Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 6th November 1909 — No.18
Facts and Opinions
China Enters
The circle of constitutionally governed Asiatic countries increases.
To Turkey, Persia and Japan, China is added.
Towards the close of the ten years set apart in the Chinese programme 
for the preparation of self-government, the Chinese Government has kept its promise to grant a constitution.
Provincial Assemblies have been established, are working and have shown their reality and independence by opposing Government demands.
The electoral basis of an Imperial Assembly has been provided.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that the steady, resolute, methodical Chinese, with their unrivalled genius for organisation, will make a success of the constitutional experiment.
In all Asia now, with the exception of Siam and Afghanistan, the only countries which are denied a constitutional Government are those which have not vindicated their national freedom.
Even in Afghanistan the first ineffective stirrings of life have been seen and1 will grow to something formidable before many years are over.
We wonder whether Lord Morley and his advisers really believe that when they are surrounded by a free and democratic Asia, the great Indian race can be kept in a state of tutelage and snail-paced advancement, much less put off to a future age in the dim mists of a millennial futurity to which the penetrating vision of the noble and Radical Lord cannot pierce.
The worst opponents of Indian freedom know well what this Asiatic constitutionalism means, and therefore the Englishman struggles, in the face of continual disappointment, to foresee the speedy collapse of Nationalism and Parliamentary Government in Persia, Turkey and even Japan as the inevitable fate of an institution foreign to the Asiatic genius, which is popularly supposed to recoil from freedom and hug most lovingly the heaviest chains.