Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 21st August 1909 — No.9
Facts and Opinions
A London Congress
It is a pity that his oratorical triumphs in England seem to have blinded Sj. Surendranath to their small utility to the country.
So far has he been led away by the slight and transient effect he has produced on the surface of the public mind in England that he is attempting to revive the old and futile idea of a Congress in London.
Whether he will prevail on his fellow-Conventionalists to perpetrate this huge waste of money, we cannot say.
The break-up of the Congress and the “stern and relentless repression” of the Nationalist party has delivered the old Congress Conservatives from the fear of public opinion.
Needless to say, no so-called Congress held under such circumstances will be representative of the people.
It is the old love of striking theatrical effects addressed to an English audience as patrons that has been revived in Sj. Surendranath by his visit.
We notice that the dead cant about the faith in the sense of justice of the Government and the British democracy once more reappears in the columns of the Bengalee.
All these are bad signs.
What is it that the Moderate Leader proposes to effect by this expenditure of money which might be so much better used in the country itself?
We fail to see how a meeting of forty or fifty Indians, however eminent and respectable, prosing about Indian grievances and the sense of justice of the British democracy or the immaculate Liberalism of Lord Morley can do any lasting service to the cause of India in England.
Even if this could be turned into a really imposing theatricality, the effect of such shows in European countries is merely a nine days' wonder unless they are followed up.
It is natural that an orator should overrate the effect of oratory, but Sj. Surendranath is surely aware that the greatest speeches or series of speeches unconnected with its own interests now produce on the blasé British public only the effect of a passing ripple which is immediately effaced by the next that follows.
Either therefore his proposal means only some temporary theatricals and waste of money or he must persuade our people to resume the old abandoned policy and carry on a perennial campaign in England for the “education” of the British Public.
Only as part of such a campaign had the proposal of a London Congress ever any meaning or justification.
But even in its best days the Congress leaders could never produce enough men, money and energy for so stupendous a work, and it is doubly impossible now that the old policy is discredited.
Certainly, if Sj. Surendranath thinks that the newly awakened energies of India are going to follow him in throwing themselves into this channel, he is grievously mistaken.
Not all his prestige and influence can put back the hands of the clock so utterly.
The Indian movement has really to deal not with the British democracy, which is an almost negligible factor in Indian affairs, but with the politicians in Parliament, His Majesty's ministers and the powerful influence in England of the official and commercial English out here.
These are hard-headed and obstinate forces which, so far as they can at all rise out of the narrow groove of class interests or racial pride and prejudice, can only be influenced by one consideration, the best way to preserve the Empire in India.
Even in the minds of Sir Henry Cotton and Mr. Mackarness that cannot fail to be a dominant consideration.
If any educational work has to be done in England, it is to convince these classes that it is only by the concession of control that the co-operation of the Indian people can be secured.
And that work is best done from India.