Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 4th September 1909 — No.11
Facts and Comments
The Law and the Nationalist
There are several points connected with the national movement 
in which the law is in a state of dangerous uncertainty.
The exact limit of sedition is one of them, the matter of social boycott is another.
We believe that social boycott involving no violence or direct coercion is perfectly legal but it is certain that not only the Anglo-Indian community at large but a portion of the judiciary would be glad to find it illegal.
Any doubt on such subjects ought to be removed, for although ignorance is in itself no excuse in law, it ought to be a defence when it is created by the uncertainties of the law itself.
We think the Nationalists ought to take every opportunity of testing the extent of the liberties still allowed to us in the ordinary course of the law.
We are aware that a section of Nationalist opinion has held that our principle of Swadeshi Boycott ought to debar us from taking any part in any legal proceedings whatever.
While many of us had openly expressed our admiration for the heroic stoicism with which this principle has been adhered to in many cases, we have not held it binding on any except those fine consciences to whom it appealed nor would we allow it to guide our own action.
We hold that no Nationalist should resort to the British Courts under the present political conditions as against a brother Nationalist or in any circumstances which give him a real choice.
If he is dragged to the criminal or civil courts by others he is entitled to defend himself to the end by all means1 that the law provides.
If arbitration is refused in a case where his interests are attacked, he is absolved from the self-denying obligation, or if the law of the land compels him as a landholder or propertied or business man to protect himself by certain legal forms, it is obvious that he cannot deny himself that protection without imperilling work or wealth necessary to the nation.
The same overriding rule of necessity which compels us to exclude machinery and other instruments of education, work and production from the Boycott, limits the application of the arbitration principle and the abstention from British Courts.
Formerly we were content to go our way in doubtful cases, such as the limits of the law of sedition, putting our own interpretation and taking the consequences of a too elastic reading of the law.
We even held ourselves justified in the case of unjust and arbitrary laws in breaking them not by violence but peacefully and passively, as the Dissenters did in 
England, so as to get them either tested or altered.
This we still hold to be morally and politically justifiable.
But the outbreak of Terrorism compels us to restrict our circle of passive resistance lest even by the most peaceful rejection of unjust laws we should seem to be encouraging lawlessness and disorder.
Still, if we are to observe the law scrupulously, just or unjust, we must know what the law is, and now that there is a man at the head of judicial administration who knows the law and tries to keep to it, we ought to take advantage of this now unusual circumstance and use every opportunity to fix the legal position of our movement and its methods.