Sri Aurobindo. The New Nationalism // Bande Mataram: Political Writings and Speeches. 1890

Sri Aurobindo

Bande Mataram

Political Writings and Speeches. 1890–1908

Part Seven. Writings from Manuscripts (1907 – 1908)

What is Extremism?

The nicknames of party warfare have often passed into the accepted terminology used by serious politicians and perpetuated by history, and it is possible that the same immortality may await the designations of Moderate² and Extremist³ by which the two parties now contending for the mind of the nation are commonly known. The forward party

The Heart of Nationalism

Nationalism; but what is Nationalism? The⁴ word has only recently begun to figure as an ordinary term of our politics and it has been brought into vogue by the new, forward or extreme party which, casting about for a convenient description of themselves, selected the name⁵ as the only one covering in a word their temper and their gospel⁶. For there is a great deal in a name in spite of Shakespeare. A name attached to a political party or school of thought not only serves to show⁷ the temper and point of view of the giver, but it helps greatly to colour contemporary ideas about the party it seeks to exalt or disparage. The advanced men whom Anglo-Indian and Moderate unite in branding as Extremists, have always repudiated the misleading designation⁸. At first they preferred to call themselves the New School; they now claim the style of Nationalists; a claim which has been angrily objected to on the ground that the rest of the Congress party are as good Nationalists as the forward party. This⁹

The New Nationalism, I said in a former article, in this Review, is a negation of the old bourgeois ideals of the nineteenth century. It is an attempt to relegate the dominant bourgeois in us to¹⁰ his old obscurity, to transform the bourgeois into the Samurai and through him to extend the workings of the Samurai spirit to the whole nation. Or to put it more broadly, it is an attempt to create a new nation¹¹ in India by reviving in¹² spirit and action ancient¹³ Indian character, the strong, great and lofty spirit of old Aryavarta, and setting it to use and¹⁴ mould the methods and materials of modernity for the freedom, greatness and well-being of a¹⁵ historic and immortal people. This is not, I am well aware, a description under which the ordinary Congress politician will recognize¹⁶ what he prefers to disparage as Extremism¹⁷, but it will be well understood by those who are constant readers of the Nationalist journals in Bengal, whether the Bande Mataram or New India or vernacular journals like the Yugantar, the Nabasakti or the Sandhya. Whatever their differences of temper, tone or style, however¹⁸ the methods they recommend may differ in detail, they are united by a common faith and a common spirit; a common faith in India, not in an¹⁹ Anglicised and transmogrified nation unrecognizable²⁰ as Indians²¹, but in²² India of the immemorial²³ past, India of the clouded but fateful present, India leonine, mighty²⁴, crowned with her²⁵ imperial diadem of the future; a common spirit of enthusiasm, hope, the desire²⁶ to dare and do²⁷ all things so that our vision of her future may be fulfilled greatly and soon. This is the heart of Nationalism. The ordinary Congress politician’s ideas of Nationalism are associated with heated²⁸ discussions in Committee and Congress, altercations at public meetings, unsparing criticisms²⁹ of successful and eminent respectabilities, sedition trials, National Volunteers, East Bengal disturbances, Rawalpindi riots. To him the Nationalist is nothing more than an “Extremist”, a violent, unreasonable, uncomfortable being whom some malign power has raised up to disturb with his Swaraj and Boycott, his lawlessness and his lathies³⁰ the respectable ease³¹ and safety³² of Congress politics. He finds him increasing in numbers and influence with an alarming rapidity which it is convenient to deny but impossible to ignore. (It is the bourgeois view of the type destined to push him aside and supplant him and like all such views born of a panic fear and hatred, it is a caricature and not a description.)³³ He has no clear idea of the aim and drift³⁴ of Extremism³⁵. He imagines it to be our³⁶ object to drive out the English and make India free by Boycott and the lathie³⁷, and, having thus erected a scarecrow to chuck stones at, he thinks himself entitled to dismiss the new party in³⁸ his mind as a crowd of enthusiastic lunatics³⁹ who talk nonsense and advocate impossibilities.

Nationalism cannot be so easily dismissed. A force which has shaken the whole of India, trampled the traditions of a century into a refuse of irrecoverable fragments and set the mightiest of modern Empires groping in a panic for weapons strong enough to meet a new and surprising danger, must have some secret of strength and therefore of truth in it which is worth knowing. To get at the heart of Nationalism we must first clear away some of the misconceptions⁴⁰ with which its realities have been clouded. We must know what Nationalism is not before we ask what it is.

Extremism in the sense of unreasoning violence of spirit and the preference of desperate methods, because they are desperate, is not the heart of Nationalism. The Nationalist is no⁴¹ advocate of lawlessness⁴² for its own sake, on the contrary he has a deeper⁴³ respect for the essence of law⁴⁴ than anyone else, because the building up of a nation is his objective and he knows well that without a profound reverence for law national⁴⁵ life cannot persist and attain a sound and healthy development. But he qualifies his respect for legality by the proviso that the law he is called upon to obey is the law of the nation, an outgrowth of its⁴⁶ organic existence and part of its own accepted system of government⁴⁷. A law imposed from outside can command only the interested obedience⁴⁸ of those whose chief demand from life is the safety of⁴⁹ their persons and property or the timid obedience of those who understand the danger of breaking the law. The claim made by it is an utilitarian, not a moral claim. Farther the Nationalist never loses sight of the truth that law was made for man and not man for the law⁵⁰. Its chief function and reason for existence is to safeguard and foster the growth and happy flowering into strength and health of national life and a law which does not subserve this end or which opposes and contradicts this end⁵¹, however rigidly it may enforce peace, order⁵² and security, forfeits its claim to respect and obedience. Nationalism refuses to accept Law as a fetish or peace and security as an aim in themselves; the only idol of its worship is Nationality and the only aim in itself it recognizes⁵³ is the freedom, power and well-being of the nation. It will not prefer violent or strenuous methods simply because they are violent or strenuous, but neither will it cling to mild and peaceful methods simply because they are mild and peaceful. It asks of a method whether it is effective for its purpose, whether it is worthy of a great people struggling to be, whether it is educative of national strength and activity, and these things ascertained, it asks nothing farther. He⁵⁴ does not love anarchy and suffering, but⁵⁵ if anarchy and suffering are the necessary passage to the great consummation he seeks, he is ready to bear them himself, to expose others to them, till the end is reached. He⁵⁶ will embrace suffering as⁵⁷ a lover and clasp the hand of Anarchy like that of a trusted friend,– if so it must be; for it is not his temper⁵⁸ to take the inevitable grudgingly or to serve or struggle with half a heart⁵⁹. If that is Extremism and fanaticism, he is an Extremist and a fanatic; but not for their own sake, not out of a disordered love for anarchy and turmoil, not in madness and desperation, but out of a reasoned conviction and courageous acceptance of the natural laws that demand this sacrifice in return for so great a promise⁶⁰. The same natural law by⁶¹ which a man who aspires to reach a difficult height, must clamber⁶² up the steep rocks and risk life and limb in arduous places, has⁶³ decreed that men who desire to live as freemen in a free country must not refuse to be ready to pay toll for freedom with their own blood and the blood⁶⁴ of their children, and still more the nation which seeks to grow out of subjection into liberty, must consent first to manure the soil with the tears of its women and the bodies of its sons. The Nationalist knows what he asks from Fate and he knows the price that Fate asks from him in return. Knowing it, he is ready to drag down the⁶⁵ nation with him into the valley of the shadow of Death, dark with night and mist and storm, sown thick and crude with perils of strange monsters and perils of morass and fire and flood, holding all danger and misery as nothing because beyond the valleys are the mountains of Beulah where the nation shall enjoy eternal life. He is ready to lead the chosen people into the desert for its⁶⁶ long wanderings, though he knows that often in the bitterness of its sufferings it will murmur and rebel against his leadership and raise its hand to stone him to death as the author of its misery, for he knows that beyond is the promised land flowing with milk and honey which the Divine Voice has told him that those⁶⁷ who are faithful, will reach and possess. If he embraces Anarchy, it is as the way to good government. If he does not shrink from disorder and violent struggle, it is because without that disorder there can be no security and without that struggle no peace, except the security of decay and the peace of death. If he has sometimes to disregard the law of man, it is to obey the dictates of his conscience and the law of God.

Nationalism⁶⁸ existed⁶⁹ in India before it became definite and articulate in Bengal, but it is Bengal that gave it a philosophy, a faith, a method, a mantra and a battle-cry.

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 1.- Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings. 1890 - May 1908.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1973.- 920 p.

¹ Editorial title. Late 1907 or early 1908. The present text follows the manuscript exactly. Sri Aurobindo first wrote, on separate pages, two incomplete paragraphs, each with a heading meant to be the title of the piece. Then, on a third page, he began again, this time without any heading. As neither of the existing headings was selected as the final title, the editors have placed a general editorial title above them both. The “former article, in this Review” referred to in the first complete paragraph is undoubtedly “The Bourgeois and the Samurai”. The text of “The New Nationalism” was put in as evidence by the prosecution in the Alipore Bomb Trial. In the beginning of 1909 this piece and “The Morality of Boycott” were reproduced from the court transcripts by Swaraj, a fortnightly review published from London by Bipin Chandra Pal. The London text was later reproduced in the Hindusthan Standard of August 14, 1938 and elsewhere.