MacDonald, Ramsay : James Ramsay (1866-1937), son of a labourer, began his career at the age of 18 as a clerk on 12/6d a week. Ten years later he joined the Labour Party & twelve years later (1906) he was elected to the Parliament & practically created the Parliamentary Labour Party. In 1909-10, he toured India in order to understand the ground realities of the Indian political situation. Among other political leaders he met Sri Aurobindo & acquainted himself with the Nationalist party’s principles & policies. On Minto-Morley’s Act of 1909 introducing separate electorates plus ‘weightage’ to benefit Mahomedans, he said, “The Mahomedan leaders are inspired by certain Anglo-Indian officials, & these officials have pulled wires at Shimla & in London, & of malice forethought sowed discord between Hindu & Mahomedan communities by showing the Muslims special favours.” In 1910, he published his memoirs of India under the title “The Awakening of India”. In 1913-14, he had lost his parliamentary seat due to his refusal to support the War-policy of Britain & was cast into the wilderness. After a second visit to India in 1913-14 he published The Government of India in 1919. In the post-war years he worked for peace in Europe & in 1922, the Labour Party re-elected him to Parliament. He stood for Parliamentary Democratic Socialism (it was what Sri Aurobindo had practically predicted in Karmayogin in 1909). In January 1924 MacDonald was elected Prime Minister & played an important part in the settlement of the long-standing dispute over war-reparations. Just before assuming the office of Prime Minister, he declared: “I hope that within a period of months rather than years there will be a new dominion added to the Commonwealth of our nations, a dominion of another race, a dominion which will find self-respect as an equal within the Commonwealth. I refer to India.” (See C.R. Das for what he & Birkenhead had hoped to usher). Unfortunately, the clarification on this made by his Secretary of State for India, Wedgewood Benn detracted a great deal from the impact Macdonald’s announcement made in India. But in 1925, barely eleven months after assuming power, his ministry fell. His second ministry formed in 1929 after Labour won the elections, was almost three years old when, in 1931, it was turned into a National Government, in which the Tories dominated the Cabinet. He presided over the three Round Table Conferences (1931-33) for settling the Govt. of India’s problem of constitutional development, fully aware that its progress depended on Indian & not the British delegates to it. But that problem was entirely eclipsed by the lethal laws of communal representation in all elections brought in by the Govt. of India Acts of 1909 & 1919 which foreclosed any agreement Indians on this issue. Fed up, Macdonald’s socialist-democratic sanskaras added the “Depressed Classes” as a party to the tussle, giving Gandhi the opening to go the whole hog by thrusting the divide & rule poison into the very genes of his India: This he achieved on September 24th, 1932, by making Malaviya sign on Hindu India’s behalf the Poona Pact with Ambedkar (representative all D.C.s). The Pact donated to the D.C.s 148 seats out of the Hindu share in provincial legislatures against the 71 allotted by Macdonald, plus reservations in all government’s services in exchange for D.C.s only registering in the Hindu electorate while having an electoral college of their own! Utterly disillusioned he incorporated this Pact in the Act of 1935 & (à la Pontius Pilate) washed his hands off the problems of India (see INC). [Based on Bhattacharya; R.C. Majumdar et al’s An Advanced History of India; Durga Das’ India-From Curzon to Nehru & After, 1969]
... paradisal, infernal, terrestrial, 110; descent into Hell, 112ff; the Temptation Scene, 112-13; Love's labour's won, 114 Lucas, F.L., 71 Macaulay, Lord, 13, 42-3, 491 Macdonald, Ramsay, 205,216, 369 Madgaokar, G. D., 208 Mahabharata, The, 5, 50, 63, 68, 69, 80ff, 88, 108,147, 250, 646, 661ff, 664, 666 Mahatmas: Kuthumi, 169, 173 Maid in ...
... being produced.' This is reasonable request; and we dare say, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald will gladly wait, but, in that case, it is also not unreasonable to ask that the proceedings in connection with the trial of Babu Arabindo and his printer might be stayed till fullest information is placed before the House...." Well, Ramsay MacDonald did show his goodwill and patience. But when days and days passed... than it at present is." The Labour M. P. Keir Hardie, member for Methyr Tydvil, supported MacDonald. "Everything that tells against the Indian people" he observed, "is blazed forth, and matters which might tell in their favour do not receive anything like the same publicity." J. Ramsay MacDonald disclosed that "I have myself received, in the ordinary course of my Indian post, during at least... Chronicles - Book Six 10 God to the Rescue We have digressed. Let us see what was going on in the British House of Commons. Ramsay MacDonald may not have understood Sri Aurobindo properly, but there is no doubt at all of the impact the latter made on him. He again put his question on 14 April to which Montagu gave only a partial reply ...
... 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... 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... 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 ...
... dissatisfied. Mr. Macdonald's Visit The tour undertaken by Mr. Ramsay Macdonald in India has been cut short by the call from England summoning him home to take his part in the great struggle which is the beginning of the end of Conservative and semi-aristocratic England. In the peaceful revolution which that struggle presages and in which it must sooner or later culminate, Mr. Macdonald's party stands... For every man is not only himself, he is that which he represents. Mr. Macdonald has been reserved and cautious during his visit and has spoken out only on the Reforms and Reuter, nor have his remarks on these subjects passed the limits of what any sincere Liberal would hold to be a moderate statement of the truth. Mr. Macdonald is one who does not speak out the whole of himself, he is a politician... and the ingratitude is theirs if they try to hamper the progress of their lifelong supporters by fighting the representatives of the new aspirations in the interests of a middle-class party. Mr. Macdonald belongs to the new thought, but he is, we believe, one of those who would hasten slowly to the goal. He has not the rugged personality of Mr. Keir Hardie, but combines in himself, in a way Mr. Hardie ...
... Need we add the amount of pressure that they exerted on the Secretary of State for India? Those were the letters Sukumar had written during his father's incarceration in Agra Jail to men like Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardy, Sir Henry Cotton and others, and the replies he had received from them. "For Page 67 the first time, no doubt under pressure from British Members of Parliament, ...
... time to wait for the 'long season.' Time had come to leave politics and journalism behind. In January 1910 when Ramsay MacDonald, a future prime minister of Britain, came to Calcutta, he went to see Sri Aurobindo at College Square. "He himself practically told me when I saw him," MacDonald disclosed in the British House of Commons in April, "that he would not be very much longer in the affairs of the ...
... teachers; in 1909 he founded the Barisal Seva Samiti. Some visitors did not figure in that police report. Rabin-dranath Tagore, a family friend, would drop in now and then. We also know that Ramsay MacDonald and his wife visited 6 College Square. Then there were the students. How they adored Sejdal With reason, of course. When, for instance, at the Hooghly Conference of the Bengal Congress Committee ...
... literature. A many-faceted literature which expressed itself in songs and dramas, poems and street-theatres, bringing to the remotest villages a new spirit of patriotism: Nationalism. A wonderstruck Ramsay MacDonald ejaculated that Bengal "is creating India by song and worship, it is clothing her in queenly garments." The 'Bengal Movement' was triggered by Lord Curzon's proposal to restructure Bengal ...
... stop—at least to delay—all or any remittance destined for Bharati. A 'civilized' strangulation. Bharati himself describes briefly his tribulations during the past few years, in a letter to Ramsay MacDonald, then the leader of the British Labour Party. Bharati's letter 1 was published in The Hindu "Dear Sir" wrote Bharati, "From the middle of the year 1905 to the month of August 1908, ...
... South India in the Freedom Movement The Cultural Influence on the Freedom Movement As mentioned earlier in the chapter on the partition in Bengal, Ramsay Macdonald had exclaimed: 'Bengal is creating India by song and worship; it is clothing her in queenly garments.' In South India too, culture had a very powerful impact. We shall illustrate this phenomenon ...
... protest. This triggered off a tremendous awakening and manifested in a sudden outburst of the genius of the Bengali race, flowering in the field of literature and music. So great was its impact that Ramsay Macdonald exclaimed: "Bengal is creating India by song and worship, it is clothing her in queenly garments.' The same phenomenon was visible in South India through the personalities of Subramaniam Bharati ...
... tremendous awakening and it manifested in a sudden outburst of the genius of the Page 30 Bengali race, flowering in the field of literature and music. So great was its impact that Ramsay Macdonald exclaimed: "Bengal is creating India by song and worship, it is clothing her in queenly garments". This led to the movement of the boycott of British goods. Foundation of the Muslim ...
... laceration because of the maladies and difficulties that have now overtaken her, and the ultimate ecstasy in the orgasmic finality of resurrection-in-death in the holocaust of martyrdom. No wonder Ramsay MacDonald, when he met Sri Aurobindo and heard him expound his philosophy and theology of patriotism, felt quite taken aback and confused but also duly impressed: "He was far more a mystic than a politician... the majority of the people concerned." Curzon's biographer. Lord Ronaldshay, later described the act of partition as "a subtle attack upon the growing solidarity of Bengali nationalism", and Ramsey MacDonald the future prime Minister went further still and characterised the measure, in his book The Awakening in India (1910), as more than a blunder, for "it was an indictable offence. Lord Curzon's personal ...
... after once being born on earth one does not return but goes to some other world and remains there till one can progress to some other better world and so on and on and on and up and up and up as Ramsay MacDonald would say. Again, this "perfected social order on Earth" is certainly not a Buddhist idea, the Buddhas never dreamed of it—their preoccupation was with helping men towards Nirvana, not towards ...
... high-souled enthusiast, averse to crime, and thus a man who ought not to have been attacked without the clearest proof, (in fact, late in April 1910, the issue was raised in the House of Commons by Ramsay MacDonald, .who had met Sri Aurobindo earlier and formed a high opinion of the spiritual Page 369 orientation of his life). Lord Crewe concluded with the doleful remark that, as a result ...
... become a political rite....He returns to his Gods and to the faith of his country for there is no India without its faith and no faith without India."* ____________________ * Quoted from J. Ramsay Macdonald's The Awakening in India first published in London in 1910. Page 147 We felt a sense of relief because when we dwell on tributes such as these the awe they generate militate ...
... Aurobindo — The Hope of Man, pp. 88 ff. Cf. also Purani, The Life (1978), p. 79ff. 13. Bhavan's Journal, 22 July 1962 14. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 1, p. 125 15. Ramsay Macdonald, The Awakening in India. 16. Purani, The Life, p. 85 17. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 1, p. 54 18. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 26, p. 24 19. Quoted from Upendranath Ban ...
... an indictable offence. Lord Curzon's personal feelings entered into it in a most reprehensible way. He devised it, as the evidence shows most conclusively, to pay off scores.... " — Ramsay Macdonald. Macdonald again characterised the Partition as "the hugest blunder committed since the battle of Plassey." 4. Italics are ours. Page 159 when he was on a tour of East Bengal... estimate of Sri 14. Indian nationalism has been "much more than the agitation of political coteries. It is the revival of an historical tradition, the liberation of the soul of a people." — Ramsay MacDonald. Page 171 Aurobindo's political life in Bengal from 1906 to 1909. But it does not - because it could not - give any idea of the wider and deeper implications even of his political ...
... Pondicherry. He met Sri Aurobindo on the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth. Evening talk on Jacob Boehme's Suprasensual Life . 22 February. Discussion about the reforms granted to India by the Ramsay Macdonald cabinet. 26 February. Talk about the supramental perfection. Hints to a sadhak about taste and about reading. Sri Aurobindo said that if he wanted to read a book he certainly could do so, but ...
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