' In other words, a Hindu hater. In a letter (17 November 1953) to Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the then President of India, he unmasked himself. "The Hindu," wrote Nehru, "is certainly not tolerant and is certainly more narrow-minded than almost any person in any other country except the Jew."

And to fill our cup, there is Nehru's bitter reproach to the French Indologist, Alain Daniélou. "What you are interested in is just what we want to destroy."

To destroy.

1 Sri Aurobindo Came to Me.

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