— if the dharma be destroyed, it destroys in turn. Britain has been made great by her Empire. If now she tries to keep India weak, her greatness cannot last, but will topple over of itself,— the weakness of a disarmed, effete and starving India will be the ruin of the British Empire.
Few have the gift of taking a broad comprehensive view of politics, especially when greed stands in the way. If any system of political exploitation should fix its ambition on the permanence of India’s connexion, then such a system is bound to overlook the very factors essential for such connexion. A permanent connexion is against the law of Nature. Even the tree has to yield up its fruit, and any artificial attempt to prolong its hold can only result in a shortening of its natural term.
To make a subjugated country weak, to keep it distracted in disunity, to prevent the natural growth of its powers by refusing to allow their exercise, and thus to reduce it to lifelessness,—this is England’s policy of the day when world-entrancing flowers have ceased to bloom in her literature and only thorny politics flourish in overwhelming luxuriance, when pity has ceased to well up for the weak, the unfortunate, the downtrodden, when only the expansion of dominion is accounted greatness, when deeds of daring have given way to aggressive exploitation, and the selfish cult of patriotism has usurped the place of religion.
Whether this state of things in England is unfortunate for us in India, or otherwise, will depend upon ourselves. A clearer vision of Truth is to be obtained in the day of tribulation, and without the vision of Truth there is no hope for any people. God has been visiting us with suffering in order to bring it home to us that we cannot gain by petitioning what it is our own duty to earn, and that expenditure of words is mere waste where service alone will do. So long as these simple truths are not realised by us, sorrow on sorrow, contumely on contumely, will be our lot.
We must first of all understand one thing clearly. If moved by some secret, underlying apprehension, the Government should choose to put obstacles in the way of our growing unity, to protest is worse than useless. Can we contrive any form of words clever enough to give them the assurance that we desire for ever to be under the British Empire as our summum bonum? And are they of such infantile innocence as to believe it? All we can say — and it will be clear enough even if we do not say it — is, that we have use for the British connexion only so long as we are unable to evolve a secure and lasting union among the differing elements which exist within India,—and no further.
Such being the case, if the Englishman looking to his own selfish interests—selfish albeit glorified with the name of Empire — should say that it is high time for him to set about consolidating his position by refusing to allow us to be united, then what reply have we to give him except in the shape of the purest of platitudes? If when the woodman is about to ply his axe, the tree should cry, “Stay, else I lose my branch,” and the woodcutter should reply “I know, I am here because I want it!”—is there any room for further argument?
But we have learnt that in Parliament they debate one party replies to the other party and the winning paity rejoices in its victory. So we cannot get rid of the idea that success in debate is final. We forget the difference. There the two parties are the right and left hands of the same body, and are both nourished by the same power. Is it the same here? Are our powers and those of the Government derived from the same source? Do we get the same shower of fruit when we shake the same tree? Please do not look into your text books in answering this question. It will be of no avail to know what Mill has said, and Herbert Spencer has said, and Seeley has said. The book of the country lies open before us, and the true answer is there.
To put it briefly, it is for the master to call the tune, and we are not the master. But the lover of argument will not be silenced. Do we not pay so many crores of
