This chapter recounts an episode of our national history that can be referred to as the “golden age” of India. In course of time, an account will perhaps be written about this episode. Exactly fifty years after 1857 (the year marked as Mutiny or first wave of Freedom Movement) came the revolutionary juncture in 1907 and again, forty years after it, India became free in 1947. It may, however, be said that this phase began in 1905 because in that year Bengal was partitioned by a British decree and as a protest reaction to this, the national movement commenced. In the following year, i.e. in 1906, the Swadeshi Movement took a concrete shape, but the ideal of complete independence became manifest in the year that followed, that is, in 1907.
It seems that the glorious account of the hallowed martyrs who appeared in this era is getting obliterated these days from the national memory. It is hoped that one day a compatriot will write a befitting history of the noble deeds of these martyrs. Sri Aurobindo whose sanctified life is the subject matter of this book was in the forefront of these venerable people. Therefore, his achievements will indirectly proclaim theirs as well.
It has been stated in the previous chapter that Sri Aurobindo had special contacts with Bengal and Maharashtra even while he was living in Baroda. He became very active in organisational work in Bengal even before the partition of Bengal. Right after the start of the Partition Movement his activities intensified greatly. In 1906, he took a long leave without pay from his service in Baroda and completely dedicated himself to political work. The public became aware of his mission when he took up the directorship (Principal) of the National Education Council, and it was then that he resigned openly from his Baroda service.
It is not possible to follow the course of the multifarious activities Sri Aurobindo undertook particularly during the period from 1904 to 1907 or to give an accurate account thereof. It may be said on the whole that even before entering the field of politics he not only formulated the fundamental principles of the Nationalist Party but also meticulously fixed its mode of action. Immediately after his arrival in Bengal, he started working with the leaders and the workers, who were inspired by its great ideals. Work was initiated for creating secret societies and also openly organising a political party and spreading the nationalist ideology. In order to orchestrate these activities, he travelled to various places in Bengal with Bipin Chandra Pal. For the spread of his ideals, he started writing in the newspaper Bande Mataram established by Bipin Chandra. Besides, when he accepted the post of Principal (of the National Education Council), he took the initiative to propagate the ideal of national education and to establish a national institution.
In the midst of the great turmoil that engulfed the entire nation because of the partition of Bengal, Sri Aurobindo, in that nationwide passion, engaged himself to prepare the ground for an armed revolution. Barindra Kumar Ghose, his younger brother, was particularly enthusiastic in this endeavour. It is on his request that Sri Aurobindo consented to launch Jugantar, a revolutionary daily of that fiery era. It is known to one and all that the ideals of this newspaper were to propagate publicly the ideals of revolution, to reject completely the British rule and to give some clue about the art of guerrilla warfare. Sri Aurobindo himself wrote a few articles at the beginning. Though its general direction was in his hands, Barindra Kumar and Upendra Nath Bandyopadhyay topped amongst its numerous fire-brand writers. When Jugantar was charged with seditious writings, it was on the advice of Sri Aurobindo that Bhupendra Nath Dutta, brother of Swami Vivekananda, refused to stand up for his own defence in the British court. Sandhya, a newspaper edited by Brahmabandhav Upadhyay, later cooperated with the Jugantar.
It is necessary to mention here that terrorism was never the basic ideal of these secret societies established under the guidance of Sri Aurobindo, except to prepare for an armed uprising. Sri Aurobindo realised early on that without the support of the people the revolution would not succeed. It is for this reason that he wanted to turn the National Congress from a bourgeois or middle-class institution to an institution of the masses. In the articles published in the Indu Prakash in 1893–94, he propagated this very ideal. Later, however, the revolutionaries followed the path of terrorism as retaliation because the masses found the torturous repressive policy of the British just unbearable. The demolition of the oppressors becomes, in most cases, the highest faith of man—the history of mankind has vindicated this truth time and again.
On the other front, Sri Aurobindo, through his articles in the English daily Bande Mataram, used to propagate the ideals of nationalism, of complete independence, of national education and of national organisation. He used to write also on the course of action needed for the mass movement, for example, swadeshi, passive resistance etc. and criticise the British rule and the British character. In other words, Sri Aurobindo was developing a double-pronged weapon for the freedom of the motherland from foreign rule; on one hand, strength in one’s arms, that is, armed revolution, and on the other, force of mass organisation.
In order to achieve the second objective, he felt an immediate need to transform the Congress Party into a national institution. It was his belief, right after his return from England, that the policy of solicitation followed by the Congress could not awaken the nation; the ideal of independence was needed for this. His purpose was on the one hand, propagating the ideal of independence through his writings and discourses, and also on the other, preparing the country for the struggle for independence equipped with the collective force. The Congress party, however, acquired at that time the fame of being a national institution. The great erudite personalities like Surendra Nath (Banerjee), and numerous orators and patriots of renown were then its leaders. But the British had understood that the Congress would not be able to go far. A certain viceroy ridiculed the Congress saying that it was an institution of a handful of people.
Sri Aurobindo had the conviction that if the Nationalist Party could take control of the Congress Party, then the latter would be turned into a real national institution and it would be able to lead the country in its struggle for freedom. He also had a more profound goal which was to gradually create a national state within the framework of the British rule (state within state) and to totally enfeeble the British rule through increasing non-cooperation with the British administration. Sri Aurobindo decided that if the Nationalist Party failed to seize the Congress Party, then a Central Revolutionary Sangh (Association) would be formed.35
In order to work in conformity with this revolutionary ideal, the youth of Bengal had already readied itself to a large extent. Another illustrious propounder of this ideal was Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar. Sakharam was a Maharashtrian by birth but a complete Bengali at heart. He could write very well in Bengali and he used to edit Hitabadi, a Bengali weekly. His book Desher Katha (The Story of the Country) galvanised the revolutionary idealism in Bengal. Desher Katha brought to light unsparingly the adverse effects of the British rule by publishing various factual data in very simple language. Needless to say, this book was proscribed in no time under the British law. It was Sakharam Deuskar who first used the word Swaraj meaning complete independence. It touched the hearts of the countrymen and attracted the mind in such a manner that, in 1906, Dadabhai Naoroji, the president of the Calcutta Congress, publicly declared Swaraj as the ideal of India. However, Dadabhai took the word Swaraj in the sense of colonial Swaraj, just as in 1919, the Duke of Connaught used this word on the occasion of granting self-rule merely as a superficial gesture. The ideal of the moderates was colonial self-rule; that is why they were in seventh heaven having earned “British-style” Swaraj and revelled in a partial Indian representation.
Bengal felt the necessity of the ideals of Swaraj especially after reading Sakharam’s book.36 The spread of the swadeshi ideals and making the people aware of the need of freedom from foreign economic grip were also included in the agenda of Sri Aurobindo’s political actions. As a matter of fact, he too awakened his countrymen comprehensively with the mantra of swadeshi through his writings in the Bande Mataram. On 7 August 1906, the Swadeshi Movement was launched in Bengal. The field had been prepared in such a manner that the whole of Bengal joined this movement as though by force of a mantra. As a result of this movement, various swadeshi industries were set up in different regions of India and the affluent community came forward to establish swadeshi factories.37
Bande Mataram, the English daily, occupies a prominent place in the history of this era. This fact has not been forgotten completely by many people even today. This age can be termed as the era of Bande Mataram. In an auspicious moment, as though through some invisible one’s inspiration, the whole nation accepted the mantra of “Bande Mataram”! How all of a sudden, thousands of voices started chanting “Bande Mataram” has been narrated by Surendra Nath in his autobiography. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya dreamt of this revolution in Ananda Math and the divine mantra he gave us reverberated as if miraculously through the voice of the nation. Shri Bipin Chandra Pal founded the Bande Mataram, a daily in English, as the principal organ of national awakening. Bipin Chandra’s enthusiasm was inexhaustible but he lacked financial resources. He brought out the English daily with a capital of five hundred rupees only. When he asked for Sri Aurobindo’s help in this venture, the latter joined him with great ardour, as Sri Aurobindo felt that the spread and propagation of the national ideal and revolutionary ideologies to the masses through the writings in the Bande Mataram would be widely effective. Of course, in awakening the nation, the contribution of the English dailies like the Bengali, the Amrita Bazar Patrika and the Bengali weeklies like Bangabasi, Hitabadi, and Sanjibani can hardly be forgotten; but none of them could become perhaps a full-fledged mouthpiece of the revolutionary ideals. It is for this reason that Sri Aurobindo and other leaders of his party decided to launch a new paper (namely, the Bande Mataram).
It was at this time that Sri Aurobindo called upon the youth of the country to serve the nation. He then openly organised a new political party and started working in unison with the corresponding group in Maharashtra under the proclaimed leadership of Lokmanya Tilak. Later, this party was labelled as the “Extremist Party”. It was also at Sri Aurobindo’s counsel that the Bande Mataram was made the voice of the party. The Bande Mataram Company was formed. The total responsibility of directing the company was undertaken by none other than Sri Aurobindo himself, as Bipin Chandra was then on a tour to the districts of Bengal to propagate the purpose and the programmes of the new party.
Within a very short period, the Bande Mataram brought about a new age in the annals of the Indian newspapers. The articles published in this paper not only received unstinted appreciation of the countrymen but it was as though new blood started flowing in the veins of the nation. Bipin Chandra and Sri Aurobindo were not the only persons on its staff; amongst their ablest colleagues first and foremost was Shyam Sundar, the erudite atma bhola (self-oblivious) and scholar. Also among its group of writers were B.C. Chatterjee, the famous barrister, Hemendra Prasad Ghosh, the editor of great renown, and many others.
The articles in the Bande Mataram were not only full of vitality but they were also so articulate and deftly written that they could dodge the noose of the law. For this there was no end of heart-burn among the Anglo-Indian newspapers. Once, Sri Aurobindo was accused as the editor for an article published in this paper, but that he was the editor of the paper could not be proved as Bipin Chandra refused to testify against his friend. As a consequence, Bipin Chandra was sentenced to six months’ simple imprisonment while the printer of the paper, Apurva Krishna Basu, got six months rigorous imprisonment. In those days, it was not compulsory by law to print the name of the editor.
As a result of this case, the name of Sri Aurobindo spread all over the country at the same time that the people of the country started reading and glorifying the Bande Mataram. Many had the notion that all the articles of the Bande Mataram used to be written by Sri Aurobindo. It was said that a few amongst the Bengalis were obsessed with English and used to say that they disliked reading English written by the Indians, but the same people felt ill at ease without going through the Bande Mataram in the morning! Unfortunately, by a strange turn of events, the connection between Bipin Chandra and the Bande Mataram was snapped as the former could not get along with other colleagues because of differences in political ideology. Sri Aurobindo was not in Calcutta then; he was convalescing in Deoghar (now in the state of Jharkhand) after a dangerous attack of malaria. Had he been in Calcutta, he would not have consented to the departure of Bipin Chandra. On one occasion his name was announced as editor of the Bande Mataram without his approval, but only for a day; he immediately put a stop to it since he was still officially in the Baroda State Service. In the following year when a great upheaval in Bengal was in full swing, Bipin Chandra was fortunately out of reach of the British authorities; otherwise God knows what would have happened to him.
Ideological conflict38 existed between Bipin Chandra and his colleagues because the former was of the opinion that the aim of the new (Nationalist) party was complete self-government, free from British control. The moderates (the then Congress) had colonial self-government as their ideal. The revolutionary Party opined that the policy of Bipin Chandra, if analysed threadbare, would be tantamount to that of the moderates because in those days too the British colonies were by and large free from the control from England. The argument put forth by the Nationalist Party, and for that matter by the revolutionaries, was that unless the nation was enlivened to the ideal of complete independence, the true awakening would never come. It has been mentioned earlier that Dadabhai Naoroji considered swaraj as the national ideal but the Congress (or the leaders of the Congress) regarded it meaningless to think of swaraj as something more than colonial self-government. On the contrary, Sri Aurobindo regarded swaraj as the complete independence and it was this ideal that he was propagating through the Bande Mataram. Not only was the country attracted by the novelty of the ideal, but it acted also as a divine mantra—as though the whole nation was rejuvenated. If the Swadeshi Movement was not inspired by such lofty ideal, it would have remained a simple movement. But this did not happen. The goal of the Swadeshi Movement was to annul the partition of Bengal. The goal was achieved, but the movement did not stop—it was transformed into freedom movement and the whole nation took up the swadeshi mantra. Even in later phases, the slogan was “swadeshi and swaraj”.
It must be said, however, that the Congress, for a long-time, even at the time of the Non-Cooperation Movement, did not consider swaraj as complete independence. The Congress thought that if the country could get colonial self-rule, it would be more than sufficient. In 1927, returning from a tour of Europe, Pandit Nehru said that if India did not accept the ideal of complete independence, she would not receive her due respect in the comity of nations. The following year, in the Calcutta Congress, a last-ditch effort for a compromise with the British was made, but it failed. As a consequence, the Congress adopted the ideal of complete independence at its session held on the banks of the River Iravati in Lahore on 31 December 1929, and in 1931, at the Karachi session, the ideal of complete independence was announced as its national objective.
In 1931 a radical change in the colonial rule took place. The colonies got total freedom. They remained with England as her equals only for the sake of unity. We shall discuss in later chapters about a prophecy Sri Aurobindo made in this regard in an article published in the Arya in 1917, in spite of the fact that he had no direct connection with politics at that time.