Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 13th November 1909 — No.19
Facts and Opinions
Social Reform and Politics
There are two methods of progress, two impelling motives from which great changes and far-reaching reforms can be effected.
One is the struggle of selfish interests between man and man, class and class, working out progress by ignoble strife, the forced compromise and convenient barter of the lower kind of politics.
The other is the impulse and clash of mighty ideas, noble aspirations, great national or humanitarian aims, the things which inspire mankind in its upward march and create empires and nations.
Both are freely used by the Master of the world in His careful providence and various economy.
Often they are intermingled.
But it cannot be doubted which is most healthful to the individual, the nation and the race.
The social result worked out by a bitter and selfish struggle between upper class and lower class, Labour and Capital, is one thing; the harmony created by a mighty enthusiasm, such as led the aristocracy of Japan to lay down their exclusive privileges and, without reserve, call upon the masses to come up and share their high culture, their seats of might and their ennobling traditions, is quite another.
Hindu society in the mofussil is now bitterly divided, and tends more and 
more to be convulsed, by the new aspirations of the lower castes and the inability of the higher to decide how they will meet the demand.
It is a bad sign that the action of both sides tends more and more to be selfish and narrow, political in the worst sense of the word.
To barter help in Swadeshi or faithfulness to Hinduism for social privileges, or to bribe the masses to Swadeshism by petty and calculated concessions will tend neither to the genuineness of the Swadeshi sentiment, nor the strength of the national movement, nor the dignity and purity of our religion.
It is an evil and foreign principle which has entered into our system, one of the many evil results of our disastrous contact with European civilisation at a time of national weakness and disintegration and our attempt to assimilate it without first vindicating our inner liberty and establishing ourselves as free agents.
A great social revolution in this ancient society ought only to come as the fruit of a mighty national, humanitarian and religious impulse.
The fault of the present state of things rests largely with the waning insight and statesmanship of the Brahmins.
Formerly, they would not have been wanting either in concerted action, largeness of view or skilfulness of device.
It was not their wont to stand still in an inert and impossible conservatism but to recognise circumstances and meet them without sacrificing the essence of their religion or the basic principles of Hindu society.