India
. An Appeal to Idealism
T FIND it difficult to do my duty to-day in a spirit of patience and calmness, and at the same time to do justice to the Indian cause, to myself and my friends in this country. For the atmosphere of mutual relationship between India and Great Britain has grown dark with suspicion and suffering.
It is my desire in this article to write concerning a reconciliation between two peoples who for over a century have had a close connexion with each other, and yet are still separated by a moral distance more difficult to over- come than mountains and seas. In this sensitive age of new awakening, the human in us in India has felt the indignity and pain of being dealt with by an abstraction of a government from across a dark chasm of impersonal aloofness, devoid of the light of imagination and the living touch Of sympathy. This large gap in humanity has offered a breeding-place to a diseased political condi- tion in our history that is crying for a cure. It can only be effected by a generous co-operation from both sides, by a union of minds which know how to make proper allowance for weakness in human nature, and at the same time maintain firm faith in it where it is great.
Our task is every day growing harder ; for the situation is solely left in the hands of the politicians, who represent the organization and not the humanity of a people. And therefore my appeal to-day is to that idealism which has made English history glorious, and which must extend its glory in an alien country.
Once Asia in her spring time of exuberant life offered the world her spiritual ideals. To-day Europe in the illumination of her intellect has brought her science and also her spirit of service. But unfortunately she has not come to Asia to reveal the generosity of her civilization, but to seek an unlimited field for her pride and power, trying to make these things eternal. She has come with her need and not with her wealth ; and therefore she has belied her own mission and used the :truth itself for a utilitarian purpose of self,aggrandisement. In order to wake her up to her own responsibility Asia must refuse weakly to yield her contribution to the impious_ belief that dehumanized power can succeed for ever with the help of science.
The people of England appear doomed to remain ignorant of the true state of things that prevails to-day in India. For in critical times like these Governments which have their faith in the short cut of punitive force for the speedy solution of their problems become -more afraid of the higher spirit of their own people than their enemies themselves. And therefore -they.- create in the surrounding air the smoke screens of obscurity and calumny in order to hide their own method of action and discredit that of their opponents. This has been amply proved in the late War. The organized power has the organ of a magnified voice ; but we who have no proper means of publicity nor the bond of kinship with the British people to make it easy for us to gain credence, must resignedly accept all misrepresentation as the bitterest part of our national penance, the unavoidable penance for our own long history of weakness. Yet I cannot allow this occasion to pass by without declaring that with few exceptions, inevitable in the present atmo- sphere of panic and defiance, India in this trial has maintained her dignity of soul. Even through distortion and suppression of truth, and circulation of untruth with belated contradiction in small letters, the fact glimmers out that our people, with a pious determination, has kept unshaken the difficult ideal which they have accepted from their great leader. Mahatma Gandhi, who upholds the noblest spirit of India, the spirit of Buddha himself. To us who are away from our homes there has reached the voice of the sufferers across the barriers of silence and the sea, carrying above the smothered cry of pain, the exaltation of a fulfilled vow under extreme provoca- tibn. My prayer for my people is not for the cessation' of their suffering, but for the keeping up of their trust in the power of the human spirit which shows itself in all its might of truth among those who are physically weak ; for we have both the occasion and the respon- sibility to prove this, not only on behalf of India, but of all humanity.
For the sake of justice I must declare that in such a conflict between an unarmed people and a government in possession ot unlimited power of destruction, our sufferings would have been terribly greater under any imperialistic rulers other than the British ; and the fact that our country even in her desperate effort of utter defiance should still feel resentful at the acts of injustice due to methods of coercion hastily improvised, is an evidence of her strong faith in the standards of justice and humanity possessed by the British nation. It also shows our lack of direct experience of any great political revolution. In fact, if the lesson of history must be acknowledged, our people should never, murmur against violence on the part of their rulers when normal conditions of government have been upset. We must expect this and face it, and never complain and blame the government for the drastic measures which we have deliberately made inevitable, while fully, I hope, anti- cipating the consequence. To light the fire and then complain that it burns is absurdly childish. And, therefore, we should, in all fairness, take upon ourselves the ultimate responsibility of the flogging and shooting, of injuries and indignities, of indiscriminate methods of striking terror into the hearts of a helpless multitude and of the awful fact that the majority of victims must necessarily be innocent in a catastrophic outrage of this nature. None of us can towardly • claim immunity or mitigation of suffering, when, even if rashly,,the subversive forces of history have been brought down upon our -country in the hope of building her history upon a new foundation.
The only thing which is Most important for us to remember is that we should heroically uphold our own Dharma and refuse to- accept defeat by offering violence in return.
RA BINDRANATH TAG ORE.
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