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Indian National Congress INC Congress Party : The struggle for independence had four distinct phases. The first was an impotent rage, on the part of certain classes & communities…which gained momentum with the actual experience of the sundry evils of British rule & the miseries caused thereby. It led to sporadic attempts…and armed resistance on a small scale in various localities all over India. These isolated acts formed a background to, & culminated in, the great outbreak of 1857 which, together with the organized armed rebellion of the Wahhabis to restore Muslim supremacy (1850-63), may be said to have ended the first phase of the struggle. The drastic manner in which both the revolts were put down caused such a terror & demoralization that armed revolt against the British authority ceased to be regarded as practical politics. …. The second phase…roughly covers the period 1860-1905…. There was almost a revolutionary change in every sphere of Indian life…the English-educated classes, now dominated the field…. Western ideas of patriotism & nationalism…made their influence felt…. Anger & hostility towards the British rule were replaced [in the English-educated classes] by devotion & loyalty to the British throne, based upon implicit faith in the benevolence & liberalism of the British people. Armed resistance [of those who actually experienced of the sundry evils of British rule & the miseries caused thereby were pushed underground] by political organization & constitutional agitation [of the English-educated classes].” [RCM-1] In 1883: The Indian National Conference was held in Calcutta from 28 to 30 December under the auspices of the Indian Association founded by S.N. Bannerjea in 1876. It was the first assembly where non-official representatives from all over India met to discuss questions relating to industrial & technical education, wider employment of Indians in the Civil Service, separation of the judicial from executive functions, representative government & the Arms Act inflicted by Lytton; its second session was also held in Calcutta in 1885 & then merged with the INC created by Hume inaugurated in December 1885. Hume had enlisted English sympathisers like J. Bright (q.v.), James Caird, Lord Ripon, Wedderburn, George Yule, Bradlaugh, & on 28 December 1885, invited 70-odd lawyers, reformists, educationists, journalists, & their associations to Bombay, & steered them into creating a sort of Majlis & anointed U.C. Bonnerji (q.v.) as its first president. In spite of being advised by Hume that Dufferin was against any effort to include the proletariat, the congregation voted to call itself Indian National Congress (INC), knowing well it qualified for none of these three terms. It passed nine resolutions among which were: To seek the cooperation of all the Indians in its efforts; to eradicate the concepts of race, creed & provincial prejudices & try to form national unity; to discuss & solve the social problems of the country; to request the Govt. to abolish the India Council headed by the Secretary of State to oversee the Viceroy of India; to admit ‘considerable portion’ of elected natives to the central & provincial Legislative Councils with rights ‘to discuss Govt. of India’s the annual budgets; to hold ICS Entrance Exam simultaneously in England & India & restore the age-limit to 23; to permit “the re-assemblage of the INC next year at Calcutta”. The number of delegates (then called representatives) which was only 71 at the first session & rose to 436 at the second session held at Calcutta (presided over by Naoroji), increased to 1889 at the fifth session held at Bombay (presided over by Sir William Wedderburn) & it was felt necessary to restrict it at 1000 to be elected by different political public associations all over the country. [Several sources including SB] In 1893-94 Popular orators like Mr Pherozshah Mehta, who carry the methods of the bar into politics, are very fond of telling people that the Congress has habituated us to act together.... Not only has the concord it tends to create been very partial, but the sort of people who have been included…do not extend beyond certain fixed & narrow limits…. So Mr Mehta [presiding over the 1890 Congress Session held at Calcutta] argued that the Congress could justly arrogate the epithet National without having any direct support from the proletariate… ‘It is because the masses are still unable to articulate definite political demands that the functions & duty devolve upon their educated & enlightened compatriots to feel, to understand & to interpret their grievances & requirements, & to suggest & indicate how these can best be redressed & met.’ …Mr Manmohan Ghose asks himself this very question & answers…‘The delegates present here today are the chosen representatives of that section of the Indian people who have learnt to think, & whose number is daily increasing with marvellous rapidity.’…So much at the mercy of their instincts & prejudices are the generality of mankind, that we hazard a very high estimate when we call even one man out of ten thousand a thinking man. But evidently by the thinking portion Mr Ghose would like to indicate the class…who have got some little idea of the machinery of English politics & are eager to import it into India along with cheap Liverpool cloths, shoddy Brummagem wares, & other useful & necessary things which have killed the fine & genuine textures…. But of all the brand new articles we have imported, inconceivably the most important is that large class of people – journalists, barristers, doctors, officials, graduates & traders – who have grown up & are increasing with prurient rapidity under the aegis of the British rule: & this class I call the middle class…phrases like ‘thinking men’ or ‘the educated class’ are merely expressions of our own boundless vanity & self-conceit. – Sri Aurobindo [NL] The second characteristic, laid down by B.C. Pal said in effect: The continuance of British authority was necessary for building up a real freedom movement & establish a Govt. which would be a Govt. of the people, by the people & for the people. But the INC could not reasonably expect to build up a real modern democracy by enlisting the masses to the service of the Congress before they were sufficiently advanced in social ideas & had been properly educated which again, necessitated the continuance of British authority as Govt. alone was authorised & equipped to educate the masses with advanced social & political ideas. [Vide RCM] The third characteristic was provided by Surendra Nath Banerjee: We rely on the liberty-loving instincts of the greatest representative assembly in the world, the palladium of English Liberty, the sanctuary of the free & brave, the British House of Commons. But when Mr Banerji’s words no longer, reverberate in your ears, listen to a quieter, more serious voice…of Matthew Arnold, himself an Englishman & genuine lover of his country, but for all that a man who thought deeply & spoke sanely. And where according to this sane & powerful intellect shall we come across the really noteworthy outcome of English effort? We shall best see it, he tells us, not in any palladium or sanctuary, not in the greatest representative assembly in the world, but in an aristocracy materialised, a middle class vulgarised & a lower class brutalised: & no clear-sighted student of England will be insensible to the just felicity with which he has hit off the social tendencies prevailing in that country…. This is highly typical of the English school of thought & the exaggerated emphasis it lays on the mould & working of institutions. …. Servile in imitation…we have swallowed down in a lump our English diet.... We blindly assent...that the awakening of the masses from their ignorance & misery is entirely unimportant & any expenditure of energy in that direction entirely premature. There we have laid the foundation, as England laid the foundation, of social collapse, of social calamities…. – Sri Aurobindo [NL] In 1887, INC adopted Banerjee’s advice with a British Committee consisting of Hume, Wedderburn, Henry Cotton, & Naoroji on an annual budget of Rs. 45000 p.a. This blind faith in the English model was not perturbed even when Dufferin publicly ridiculed it on 30 November 1888: “Some intelligent, loyal, & patriotic & well-meaning men are desirous of taking…a big jump into the unknown…by the application to India of democratic methods of government, & the adoption of parliamentary system, which England herself had only reached by slow degrees & through the discipline of many centuries of preparation… Well, gentlemen, I am afraid that the people of England will not readily be brought to the acceptance of this programme.” & sure enough, within a decade INC’s London Committee proved too ineffective & expensive & had to be dropped. [Vide APK] 1892: In October, Sri Aurobindo left King’s & came down to London, from a cradle of English culture & democracy into the hub of imperial intrigues. He joined C.R. Das & other patriotic students but did not share their thrill over the election of Naoroji of the Indian National Congress on a British Liberal ticket obtained thanks to Wedderburn & Gladstone to the Parlia¬ment. The INC had been led to believe that Gladstone’s liberal principles had created in his Liberal Party a great sympathy for Irish nationalism, but Sri Aurobindo knew that where Parnell failed to change official policy through Parliament, INC’s chances were nil, rightly guessing the reaction of Secretary of State, Hamilton: “Naoroji’s long residence in England & association with the least reputable portion of the [British] political world have hopelessly deteriorated whatever brains or prescience he may originally have possessed.” [APK] Yet when Prime Minister Gladstone’s Liberal party passed as the Councils Act of 1892 (the first was passed in 1861 & the third in 1909 firmly laying the seeds of the Partition on 1947), instead of seeing the true nature of the English as Parnell had done the INC went into ecstasies, claiming that their prayers & petitions since 1885 for enlargements of Viceroy’s & Governor’s councils to include Indians had materialised though “it did not,” it regretted, “concede to the people the right of electing their own representatives to the Council” & hoped ‘that the rules, now being prepared under the Act, will be framed on the lines of Mr Gladstone’s declaration’ in the House of Commons.” Naturally that did not happen, & the speeches of INC delegates at those Councils, “achieved little success by way of practical results”. Naoroji lost in the next election; no other Indian was ever elected to Parliament. Sri Aurobindo’s hope that the 700-year-old Irish struggle would inspire INC not to appeal to the British sense of justice but to their own sense of manhood proved a cry in wilderness. [Vide RCM-1] 1893: The India Office demonstrated its ability to circumvent Parliament on a matter of great importance to Congress when H. Paul, M.P., & the Secretary of the British Committee of Congress, succeeded in securing parliamentary approval in a rump session… for simultaneous ICS entrance exams in India & England, the Secretary of State for India, Lord Kimberley, simply called it a ‘fatal mistake’ & took measures to prevent its implementation.” [APK] In 1893-94: It is true that in the dull comedy which we call English politics, Truth & Justice – written in large letters – cover the whole of the poster, but in the actual enactment of the play these characters have very little indeed to do. Nevertheless we still go on appealing to the English sense of justice. The simple truth of the matter is that we shall not get from the British Parliament anything better than nominal redress, or at the most a petty & tinkering legislation…. But if we carry our glance across the English Channel, we shall witness a very different & more animating spectacle. Gifted with a lighter, subtler & clearer mind than their insular neighbours, the French people have moved irresistibly towards a social & not a political development…the best blood, the highest thought, the real grandeur of the nation does not reside in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies; it resides in the artistic & municipal forces of Parisian life, in the firm settled executive, in the great vehement heart of the French populace – & that has ever beaten most highly in unison with the grand ideas of Equality & Fraternity…. To put it in a concrete form, Paris may be said to revolve around the Theatre, the Municipal Council & the French Academy, London looks rather to the House of Commons & New York to the Stock Exchange…. If then we are bent upon adopting England as our exemplar, we shall certainly imitate the progress of the glacier rather than the progress of a torrent. From Runnymede to the Hull riots is a far cry; yet these seven centuries have done less to change partially the political & social exterior of England…. It was not a convocation of respectable citizens, but the vast & ignorant proletariate, that emerged from a prolonged & almost coeval apathy & blotted out in five terrible years the accumulated oppression of thirteen centuries…. Is it at all true that the initiators of Irish resistance to England were a body of successful lawyers, remarkable only for a power of shallow rhetoric, & deputed by the sort of men that are churned out at Trinity College, Dublin?.... Certainly men who preferred action to long speeches & appealed…not to the British sense of justice but to their own sense of manhood, are not at all the sort of people we have either the will or the power to imitate…. Indeed it will not hurt any of us to put out of sight…the gradual evolution of an Indian Parliament, with which certain politicians are fond of amusing us, & look things straight in the face. We must resolutely hold fast to the primary fact that right & effective action can only ensue upon a right understanding of ourselves in relation to our environment. For by reflection or instinct to get a clear insight into our position & by dexterity to make the most of it, that is the whole secret of politics, & that is just what we have failed to do. – Sri Aurobindo [NL] There is no doubt that the progress of the Congress from 1885 to 1905 was an even march based on a firm faith in constitutional agitation in the unfailing regard for justice attributed to the English. [SP] At the 4th Congress, Allahabad, 1888: Although there was no regular constitution for the Congress, regulation of business of the Congress contemplated by a resolution to keep the feelings of the Hindu & Mohemedan smooth. The resolution stated that “no subject shall be passed for discussion by the Subjects Committee or allowed to be discussed at any Congress by the President thereof to the introduction of which the Hindu or Mohemedan delegates as a body object unanimously or nearly unanimously & that if after discussion of any subject which has been admitted for discussion it shall appear that all the Hindu or all the Mohemedan delegates as a body are unanimously or nearly unanimously opposed to the resolution which it is proposed to pass thereon, such resolution shall be dropped provided that the rule shall refer only to subjects in regard to which the Congress had not already definitely pronounced an opinion.” Only two Muslims ‘attended’ the 1st Congress in 1885; 33 in 1886; 156 (22 of the total) in 1890. Under the Constitution adopted in 1908, after the Nationalist Party had been kicked out with Govt. help, 20 of AICC members had to be Muslims. [Vide MVRR & SP] …when I say that the Congress is not really national…I do not at all mean to re-echo the Anglo-Indian catchword about Hindus & Mahomedans. Like most catchwords it is without much force, & has been still farther stripped of meaning by the policy of the Congress. The Mahomedans have been as largely represented on that body as any reasonable community could desire, & their susceptibilities, far from being denied respect, have always been most assiduously soothed & flattered… – Sri Aurobindo [NL] Karandikar: Among Jihadis aroused by Principal Beck of Aligarh’s Anglo-Oriental College, was Nawab Mohabat of Junāgadh, in the south of which is Prabhās Pātaṇ. In the latter half of 1893 jihadis attacked Prabhās-Pātaṇ, Hindu-populated towns in U.P., Bombay city, Yeola & a few other places in Bombay Presidency. When Govt. of Bombay insisted that jihadis were incited by the cow-protection movement, William Wedderburn’s article in New Review held Viceroy Dufferin responsible for having deliberately roused them as a way of terrorising the politically conscious Hindus. Tilak wrote on the subject in the Kesari, toured Bombay & Yeola, & on 10th September 1893 held a public meeting in Poona which passed the resolution affirming cow-protection was not responsible & traced the riots to the absence of any authoritative exposition of policy for the guidance of Govt. officials & the absence of authoritative record of existing religious & social rights & privileges. To maintain the spontaneous unity that the rioting had caused among Hindus of Poona, he proposed the formation of a procession on the day of the immersion of the statues at the end of the Ganapati week to develop a sense of solidarity among all Hindu Mahārāshtrians. This gradually brought about an annual Ganapati Festival. The Jihadi riots continued into the next year & the Octopus imposed punitive police & mass arrest & prosecution of Hindu leaders when & wherever Hindus retaliated, – a policy earnestly followed well into the 1970-80. Sri Aurobindo: [While] we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions... the waters of the great deep are being stirred & that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilized societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely & ominously agitated. Already [1893] a red danger-signal has shot up from Prabhāsa-Pātaṇ, & sped across the country…. Perhaps the religious complexion of these occurrences has lulled our fears; but when turbulence has once become habitual in a people, it is only folly that will reckon on its preserving the original complexion…. I am speaking to that class which Mr Manmohan Ghose has called the thinking portion of the Indian community: well, let these thinking gentlemen carry their thoughtful intellects a hundred years back. Let them recollect what causes led from the religious madness of St. Bartholomew to the social madness of the Reign of Terror (q.v.)…. With us it rests – if indeed it is not too late – with our sincerity, our foresight, our promptness of thought & action that the hideous parallel shall not be followed up by a sequel as awful, as bloody & more purely disastrous… I again assert as our first & holiest duty, the elevation & enlightenment of the proletariate….” [NP] It is an undeniable fact that a strong section of the Muslims, from the very beginning, adopted an unsympathetic attitude towards the Congress, though Muslims in general were indifferent…. Md. Rahimtulla Sayani, who presided over the Congress in 1896 at Calcutta, observed with truth: “It is imagined by some persons that all, or almost all, the Muslims of India are against the Congress movement; this is not true. Indeed by far the largest part, do not know what the Congress movement is. [RCM-4] Lord Curzon…to Secretary of State Hamilton on 7 June, 1899: ‘I gather that you want me to ascertain what native princes or noblemen contribute to Congress funds & I will endeavour to discover this.’ But Curzon hardly required any inspiration. On November 18, 1900, he wrote to Hamilton: ‘My own belief is that the Congress is tottering to its fall, & one of my greatest ambitions while in India is to assist it to a peaceful demise.’ ― Towards the end of the year 1903 Lord Curzon’s Government proposed to separate the whole of Chittagong Division & the Districts of Dacca & Mymensingh from Bengal, & to incorporate them with Assam…. The crowning act of Lord Curzon’s folly was the partition of Bengal in the teeth of an angry, unanimous opposition, the like of which was never seen before during the British rule. [It] called forth all the latent forces of nationalism which had been gathering strength for years. Ere long, the protest took the form of Swadeshi movement which soon outstripped its original limitations of space & object & merged itself into an all-India national struggle for achieving freedom from the British yoke. That struggle continued through ups & downs, but without a break, until freedom was won. ― [By July 1905] the Govt. of India was in feverish haste to put into operation the entire scheme of Partition. On 3 August, 1905, they forwarded to the Secretary of State a draft proclamation & a draft Bill… The Secretary of State was equally prompt, & with his approval the Proclamation was published on September 1, 1905. It was the final decision regarding Partition & gave a list of the districts in Bengal which, along with Assam, would ‘form a separate Province called the Province of Eastern Bengal & Assam’. It was further stated that the new Province would be a Lieutenant-Governorship with Mr Joseph Bampfylde Fuller, then the Chief Commissioner of Assam, as the first Lieutenant-Governor. Finally, it stated that the new arrangement would come into force from October 16, 1905…. There is, however, no doubt that the solidarity of opposition against the Partition was gradually weakened. Lord Curzon won over Salimullah, the Nawab of Dacca, partly by advancing a loan at a very low rate of interest, & partly by holding out the hope that the interests of the Muslims will dominate the administration of the new Province, & the Nawab, as their leader, will occupy a unique position there, with Dacca, his own home, raised to the status of a great capital city of an opulent Province. The Nawab gradually became a great supporter of the Partition, & gathered a section of Muslims round him…. The new administration, in its actual operation, openly favoured the Muslims, & the first Lt.-Gov., Fuller, said with reference to the two main sections of population, the Musalmans & Hindus, that they were like his two queens of Indian legends, the first being the suo (favoured) & the second, the duo (neglected). No wonder that the followers of Salimullah would gain in strength. When the partition led to the Swadeshi, i.e. the movement for the use of indigenous & boycott of English goods, the Englishmen gradually became hostile to anti-Partition agitation, & withdrew their support from it. Injury to material interests proved a much stronger force than sympathy for a just cause. [RCM-I] I entered into political action & continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim & one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom & the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue. – Sri Aurobindo [to Bapista, Jan.5, 1920] I often called on my elder brother Abinash Bhattacharya in the Yugāntar office. I remember going to see him on a morning of early July 1906. But Dada & Barinda had left for Howrah station to receive Sri Aurobindo who was due shortly to arrive…. My mind had involuntarily painted an image of him in accordance to what I had heard. Unconsciously, I was expecting to meet an imposing leader matched by an overbearance, eager to win me over by his moving speech. So, I was quite surprised when instead of an imposing person a lean youth alighted from the hansom.... But, despite its disproportionate leanness, his body seemed to possess tremendous strength. His young face bore mixed expressions of seriousness & happiness. But strangest of all were his large smouldering eyes; no one could escape their grip of sparkling effulgence. I kept observing him with wonder. [UPB] G.K. Gokhale was in the viceroy’s good graces; Rāshbehari Ghose became his cat’s-paw. Elected president of the Moderates-Only-Congress, Rāshbehari met with Lord Minto, who convinced him to run [that] Congress ‘in conformity with ideas as to which he & I might agree’. At its 1908 session, Rāshbehari proclaimed, when in the fullness of time the people have outgrown the present system of administration they might hope for “the extension to India of the colonial form of self-government though, this ideal can only be realised in the distant future”. [PH-2] 24 Sep.1909, Gokhale wrote to William Wedderburn: “I fear one of our numerous disintegrations has overtaken us again – this time it is the national movement that appears to be going to pieces, throwing us back on Provincialism & one grieves to find that there is no influence available anywhere in the country, capable of staying the process. The organisation evolved by Mr Hume out of the material prepared by a succession of workers in different parts of the country is crumbling to pieces & the effort of the nation’s heart & mind that brought us together in that organization seems to have almost exhausted itself. The split at Surat, followed by the vigour with which the Government came down on the Extremists everywhere, has turned the whole Extremist party into active enemies of the national constitutional movement. And the Moderates placed between the officials & the Extremists have not the necessary public spirit & energy of character to hold together effectively for long, thought they are numerically strong in the country. In addition to the incessant attacks of the extremists, the conduct of the Bengal Moderates is hastening the disintegration of the national movement. Bengal really has no leader on our side. Surendranath B is an orator, but he has no great courage or backbone, & he cannot keep in hand the unruly pack whom he presses to lead. Moreover there is no doubt that the position of the constitutional party has been rendered almost impossible by the Govt.’s refusal to reconsider the partition & the continued incarceration of the deportees. [BRN] INC Dec.1909: Only 243 delegates attended. The first resolution related to the Indian Councils Act, 1909, otherwise known as the Morley-Minto Reforms. The Congress welcomed the liberal constitutional measures, but disapproved the creation of separate electorates through Surendranath’s resolution: “That this Congress… deems it its duty to place on record its strong sense of disapproval of the creation of separate electorates on the basis of religion….” The narrow-minded politicians pointed out that the Hindu minorities in East Bengal and Assam and the Punjab were not given a like privilege, but this was really going off the track. What was more egregious was the different franchises set up for the different communities. To become a voter, the Muslim voter had to pay income tax on Rs.3000 a year while the non-Muslim voter had to pay on Rs. 3 lakhs a year. It was enough for the Muslim graduate to have standing of 3 years to become a voter while the non-Muslim was required to have 30 years standing.” But the Congress had reason to feel proud that some measure of constitutional reform had been achieved. [Based on RR & PS’s accounts] Jan 1910: The basis of our claim to Swaraj is not that the English bureaucracy is a bad or tyrannical Government; a bureaucracy is always inclined to be arrogant, self-sufficient, self-righteous & unsympathetic, to ignore the abuses with which it abounds, & a bureaucracy foreign & irresponsible to the people is likely to exhibit these characteristics in an exaggerated form. But even if we were ruled by a bureaucracy of angels, we should still lay claim to Swaraj & move towards national self-sufficiency & independence. On the same principle we do not notice or lay stress on the collisions between Englishmen & Indians which are an inevitable result of the anomalous & unnatural relations existing between the races. It is the relations themselves we seek to alter from the root instead of dealing with the symptoms. But the incident at Goalundo detailed in this week’s Dharma is one which the country has to take notice of, unless we are to suppose that the movement of 1905 was the last flaring up of national strength & spirit previous to extinction & that the extinction has now come. – Sri Aurobindo [SABCL Vol.2:358-62] The Swadeshi movement acquired an All-India & national character almost immediately after its birth. It was the repercussion of this movement on Indian politics that gave rise to the Extremist or Nationalist Party under Tilak, Arabinda, Lajpat Rai, Khaparde & other leaders, & radically changed the conception of political goal & the method to achieve it, upheld by the Indian National Congress since its inception in 1885. In so doing, it brought about a great upheaval of nationalist sentiment all over India…. Not only this, but a closer examination will reveal the fact that almost all the characteristic features that marked India’s struggle for freedom up to 1947, may be traced to the Swadeshi movement. Even the Non-co-operation & Passive Resistance – the two Brahmāstras with which Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have fatally struck the British rule in India, – as well as the concomitant circumstances – terrible repression on the part of the Government & the heroic courage, sufferings, & self-sacrifice on the part of the people – had their origin in the Swadeshi movement. Arabinda preached Non-co-operation & Passive Resistance during the Swadeshi movement, long before Gandhi, & also anticipated his enunciation of the high moral & spiritual values of a non-violent struggle. He said: “On their fidelity to Swadeshi, to boycott, to passive resistance, rested the hope of a peaceful & spiritual revolution, on that it depended whether India would give the example unprecedented in history of a revolution worked only by moral force & peaceful pressure”…. All the oppressive & terrorising weapons in the armoury of the British Government which were hurled by them against the people till 1947 were first brought into operation against the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. The difference between the political ideologies of the Moderates & the Extremists, & of the Hindus & the Muslims, which the Swadeshi movement generated, persisted till the very end. It is impossible to understand the history of India’s struggle for freedom in its true perspective without a thorough knowledge of the Swadeshi movement in its different aspects…. Another topic to which unusual prominence has been given in this Volume is the militant aspect of nationalism, generally referred to as terrorism. The followers of this cult of violence, who should be more properly called revolutionaries, have suffered in the estimation of the people as a result of the preaching of the cult of Ahimsa (nonviolence) by Mahatma Gandhi. Without belittling in any way the high ethical ideal behind this cult it may be pointed out that non-violence was never known to have played any important role in practical politics, especially where a struggle against a highly organized military power was concerned. [RCM-1]