Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 3rd July 1909 — No.3
Opinion and Comments
Faith and Analysis
Because Nationalism is the highest synthesis, it is more than a mere faith, says the Bengalee, it embodies an analysis, however unconscious or even inadequate, of the actual forces and conditions of life.
We do not quite understand our contemporary's philosophy.
An unconscious analysis is a contradiction in terms.
There may be a vague and ill-expressed weighing of things in the rough, but that is not analysis.
Analysis is in its nature a deliberate intellectual process; the other is merely a perception of things separately or together but without analysis.
And analysis is not inconsistent with faith, but must accompany it unless the faith is merely superstition.
Every faith is to a certain extent rational, it has its own analysis and synthesis by which it seeks to establish itself intellectually; so has Nationalism.
What the Bengalee means is apparently that our faith ought not to exceed our observation; in other words, we ought to calculate the forces for and against us and if the favourable forces are weak and the unfavourable strong, we ought to move with caution and hesitation.
Now that is a very different question which has nothing to do with the philosophical aspect of Nationalism but with the policy of the moment.
Our position is that Nationalism is our faith, our dharma, and its realisation the duty which lies before the country at the present moment.
If so, it is a thing which must be done and from which we cannot turn merely because the forces are against us.
If we rely on an analysis of forces, what is it we arrive at?
It was only yesterday that there was a series of articles in the Bengalee which sought to establish the proposition that the Hindus on whom the burden of the movement has fallen are a doomed and perishing race.
The writer arrived at that conclusion by patient and exhaustive analysis.
What else does analysis 
show us?
It shows us one of the most powerful Governments in the world determined not to part with its absolute control and aided for the present by a large part of one of the chief communities in India.
On the other side a people unequipped, unorganised, without means or resources, divided within itself, a considerable portion of it inert, and even in the educated class a part of it unsympathetic, afraid, insisting on caution and prudence.
Shall we then turn from our work?
Shall we deny God?
Rationality demands that we should.
And if we do not, it is simply because it would be to deny God, because we have “mere” faith, because we believe that God is within us, a spiritual force strong enough to overcome all physical obstacles, weaknesses, disabilities, that God is in the movement, that He is its leader and guides it, that we belong to the world and the future and are not a spent and dying force.
This faith we hold because we understand the processes by which He works and can therefore see good in evil, light in the darkness, a preparation for victory in defeat, a new life in the apparent process of disintegration.